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Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

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

#31

Post by dunkelheit »

stegosaurus wrote: post #7
taneq wrote: post #6

The examples that always come up of "stupid interview questions" in this kind of rant: Implement a breadth first search, or reverse a binary tree, or write FizzBuzz. Are these really such difficult things to whip up, off the top of your head? Is it really that unreasonable to want to hire someone who can do so? Yes, if you need such a thing and it's not immediately obvious how to do it, off to StackOverflow you go to…

I don't know what BFS is. I just googled it. Oh, I know what it is now. If you haven't been exposed to it, it's just jargon. That's the point. You are testing for jargon rather than ability. It is the distinction between saying 'implement FizzBuzz' and going silent, and actually explaining what it is. As an interviewer it is easy to forget that whilst you may have asked a question 20 times, this may be the candidate'…

That's not what happened to the OP. He was asked to code up a solution to maze searching problem. The statement of this problem is understandable by a 5-year old kid.

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

#32

Post by joesmo »

malbs wrote: post #14

Just went through this process from the POV of employer. The risk of choosing the wrong person is so great, that it's often better to not choose anyone. If there is any doubt what-so-ever, it's better to not make a a hire, it can be too damaging to a team, manager, company. I've tried so many different "coding interview" scenarios. But I found the best one was a real task that a real staff member would be expected to…

"The risk of choosing the wrong person is so great"

I assume you don't live in the US or if you do, please elaborate because in the US there are virtually no such risks with at-will employment. It's so incredibly easy to fire people in the US that such an idea is actually ridiculous, yet people keep bringing it up all the time as if it's real.

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

#33

Post by taneq »

tyingq wrote: post #2

>> "The first round started with introductions, followed by a coding exercise — write a maze solving algorithm. What the fuck?! Seriously?...I am not a recent college graduate anymore" I wonder if just writing a brute-force maze solver, and then explaining that you are aware better solutions exist...but that you didn't have any memorized, would have sufficed.

(Edit: Whoops, I misread you and thought you were saying you couldn't remember the brute-force one, not the more elegant solution. Ah what the hell, it was fun to write. :)

A recursive implementation of depth-first search should only take ten minutes to write. OK, here, I'll do it without looking anything up. Start time 8:55pm.

    #include 
    #include 

    const int WIDTH = 32; // adjust to suit
    const int HEIGHT = 32; // adjust to suit
    const bool WALLS[WIDTH][HEIGHT] = {
        // enter maze layout here, true = wall
        // this isn't a test of file IO knowledge
        // make sure the outer perimeter of the maze is
        // fully closed with walls
    };
    const int START_X = 16; // adjust to suit
    const int START_Y = 16; // adjust to suit

    const int GOAL_X = 16; // adjust to suit
    const int GOAL_Y = 16; // adjust to suit

    bool search_maze(bool **searched, int cur_x, int cur_y,
        int start_x, int start_y) {
        const int DIRS = 4;
        const int DIR_X = { -1, 0, 1, 0 };
        const int DIR_Y = { 0, 1, 0, -1 };

        searched[cur_x][cur_y] = true;
        for (int i=0; i
End time 9:12pm. So 17 minutes (what's that rule about estimating software dev time?), and I haven't run and tested it yet, but it should show what the interviewer wants.

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

#34

Post by [deleted] »

emerongi wrote: post #30
sagichmal wrote: post #11

Hiring isn't broken, dude. You just don't interview well, and you seem antagonistic even to the idea that your cachet and skills, insofar as they exist, aren't useful to the market. That's a problem -- for you. Interviews exist because employers need a way to quantify and qualify your ability. Typical computer science problems are a (flawed, but concrete) way of doing that. No reasonable interviewer expects you to re…

I don't think many software engineers deal with "computer science problems" in their everyday jobs. GitHub stars are worth much more IMO. It shows that other developers value your work. That says a lot. In the end, we have to realize that most developers are just average. Why go through the ridiculous process of finding average developers who by luck (or some homework) happen to solve the problems you throw at them p…

[deleted]

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

#36

Post by LamaOfRuin »

stegosaurus wrote: post #7
taneq wrote: post #6

The examples that always come up of "stupid interview questions" in this kind of rant: Implement a breadth first search, or reverse a binary tree, or write FizzBuzz. Are these really such difficult things to whip up, off the top of your head? Is it really that unreasonable to want to hire someone who can do so? Yes, if you need such a thing and it's not immediately obvious how to do it, off to StackOverflow you go to…

I don't know what BFS is. I just googled it. Oh, I know what it is now. If you haven't been exposed to it, it's just jargon. That's the point. You are testing for jargon rather than ability. It is the distinction between saying 'implement FizzBuzz' and going silent, and actually explaining what it is. As an interviewer it is easy to forget that whilst you may have asked a question 20 times, this may be the candidate'…

To a degree this is true, but there is also significant value in having (and retaining) that broad base of knowledge that a good CS program or some systematic personal studies will get you. Most of the time you're not going to get a "implement this algorithm" you're going to get a "solve this problem we have" and you need to know the standard tools that are available to get you to a first approximation solution.

Depending on what their listed requirements were, I think it's reasonable to expect you to know standard terminology, though I wouldn't count it against you if you asked to be reminded of the details for one or two things.

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

#37

Post by 746F7475 »

Didn't care to read after first rant about hiring process. It just seems like you are not a fit for Google. People always try to find company which "culture" fits them, but it also works the other way around, even if you wish to work for Google, maybe just for the salary or other benefits, if you are poor fit for the company culture then you are a net loss.

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

#39

Post by akadien »

sagichmal wrote: post #11

Hiring isn't broken, dude. You just don't interview well, and you seem antagonistic even to the idea that your cachet and skills, insofar as they exist, aren't useful to the market. That's a problem -- for you. Interviews exist because employers need a way to quantify and qualify your ability. Typical computer science problems are a (flawed, but concrete) way of doing that. No reasonable interviewer expects you to re…

> A few popular open-source projects don't necessarily speak to your talent as a programmer.

If having source code and demonstrated traction for a few open source projects to review don't speak to one's talent as a programmer, then what does?

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

#40

Post by robbiemitchell »

sagichmal wrote: post #11

Hiring isn't broken, dude. You just don't interview well, and you seem antagonistic even to the idea that your cachet and skills, insofar as they exist, aren't useful to the market. That's a problem -- for you. Interviews exist because employers need a way to quantify and qualify your ability. Typical computer science problems are a (flawed, but concrete) way of doing that. No reasonable interviewer expects you to re…

What do you think about OP's comments that the algorithm questions were unrelated to the front-end positions?
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