Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

darrenkopp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 679 posts

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#291

Post by hintymad »

paulddraper wrote: post #285
xandrius wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't get why such questions are even asked as most jobs I've ever had not even remotely touched those and I've touched quite a few industries, technologies and types of companies. To me, the value of a software engineer is to ask questions, make hypotheses and be able to iterate quickly. Balancing trees, leetcode and other algorithmic stuff on the spot sounds like bringing the dreadful education system struc…

> I still don't get why such questions are even asked The thesis is not that these exercises are representative of work but rather predictive of performance. Sales has a similar phenomenon with sports. While there is no athleticism involved in selling, many believe history in competitive sports to be a positive predictor of sales success. --- You can reasonably argue whether leetcode accomplishes this well or poorly,…

> The thesis is not that these exercises are representative of work but rather predictive of performance.

Well said. Just like in college, calculus (not analysis) and organic chemistry are used as filter courses. Of course, why the two courses, especially organic chemistry, are so hard to American students is another topic. I personally think that it shows the failure of the education system of the US.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#292

Post by feoren »

> I have, once again, failed an interview

Can we stop calling it "failing" when a company decides you're not a good fit? If you go on a date and don't get asked for a 2nd, did you fail the date? You're not just what they're looking for right now; not everything has to be a failure.

> for every 1-hour interview where I evaluated if someone knew their data structures, I could have just taught them

I'm sorry, what? He thinks it takes one hour to teach someone data structures? We sure are wasting our time with those multiple college courses and hundreds of textbooks on the subject then. We should just get this guy to spend one hour imparting all necessary knowledge into everyone.

> it’s often said that what’s more important is how you solve the problem, not that you solve the problem, but in practice human biases will work against you if you don’t get close to it working.

Human biases are much more likely to work against you if the interviewers have not spent time trying to come up with a consistent test that they give everyone. Does the author think human bias is absent from non-technical interviews? The less standard your hiring methods are, the more bias you'll have.

> I’ll just keep practicing for interviews until I successfully trick someone into thinking that I know how to code and then secretely become one of the best employees they have ever had.

I don't know who Darren Kopp is, so maybe I'm about to get an army of replies saying he's their coding role model, but this is an article about whether code interviews work or not, and he's basically saying "if they don't hire me, who will definitely become one of the best employees they've ever had, then their coding interview process must suck". The other possibility is that Darren Kopp just isn't actually tremendously more stellar than everyone else and coding interviews are actually kinda working. For his argument to work, he has to be one of the best possible candidates for every job he's applying for. I just kinda doubt that.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#293

Post by xandrius »

okwhateverdude wrote: post #242
onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #63

Honestly, as somebody who is hiring senior devs I can't imagine not doing a coding interview. Unfortunately, it is very hard to judge somebody's coding ability in discussion alone. You can sort of get the idea whether they have or don't have experience and whether they have luck being asked about topics they know (although you can help your luck just knowing a lot of stuff). I have seen a lot of candidates who were q…

>Unfortunately, it is very hard to judge somebody's coding ability in discussion alone. You can sort of get the idea whether they have or don't have experience and whether they have luck being asked about topics they know (although you can help your luck just knowing a lot of stuff). I disagree with your stated difficulty in judging coding ability by discussion alone. A skilled interviewer is easily able to ascertain…

Yeah, OP sounds dreadful to interview with. Especially the: omg, I basically gave them the solution!!

When they themselves didn't have to solve it, since they came up with it.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#294

Post by paulddraper »

xandrius wrote: post #289
paulddraper wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still don't get why such questions are even asked The thesis is not that these exercises are representative of work but rather predictive of performance. Sales has a similar phenomenon with sports. While there is no athleticism involved in selling, many believe history in competitive sports to be a positive predictor of sales success. --- You can reasonably argue whether leetcode accomplishes this well or poorly,…

So you're saying that someone wasting their time studying leetcode to pass a stupid game is a good indicator? I would almost believe the opposite: if you actually pass those tests with flying colours, it shows me that you believe you needed to do that to be hired, while someone who's actually experienced would never in a million years step down so low.

I didn't state my personal opinion above, but yes I have seen leetcode aptitude to positively correlate with day-to-day problem solving.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#295

Post by sshine »

ddoolin wrote: post #30
sshine wrote: post #18

At this point, I’ve had enough successful positions at hard jobs that I don’t question my competency when I fail a pop quiz. I still don’t know what my favourite Rust crate is. I feel I should have one after being asked more than a couple of times.

You've actually been asked that...? That's a trip. "Whichever one solves the problem at hand."

