Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry • Hacker News Board

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#261

Post by p4wnc6 » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 4:15 PM UTC

ted12345 wrote: post #252

I wonder if this has to do with your personality, how you behave under pressure, and how you react to not knowing the answer to something. You seem more than capable enough to get a good job but in my experience, interviewers are looking to see how you react to being stumped. If it's anger/frustration/clamming up then that's a turn off for a lot of employers. They're looking for more than the right answer.

What if he is merely introverted, and responds well to pressure when there is not an awkward, immediate social situation? There are lots of excellent programmers like this, you know, and also very few workplaces that actually benefit from lots of real-time interpersonal communication (as opposed to cargo culting that from startup bullshit).

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#262

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 4:15 PM UTC

wlesieutre wrote: post #210

zappo2938 wrote: post #178

"Write a maze solving algorithm" I just solved that in less than 3 seconds. Here is the solution in a Fiddle[0] and the discussion on Stack Exchange.[1]Sorry, I'm too busy solving problems which haven't been solved yet to bother with problems that have been solved. [0]: http://jsfiddle.net/5g7se8qL/7/ [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16173259/javascript-maze-...

And then when they ask you to solve a real problem they're working on instead of a contrived algorithm, you can complain about how they're expecting you to do work they can profit off of but aren't paying you for the interview. Or they could find some obscure (and unrelated to their product) algorithmic problem that's been solved before but isn't posted on StackOverflow, and you can complain about how it's just trivi…

[deleted]

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#263

Post by theli0nheart » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 4:16 PM UTC

phn wrote: post #241

askyourmother wrote: post #205

When I hired a plumber for my heating firm, I put her through a hazing interview, tested her knowledge of Maxwell relations and thermodynamic equations. Oh wait, no I didn't. As she has been a plumber for years, so we recognised her skill and experience and cut to the chase. When I hired a programmer for our doomed to die VC life support funded fart of a project, we put her through numerous rounds of comp sci bingo a…

A plumber, sure. What about the guys who design your water heater? Should they just google the thermodynamics as they go as well? My point being, it depends on the role, and the expectations you have for the future of a candidate in your company. Are you hiring a guy to bugfix or implement a couple of features on your web app? Or a guy to design and implement from scratch a app that should have some hope of scaling i…

Sure, it makes sense to ask a compiler engineer the various ways in which to reverse a binary tree. That's going to be a problem that you're probably going to encounter on the job.

The fact is that most developers spend 90+% of their time futzing with NPM, dealing with Apple's review process, or renewing SSL certificates. Low-level algorithm work is something very few engineers need to know.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#264

Post by mixmastamyk » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 4:17 PM UTC

> From this moment on, I would rather be unemployed and homeless rather than do another tech interview. Enough is enough.

God, happened to me this year, highlights:

    - "Do you like to wear a tie to work?"  
      (perhaps because I'm 40-ish)
    - "Tell us about your worst boss."  
      (from three guys with frowns and folded arms)
    - "Do/talk through this sorting problem on the whiteboard/webpage..." 
      (With people watching, clock ticking over $100k in suitcase, gun to head)

I gave up as well, am now writing a book on software, unsure it will sell.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#265

Post by mathattack » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 4:18 PM UTC

swayvil wrote: post #229

paddy_m wrote: post #215

I hired Sahat as an intern three years ago while he was an undergrad. It was one of the best hiring decisions I have ever made. He was productive immediately and our (small) team felt the loss when he went back to school. This guy is good and gets stuff done, ask people who have worked with him. I wish Sahat had reached out to more of his network before responding to random recruiters. Tech interviews as Sahat experi…

I'm seeing a lot of "reaching out" in this thread. Is this a new thing, like "passion"?

Almost anyone in any company can go to HR and say, "This person is great, we should interview them for position X" and they will go to the top of the pile. If you reach out to someone you know at a company, if they like you, and you are good, usually you can get an interview there.

Contacts are also good at helping you find unposted jobs. You have to "Reach out" first.

