331–340 of 693 posts
I dunno... it's frustrating, but really, you can learn some valuable stuff during those few hours. I have had some interviews that certainly haven't been positive, but they have been instructive or rewarding in some way. Not necessarily even relating to code. It teaches you something about them, the industry, and more importantly, about yourself.
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I frequently hear this basic point: "Software interviews test algorithms and data structures that are so clearly not relevant to the work being done and soooo theoretical I don't understand why interviewing isn't better???" I used to believe this myself, mostly because I didn't have a strong CS background and was still successful at carrying out software projects at a relatively high level. The truth is, as I learned…
It's not that they're irrelevant, it's that the problems can't be done in a disruptive environment with $100k on the line, by asking questions that must be memorized by chance first.
It sucks that we have to do it under the pressure of a 45min-1hour conversation, and I totally get that the stakes are high and so nerves are a problem. In general I think the best way to handle this stuff is to give candidates multiple paths to succeed.
I think the nerves problem is slightly overstated though, because I do think many companies do give candidates multiple paths to succeed. For instance, if you have trouble performing well in an interview setting it's pretty crucial that you have a wide array of work on github proving you can code and that will give you an opportunity to have some complicated but familiar code that you can talk about in the interview. If someone comes in with this but is shy or gets frustrated or something, as an interviewer I'm really going to try and pull the magic I see in their github out of them in that interview. Keep in mind that people hiring engineers really want the candidate to succeed in most cases. It's so difficult to find good talent that while I'm never going to lower my standards to hurt the company, I'm definitely on the candidate's team in an interview, trying to get them to shine as best I can.
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…
I'm always happy to get a kudos on GitHub. But those of us who don't play the game of promoting our own code on social media, or who have code we can't post on GitHub, would be at a significant disadvantage in a hiring process based on that metric.
There's selectivity, and there's courtesy and respect. Companies are entitled to be as selective as they like, and if those are the kinds of tests that yield the people they want to hire then good for them. On the other hand courtesy and respect would demand that you're clear with the candidate about your expectations and requirements, that you don't waste their time, that you respect the investment of time by commun…
Nurses also have licenses and registered credentials. If they mess up badly, they can be disciplined and lose their license and career. So there is a self-regulation that takes place in that industry. Were it not so, I could imagine nursing interviews to be a lot more intense. There is no such regulation in the tech industry. One bad hire I made faked his technical capabilities and I regretted it a lot when I had to…
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When the author himself describes very positive and negative interviewing experiences, yet having no success at either, I have a hard time blaming the hiring practices.
An interview can be positive and not lead to a job. I went on a lot of interviews (maybe close to 100) before starting my own business, and I'd say at least 9/10 of them were very positive. By positive: I felt we both left the interview a bit happier than we went in. We both had a legitimate good time, and enjoyed it. It wasn't a grind, both people got to know each other. I'd say I had a 10% offer rate. The most comm…
I would think this is something that should have been made clear from the get-go in the initial technical phone interview.
Anyone who goes to an in-person interview should expect, at minimum, that the interviewers have done their homework.
For example, if they just want Stanford or MIT grads, fine. But to bring someone into an interview - which may involve more than a day of travel, lost vacation time etc - just to tell them they went to the wrong college afterwards, that's plain infuriating and shows complete lack of courtesy.
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Hiring in CS / IT is massively more objective compared to most of other fields.
Not really - these kinds of interviews are about hiring "People Like Us", i.e. recent college CS graduates who the interviewers like right off the bat (are they going to strongly recommend someone they don't like). It discourages diversity, reinforces ageism, and creates a stagnation in the company doing the hiring. I've seen this directly happen - the interviewers were two Asian and one White male, who came to this…
IME, that's much more a consequence of the limited diversity of candidates, not a limited diversity of hires. In most places I've worked at, even if they hired all women and blacks (or other non-Asian minorities), there would still be at most approximately 5% women and 0% blacks (the latter would probably be higher in the US).
Yep, the interview process is pretty broken. It took me 5 Google phone screens before I got invited to an on-site (although one of those phone screens had the technical phone interview waived due to the team's familiarity with my skills, but I still got rejected amusingly) - the only reason I made it was because I failed & learned from each of the previous phone screens enough to pass. This is an absolutely awful way…
For shits and giggles, I changed my school to a comparable one that was on their list and updated my resume accordingly (changing nothing but my school) and low and fking behold. "We would be very interested in moving forward with your application"... Wtf.
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And this is why there is an impedance mismatch... these people are interviewing for a "computer science" role they're filling when really they want a programmer. The two are different.
As an Information Engineer, you're totally right. Almost in any interview I had, I been asked about CS stuff. Never anything related to my field. I don't blame them. They ask about what they know and what they think it's important, even if it's not relevant to the position.
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