Don’t do interviews, do discussions • Hacker News Board

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#201

Post by Jensson » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

dtoms wrote: post #113

01100011 wrote: post #30

Depends on the role and the candidate. If I'm hiring for a lower skill position and the candidate has a strong resume I just might want to verify the resume and confirm they have a basic grasp of the relevant skills. If I'm hiring for a high-output FANG job, you bet your ass we're going to the whiteboard. Sure, I hate it too(on either side of the table), but it's not too much to ask to prove that you can think on you…

so there is no glue code at FAANG? Or you have overqualified folks doing, and getting bored, and jumping ship between FAANG every 1.5 years...

There is a lot of glue code at FAANG, but there are a lot of cutting edge libraries and services that you need to understand before you know how to properly glue them together. That is very different from mostly gluing together well documented standard public libraries.

From an efficiency standpoint, it is probably a lot cheaper to hire smarter users of those libraries than to ensure all new libraries can be used by less smart engineers. Especially since many smart engineers who can write great libraries doesn't necessarily have the ability to document those libraries well, so by removing the need for great documentation they can get a ton of such engineers that other companies with lots of mediocre engineers cannot find a good use for.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#202

Post by 01100011 » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:03 AM UTC

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #130

01100011 wrote: post #30

Depends on the role and the candidate. If I'm hiring for a lower skill position and the candidate has a strong resume I just might want to verify the resume and confirm they have a basic grasp of the relevant skills. If I'm hiring for a high-output FANG job, you bet your ass we're going to the whiteboard. Sure, I hate it too(on either side of the table), but it's not too much to ask to prove that you can think on you…

>but it's not too much to ask to prove that you can think on your feet and solve hard problems if that's what the job is. Because the most common say to day issue is needing to think of an algorithm on the spot... You hate it because you know that's not true. Yet you're using it.

Should companies set their hiring bar to match the average difficulty of problems they encounter, or should they try to find people who can solve their difficult challenges?

Is your view of programming that good programmers spend the majority of their time writing boilerplate code or doing grunt work?

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#203

Post by 01100011 » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:05 AM UTC

swman wrote: post #137

dtoms wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so there is no glue code at FAANG? Or you have overqualified folks doing, and getting bored, and jumping ship between FAANG every 1.5 years...

It’s perfect code with 105% test coverage and there are amazing meetings and everyone is as smart as they think they are.

So if I'm understanding your cynicism correctly, the code at FANGs sucks and so the solution is to lower the hiring bar?

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#204

Post by smsm42 » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:05 AM UTC

geoduck14 wrote: post #91

CalRobert wrote: post #26

I've finally reached a point in my career where I have a great paying job and like it well enough, and really don't give a shit what interviewers think. Paradoxically, I think I interview a lot better. I can steer conversation towards stuff I care about, and if they insist on being annoying, just thank them for their time and leave. Though this might just be a result of being pickier about who I interview with. If no…

>I've finally reached a point in my career where I have a great paying job and like it well enough, and really don't give a shit what interviewers think. I've interviewed people who have resched this point. It makes for a chill interview. In some cases, the interviewee is overly "chill" and is bored with the challenges described in the job. I prefer to hire people who are EXCITED about the challenges they will face i…

EXCITED may be a bit overdoing it. I'm a geek, have been all my life. I've been programming since I was 13 yo. I still love what I am doing. But I am not automatically EXCITED about everything. I like my job, I care about my craft, and without false modesty, I do my job quite well. But you can't expect me be jumping all over myself at the chance of doing what I've been doing for 30+ years. I'm not a puppy anymore. There may be once in a while things I'm really interested in, and sometimes a task comes around that gets me working until late hours just because I want to figure out something tough - but you can't maintain bubbling excitement over that long, it's just not happening.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#205

Post by somberi » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:08 AM UTC

harry8 wrote: post #193

somberi wrote: post #159

Been on the hiring side for more than a decade. In addition to other advice in this thread, I would like to add - I treat the interview as my chance to help the candidate pass the interview. This bent of thought may seem subtle, but makes all the difference in meeting the candidate in their terrain, and seeing the world from their point of view. Consequently, the case studies given explicitly state that if the candid…

> They really good ones admit to the possibility that there were other better ways to have built, or explain to me the constraints under which they made the choices they did. Does anyone just clam up because you are making slights about something where you don't know the constraints and make inferences about you from that? Most of us have dealt with utterly terrible, opinionated, under-skilled, supercilious and rude…

Yes, what you said exactly happens, but not often enough to negate the value of opening up the otherwise clammed up candidate.

