Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The problems with live coding interviews

garrettdimon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 226 posts

Re: The problems with live coding interviews

#211

Post by zamnos »

michaelt wrote: post #64
ye-olde-sysrq wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do other industries do this? Is programming weird because you can just ask someone to prove they know how to use a hammer? And so other industries just have to hire based on work history and/or bias "culture fit" during the interview? And they suffer terribly from people who can talk the talk but not walk the walk? Or is programming weird because there's so much propensity for people to be able to talk but not wa…

> How do other industries do this? There's lots of other ways, but some of them suck. Some fields attach a lot of weight to your alma mater, maybe they only hire people who studied law at Yale or Harvard. Some fields require not just a degree, but also years of study under an industry veteran. Sometimes that also involves hazing like working 70-hour weeks, for some reason. Some fields require work-sample tests where…

Some fields have a literal test you have to pass to get a license which allows you to practice that field, and some even have laws that criminalize practicing in the field without said license.

Given surgeons don't have to do live pancreatectomies as part of the interview process, I'm not convinced that's such a bad thing.

Re: The problems with live coding interviews

#212

Post by zamnos »

rockbruno wrote: post #26

Everyone complains about the state of SWE interviews yet nobody seems to be able to come up with a legit better alternative. Even the author recognises this in the article. This format is popular because it's the best time/effort trade-off for both the company and the candidate. It's massively flawed, but everything else attempted so far turned out to be even worse.

Triplebyte and a few others in that space were able to do pre-screening for companies that chose to go though them, which skipped the recruiter call and pre-screen and got you on site faster. Worked pretty well, but they failed to figure out a business model and we sold to Karet which just shut down Triplebyte's candidate vetting process.

Re: The problems with live coding interviews

#213

Post by loa_in_ »

whoomp12342 wrote: post #81

If I do a live coding challenge, it is absurdly simple and is meant to root out people who have literally no business being in the room. Write a function that takes in a string and returns 1 if the amount of letters in the string is odd. It returns 0 if the amount of letters in the string is even. If you can do this, we are good. I dont need NP hard or whiteboarding or algorithms. I can tell how good you are just by…

Some candidate, done, sweating: "I wasn't sure if the limericks, speeches and open letters count as letters here but the criteria used are easily replaceable" /jk

Re: The problems with live coding interviews

#214

Post by jvanderbot »

gymbeaux wrote: post #201
jvanderbot wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working well under pressure is a skill too.

Why? We don’t have animals hunting us and a constant need to fend for food and water like our ancestors did. Why in 2023 should anyone be under pressure for anything to do with their job?

Ideally, there would be no pressure involved. But in reality, there are pressures associated with deliveries and conflicting goals. You don't have to look far for these, and hiring for the ideal conditions is unrealistic.

Re: The problems with live coding interviews

#215

Post by beerpls »

Freire_Herval wrote: post #171
beerpls wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the only thing you can say in response is giving excuses why people must dance? Sometimes you’re desperate and will do things you otherwise wouldn’t. That isn’t and should be thought of as the norm

People don't have to dance. Incentive to dance is very strong though. Here's the thing, when you look at the behavior of large groups of people the overall incentive is the overall outcome. As an individual you can resist but groups act predictably and follow straightforward patterns. Think of it like drugs. You going to tell people to stop doing heroin and end the problem forever? No. You gonna tell people to stop d…

You’re saying people are weak and can’t enable change if they chose to behave a certain way and instead we need more governance and powers above us

I fundamentally don’t agree. It’s simple: prioritize dignity in yourself and the world will give it

I don’t accept interviews where i’m required to dance. My career has only gotten better since I made that choice.

Even on the individual level you can make this right. It just takes effort.

Re: The problems with live coding interviews

#216

Post by Freire_Herval »

beerpls wrote: post #215
Freire_Herval wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't have to dance. Incentive to dance is very strong though. Here's the thing, when you look at the behavior of large groups of people the overall incentive is the overall outcome. As an individual you can resist but groups act predictably and follow straightforward patterns. Think of it like drugs. You going to tell people to stop doing heroin and end the problem forever? No. You gonna tell people to stop d…

You’re saying people are weak and can’t enable change if they chose to behave a certain way and instead we need more governance and powers above us I fundamentally don’t agree. It’s simple: prioritize dignity in yourself and the world will give it I don’t accept interviews where i’m required to dance. My career has only gotten better since I made that choice. Even on the individual level you can make this right. It j…

>You’re saying people are weak and can’t enable change if they chose to behave a certain way and instead we need more governance and powers above us

Yes, I am saying people in aggregate are fundamentally weak. Certain individuals can overcome weaknesses but in aggregate we can't.

