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The Last Technical Interview

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Re: The Last Technical Interview

#241

Post by Cpoll »

sitzkrieg wrote: post #238
mooreds wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the legal world and then there's the world of custom and ethics. They don't always diverge, but in my experience they do. At least over the last 25 years in the tech spaces I've been part of, I rarely hear of people being dismissed/let go quickly. #anecdata

is this sarcasm? tech industry has some of the worst layoffs ever. i have personally seen several different employers notify employees day of firing they no longer have a job

No-one in this thread is talking about layoffs, they're talking about individual firings.

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#242

Post by paulryanrogers »

spit2wind wrote: post #233
yawnxyz wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in most states, as long as it's not discriminatory, you CAN fire anyone for any reason the article is wrong here

Dead wrong. Because I see so many people who believe otherwise, here's a direct quote from a prior contract: > I UNDERSTAND AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MY EMPLOYMENT WITH THE COMPANY IS FOR NO SPECIFIED TERM AND CONSTITUTES "AT-WILL" EMPLOYMENT. I ALSO UNDERSTAND THAT ANY REPRESENTATION TO THE CONTRARY IS UNAUTHORIZED AND NOT VALID UNLESS SIGNED BY THE PRESIDENT OR CEO OF THE COMPANY. ACCORDINGLY, I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MY EMPL…

What did they say is dead wrong?

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#243

Post by HenriTEL »

dilyevsky wrote: post #224
dalyons wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take homes are much lower signal now with AI

Depends on what you ask, i suppose. I’m sure i can come up with something that can’t simply be one shot or the result would be bad if you do. A bit more difficult on logistics tho as you’d have to arrange for an environment with some prepaid llm access

Without a way to estimate "AI power" used for the task I don't see how you can fairly rate home assignments.

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#244

Post by mooreds »

spit2wind wrote: post #233
yawnxyz wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in most states, as long as it's not discriminatory, you CAN fire anyone for any reason the article is wrong here

Dead wrong. Because I see so many people who believe otherwise, here's a direct quote from a prior contract: > I UNDERSTAND AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MY EMPLOYMENT WITH THE COMPANY IS FOR NO SPECIFIED TERM AND CONSTITUTES "AT-WILL" EMPLOYMENT. I ALSO UNDERSTAND THAT ANY REPRESENTATION TO THE CONTRARY IS UNAUTHORIZED AND NOT VALID UNLESS SIGNED BY THE PRESIDENT OR CEO OF THE COMPANY. ACCORDINGLY, I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MY EMPL…

Have you known folks at those jobs to be notified of being let go and sent home on the same day?

Have you been involved with letting people go and seen it happen as quickly as the above legal disclaimer implies?

I agree that the legal justification is 100% there, but in my experience it is often buffered and takes more time.

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#245

Post by mooreds »

sitzkrieg wrote: post #238
mooreds wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the legal world and then there's the world of custom and ethics. They don't always diverge, but in my experience they do. At least over the last 25 years in the tech spaces I've been part of, I rarely hear of people being dismissed/let go quickly. #anecdata

is this sarcasm? tech industry has some of the worst layoffs ever. i have personally seen several different employers notify employees day of firing they no longer have a job

Not sarcasm. I guess I've just had different experiences than you.

The larger point of the effort involved before the employees' last day still stands. But that's a hard one to speak to generally, since most folks in layoffs or firings don't talk about the process used to arrive at the decisions.

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#246

Post by ryukoposting »

chihuahua wrote: post #58

The "provisional employment" idea sounds good at first, until you think about how it would actually work in practice. You have 100 applicants for 1 position. Which one do you provisionally hire? Ah of course, we have to do a traditional interview loop to evaluate 10 candidates before we can pick one. So you do the traditional interview loop, and then you have 6 months of provisional employment. You haven't replaced a…

And that's besides the money problem.

You provisionally hire 10 candidates for 3 jobs, keeping each of them for 6 months:

Do you spend 5 years' salary over the course of those 6 months just to hire people? How do you financially justify ballooning your payroll for a bunch of people you're going to get rid of before you get any ROI out of them? You've (maybe) gotten better talent in the end, but have you actually improved the company's bottom line?

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#247

Post by dilyevsky »

HenriTEL wrote: post #243
dilyevsky wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you ask, i suppose. I’m sure i can come up with something that can’t simply be one shot or the result would be bad if you do. A bit more difficult on logistics tho as you’d have to arrange for an environment with some prepaid llm access

Without a way to estimate "AI power" used for the task I don't see how you can fairly rate home assignments.

Like i said either use pre-baked env or give a candidate an auth token with something like $100-200 quota from the provider your company already uses

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#248

Post by csh0 »

tptacek wrote: post #210
mplanchard wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going through the interview process now for the first time in half a decade, and while I already would have said five years ago that I preferred work samples, that opinion is only growing stronger as I go through the process again. Leetcode style interviews feel so stupid and divorced from the reality of the job, especially the “one weird trick” kind where you’re expected to discern the best possible solution to a pr…

I shouldn't keep leaving this comment because it's not that useful but: AI-era work samples are a fun problem (you definitely can't just use your pre-agent default work samples!), and we've come up with a couple useful solutions. If you're in an environment that is open to agents to begin with, one simple thing to do is just tell people to use agents, and ask for the prompts. Prompts are a high-signal artifact, and y…

In a similar vein, in the pre-LLM era I gave a few interviews where the candidate was asked to screenshare while solving the problem. The candidates were allowed to use any resource they wanted from the broader internet.

I often found that I learned more about the candidate by the way they phrased their Google searches and how they selected and explored sites for information than from the actual solution they produced.

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#249

Post by gruez »

sitzkrieg wrote: post #238
mooreds wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the legal world and then there's the world of custom and ethics. They don't always diverge, but in my experience they do. At least over the last 25 years in the tech spaces I've been part of, I rarely hear of people being dismissed/let go quickly. #anecdata

is this sarcasm? tech industry has some of the worst layoffs ever. i have personally seen several different employers notify employees day of firing they no longer have a job

I don't care about the notice period. I care about how much severance I'm getting. I'd be fine with no notice if the severance was generous.

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#250

Post by QuiEgo »

yawnxyz wrote: post #207
mooreds wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > In the U.S. you generally can’t just up and fire someone, even if they are underperforming, even if it’s at-will employment, without risking a lawsuit and some sort of cash outlay. This is what makes hiring decisions so high-stakes. I've been part of a few situations where someone had to be let go in the USA, and I can tell you it wasn't a trivial decision. There were legal aspects, sure, but ther…

in most states, as long as it's not discriminatory, you CAN fire anyone for any reason the article is wrong here

You can, but most places would rather spend months building a legal shield through a PiP rather than risk a lawsuit.
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