Three times, yes.

I don’t have one, though.

Much like I don’t have a favourite number or colour any more. I have favourite sets of numbers and colour palettes!

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#296

Post by davidw »

hintymad wrote: post #283
xandrius wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't get why such questions are even asked as most jobs I've ever had not even remotely touched those and I've touched quite a few industries, technologies and types of companies. To me, the value of a software engineer is to ask questions, make hypotheses and be able to iterate quickly. Balancing trees, leetcode and other algorithmic stuff on the spot sounds like bringing the dreadful education system struc…

Personally I think such questions have three values: - Future proof. Unless I work for an outsourcing company, sooner or later I will want to push the envelope, or so I hope I do. And to push the envelop, one needs good CS fundamentals (maybe there are some exceptions in some specialized field). Think about React. It's a JS framework, yet to invent it one needs to understand at least compiler and graph. - Geekiness/t…

> Think about React. It's a JS framework, yet to invent it one needs to understand at least compiler and graph.

Are you hiring people to create new JS frameworks, or to use an existing one?

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#297

Post by xandrius »

paulddraper wrote: post #294
xandrius wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying that someone wasting their time studying leetcode to pass a stupid game is a good indicator? I would almost believe the opposite: if you actually pass those tests with flying colours, it shows me that you believe you needed to do that to be hired, while someone who's actually experienced would never in a million years step down so low.

I didn't state my personal opinion above, but yes I have seen leetcode aptitude to positively correlate with day-to-day problem solving.

If your company uses leetcode to filter out employees then you are a leetcode team with your internal levels and ranks, not at all representative of the whole population of skilled IT people.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#298

Post by paulddraper »

davidw wrote: post #296
hintymad wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think such questions have three values: - Future proof. Unless I work for an outsourcing company, sooner or later I will want to push the envelope, or so I hope I do. And to push the envelop, one needs good CS fundamentals (maybe there are some exceptions in some specialized field). Think about React. It's a JS framework, yet to invent it one needs to understand at least compiler and graph. - Geekiness/t…

> Think about React. It's a JS framework, yet to invent it one needs to understand at least compiler and graph. Are you hiring people to create new JS frameworks, or to use an existing one?

To use an existing one.

And tools are best used when they are understood.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#299

Post by blindriver »

hintymad wrote: post #239

Assuming that a company does not look for candidates who are naturally good at ICPC-type of questions or geniuses who can come up with amazing algorithms in a matter of minutes, there is actually a different way to do coding interview: just give a high-level description of a sophisticated enough algorithm to a candidate and ask the candidate to turn that into code. I think it strikes a good balance between depth in C…

Unless you have data to show that your "different way" produces better results, your idea sounds exactly the same as every other idea, which is basically garbage.

Lots of people have lots of ideas on what makes a great interview question, but none of them are backed by data. LeetCode-style algo questions USED to be an indicator of intelligence as per Google's investigation, but now it's so heavily gamed that I doubt there's any signal behind it anymore.

Someone needs to spend time and effort and money and actually do random controlled tests to see if people who pass a particular type of test actually make good employees. But so far no one has done this, except Google as far as I've seen. But even now, I think there's no evidence that even algorithm questions are any indicator, given what I've seen.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#300

Post by whstl »

xandrius wrote: post #257
hintymad wrote: post #239

Assuming that a company does not look for candidates who are naturally good at ICPC-type of questions or geniuses who can come up with amazing algorithms in a matter of minutes, there is actually a different way to do coding interview: just give a high-level description of a sophisticated enough algorithm to a candidate and ask the candidate to turn that into code. I think it strikes a good balance between depth in C…

I still don't get why such questions are even asked as most jobs I've ever had not even remotely touched those and I've touched quite a few industries, technologies and types of companies. To me, the value of a software engineer is to ask questions, make hypotheses and be able to iterate quickly. Balancing trees, leetcode and other algorithmic stuff on the spot sounds like bringing the dreadful education system struc…

I disagree with some of this.

At some of my past jobs and the current one, this kind of algorithmic knowledge was important to build features that were differentiators in the market. As much as people love to pretend, not every single possible solution is in a library. Sometimes you're the one building the library.

It doesn't have to be leetcode, but candidates should at least be able to produce some code that doesn't come from the README of their favourite framework.

Also, talking for 30/45 mins can be enough, but it produces false positives when you have people coaching candidates. I've had people completely acing interviews that it felt like the perfect candidate. Well, it was rehearsed. When I asked for a fizz-buzz type question they completely messed it up.

Post reply on HN