“I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews” • Hacker News Board

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#321

Post by hiq » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:12 AM UTC

slumpt_ wrote: post #269

_9omd wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's extremely tired. FAANG companies are not dumb, they hire at scale and know how to find talented engineers using a rigorous/repeatable interview process. I think most of the complaints come from people who fail these interviews (I used to be one), and don't want to admit that maybe they're not good enough.

“Not good enough” is not an accurate description. There is an abundance of people more than “good enough” for roles at FAANGs. They may simply not be stellar at the examination process used by FAANGs to assess candidates. As much as many folks at those companies might want to partake in some fart-huffing and call that a predictor of engineering excellence, it’s not. It’s an optimization to shovel candidates at scale,…

I think OP meant "not good enough" to pass the interview, not to perform on the job.

Saying that a certain $PREDICTOR is bad in itself doesn't say much, in particular it doesn't say whether there's a better one available under the same constraints. Widespread leetcode interviews is just an indication that large companies have not found a better predictor yet (again, under the same constraints with respect to time, budget, etc.).

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#322

Post by hiq » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:15 AM UTC

ornornor wrote: post #233

joeax wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have several certifications from Microsoft and Google and, for the most part, mean jack to an interviewer. I am still forced to leetcode and answer mind-numbing questions. On a side note, of all the choices I prefer a take-home, as long as it is timeboxed to no more than 1-2 hours.

It never is one or two hours though. It might be if you designed the thing and know exactly how to get there and handle all the corner cases. Oh and also we always underestimate. I have yet to see a 1–2h take home test actually be doable in that amount of time. It’s more like 8–10h to get going, have something meaningful, and code that isn’t inscrutable.

The timebox has to be enforced on the company side, meaning that you have e.g. 2h to submit your answer once you've opened their link (which you should be free to open at any time, so that you're sure you have the time allotted).

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#323

Post by tpoacher » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:27 AM UTC

> "In the past, when I was interviewing myself, I would come across large numbers of really smart candidates all the time. Once in a while, though, I'd find someone exceptional who could approach problems differently, and those people would always turn out to be the best hires. They would have been filtered out by these systems."

This reminded me of a quote I once heard (on Slashdot if I'm not mistaken).

"There is often a mentality in the workplace that with sufficiently detailed protocols and procedures, the village idiot can perform theoretical physics just as well as Einstein.

In fact, no amount of procedure will make that happen; quite the contrary, all that procedure ensures is that if you ever do hire Einstein, their output will closely resemble that of the village idiot."

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#324

Post by jjav » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:28 AM UTC

dilyevsky wrote: post #96

millstone wrote: post #57

The author has been working as a developer for 15 years, and claims very strong technical skills. Why are they learning/re-learning Python, C++, SQL, C#, college math? Nobody will be fooled by that; at 15 YoE they will be evaluated on what they have done over a career, not over the last month. > it's all about how much time you can spend on Leetcode. The author is playing a game built for new grads. Here's a secret,…

Haven’t worked at fb but same experience at other big co. Also I question authors experience interviewing people - I’ve done literally hundreds coding sessions and there’re surprisingly large number of folks who claim 5-10 years of experience and several companies under their belt but aren’t able to code a simple for-loop in their language of choice

> there’re surprisingly large number of folks who claim 5-10 years of experience and several companies under their belt but aren’t able to code a simple for-loop in their language of choice

No. This indicates a failure in the interview technique.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#325

Post by a_square_peg » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:30 AM UTC

I think we're increasingly losing the art of making and taking ownership of technical decisions that correspond to the level of the position and the job title. When the author says that "technical skills have definitely sharpened up by practicing Hackerrank-style questions", I would actually say that senior engineers practising online problems would have added value no more than getting better at Sudoku. I've been frustrated by senior software engineers who have strong opinions and can talk hours about the choice of text editors but then magically disappear when it comes to making project-critical decisions with millions of dollars on the line.

