Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary • Hacker News Board

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#181

Post by dilemma » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:17 AM UTC

colmvp wrote: post #10

senekerim wrote: post #5

I have been to lots of interviews, on both sides of the table. I find most interviewers unprepared to evaluate the person for the role, and instead exercise their own biases, stroke their egos, etc. It's largely a voodoo practice that we'll look back and laugh at as a civilization at some point..

I wonder how many employ Kahneman's recommendation based on his book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow": > Suppose that you need to hire a sales representative for your firm. If you are serious about hiring the best possible person for the job, this is what you should do. First, select a few traits that are prerequisites for success in this position (technical proficiency, engaging personality, reliability, and so on. Don't…

> These preparations should take you half an hour or so, a small investment that can make a significant difference in the quality of the people you hire.

Sounds more like it would take thousands of years if not eternity to prepare, as it involves a) accurately identifying personal characteristics related to professional success and b) predicting the future.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#182

Post by dilemma » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:27 AM UTC

richardwhiuk wrote: post #9

Isn't this exactly what you'd expect? e.g. if get a random cohort of developers who all of their peers would say are amazing, if I subject them to a series of tests, they will do differently well at the different tests? For example, so I set a test where you have to write some Java, if half the candidates haven't written any Java, they'd all surely do worse on the test than the other half? Or is their a belief in the…

People do believe such things, yes, despite how absurd it is as you've shown.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#183

Post by wott » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:28 AM UTC

jccc wrote: post #164

nvarsj wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The single most effective way that I've found to interview for "interest" is to just get them talking about something they've done before and ask them to go deep into the details. You get everything you need from watching somebody talk, with a smile on their face, about how they solved some problem in a creative way that makes them show some pride. Sorry, but you are being scammed. You are selecting for sales skill…

> Sorry, but you are being scammed. You are selecting for sales skills, not technical skills. Read what you've written. You're asking the parent commenter to set aside eight years of personal hiring experience, over which time "every person I've ever hired who has passed that part has ended up in my 'great hire' category" (assuming, that is, that you've read what he/she's written). Can a candidate lacking the technic…

> Can a candidate lacking the technical skills go deep into details the way the parent commenter describes?

That's what most bosses/salesmen excel at doing everyday.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#184

Post by jorgecurio » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:37 AM UTC

Technical interviews are part of why I've moved away from engineering positions. I'm looking at product management jobs thinking that I could use what I learned past 6 years working on a SaaS alone. However, I found the exact same shit, even more technical interview questions that require whiteboard code writing.

There might be some merit to why they are doing this but it's impossible for me to engage companies that discount real world product experience in favor of rote memorization.

So far it's a pretty tough nut to crack, lot of product manager interviewers don't seem to know what they are doing, instead relying on law of large numbers and how great their fucking product is blah blah blah (it isn't).

It's a bit worrying since some companies seem to be hiring product managers for some subjective end goal of an improved product and improved sales....they want one person to take the credit from, and the same person to take all the blame...another huge red flag when managers outright tell you they have no idea what to do so they just get someone else to outsource their thinking.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#185

Post by dms105 » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:38 AM UTC

grillvogel wrote: post #135

dms105 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the law/programming analogy, but theres probably more of a margin for error when your job is to convince some people, depending on if you're prosecuting or defending. If you make even a small mistake when programming, it could break your entire program.

if you make one "small mistake" while lawyering an innocent person might get sentenced to death. why do so many programmers think their job is inherently more special and difficult than everyone else's?

You misinterpreted what I was trying to say. I was simply trying to highlight that theres a difference between dealing with people and dealing with a perfectly logical machine, to support the point that interviewing programmers is harder than interviewing lawyers. And I'm not a programmer.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#186

Post by bavcyc » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:50 AM UTC

dudul wrote: post #12

In the HN echo chamber, there isn't a day without some blog post/article describing how our interview process is BS, interview is broken, etc. I don't necessarily dispute this state of affaire, but does anyone know how it compares to other fiels/professions? How about interviewing a lawyer? Or a doctor? Or an account manager? Or a product marketer? Are developers the only one with a "broken" interview process?