>I fundamentally don’t agree. It’s simple: prioritize dignity in yourself and the world will give it

Then you fundamentally don't agree with reality. Tell that dignity thing to a drug addict. Tell him to Prioritize his dignity and stop doing heroin. End the drug problem because people are strong. A few people will listen. In aggregate, nothing changes.

>I don’t accept interviews where i’m required to dance. My career has only gotten better since I made that choice.

On one hand you have control. On the other hand maybe you don't dance because you can't dance. There are people where "dancing" is equivalent to donating a dime to charity. A Trivial effort. To them the interview process is the equivalent of giving a dime in return for half a million dollars. Why the hell not?

>Even on the individual level you can make this right. It just takes effort.

The individual level is the only place where someone can refuse to "dance." For the industry to change it has to happen in aggregate. The aggregate change is impossible. There will always be people willing to dance, and there will always be people where "dancing" is a zero effort hand wave.

Re: The problems with live coding interviews

#217

Post by citrin_ru »

vparikh wrote: post #132

I have been in the software industry for 30 years as of this month. I have never had a gap of longer then 6 months and the shortest time with a company was 4 years 8 months and the longest time was 16 years. I have worked on the following technoclogies. Companies range from on of the Big 3 consulting firms to startups. Here are the technologies I have worked on - C/C++ on Win16/Win32 - Assembly language development w…

Try to look on a hiring problem from another side. Companies getting a lot of applications and at least some either stretch the truth on their CV or just lie, so trusting CV is not something a company can rely upon. Instead a company need an universal for all applicants way to filter out ones who likely cannot write code and then spend time only on candidates who've passed this test. Unless difficulty of this coding interview is miscalculated any experienced developer should be able to pass it, may be with a few days of coding interview practice. And if you are not ready to spend a few days preparing for interviews it's also a bad sign in eyes of an employer.

Re: The problems with live coding interviews

#218

Post by gymbeaux »

dragonwriter wrote: post #205
gymbeaux wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get why I have to prove to some strangers I can write code when I’ve been doing it for the last decade. It’s a ludicrous and broken system.

You don’t get why you have to prove your ability to do a job when you want them to pay you to do that job?

Yep. I realize that’s not going to resonate with many or even most people, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe it and that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have merit.

Law firms don’t ask lawyers to litigate in a mock courtroom setting before hiring them. Hospitals don’t ask surgeons to perform a little test surgery on a person before hiring them. Engineers aren’t asked to build a bridge to prove they know how.

I think the reason we are so unique is because we CAN demonstrate our ability to quickly and easily, and without risking human life. CAN of course does not equal SHOULD.

Re: The problems with live coding interviews

#219

Post by gymbeaux »

zamnos wrote: post #206
gymbeaux wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get why I have to prove to some strangers I can write code when I’ve been doing it for the last decade. It’s a ludicrous and broken system.

Because those strangers don't know you. Any idiot can write things on a resume and say they did things they didn't do (aka lying). You would never do such a thing, of course, but as crazy as it sounds, there are people out there who would do just that! So because there's no professional license to write code, the only way to prove to these strangers that you actually can write code is some sort of exercise where you…

My issue is that these coding interviews tend to turn up a lot of false-negatives and sometimes even false-positives. And of course they do. There’s so much more to what we do than being able to implement A* in 45 minutes without a real IDE could demonstrate.

Re: The problems with live coding interviews

#220

Post by beerpls »

Freire_Herval wrote: post #216
beerpls wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re saying people are weak and can’t enable change if they chose to behave a certain way and instead we need more governance and powers above us I fundamentally don’t agree. It’s simple: prioritize dignity in yourself and the world will give it I don’t accept interviews where i’m required to dance. My career has only gotten better since I made that choice. Even on the individual level you can make this right. It j…

>You’re saying people are weak and can’t enable change if they chose to behave a certain way and instead we need more governance and powers above us Yes, I am saying people in aggregate are fundamentally weak. Certain individuals can overcome weaknesses but in aggregate we can't. >I fundamentally don’t agree. It’s simple: prioritize dignity in yourself and the world will give it Then you fundamentally don't agree wit…

It’s not impossible, you’re just giving up and refusing to be a part of the solution

The path of least resistance long run is demand dignity. The path of more resistance long term but ease short term is accept undignifying circumstances

You can make your situation and the worlds better by doing the right thing. Or you can sit and argue to a stranger why it’s ‘impossible’ to tell a potential employer to pound sand when they ask you to do something demeaning

Choice is yours

Post reply on HN