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Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

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Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#281

Post by trishume »

drblast wrote: post #273

Google recruiters call me a lot. I think I'd do a good if not stellar job working there. I've passed multiple FAANG interviews and been very successful as a senior developer. In my email I have an "interview prep packet" from them that essentially tells me to brush up on algorithms and read Cracking the Coding Interview to prepare for their interview process. I'm fairly happy in my job. If they offered more money or…

I've interviewed with Google and the interviews I got didn't really require having memorized algorithms. Maybe on the level of breadth first and binary search which are pretty basic. But I don't think most interviews used any algorithms from a book at all. I think their interview prep packet overstates the amount of knowledge expected.

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#282

Post by JamieF1 »

Zimahl wrote: post #235
wiremine wrote: post #132

At my consultancy we recently streamlined our interview process: 1. Phone screen which takes 15 or 20 minutes. 2. The candidate fills out an essay, including showing us some code they're proud of. 3. If the essay ticks the boxes we conduct a 1 hour on site interview. We use the same a set of questions for every candidate, so the investment is easy to manage, and our team has a shared set of expectations on what is go…

If you want to do it for junior developers, fine, but as a senior dev, I'm not doing any take home assignment. It's an immediate pass from me. There is very little possibility that you can glean anything from my code other than picking apart it for code review bullshit. I'm not going to waste 2 to 6 hours on this - done it before, never again.

And this is why I built a site to allow people to search for jobs based on interview type. Although I haven't done any proper marketing yet, still a work in progress (https://softwarejobs.xyz)

Everybody is different.

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#283

Post by alboy »

bunderbunder wrote: post #162
chillacy wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s like an industry hazing ritual. How bad do you want it?

Hmm. Y'know, that's a great point. I could build a whole conspiracy theory off of that idea: If I'm a FAANG, I'm simply not using my normal interview process to hire for the really interesting jobs. I reserve those ones for people who got the job by virtue of their publication history in the academic literature, or because they built some well-known cool thing, or because they got promoted into the position. Those pe…

I wonder if the added friction of changing your place of work caused by this practice is meant to somewhat counterbalance the heavy incentives engineers have to job-hop in the current climate. Kind of makes sense from the point of view of tech employers.

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#284

Post by drblast »

esoterica wrote: post #257

Why do developers complain so much about hard interview questions that can be supposedly be gamed by studying to the test? Every high paying industry heavily engages in gatekeeping, because the number of people who want to make 400k/year is far larger than the number of 400k/year jobs available. The traditional forms of gatekeeping involve requiring that people have the right personal/familial connections, or have an…

I already make plenty of money in my current job and I'm fairly happy.

If I wanted to switch companies I'd be interviewed as if I were a recent college graduate.

Anyone experienced and good at this isn't going to have time for that because they're not going to jump through hoops to increase a 275k salary to a 300k one.

So what the interview selects for are people desperate enough to study hard enough to fool the interviewer.

And this is one reason the industry leans heavily toward young privileged male candidates and loves to reinvent the wheel every six months.

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#285

Post by ninja10 »

castlecrasher2 wrote: post #44
rightbyte wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind off strange for a non US resident to grasp. I've been employed as a programmer three times and noone tested my coding abilites what so ever on the interviews. No samples, nothing. Never heard of any collegue doing that either.

>This is kind off strange for a non US resident to grasp. I've worked for two non-technical companies as a software developer and one highly technical company, and interviewed at a few Silicon Valley companies. The difference between the interview processes is staggering; my current job's interview was two hours of conversation, no code tests, just a general assessment of "do you know what you're doing" by the hiring…

It's quite frustrating, I've submitted my portfolio of open source projects on GitHub for interviews. I specifically told the recruiters, HR personnel, hiring managers and some of the developers that the projects contain a large enough body of work to see examples of my code. These projects are quite comprehensive and not one person looked at them or mentioned them during the interviews.

Unfortunately, people in general rarely try to first understand what the candidate offers. It's more often ONLY about whether candidates uunderstand the exact way the company uses certain technology.