Although not a completely different field/profession:

Power Engineering interviews usually have technical questions, or how you would approach a problem. Even if you have a license. But typically if you have worked in the field, the answers are straight forward.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#187

Post by dilemma » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:50 AM UTC

The problem with hiring is that hiring decisions are centralized, causing huge workloads for the decision maker. To reduce the load, arbitrary processes and voodoo tests are used, always with the same poor results.

Instead, the team hiring should themselves interview candidates and make decisions on who to hire, because it requires personal knowledge that you can't get from tests.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#188

Post by taneq » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:52 AM UTC

RogerL wrote: post #109

jkyle wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I expect a programmer to be able to pick up a new language or database within a couple of weeks (tops) in most cases. They may be able to hack around, write a for loop, track down a bug....but you're not going to get the same caliber of work from someone who first saw python two weeks ago compared to someone whose been using the language for 5 years on real projects.

So how exactly is anyone supposed to gain new experience? I don't mean to be combative, but so many job recs and interviews expect X years of Y. How do you get that time it? You learn it, right? I didn't used to know Python, but it was obviously useful for my job. So, I installed it and learned it. I was producing useful results for my company very rapidly. Sure, a few years later my skills are more well rounded and…

If you're good at picking things up in a hurry, the best way to gain experience in new skills is to get hired for your existing skill set, either at a very small company or (better yet) a large one with incompetent management.

In a small company, everyone wears a bunch of different hats and you will often be asked to do new things outside your official role.

In a large company with bad management, staff turnover will ensure that they regularly find themselves short on skills, at which point you can stick your hand up to pick up the slack.

Either way, if you consistently deliver the goods then they'll keep coming to you with new challenges.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#189

Post by lostcolony » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 2:16 AM UTC

It may not be arbitrary, but if so it's buried deep in the data.

I've turned down candidates who had impressive technical resumes, who had worked in startups that sold, who had been hired on as consultants at various places, etc, because they were unable to solve simple algorithms in a simple manner, and their code was atrocious. Does this mean they're "bad developers"? No. If we were a consulting firm or a startup they might well be worth it; where the important thing is getting code out the door quickly, and to have something that works, even if it's not easily maintainable. But I was hiring for a position that required someone who would keep solutions simple and maintainable ('craftsmanship' rather than productivity, if you will. Note that the former does not necessarily preclude the latter, but it's the trait that was necessary, and was lacking).

Google optimizes for people with strong algorithmic knowledge. It's debatable whether they need everyone to have that, but certainly, many shops don't. Again, I've hired people with no formal CS background, because most of my job's problems don't require you to have deep algorithmic knowledge (the ones that do we can have others address, or work together on).

We know that people can fail one technical interview, while being radiant in another, and the reality is that what we're looking for, and what others are looking for, are often different. That creates a lot of variance in the data when we compare them.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#190

Post by deciplex » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 2:23 AM UTC

maxaf wrote: post #29

Take home tests FTW. The thinking goes as follows: 1. If the candidate can't be bothered to complete a 2-4 hour (depending on claimed seniority) code test in the language of their choice, we can't be bothered to talk to them. 2. If the candidate does reasonably well by completing the code test somewhat on time (with a fat margin allowed for them, well, having a life) and within parameters of the task, they're invited…

Despite what others are saying here I think take-home tests are a great idea. What is a terrible idea however is requiring that a candidate complete your take-home test, that you wrote and will administer. It is simply not reasonable to expect a candidate to complete such an exam for every company he applies to, oftentimes before he even talks to a human being and usually before he has a face-to-face or a phone interview with an engineer. There simply aren't enough hours in the day, even if you're unemployed.

And there aren't, to my knowledge, any really good and widely-used sites that a prospective job-seeker could use to establish his skills, which any random company likely will look at and accept as canon. And so we're all in a bit of a bind.