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The Hiring Post

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Re: The Hiring Post

#241

Post by bootload »

krakensden wrote: post #214
bootload wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thx for replying @eru, I don't envy the task evaluating candidates. By work samples do you mean real code you've created to solve problems? “bring the same level of rigor to people-decisions that we do to engineering decisions.” [0] The weakness at google is understanding people. So I can understand the allure of HRA (HR Analytics) but feel google is missing something not intuitively understanding people and behaviou…

Let's be honest- the 'rigor' that people bring to engineering decisions is oversold.

"the 'rigor' that people bring to engineering decisions is oversold."

Possibly, I don't see google going down, so the engineering is sound. That's missing the real issue though.

Google, the people who lead and work there fundamentally do not grok people or psychology. This will is problematic as they attempt to diversify their workforce. I'm sure this is a known-known at google, hence the training that @eru is receiving. This is why the @tptacek article is such a good read. A tech-company attempting to understand more about hiring humans who understand machines.

People are not machines.

cf: http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2015/03/07/former-google-e...

Re: The Hiring Post

#242

Post by jazzdev »

tptacek wrote: post #57
rdtsc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good post. Thank you for sharing it. I've been interviewing applicants quite a bit lately, so have been thinking about these issues. Two questions for you. What is your experience hiring fresh college grads? Is the process different? Since one of goals of the process seems to not arbitrarily adjust it for every candidate, but rather stay consistent, do you think it makes sense to adjust it for someone who just g…

Everyone has exactly the same process, with the exception of interns. Interns have an abbreviated interview (shorthand: we switch from assessing aptitude to assessing enthusiasm ), and any time one came back looking for a full time job, they got fast-tracked. I'm not saying that was the best policy (it did keep us from collecting some extra data), but by the end of an internship you had a really good idea that you wa…

How do you access enthusiasm?

Re: The Hiring Post

#243

Post by tptacek »

michaelochurch wrote: post #209

I realize that I "should" like code samples, on the going ideology and considering the real problem of non-Fizzbuzzing programmers, but I don't find them useful and only do them when I'm unemployed (which hasn't been an issue for a few years). My problem with them, based on experience, is that they only provide downside. Used a language that the team doesn't like? Too bad. (Once I was told that I shouldn't have used…

This post is not about code samples.

Re: The Hiring Post

#244

Post by lsc »

eps wrote: post #43

We went through the phase when we gave candidates a problem and let them work on it remotely. It was in an embedded C shop that did a lot of kernel work. Basically, we'd give a short programming task (say, to write an intrusive AVL tree container in C) and 24 hours. Guess what? HALF of candidates cheated. Meaning that when the got called for an in-person interview, they stumbled to explain how "their" code worked. To…

eh, I think it's actually pretty easy to tell if a person wrote a particular piece of code last night. So cheating is pretty easy to ferret out. Because of this, I think the take-home test conveys a lot of useful information.

Re: The Hiring Post

#245

Post by lsc »

bsdpython wrote: post #89

My biggest issue with the work sample tests is the companies that waste your time with them. I've had 3 cases over the years where I was asked to work on something, I did it quickly, with quality and exceeded the specs and I was still turned down at that point (I confirmed that the code was good in at least 2 of the cases). As a senior technical person at this point in my career I simply have very little stomach for…

But the all-day interviews have the same problem. I interviewed at some startup in SF...

I mean, this was me looking for my "job with low standards" so I was going through recruiters, right? That's how you get a job with low standards. You put your resume on dice and include a phone number. Answer the phone. Wade through all the bullshit jobs that have nothing to do with your skill-set. Find jobs you could reasonably do, and say yes to the interviews.

In my experience, this means that I'm competing, mostly, with people that don't have other options... people that can't get jobs through people they know, because they just aren't that good. For a lot of complex reasons, well, that's exactly what I needed at the time.

I negotiate with the recruiter and $150K is within their range. I mean, I'm... not 100%, right? lowered expectations. So I should be looking for less. But I've never had any problem asking for too much; at worst, they laugh and offer me something lower, right?

Anyhow, so I show up at this place and they grill me for the usual 8 hours. I mean, it's not too unpleasant; there's beer and food and everything you expect, and they seem to be really into me. The guy who is going to be my boss gives me his email and tells me to send him an email so he can get things started over the weekend.

The business guy is, well, he's a business guy, but everyone else seems like people I could work with; people I'd get along with, and the skill level was right in there; even in my reduced capacity, I wouldn't be holding the team back.

At the end of the interview, they ask what I'm looking for, money-wise. Now, like I said, I negotiated this with the recruiter, so I said $150K, but I noted I could probably be talked down some, and I mentioned a lower sum, one a friend who has worked for me for most of his career recently got.

The mood immediately changed. We said our goodbyes, and I left. I did email the boss, but total radio silence.

I never heard from these people again. I eventually got the recruiter to tell me they didn't want me, but...

Personally, I'd be less pissed I spent 20 minutes on a coding problem for them at home and then didn't hear about it.

Re: The Hiring Post

#246

Post by timv »

beefman wrote: post #117
Iftheshoefits wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think hiring is broken for a different reason: workers, whether in software or any other industry, are viewed as less-than-equal ("second-class citizens"). Except in rare cases the entire hiring process in software especially, from start to finish, just about everywhere I've ever interviewed, seems to me designed to find reasons to reject candidates, and as a side-effect is (perhaps unintentionally) also designed t…

I agree. But why are they so choosy, and why do they complain about a lack of qualified candidates when their rejection rates are so high? I think it's the zero-sum game I mentioned. Firms are trying to outhire each other, like talent is some magic wand that can replace compelling products. There's a lot of snake oil in the industry, like SEO (now called "data science"), meant to substitute for things like vision, le…

firms are trying to outhire each other, like talent is some magic wand that can replace compelling products.

