The dystopian world of software engineering interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#221

Post by eternalny1 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:01 AM UTC

I recently flagged myself as "back on the market" on sites like StackOverflow and LinkedIn.

What a nightmare process this whole thing is.

I end up with a slammed inbox, constant cold-calls from head hunters that are all dead ends, and in between all of the noise are some real opportunities where I get moved from the tech screen to the final round quickly due to my seniority.

It's like most jobs except there is a strange dichotomy between the technical screens, and the on-prem final rounds, which become more of a culture-fit type interview.

I feel like I am up against the Bob's from Office Space a lot of the time.

If anyone needs a 30+ year software engineer currently working with .Net Core 3.1 on Azure Linux and Angular 9, please hit me up.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#222

Post by gonehome » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:01 AM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #81

gonehome wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of reasons: - Comp: Total comp for a new hire with 3+ yrs dev experience is probably 300k -> 400k at a FAANG on average (with possibility to be higher). If you want to live and raise a family in your own house in the bay area (2.5 Million for a reasonable house), this matters. - Access: Few places have the kind of scale and resources of these companies, that can make them fun places to work. You also get to…

> If you want to live and raise a family in your own house in the bay area (2.5 Million for a reasonable house), this matters. I love the bay area, and I have terrible judgement, but even my terrible judgement and my love of the bay area combined aren't a bad enough combination to make me think it's a good place to raise a family.

Except for housing costs, I think it’d be a great place to raise kids.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#223

Post by chillacy » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:01 AM UTC

taeric wrote: post #163

starpilot wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has strong data that it does predict job performance, better than GPA, college degree and so on. What are your aggregate data showing that Google is wrong on this?

Does it? Because their strong data haven't helped them not screw up their messenger space. Or to have a fast email web client. Indeed, they seem to be going backwards on that chart. They flopped on wave and Google plus, hard. Those are the kinds of mistakes that kill most companies. Even Google glass still somewhat rankles and has left me with no confidence in any of their consumer things. And I say this as a happy G…

I don’t think those products failed due to poor engineering, google just hasn’t been great at social (if you don’t count YouTube). Other companies which use the same interview techniques are winning in those exact product spaces.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#224

Post by chillacy » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:02 AM UTC

starpilot wrote: post #138

MAGZine wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google might not need you to code some efficient algorithm to search a b-tree every day, but they pay top dollar and can rightly expect that their software engineers can come up with efficient and creative solutions to hard problems without dragging the rest of their team down. This is a non-sequitur. Being able to write good software has nothing to do with reading cracking the coding interview and practicing leetc…

Google has strong data that it does predict job performance, better than GPA, college degree and so on. What are your aggregate data showing that Google is wrong on this?

My understanding is that they stopped asking brain teasers because they found no correlation with job performance. Which is good because for awhile it seemed like other companies were cargo culting questions like “why are manhole covers round”

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#225

Post by Cu3PO42 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #216

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realise this is tangential to the original topic, but this notion that the UK is not a part of Europe (and therefore mentioned separately) seems really weird to me. They can leave the EU as much as they want, but it doesn't change the fact that physically they're still in Europe. Is this because of some perceived notion of cultural differences? Because if we're starting to draw lines based on that we probably need…

I only said it that way in an attempt to be clear because they left the EU (and I’ve heard people use Europe to mean EU).

I see, thank you for clarifying. It's true that some people do use Europe to mean EU, I hadn't taken that possibility into account.

In my experience, this is mostly done in sentences like "In Europe something or another is allowed/forbidden/... (by law)", but I can definitely see where you're coming from.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#226

Post by nickysielicki » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

I wonder if they were actually effective with that recruitment strategy. I got that notification a bunch of times, generally when googling for documentation, and thus when I’m in the middle of something relatively technical. Finally, I accepted the challenge, looked at the problem, realized it would take at least an hour, and then went back to the programming problem I was doing in the first place.

You’re selecting for employees who are able to get distracted for a few hours when they’re in the middle of something else. That’s not who you want.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#227

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

glofish wrote: post #202

mattmanser wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A column orientated file? What format? Excel? CSV? What is cut, sort or head? Are you only accepting Linux candidates then, a tiny percentage of users? This sort of utter nonsense question, heavily loaded to your "standard" experience, which is anything but, is even worse than the questions cited in the article. All you're doing is filtering for people who are in your tribe, who followed the same path as you and thin…

Interesting how negative your reaction is. Also how far off target all that anger is. I am not selecting for a tribe, I am selecting for a job. The questions are loaded, of course. Among the many duties, the jobs do require processing large files, sometimes with cut, Python or C. I want the candidate to use the most appropriate tool as needed. I'd rather not have people implement functionality that already exists in…

[deleted]

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#228

Post by kortilla » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

kohtatsu wrote: post #196

paxys wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah! Reminds me of https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 . Cynical answer though — Google does not want people like you. They don't want to hire entrepreneurs or inventors. They want people who can churn out code when given specific instructions, and that is what their interview process optimizes for.

False; Google wants everyone like them to keep them away from the competition. Edit: it's unfair to single Google out. It's unfortunately the correct game theory and impossible to regulate.

That’s a lie they tell employees to make them feel good about themselves. If they actually cared about keeping competent engineers away from competitors, their interview process would be tuned to look for engineering skills, not leetcode.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#229

Post by learc83 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:05 AM UTC

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #193

gonehome wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Europe (and the UK) undervalue software engineers. At least in the UK this seems like a cultural thing where management is high status/high value and engineers are low status/low value. I think the US generally gets this right (at least in silicon valley), but it could partly be because the US has some extremely valuable software companies that operate on a global stage that aren't really present elsewhere. R…

I realise this is tangential to the original topic, but this notion that the UK is not a part of Europe (and therefore mentioned separately) seems really weird to me. They can leave the EU as much as they want, but it doesn't change the fact that physically they're still in Europe. Is this because of some perceived notion of cultural differences? Because if we're starting to draw lines based on that we probably need…

It's because America has (and has historically had) a closer relationship with the UK than with other European countries. The British see themselves as different than the rest of Europe as evidenced by sayings like "on the continent", so it's natural for us to pick some of that up.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#230

Post by overgard » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:06 AM UTC

Hiring and interviewing are incredibly broken, I totally agree... And the algorithm puzzles are basically silly and don't tell you any relevant things, like how pleasant would this person be to work with, how conscientious are they, etc.

But.

Usually interviewers are asking these questions to see how you think, not because they expect you to get it exactly right. And so verbalizing your thought process is how you prove yourself. And if you have trouble verbalizing your thought process, I sympathize, but being able to explain to others what you're trying to do and why you want to do it that way is a really big part of the job. And there are going to be a lot of times on the job where you DO need to tackle something wildly outside your skill set, and people need to see that you can at least start iterating towards the right thing. You don't have to be right, you just have to convince them you'd get there in a reasonable amount of time.

Also, if a small amount of pressure causes you to forget your entire CS education, that's kind of relevant to being able to do your job? I'm not trying to pile on to people that have anxiety issues, but being able to do things under pressure is a skill. If we're up against a deadline and you entirely freeze up and can't do anything, that would be a bit of a problem wouldn't it?