TLDR: Doesn't know computer science fundamentals, doesn't get hired in a role that requires computer science fundamentals.
Is this Hacker News or Script-Kiddie News?
Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
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Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#22Just went through this process from the POV of employer. The risk of choosing the wrong person is so great, that it's often better to not choose anyone. If there is any doubt what-so-ever, it's better to not make a a hire, it can be too damaging to a team, manager, company. I've tried so many different "coding interview" scenarios. But I found the best one was a real task that a real staff member would be expected to…
"The risk of choosing the wrong person is so great, that it's often better to not choose anyone"
This risk can be great, but the team and company can be organized such that the risk is extremely reduced. A pairing schedule, for example, can be very effective.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#23The examples that always come up of "stupid interview questions" in this kind of rant: Implement a breadth first search, or reverse a binary tree, or write FizzBuzz. Are these really such difficult things to whip up, off the top of your head? Is it really that unreasonable to want to hire someone who can do so? Yes, if you need such a thing and it's not immediately obvious how to do it, off to StackOverflow you go to…
Given time alone in a quiet room with a computer, these are not huge demands. Trying to do this in front of people, on a whiteboard, with limited time, and having to explain yourself to idiots is indeed, the very definition of "stupid interview questions". This would, however, work great in other professions. For example, why don't we test surgeons' skills by giving them a chainsaw to cut up the patient with, in a room full of germs, while they have to explain to a 3 year old what they're doing? Oh, and always ask the surgeon to operate on a body part he doesn't specialize in, hasn't worked on in 20 years, and will likely never work on in his lifetime. This would hire us great surgeons because it hires us great programmers! I mean, just look at all the amazingly good code out there!
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#24In jobs or sales or relationships (which is ultimately what this is: interpersonal relationship dynamics), the best outcomes are effortless. If there's too much friction, it's probably not going to work out. The best job/deal/friend/partner will simply fall into your lap, and you'll wonder how it can be so simple.
The challenge is finding these. Careful filtering can help, but it seems to be largely a numbers game.
This becomes increasingly difficult, as more companies are infected with these faddish processes every day.
And there's a cost, of time and money and contentment. To help reduce this, consider spending increasingly less time on opportunities you deem unlikely to work out, based on past experience.
I often prequalify jobs--sometimes companies respond, sometimes not, but that also provides me with useful information.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#25Hiring isn't broken, dude. You just don't interview well, and you seem antagonistic even to the idea that your cachet and skills, insofar as they exist, aren't useful to the market. That's a problem -- for you. Interviews exist because employers need a way to quantify and qualify your ability. Typical computer science problems are a (flawed, but concrete) way of doing that. No reasonable interviewer expects you to re…
Additionally, a good programmer (or worker in general) should be good at much more than programming; like being able to collaborate & socialize with other team members & management without immediately resorting to "Fuck you, I quit".
The author seems to have a chip on his shoulder...
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#26Considering that it's our fellow programmers doing the interviewing, I'd say we're failing ourselves here. I'd wager that in almost all cases, those doing interviews have had zero training on effectively recruiting anyone (let alone other developers). An effective interview requires preparation - and I bet the majority of developers do this right between saying "fuck, have they arrived already?" and starting the interview. Is it any wonder it falls back to the standard approach of "Google does it, it must be good" or a dick swinging contest trying to prove how amazing your team is, because "fuck yeah, we all write search algos every fucking day - it's why our product is amazing."
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#27I see these same algorithms/concepts show up repeatedly in interview rants posted here. At this point, if I'm going to interview, I'm just going to cold memorize them over a week or so and then adapt to the specific interview questions. It's just a ritual that needs to be done at this point.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#28[deleted]
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#29The examples that always come up of "stupid interview questions" in this kind of rant: Implement a breadth first search, or reverse a binary tree, or write FizzBuzz. Are these really such difficult things to whip up, off the top of your head? Is it really that unreasonable to want to hire someone who can do so? Yes, if you need such a thing and it's not immediately obvious how to do it, off to StackOverflow you go to…
I had a disastrous phone interview this week throughout which I remained calm and focused but immediately after putting the phone down I emailed the recruiter to say I wasn't interested.
The "Technical" part was just trivia. Never-mind that I was sat in front of a computer and could have googled everything asked, I chose not to do that.
So yes, I stumbled when asked "what does the using keyword do". I explained how it relates to IDisposable, disposeing the object at the end of the block scope and avoids needing try/finally blocks.
But clearly that wasn't the script, because they kept asking "Are you sure it doesn't do anything else? Are you sure isn't used anywhere else?".
Eventually I realised they were talking about "using System.Linq" etc, and all they wanted to hear was the word "namespaces".
Talk about interviewing by numbers, had I wanted to I could have googled every question and given them perfect descriptions.
What could they possibly have learned from that interaction? I learned I didn't want to work there, so it helped me I guess.
But I find implementation things more helpful (in person, not by phone!), because it's not about whipping out the right answer, it's about watching how the candidate thinks and approaches problems. It's about how they work not the end result.
I like the "write a function to multiply" because it can be extended to any level. If someone aces the positive numbers case you point out negative numbers, if they ace that you can talk about efficiency, or bounds checks, exception handling, efficiency or whatever else you think they'd like to talk about.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#30Hiring isn't broken, dude. You just don't interview well, and you seem antagonistic even to the idea that your cachet and skills, insofar as they exist, aren't useful to the market. That's a problem -- for you. Interviews exist because employers need a way to quantify and qualify your ability. Typical computer science problems are a (flawed, but concrete) way of doing that. No reasonable interviewer expects you to re…
I don't think many software engineers deal with "computer science problems" in their everyday jobs.
GitHub stars are worth much more IMO. It shows that other developers value your work. That says a lot.
In the end, we have to realize that most developers are just average. Why go through the ridiculous process of finding average developers who by luck (or some homework) happen to solve the problems you throw at them perfectly?