Where do you think the compelling products come from?

There are plenty of companies that take the view that you seem to be advocating - that there are employees who "create" and other employees who just turn the wheels and implement those ideas. Your average fortune 500 company is just like that. The engineers working there pretty consistently complain that the software dev team isn't respected, and isn't sees as producing things of value, or providing a competitive advantage. Those companies believe that thevakue isn't in the oroduct/idea and the execution is easy and ought to be cheap. Which is fine, as long as you never need to do anything that requires significant technical skills. Because such environments force out anyone who thinks that they gave more to offer than simply churning out cookie-cutter, mediocre code.

Their are ways to build successful teams that don't require that everyone is top 10%, but the notion that you just need compelling product ideas and a bunch of average developers to implement them is pretty common place, and rarely produces exceptional products.

Re: The Hiring Post

#247

Post by blackRust »

egonschiele wrote: post #79

I have had my share of bad interview questions too. The worst part is when the interviewer starts working on their laptop, like they are so bored of this question they can't think about it any longer. Yet it is now a part of my life for 45 minutes. At the end of every trivia question I'm tempted to ask: so is this typical of what I will be doing here? Will I be implementing rand(7) given rand(5) once a week? I've als…

> I've realized that code challenges require no investment on the company's part, so I don't want to do one that requires significant investment on my part.

Same.

I'm happy to do one after we've talked about the role and done the "warm up" phase. Just last week I got given a 150m challenge on an online platform with very little information about the company, role or code challenge.

It's all automated, which lowers costs for the company, but I think they're loosing out on candidates with this strategy. A little fine tuning and they can have low costs but with a better success rate.

I told them it was rude and I expected to know something about what I'm diving into before setting myself up for 150m.

Re: The Hiring Post

#248

Post by throwawaykf05 »

tptacek wrote: post #49
nissimk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, because to change it, you have to admit that the way you were doing it before is not effective. I've come across many people who admit that they are bad at being interviewed, but very few people I meet have admitted to being bad at interviewing others. It's incongruous with the results, because these are the same people that have hired folks that we all agree are not exhibiting the level and characteristi…

I was horrible at interviews. I was a sport interviewer. I had favorite tricky questions. "Design the fastest possible traceroute" was one for a long time. "Describe the most important feature of TCP NO WRONG, IT'S CONGESTION CONTROL NITWIT". I trust my own interviewing ability least of all, which is why I sink so much time into avoiding them.

> "Design the fastest possible traceroute"

Hmm, I once took it upon myself to do exactly that (mostly using non-blocking sockets, skipping hostname lookups, etc.), but what's so "tricky" about this question? Assuming the position involved network programming, I'd consider it a good way to test someone's networking knowledge. Is the "tricky" part knowing how routers often drop ICMP replies if they exceed some threshold rate?

Re: The Hiring Post

#249

Post by bsdpython »

lsc wrote: post #245
bsdpython wrote: post #89

My biggest issue with the work sample tests is the companies that waste your time with them. I've had 3 cases over the years where I was asked to work on something, I did it quickly, with quality and exceeded the specs and I was still turned down at that point (I confirmed that the code was good in at least 2 of the cases). As a senior technical person at this point in my career I simply have very little stomach for…

But the all-day interviews have the same problem. I interviewed at some startup in SF... I mean, this was me looking for my "job with low standards" so I was going through recruiters, right? That's how you get a job with low standards. You put your resume on dice and include a phone number. Answer the phone. Wade through all the bullshit jobs that have nothing to do with your skill-set. Find jobs you could reasonably…

I can relate to this comment and the others that replied to my original. I guess my overall view is that far too much time is wasted and it is mostly preventable. As a senior developer I have a detailed LinkedIn profile, a few recommendations, some side businesses and startups I have been involved in, a portfolio website showing off websites and apps I've built, a tech focused blog, a GitHub and a Stack Overflow. Right there if you just spent 15 minutes reviewing my profile you should have a pretty good picture of who I am and what I am capable of. If you need to see a 3 hour coding exam and have 8 hours of interviews on top of that I think you are just not decisive. I think a lot of it is people rationalizing with themselves that having gone through a "thorough" interview process of tons of candidates and lots of time that they somehow found the best candidate when it's a lot of noise IMO.

Re: The Hiring Post

#250

Post by lsc »

bsdpython wrote: post #249
lsc wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the all-day interviews have the same problem. I interviewed at some startup in SF... I mean, this was me looking for my "job with low standards" so I was going through recruiters, right? That's how you get a job with low standards. You put your resume on dice and include a phone number. Answer the phone. Wade through all the bullshit jobs that have nothing to do with your skill-set. Find jobs you could reasonably…

I can relate to this comment and the others that replied to my original. I guess my overall view is that far too much time is wasted and it is mostly preventable. As a senior developer I have a detailed LinkedIn profile, a few recommendations, some side businesses and startups I have been involved in, a portfolio website showing off websites and apps I've built, a tech focused blog, a GitHub and a Stack Overflow. Rig…

Yeah.

My favorite method, really, on both ends of the fence? Just hire the person and start them working, for pay, with the understanding that this is still an evaluation type deal. If it doesn't work out? if I'm the one being evaluated, at least I got paid for the time. If I'm doing the evaluating, seeing some one actually work is a way better indicator of, well, how well they work than anything else.

The problem with this method is that it doesn't work if you are trying to hire someone that values stability away from a stable job. You are limited to people that are unemployed or that don't value stability.

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