Hopefully, the first part where the humanhuman chat happens, the candidate is able to see that the intent is to have a genuine conversation, albeit with a more senior person (aka older) person on the other side.

Where I differ from you is the zero-payoff framing. There have been cases where the candidate put me in my place, rightfully so, and ended up getting hired.

This is subjective territory, but I actually prefer a candidate that spars. It gives me a chance to explain my position as well as hear his/hers.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#206

Post by spicyramen » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:11 AM UTC

In my experience I have seen some candidates that work very hard and mainly do boiler plate code in their projects, they struggle in the Algos/data structures but at the end of the day they get the job done. Others perform very good in Algos/data structures but produce very little at work, and also people that do good and perform above expectations. Is hard for me to actually filter good candidates, and at the end of the day, I value output and some quality.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#207

Post by whakim » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:12 AM UTC

geoduck14 wrote: post #91

CalRobert wrote: post #26

I've finally reached a point in my career where I have a great paying job and like it well enough, and really don't give a shit what interviewers think. Paradoxically, I think I interview a lot better. I can steer conversation towards stuff I care about, and if they insist on being annoying, just thank them for their time and leave. Though this might just be a result of being pickier about who I interview with. If no…

>I've finally reached a point in my career where I have a great paying job and like it well enough, and really don't give a shit what interviewers think. I've interviewed people who have resched this point. It makes for a chill interview. In some cases, the interviewee is overly "chill" and is bored with the challenges described in the job. I prefer to hire people who are EXCITED about the challenges they will face i…

In addition to the points made in sibling comments, I want to point out that "showing excitement" (particularly in an interview context) can be culturally conditional. You may in fact be selecting for candidates with a European American cultural background more than anything else.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#208

Post by mark-r » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:12 AM UTC

turbinerneiter wrote: post #24

I've lately been trying to get people to teach me something as an interview. Interviewed a guy with a PhD in organic electronics and asked him how to make an organic transistor at home. It was a great conversation, not sure yet if it was a great interview.

I once had an interviewer ask me an obscure C++ question. I didn't know the answer, so I reversed it and asked if he knew. He did, and it taught me something I didn't know before. No, I didn't get the job. I no longer even remember the interviewer's name, but I remember well the question and answer.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#209

Post by Jensson » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:13 AM UTC

benatkin wrote: post #167

asdfman123 wrote: post #164

I think this is pretty much the opposite of what the evidence suggests: that unstructured interviews are pretty much worthless. Conversations gives both parties more fuzzy feelings, but are they actually better or just easier and less awkward?

Both interviews and discussions are conversations. I know lots of interviews are too formal in some ways. I think it might be useful to start formal, get informal but still stick to rules like not asking discriminatory questions, and then get formal again for the end of the interview. Sort of like a feedback sandwich.

> I know lots of interviews are too formal in some ways

How do you know that? Maybe those interviews are the right amount of formal. Do you have evidence that they are too formal?

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#210

Post by Consultant32452 » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

swman wrote: post #197

I wish I could a 2-3 hour interview where I (or the candidate) showcase one of my projects and explain the architectural details and decisions in addition to showing any cool/hairy/insane code that got the job done. We can discuss those things and see how to improve them, or laugh at the crazy solutions. Honestly how many times do I need to rehearse these dumbass algos (blah blah blah, so I'll optimize for space with…

This is almost exactly how I hold interviews, except they are usually I've found this technique to be extremely successful. It's possible I may have had some false negatives, but I've never had a false positive. Everyone I've recommended for hiring has been successful.