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Why do big companies ask unrealistic software engineering interview questions?

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Re: Why do big companies ask unrealistic software engineering interview questions?

#31

Post by sevagh »

sph wrote: post #17
your_friend wrote: post #5

That's the thing I was struggling with, I can solve many of problems for the avg company – but I don't know how to solve a leetcode problem. I bet there aren't as many companies solving the complex problems on a scale. But if we look from the perspective of the company – maybe it's just an filter to get someone very dedicated and nerdy about programming. Less churn, less questions.

I have a controversial, philosophical explanation why that is: Leet code is useless in the real world, everybody knows it. But one would find that people that are able to sit down and learn something useless and stupid only because their boss asked it makes for better employees. The modern corporate world does not like free thinkers, if not within easily controllable parameters. The solution for the ones that have be…

I half agree. I know people who have a natural curiosity of algos & DS - most predictably, people who did algo/ds competitions/competitive programming. To them, leetcode is easy shit, and just naturally so. E.g. I had a group of friends who would ace Advent of Code every year while I muddled through (and always get stuck on day 7 or 10).

So I think leetcode interviews get both those groups - the ones you mentioned, who work hard and study (and thus demonstrate good qualities of being employees), _or_ those who are so good at this stuff that leetcode won't even make them sweat.

Re: Why do big companies ask unrealistic software engineering interview questions?

#32

Post by alephnan »

rco8786 wrote: post #15

As always, it's an imperfect proxy. Nothing more, nothing less. But nobody has found a more reliable proxy yet.

> nobody has found a more reliable proxy yet.

Companies have not found a process at scale where they can train their employees to systematically gauge candidates.

Small and startup companies where leadership is still involved in the interview process can gauge candidates based on their own technical intuition. So it's false to say NOBODY has a proxy for good software engineering skills. The founders can also look at the candidate's public code contributions.

The problem is that this method does not scale. If you trusted employees to hire based on feel and intuition, you open up the door for people to bring in incompetent friends.

The real problem here is incentives. Founders have a financial incentive to not hire bad candidates. Employees don't, and that's why a standardized process is needed.

Re: Why do big companies ask unrealistic software engineering interview questions?

#33

Post by marginalia_nu »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #25
marginalia_nu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also noteworthy that if you're building a search engine, these types of questions are actually pretty relevant. As a field Search demands both a breadth and depth in CS fundamentals in a way that rare in most other places.

Most Googlers joining Google today aren't gonna be tasked with the elbow grease of building a search engine from scratch, not even close. You'll be a small cog in a large machine, engaging in theatrics justifying in length why your 10h/week of serializing/deserializing JSONS was so difficult and important to the company, while you rest and vest playing videogames at home, asking on Reddit if everyone working in FAANG…

That's true, but these practices date from back when Google was a search company. My point being there existed a time when Google asking these questions made a lot of sense.

Re: Why do big companies ask unrealistic software engineering interview questions?

#34

Post by FrustratedMonky »

sen wrote: post #22
huqedato wrote: post #6

Don't publish anymore on Medium, people!

https://archive.md/Xk2F4 I find it hard to trust the opinion of any “techie” who writes on Medium personally. It reeks of “I want to be an influencer!” type personalities.

Medium started out better, it's gone downhill.

Re: Why do big companies ask unrealistic software engineering interview questions?

#35

Post by xxs »

begueradj wrote: post #14
your_friend wrote: post #5

That's the thing I was struggling with, I can solve many of problems for the avg company – but I don't know how to solve a leetcode problem. I bet there aren't as many companies solving the complex problems on a scale. But if we look from the perspective of the company – maybe it's just an filter to get someone very dedicated and nerdy about programming. Less churn, less questions.

I believe it is simply an efficient way to discriminate applicants based on their age: a fresh school graduate in his/her twenties is the one who is more likely to solve LeetCode like algorithms than a senior developer in his 40s who has a respectable knowledge and insight on how software should be done, deployed and run.

I think this "senior developer in his 40s" vs " fresh school graduate in his/her twenties" is more like your personal rendition of the story.

Re: Why do big companies ask unrealistic software engineering interview questions?

#37

Post by zwnow »

Kelteseth wrote: post #12
your_friend wrote: post #5

That's the thing I was struggling with, I can solve many of problems for the avg company – but I don't know how to solve a leetcode problem. I bet there aren't as many companies solving the complex problems on a scale. But if we look from the perspective of the company – maybe it's just an filter to get someone very dedicated and nerdy about programming. Less churn, less questions.

Thank god I never had these interview questions at the companies I interviewed for, here in Germany. Most talks were simply a 30min chat with the actual developer there. Mostly about the job, what they do, and some of their current issues. Then they would ask me how I would tackle them.

Yup, can sign that. Never had a coding interview so far... It is all about sympathy and being knowledgable. Had the most success by being brutaly honest about not knowing certain technologies. But I also show a lot of interest once I do not know something.

Re: Why do big companies ask unrealistic software engineering interview questions?

#38

Post by janosdebugs »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #11
4death4 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a retcon. The real reason is most likely that Google started interviewing people this way and then that's the culture that developed in the industry. Once a culture develops, it's very hard to change.

This is the correct answer. Microsoft used to ask things like "Why are manholes square" or "How many dentists are there in USA". For a while it got trendy to ask those sort of brainteasers in interviews (thankfully it didn't seem to stick). It is very hard to change established processed - especially when the people doing the interviews have gone through the process. They had to suffer, so why should the people after…

I hold a very controvertial take on the dentist question: this and similar questions select candidates who can come up with convincing lines that lack any basis in facts (i.e. bullshit). This seems to be a good foundation for a terrible engineering/company culture.

Re: Why do big companies ask unrealistic software engineering interview questions?

#39

Post by commandersaki »

Couldn't read the article due to pay/registration wall.

If this is about screening potential software engineers with programming questions during an interview, hasn't this always been a thing even before Google popularised it?

I started my career after the dot-com era but it was in Systems Administration, so I didn't get to experience any programming style interviews until I changed careers and attempted an interview in 2008 with Google.

But hasn't this been the standard modus operandi for big tech companies like Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, IBM, etc. even in the 90s? I recall reading this [1] article from Casey Muratori about programming questions for a Software Engineering intern at Microsoft.

I'm not against this style of interviewing, but I do also think that some questions can be absurd or unnecessarily tricky. I've had my fair share of programming interview questions, and I found my solve rate to be around 3/7 for my last interview with Google back in 2015. Some of the questions posed were really tricky, and I just don't have the ability to solve in a timely manner without properly experimenting with the problem. From my impression and perspective, interviewers would sometimes choose questions with high coolness/leetness factor instead of choosing something more practical for a 30-50 minute session.

[1]: https://www.computerenhance.com/p/the-four-programming-quest...

Re: Why do big companies ask unrealistic software engineering interview questions?

#40

Post by zwnow »

begueradj wrote: post #14
your_friend wrote: post #5

That's the thing I was struggling with, I can solve many of problems for the avg company – but I don't know how to solve a leetcode problem. I bet there aren't as many companies solving the complex problems on a scale. But if we look from the perspective of the company – maybe it's just an filter to get someone very dedicated and nerdy about programming. Less churn, less questions.

I believe it is simply an efficient way to discriminate applicants based on their age: a fresh school graduate in his/her twenties is the one who is more likely to solve LeetCode like algorithms than a senior developer in his 40s who has a respectable knowledge and insight on how software should be done, deployed and run.

Usually the issues companies throw at their applicants aren't that difficult to solve. Every dev should know how to split data into structures you can work with.
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