Contacts can also recommend you to a hiring manager. The best hiring managers trust a reference based on a long working relationship over 30-45 minutes in an interview. But you have to "reach out" first.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#266

Post by zerr » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 4:18 PM UTC

phn wrote: post #241

askyourmother wrote: post #205

When I hired a plumber for my heating firm, I put her through a hazing interview, tested her knowledge of Maxwell relations and thermodynamic equations. Oh wait, no I didn't. As she has been a plumber for years, so we recognised her skill and experience and cut to the chase. When I hired a programmer for our doomed to die VC life support funded fart of a project, we put her through numerous rounds of comp sci bingo a…

A plumber, sure. What about the guys who design your water heater? Should they just google the thermodynamics as they go as well? My point being, it depends on the role, and the expectations you have for the future of a candidate in your company. Are you hiring a guy to bugfix or implement a couple of features on your web app? Or a guy to design and implement from scratch a app that should have some hope of scaling i…

It comes from the point that the candidate is a lair (when we talk about hiring experienced pros). If someone in your company who is in charge of tech hiring is unable to tell if the candidate is laying about her past experience and projects - you should fire him in the first place (or at least keep him away from the hiring).

So if you want to hire a "guy" to "design your water heater", ask him about the water heater he designed in the previous company, or a water cooler he designed for the neighbor community...

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#267

Post by personlurking » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 4:19 PM UTC

luso_brazilian wrote: post #238

swayvil wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to meet a professional plumber who is female, and I've met a lot of plumbers (I'm in construction). Just saying, it's jarring.

My thoughts exactly, although that could be a regional thing. In Portugal I was very amazed by the large amount of women driving buses, taxis and garbage trucks (for instance). Back in Brazil I must have seen at most five or six but in Portugal it is a very common sight. Now for this kind of specialized trade jobs like plumbers, electricians and auto mechanics I personally never seen a woman doing it in both sides of…

Interesting. I live in Portugal and lived in Brazil, but almost never see (have seen) women in these roles.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#268

Post by mixmastamyk » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

wdewind wrote: post #255

askyourmother wrote: post #205

When I hired a plumber for my heating firm, I put her through a hazing interview, tested her knowledge of Maxwell relations and thermodynamic equations. Oh wait, no I didn't. As she has been a plumber for years, so we recognised her skill and experience and cut to the chase. When I hired a programmer for our doomed to die VC life support funded fart of a project, we put her through numerous rounds of comp sci bingo a…

I frequently hear this basic point: "Software interviews test algorithms and data structures that are so clearly not relevant to the work being done and soooo theoretical I don't understand why interviewing isn't better???" I used to believe this myself, mostly because I didn't have a strong CS background and was still successful at carrying out software projects at a relatively high level. The truth is, as I learned…

It's not that they're irrelevant, it's that the problems can't be done in a disruptive environment with $100k on the line, by asking questions that must be memorized by chance first.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#269

Post by plafl » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

I think that the kind of interview you get tells a lot about the person that is interviewing you. I have been interviewed by professors and PhDs, and I have worked with them too, and never they expected anyone to remember some specific knowledge from several years ago. Hell, I spent more than 5 years working on Kalman filters and I don't think I could code the algorithm without having a look at wikipedia (I always forget the formula for the 'K' matrix). I remember taking Udacity's course about robotics and when Sebastian Thrunn appeared on the video and said he always forgot the formula too a tear dropped from my eye. If someone makes you that kind of specific technical questions my guess is that they lack enough qualification to better assess you, I don't care if they work in Google, Facebook or whatever.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#270

Post by theli0nheart » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

akavi wrote: post #251

askyourmother wrote: post #205

When I hired a plumber for my heating firm, I put her through a hazing interview, tested her knowledge of Maxwell relations and thermodynamic equations. Oh wait, no I didn't. As she has been a plumber for years, so we recognised her skill and experience and cut to the chase. When I hired a programmer for our doomed to die VC life support funded fart of a project, we put her through numerous rounds of comp sci bingo a…

> We recognized her skill and experience and cut to the chase So, to clarify, you're advocating that programmers be hired based on resume, references, and a conversation about prior projects? I'm not sure I agree with this. It seems you'd be selecting for ability to present yourself as a good programmer over actually being a good programmer. What is your objection to attempting to verify someone's programming skill d…

> But I really would hesitate to work at a place that just took people's word on their programming ability.

This is how I've hired for every open position in my company. You'd be amazed how easy it is to weed people out based on a conversation. It's very rare that someone can talk the talk without actually knowing what they're doing. There are too many obscure concepts and it gets clear really quickly if someone is bullshitting or has no idea what they're talking about.