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Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

erikmcclure.com

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Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#221

Post by MrKristopher »

andyxor wrote: post #168

why there is no standardized Leetcode-style tests like SAT or GRE that can be administered once and applied to all software job applications. The current situation is like every company coming up with its own version of IQ test, the randomness factor is huge. if current employees of any company were to simply retake their own tests most will fail.

Even though FANG and startups are giving similar whiteboard interviews, they are evaluating on different dimensions to select candidates that fit their respective companies and the specific position. Reducing the Leetcode skill to a single number would not work well for this reason.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#222

Post by jackietreehorn »

kentonv wrote: post #58

We used this a couple times at Sandstorm back in the day. At the end of the interview the candidate would play Factorio cooperatively with the team for a while. I think it is remarkably effective at identifying the kinds of skills and personality traits that a software engineer actually needs to have in day-to-day work. You can find out if someone is self-directed, how fast they work, whether they produce clean desig…

We used it at Cloudflare a few times too (as suggested by former Sandstorm people). I still remember getting the purchase of the game approved by engineering leadership. Was pretty humorous where it went from wanting to understand to whatever approved in like 30 seconds.

I agree with your assessment of the pros/cons of the various interview methods. I agree that there is no right answer.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#223

Post by fennecfoxen »

sangnoir wrote: post #207

> A senior developer should be able to explore the UI and figure out a goal, then establish a plan for accomplishing that goal. I'm confounded on why the author thinks being a senior developer (say, in embedded systems) would make someone better at exploring a game UI compared to an intern-candidate who puts 20+ hours into gaming per week... I would probably walk out of the interview if someone suggested I play facto…

Factorio isn't a game about shooting things. It is a systems-design game. Your goal is to orchestrate the processing of several different resources (iron, copper, coal, oil, stone) into several different intermediate products (gears, circuit boards, sulfuric acid, radar systems, etc), in service of a final deliverable (a rocket launch, or if you're ambitious, a continuous series of rocket launches).

To that end you must manage a variety of subsystems and how they interact with each other and with the components that you build. You will be rewarded for consistency, for modularity, for automation of frequent tasks, for reproducible designs, for looking ahead and preparing for scalability. You will be punished for failing to plan ahead. You will also be punished for trying to scale too fast, too soon.

The interview is a bad idea, yes. Even if all candidates were experienced with the game, as a showcase of how to build things, you'd still need many more hours than a typical interviewee is willing to provide, to showcase the approach. But it's not a game you get better at by focusing on "gaming".

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#224

Post by krainboltgreene »

MPSimmons wrote: post #54
Workaccount2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm D tier programmer who would easily land a programming job if factorio was the skill metric.

If you're actually D tier, and you're good at Factorio, why are you a D tier? You clearly have the mindset for problem-solving. What is holding you back?

> you're good at Factorio, why are you a D tier

Because these actually have very little in relation.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#226

Post by r00fus »

inetknght wrote: post #86
plank_time wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hire quickly and fire quickly with a generous severance. That’s the only method that I’ve seen works effectively. Netflix does more with 2000 engineers that companies with 10-20x that. This also lets you take chances on engineers that weren’t “perfect” but had a lot of positives to offer.

> hire quickly and fire quickly This kind of mentality is not conducive to a well-functioning nation with people who have dependents and need stability.

It would absolutely work -- assuming everyone has access to healthcare (preferably universal coverage).

Unfortunately this cuts at the moat that big corporations have set up not to mention health insurance industry and big pharma. Which is why it hasn't happened yet here (though it has in many other countries).

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#227

Post by notJim »

Good lord, this is an awful idea. I've played a ton of Factorio, and I'm a decent engineer, and while the skillsets are similar conceptually, the actual execution and mechanics of them are very very different. Factorio involves a lot of care with spatial layout, tricks to optimize loading the conveyer belts, ensuring that the right ratios of pre-cursors are sent, etc etc.

You could get a candidate who perfectly understands design patterns for programming, because they've studied programming and know how to program using programming languages and programming tools, but they don't translate that very well into the spatial environment of Factorio. Debugging and optimizing in Factorio again are conceptually similar to doing so in a programming language, but the actual techniques and patterns available to do so are very very different, and you have to learn them. Most of us do not figure these things out from scratch by ourselves.

As others have pointed out, it also is begging for a monoculture. Plenty of people who are good at programming don't give a shit about video games, and will either do poorly in this interview, or will skip it altogether. The result would be hiring one type of person, and not having any other skillsets on your team. Even as someone who would do well in this interview, I would run screaming, as I do not want to work in a monoculture.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#228

Post by DesiLurker »

interesting, at one point I wanted to use sokoban puzzles to judge how candidates handle complex tasks. did not do it for variety of reasons but might not be such a bad idea to build a mock interview out of such non-whiteboard code schemes.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#229

Post by stnmtn »

SilasX wrote: post #63
lvice wrote: post #22

This winter break I spent an embarrassing amount of time on Satisfactory on Steam, which is essentially a nicer (and probably easier) modern refresh of Factorio. While I played, I came to similar conclusions to the article. Building factories in this game is very very similar conceptually to building software. I ran into exactly the same problems that I ran while I build software like: - If I don't plan ahead enough…

Disclaimer: I've only played the Factorio demo. If that's the analogy, then I don't think it captures the core difficulty of software, which is unknown unknowns. That is, you write something that depends on an external system working a certain way, you follow its spec and depend on it working that way, and then it just ... doesn't, and you have to find exactly where it deviates, possibly making up some complicated kl…

I think this could potentially be the Biters - the enemies in the game that will periodically attack your base. You can guess that they will attack your base, but you are never sure quite when and it's always a concern in the back of your head.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#230

Post by jmarcher »

notJim wrote: post #227

Good lord, this is an awful idea. I've played a ton of Factorio, and I'm a decent engineer, and while the skillsets are similar conceptually , the actual execution and mechanics of them are very very different. Factorio involves a lot of care with spatial layout, tricks to optimize loading the conveyer belts, ensuring that the right ratios of pre-cursors are sent, etc etc. You could get a candidate who perfectly unde…

Also, you might end up with a bunch of industrial engineers who may not code (yet).
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