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#286

Post by Ensorceled »

trishume wrote: post #281
drblast wrote: post #273

Google recruiters call me a lot. I think I'd do a good if not stellar job working there. I've passed multiple FAANG interviews and been very successful as a senior developer. In my email I have an "interview prep packet" from them that essentially tells me to brush up on algorithms and read Cracking the Coding Interview to prepare for their interview process. I'm fairly happy in my job. If they offered more money or…

I've interviewed with Google and the interviews I got didn't really require having memorized algorithms. Maybe on the level of breadth first and binary search which are pretty basic. But I don't think most interviews used any algorithms from a book at all. I think their interview prep packet overstates the amount of knowledge expected.

We ... had different experiences. It was a day of implementing algorithms on a whiteboard. I was supposed to be interviewing for a management position so I didn’t get the study packet either.

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#287

Post by ehsankia »

Gimpei wrote: post #263
esoterica wrote: post #257

Why do developers complain so much about hard interview questions that can be supposedly be gamed by studying to the test? Every high paying industry heavily engages in gatekeeping, because the number of people who want to make 400k/year is far larger than the number of 400k/year jobs available. The traditional forms of gatekeeping involve requiring that people have the right personal/familial connections, or have an…

I think because some people can't train themselves up through the gate. This is not because they can't figure out the leetcode problems, but because they have more difficulty dealing with the kind of pressure you see in interviewing situations than others.

If you have a hard time working under pressure, there's sadly not many viable alternatives. Any process that has a very low % success rate will inherently be stressful. Also, being able to perform under stress could be seen as a desirable skill too.

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#288

Post by wolfgke »

sunir wrote: post #191
whatshisface wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for people over 50 who have probably realized there is more to life, why would some demographics be willing to grind less than others? Edit: By "over 50," I mean age demographics in general, which is the main thing that raises your family obligations. The only demographic division that I can think of that would reduce someone's willingness to abandon their personal life would be age.

They have kids. Developing a sentient being is a higher priority and more difficult than developing React Redux.

> They have kids. Developing a sentient being is a higher priority and more difficult than developing React Redux.

This is like saying: "I have a time-intense hobby that I prefer over working too much for you.".

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#289

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

zanny wrote: post #269
ohyes wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s frustrating to me is that we haven’t found a way to teach programming that doesn’t rely on natural aptitude. It’s really a travesty that we can’t teach it the same way that we teach maths or natural languages. The end result is we’re left trying to divine whether someone is the programming equivalent of being illiterate. As with illiteracy people find ways to fake it.

I don't believe for a second it requires "natural aptitude" to program. The problem is any programming curriculum starts with a text editor open. If a developer-to-be doesn't understand the framing context of what they are doing they are being dropped in a lake with no sense of direction. Its why all the "naturals" started as geeks who played with computers from a young age. You learned about the environment you woul…

We convinced our parents to buy a computer because it would help our education when all we really wanted one for was playing computer games. Joke was on us though, because playing computer games at the time usually involved a lot of putzing around and figuring out how stuff worked, ultimately teaching us marketable skills.

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#290

Post by kyralis »

systematical wrote: post #8

I've never been giving given a practical programming test. Nearly all are useless algorithms. Create a function that takes a integer greater than 0. Build an array equal in size to the argument. Fill the array with numbers that when summed together equal zero. It was worded far worse than that. What exactly is that telling you about the engineer? On the flip side I'm asked to code full fledged applications but not to…

FWIW, I regularly pass interview candidates who "fail" at certain questions. The point of those questions isn't to complete it perfectly (and sometimes we get less information from those, honestly), it's to see how you go about getting there, how you fail, and how you deal with that failure.

For instance, one of the problems I frequently ask has a structure that really encourages people to try inventing heuristics to solve the problem, even though ultimately all of those heuristics fail. Seeing how people react to "but what if your input looks like this?" questions is often very enlightening- can they rethink their approach? Do they just keep glomming on more special cases? Can they deal with someone pointing out that sort of flaw?

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