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In defense of coding interviews

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Re: In defense of coding interviews

#241

Post by maccard »

peterhunt wrote: post #118
vorpalhex wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What process do you think introverts are going to have an equal footing at that isn't take home homework? And yes, people who know technology will do better.. in a technology interview. I suppose I could ask about gardening but that doesn't help much does it?

Algorithmic interviews are huge equalizers. Anyone regardless of their social skills or technical background can show their talent. I’m not talking about people who know technology generally. I’m talking about people who know different technology. The process you’ve proposed, if implemented at, say, PHP shop, will rule out plenty of great .NET developers since the interviewer won’t have the context.

Algorithmic interviews optimise for algorithmic knowledge, not on the job capability. It checks for rote learning and time spent preparing for the interview.

Knowing how to implement prefix tree or a hash table shows that you've learned solutions, but not that you can write good code in a team environment. Frankly I'd take a worse engineer that worked better in a team over a 10x that ends up silo'ed in 95% of cases.

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#243

Post by native_samples »

lapcat wrote: post #214
sitkack wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interview technical folks at a FAANG and I don't asking leetcode questions. It isn't a SWE role but people should be SWE material. I do ask them to * read code * extend some working code with a new feature * parse some semi-structured text into a data structure Programming interviews suck for everyone, even the interviewer. I feel absolutely horrible when someone locks up, or fails really hard. The questions I ask ar…

> I had one person start crying they put so much pressure on themselves, I had to take a two week break from interviewing after that. This is a sign that the hiring process is broken. It's not testing skill level, it's testing anxiety level.

The second sentence may be true but the former isn't.

People who break down and cry in interviews are rare but if they do it, they are best avoided and it was good that the interview revealed this. You cannot have that happening on the job but if they can't handle being asked to program something whilst up against a time limit or being watched, they're going to have breakdowns in other situations too.

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#244

Post by 4dregress »

koonsolo wrote: post #134
vorpalhex wrote: post #27

"Can coding interviews work in an ideal world" which is what the article seems to discuss: sure, probably, this seems like a reasonable approach to what that ideal world might look like: a really carefully chosen question and attempting to understand the process the candidate is using to comprehend their skill. "Do coding interviews work in the actual world in which we live in?" No, fundamentally not. Almost nobody i…

I do a lot of interviews with potential candidates, and worked with plenty of those we hired (and unfortunately some we fired afterwards). If you have a better way on how to assess a software developer, I would love to hear it.

I would like to see the hiring process like this.

1st interview - Go over the role etc, both parties ask question to see if they are a good fit. If both parties are happy to move to the next stage then there is a take home exercise to do.

Tech Exercise - Something simple which touches the core competencies that the role requires.

2 Second interview - Go through the exercise discussing the design choices etc. If everyone is happy offer the job.

I think the probation period should be used to determine if the candidate is the right fit for the role. That way the business gets a much better idea of who it is they are hiring and the same goes for the candidate.

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#245

Post by zach_garwood »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #53
zach_garwood wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya know, I've heard this repeatedly over the past 15 years, but I've never actually encountered this mythical "senior programmer who can't code." Never worked with one. Never interviewed one. Never met one at a meetup. I think it's just a boogeyman used to frighten hiring managers.

I have. Supposedly an experienced fellow but put out code that would embarrass an intern (and a bad intern at that).

So, they could code, just not up to your standard.

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#246

Post by zach_garwood »

nunez wrote: post #125
zach_garwood wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya know, I've heard this repeatedly over the past 15 years, but I've never actually encountered this mythical "senior programmer who can't code." Never worked with one. Never interviewed one. Never met one at a meetup. I think it's just a boogeyman used to frighten hiring managers.

i definitely 150% have there are a lot of them

That's too many percents.

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#247

Post by photochemsyn »

WalterBright wrote: post #65

Coding interviews are because of cheaters and frauds: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31544634

The academic qualification system is pretty broken in the computer science world. One core problem is a lot of teachers use automated tests to judge submitted code because they're either lazy or overworked, and it's very easy to game that setup.

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#249

Post by lapcat »

native_samples wrote: post #243
lapcat wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had one person start crying they put so much pressure on themselves, I had to take a two week break from interviewing after that. This is a sign that the hiring process is broken. It's not testing skill level, it's testing anxiety level.

The second sentence may be true but the former isn't. People who break down and cry in interviews are rare but if they do it, they are best avoided and it was good that the interview revealed this. You cannot have that happening on the job but if they can't handle being asked to program something whilst up against a time limit or being watched, they're going to have breakdowns in other situations too.

I've written at length about this before, so I'll just give a link instead of repeating the whole screed, but it's a misconception to equate interview anxiety with job anxiety. They're distinct and not necessarily correlated. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31377459

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#250

Post by native_samples »

zach_garwood wrote: post #35
ma2rten wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But many senior candidates actually can’t code anymore. Also, typically the point of these questions is to see if the candidate can solve a novel problem not if they can use a hash table.

Ya know, I've heard this repeatedly over the past 15 years, but I've never actually encountered this mythical "senior programmer who can't code." Never worked with one. Never interviewed one. Never met one at a meetup. I think it's just a boogeyman used to frighten hiring managers.

Be grateful! They definitely exist.

At my last company, I joined as their lead developer and discovered they already had another developer in the pipeline they were thinking of hiring. They thought the guy was super senior, and when I read his CV sure enough he came across that way. He emphasized on his CV that he was not only a Java expert but an expert on the internals of HotSpot itself.

Probably he'd been saying that for years, and given how many firms use the JVM it's probably a great line. Unlucky for him he got an interviewer (me) who actually was an expert in the HotSpot internals and liked to relax by reading its source code. Guess what? He knew nothing about the JVM, not even stuff you'd learn by reading the user guide. I got the sense he'd read one or two popular press articles about it 20 years ago, put it on his CV and never updated it.

So we progress to some coding. He can't code. He struggles with even the basics of starting a new program in an editor and compiling it.

The guy was demanding a huuuge salary and great perks. After I wrote up what I'd found from the coding interview he was quietly dropped from the pipeline. They'd been about to accept because they were so dazzled by his claims but weren't checking them.

The "knew it once maybe sorta" problem is common, especially with C++ where lots of people were struggling with it in the 90s and then jumped to Java/C# as soon as they came out. But they still list C++ on their CV. Ask them to write a C++ program (that does anything at all) and they'll just refuse or state point blank they'd feel really uncomfortable doing that.

Lots of people lie about their experience unfortunately. They probably don't think of it as lying. They just write down every possible thing they've ever thought or read about and exaggerate, gambling that they'll never be called on it. And, they're probably right. That's why coding interviews took off.

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