I think this is reflected in the hiring process also - no one wants to be responsible for bad hire so it becomes a group-think exercise where each applicant has to get thumbs up from half-a-dozen interviewers. This will inevitably drive mediocrity and I'm sure this also structurally weeds out any candidate who can become a threat.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#326

Post by ornornor » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:38 AM UTC

hiq wrote: post #322

ornornor wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It never is one or two hours though. It might be if you designed the thing and know exactly how to get there and handle all the corner cases. Oh and also we always underestimate. I have yet to see a 1–2h take home test actually be doable in that amount of time. It’s more like 8–10h to get going, have something meaningful, and code that isn’t inscrutable.

The timebox has to be enforced on the company side, meaning that you have e.g. 2h to submit your answer once you've opened their link (which you should be free to open at any time, so that you're sure you have the time allotted).

I don’t know about you but I suck the most when coding in a HTML element instead of my editor and with a gun to my head.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#327

Post by a_square_peg » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:54 AM UTC

tpoacher wrote: post #323

> "In the past, when I was interviewing myself, I would come across large numbers of really smart candidates all the time. Once in a while, though, I'd find someone exceptional who could approach problems differently, and those people would always turn out to be the best hires. They would have been filtered out by these systems." This reminded me of a quote I once heard (on Slashdot if I'm not mistaken). "There is of…

On the other hand, I've seen well-managed organizations that allow a team of competent but not necessarily exceptional group of engineers to accomplish exceptional feats and also the opposite, where a team of exceptional individuals but without any coherent structure led to dismal results.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#328

Post by hiq » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:56 AM UTC

ornornor wrote: post #326

hiq wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The timebox has to be enforced on the company side, meaning that you have e.g. 2h to submit your answer once you've opened their link (which you should be free to open at any time, so that you're sure you have the time allotted).

I don’t know about you but I suck the most when coding in a HTML element instead of my editor and with a gun to my head.

I think the problem can be solved if the interviewer gives enough information so that the interviewee can have their IDE working correctly by the time they get started.

The pressure problem can be solved by giving more time than what would be expected in a work setting. If you expect a task to be completed in 1h, just give 2h. Of course that implies that you don't give a task which would take an expected 6h to complete.

Of course these are things to consider from the company side, if they think they want to hire people who can program under high pressure, they should probably keep that as part of the interview, for both the company's and interviewee's sake.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#329

Post by username90 » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:57 AM UTC

jjav wrote: post #324

dilyevsky wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven’t worked at fb but same experience at other big co. Also I question authors experience interviewing people - I’ve done literally hundreds coding sessions and there’re surprisingly large number of folks who claim 5-10 years of experience and several companies under their belt but aren’t able to code a simple for-loop in their language of choice

> there’re surprisingly large number of folks who claim 5-10 years of experience and several companies under their belt but aren’t able to code a simple for-loop in their language of choice No. This indicates a failure in the interview technique.

Many software jobs barely involve programming. Just look around in this thread, you will find people who argue that the job barely requires writing any code at all and mostly involves talking to customers or managers. That kind of experience doesn't make you a better coder, it makes you a better product manager, so technical interviews filtering them out is intended.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#330

Post by BlargMcLarg » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:57 AM UTC

hiq wrote: post #316

gonehome wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think testing whether someone can recall the implementation of quick sort and has practiced writing it quickly is not really testing for building complexity or solving problems. It’s testing for practiced solutions of memorized algorithms and a bit of role play. I get there’s some IQ challenge to preparing this and it’s hard to evaluate skill, but I don’t think this tests much beyond that. Want to test true basic p…

Note that koonsolo never mentioned quicksort, only sort. You can easily make it a newbie question by just accepting any sort that returns a correct output, even with a quadratic complexity in the best case. Any programmer should be able to write that in less than 10min. And as the post you answered to alluded to, the point of the question is really just to filter out candidates who can't even write simple code, just…

I haven't written a sorting method in years and couldn't remember it on the spot in 10 minutes, despite having analyzed the big ones 6 years ago. Yet, I have no problem creating a giant, modular, cookie-cutter enterprise structure, which is generally more sought after and something many hardcore leets seem to struggle with, especially once it comes down to doing more than just a fancy UML graph.

We really don't need True Scotsmans on this site.