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Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

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Re: Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

#31

Post by kafkaesq »

However, he was less comfortable jumping into [and] thinking about a problem outside of an area of expertise.

These kinds of snap judgements I find very problematic. As if anyone -- even if they're an "industry leader", even if they've interviewed hundreds of candidates; heck, even if they're a truly towering figure in their field (or otherwise a truly brilliant person that no one knows about yet) -- can make that kind of an assessment from a (highly contrived and stressful) 45-minute or so interaction with someone.

Maybe after working alongside someone for several months, you could say that. But from their off-the-cuff answers to your made up puzzle problems (or even from unstructured conversation)? I just don't buy it.

BTW you should be doing a lot more to anonymize these profiles. Blurring the school name is a good start, but you definitely should not include company names either; and the gender should be obscured, as well. Even from just a small tuple of attributes like these, it wouldn't be too hard to identify, and perhaps cause considerable harm to some of these candidates.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

#32

Post by landon32 »

Chyzwar wrote: post #18

Both interviews highly biased towards interviewing skills: bs and basic algo. Judging if someone has the skill to build large system based on a conversation is silly. You cannot make an informed decision. You should look for people with the portfolio. If someone has made a project in TensorFlow to paint in Picasso style then you should hire them regardless of education. This is an unpopular opinion. You cannot become…

>If someone has made a project in TensorFlow to paint in Picasso style then you should hire them regardless of education.

Hmm, I definitely don't agree. Once the Style Transfer paper was released, it's pretty trivial to implement it in a DL framework. Certainly a good indicator that someone knows how to implement deep learning algorithms, but it's a pretty small facet of someone's skill. You can implement Style Transfer while still writing ugly, buggy, mediocre code. You can also copy most of the code from different open source DL repos, even before anyone had implemented Style Transfer.

That said, someone taking the time to implement Style Transfer does show that they're reading recent research and are curious about deep learning, which are definitely good signals.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

#33

Post by aub3bhat »

For the interviewer 1 question of sorting an array with only two unique elements. Am I missing something? The solution just requires counting lower value and writing it number of times it occurs and then writing the other value until the end.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_sort

Re: Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

#34

Post by IncRnd »

aub3bhat wrote: post #33

For the interviewer 1 question of sorting an array with only two unique elements. Am I missing something? The solution just requires counting lower value and writing it number of times it occurs and then writing the other value until the end. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_sort

For some reason many senior engineers cannot answer questions of this type. These types of questions are meant to see if someone can write programs in language X. They are also followed up with exploratory 'what if' questions that enable the interviewer to inspect the thought processes of the candidate. They are also used in behavioral interviews.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

#36

Post by aub3bhat »

IncRnd wrote: post #34
aub3bhat wrote: post #33

For the interviewer 1 question of sorting an array with only two unique elements. Am I missing something? The solution just requires counting lower value and writing it number of times it occurs and then writing the other value until the end. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_sort

For some reason many senior engineers cannot answer questions of this type. These types of questions are meant to see if someone can write programs in language X. They are also followed up with exploratory 'what if' questions that enable the interviewer to inspect the thought processes of the candidate. They are also used in behavioral interviews.

The person interviewed isn't senior. The one interviewing is.

I think her solution for array larger than memory is very inefficient. Even in smaller case one might achieve speed up by excluding unnecessary read/temp/move in else clause by just by writing two values which will likely be in registers.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

#37

Post by j_s »

In the last week or two, the idea of hosting mock interviews has taken the Twitch.TV "Programming" Community by storm. A number of willing victims have volunteered to go through the process of solving a problem within a set time limit. In general the interviewers have been able to stay positive even when people are so inexperienced they are clearly overwhelmed by the adventure.

My impression is that going through a mock interview in this way has pulled back the curtain on a process that a select few have been able to shake their network (school alumni, etc.) to do something similar privately.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

#38

Post by jy1 »

kafkaesq wrote: post #31

However, he was less comfortable jumping into [and] thinking about a problem outside of an area of expertise. These kinds of snap judgements I find very problematic. As if anyone -- even if they're an "industry leader", even if they've interviewed hundreds of candidates; heck, even if they're a truly towering figure in their field (or otherwise a truly brilliant person that no one knows about yet) -- can make that ki…

I don't think it's a "snap judgement".

Interviewing is a trying to get as much signal in a short window. Any good interviewer knows there is high variance, however you still need to make an assessment quickly.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

#39

Post by Nikbul »

I have some questions: How does measurement of leadership happening in those interviews? How is measurement of explaining hard terminology and principles in easier terms is measured? How is a reliability as the team member measured?

For the first-you can't asses leadership ability just out of the blue since each company has different set of values and approaches there. (For example Army vs Google leadership styles)

For the second-you need some 3rd person who has relatively low understanding of the field you testing person for, then you need to ask candidate to explain something to that person and then ask the 3rd person to tell you what did they learn or understood from this conversation. So far I see no other way about it, if you have better ideas, please share.

And third, well only time can show such attribute as reliability as a team players. There is way too many thing could go wrong in chemistry between team and the candidate.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

#40

Post by somberi »

I find the two evaluations useful and valuable. I am a hiring manager and some of comments if I may:

1. Always use HE, even if it is a SHE. (1)

2. We test our candidates with custom-made case studies that help them SHINE and not focused on making them FAIL. This mindset has helped us evaluate candidates, in the waters they currently swim, than to throw them into our reality. It is the job of the interviewer to retrofit our problems into the candidate's universe. We have heard from candidates, both from hired and not-hired pools, that their stress level is reduced a lot by this approach.

(1) https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/...

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