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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

#201

Post by _lce0 »

ts330 wrote: post #48
sagichmal wrote: post #11

Hiring 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…

And this is why there is an impedance mismatch... these people are interviewing for a "computer science" role they're filling when really they want a programmer. The two are different.

As an Information Engineer, you're totally right.

Almost in any interview I had, I been asked about CS stuff. Never anything related to my field.

I don't blame them. They ask about what they know and what they think it's important, even if it's not relevant to the position.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#202

Post by aregsarkissian »

When you go on interviews you should be interviewing them as well. So for every question they ask you should ask them one as well. If they ask you to code up something them you should ask them to code up something to see if they qualify as a group of people you would like to work for. This might not go well at some companies which should be sign that you don't want to work for them.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#203

Post by bpchaps »

tronje wrote: post #176
tachion wrote: post #170

After reading author's post I've a feeling that its not the programming skills that the author has issues with, but instead the attitude, stress durability, expectations to the world around him. True, hiring can be broken, it often is, but as with everything, the persistence usually allows us to find the proper company with proper hiring process. He's getting frustrated pretty quickly, complains when is asked to perf…

I agree with you. The author's inability to write a breadth-first-search under stress, for example, very much highlights this, in my opinion. I sort-of agree that these specific tasks shouldn't be used as an indicator of programming skills, but a breadth-first-search is really quite simple. It's mode of operation is in the name, and even if you haven't implemented one in a while, you should be able to derive some val…

He posts a link to his github page, ffs! Sure, he could've modified that, but that just sounds incredibly silly, considering how open he is about everything else: https://github.com/sahat

I spend maybe four hours per coding in a moderately complex domain where I have zero need to know how to write a bfs. To ask someone to do it, then to ding them on it is just self-masturbatory behavior.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#204

Post by tacos »

I do not think junior people realize what senior people see when they look at your GitHub work. Without exception, the crappier the oeurve the more the candidate wants me to look at his or her GitHub.

Read a single user's Tweets going back a month and even your best friend starts to look a little nuts. Do it with their git history and you'll sometimes get a very different impression of their work habits, too.

In my experience, these services tend to make people look worse, not better. But I can't always give the benefit of the doubt when I'm making a critical hiring decision.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#205

Post by askyourmother »

When I hired a plumber for my heating firm, I put her through a hazing interview, tested her knowledge of Maxwell relations and thermodynamic equations. Oh wait, no I didn't. As she has been a plumber for years, so we recognised her skill and experience and cut to the chase.

When I hired a programmer for our doomed to die VC life support funded fart of a project, we put her through numerous rounds of comp sci bingo and algorithm hell. Why? Not sure. Everyone else does. I mean, hiring in IT is shit, why should we break from the industry norm? Why should we want to care about the candidates? Right? I mean if Google can do it...

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#206

Post by GFischer »

m52go wrote: post #3

WOW. I thought I was in a weak spot by being self-taught and scattered. So just who the hell is passing these inquisitions? What's really necessary?

I know of someone who quit his day job, then spent several months studying algorithms, the books about passing Google-style interviews, memorized everything, practised interviews a lot. Then he sent his carefully-crafted resume, scheduled several interviews and flew to San Francisco.

It worked. He's working at a top company for several times his former salary, he had several competing offers with HUGE bonuses and equity offers.

However, I don't know if I have the commitment to do that, and I'm not sure if everyone SHOULD have to do that.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#207

Post by beambot »

tachion wrote: post #170

After reading author's post I've a feeling that its not the programming skills that the author has issues with, but instead the attitude, stress durability, expectations to the world around him. True, hiring can be broken, it often is, but as with everything, the persistence usually allows us to find the proper company with proper hiring process. He's getting frustrated pretty quickly, complains when is asked to perf…

Indeed. You would think that someone who is smart, capable, and clearly determined early on (as in pre-Google interview) that many potential employers would ask algorithm questions.... Would, you know, study up on some algorithms?

It probably isn't the "right" way for programming interviews, but once you identify the rules of the game, it behooves you to play the game accordingly, no?

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#208

Post by GFischer »

robbiemitchell wrote: post #59

Most people are commenting about the technical nature of the interviewers, but the communication between company and applicant is often broken as well. It's the difference between not getting an offer and then (a) hating the company or (b) supporting it and recommending it to other potential applicants. Companies underestimate these effects. Once you bring someone in for an interview, you owe them a phone call, with…

Some companies do have good feedback processes.

I was rejected twice by a large company, which both had a much saner interview process (take-home excercises and much better in-person interviews), and I still think very highly of it (and I know the people that did get in and they were indeed very good).

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#210

Post by wlesieutre »

zappo2938 wrote: post #178

"Write a maze solving algorithm" I just solved that in less than 3 seconds. Here is the solution in a Fiddle[0] and the discussion on Stack Exchange.[1]Sorry, I'm too busy solving problems which haven't been solved yet to bother with problems that have been solved. [0]: http://jsfiddle.net/5g7se8qL/7/ [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16173259/javascript-maze-...

And then when they ask you to solve a real problem they're working on instead of a contrived algorithm, you can complain about how they're expecting you to do work they can profit off of but aren't paying you for the interview.

Or they could find some obscure (and unrelated to their product) algorithmic problem that's been solved before but isn't posted on StackOverflow, and you can complain about how it's just trivia and not a useful problem.

No matter what the question is, there will always be some reason that the job interview is a waste of your time and you could have spent your afternoon off curing cancer instead.

They want to know if you can solve problems. The maze is an (imperfect) test from which they hope to extrapolate whether you could solve future problems. The future problems will not all be written up word-for-word on a Q&A site.

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