Hiring without whiteboards • Hacker News Board

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#341

Post by tchaffee » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 9:21 PM UTC

toephu2 wrote: post #270

silverbax88 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd better be looking for psuedocode, because if you're looking for syntax, no strong programmer with experience is going to take you seriously. Honestly, whiteboard interviews are for lightweight startups with very little programming knowledge. You should be looking at logic, not syntax. You should be looking at how the person thinks, not if they can memorize a specific language to do a simple task.

Have you ever interviewed at Google? They care about syntax, psuedocode will not cut it in the interviews... and Google has a lot of strong programmers.

Google has the name to attract strong programmers. I'd like to see stats on how few (or many) strong programmers their interview process misses. Especially when that interview process is used at a company without such a huge name.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#342

Post by NTDF9 » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 9:23 PM UTC

george_ciobanu wrote: post #337

NTDF9 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Am I missing any other ways to assess candidates? Yes. You are completely glossing over the fact that the candidate might be bringing something special to the table. You have literally not left any room for the candidate to showcase what they've learned (again, not minutia of algorithms but something completely different..like the candidate could be a specialist in how compilers do register allocation) How about t…

Of course computer architecture, compiler knowledge etc is valuable and part of the interview process. I was referring to the general process of evaluating- - thus the question was focused on methods not content. Additionally, explaining how a system works is valuable, and I captured it when mentioned communication abilities.

>> Of course computer architecture, compiler knowledge etc is valuable and part of the interview process. I was referring to the general process of evaluating- - thus the question was focused on methods not content.

The general process is fucked up because the interviewers are incompetent enough that they can't tell who is actually a smart guy. This is why incompetent interviewers resort to binary decision making on programming questions.

Here's a way to think about it. Let's take two candidates with equal communication skills:

1. This candidate solves all coding problems fast, with great syntax, good style and discusses algorithmic complexities well

2. This candidate is smart, can go deep in their specialty (because they've spent years developing complex expertise) but couldn't do a medium-level tree traversal without hints or has bad coding style (on whiteboard)

Who do you see getting picked (at Google)?

I remember a friend of mine at Google (a Java programmer) docked points off a candidate (a C programmer) because the candidate passed length of array as an argument. I was like wtf? Seriously? You don't know C?

The data-driven committee-based process completely ignores that not interviewers are equal. Their feedbacks on paper are not equal.

There's a reason scouting still exists in Baseball/Soccer/Football because data-driven process has given mediocre results at best. Interviewing is much like scouting. You cannot use mediocre engineers to identify who's a real talent.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#343

Post by richdougherty » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 9:48 PM UTC

udev wrote: post #284

kelvin0 wrote: post #269

Imagine this. You are interviewing for a job, you walk in a room with 2 people who hand you over a sheet with a few problems. They ask you to write the solutions on the whiteboard, while they wait for you to complete. Not a word is said, they are clicking at their laptops, and staring at the whiteboard, as waiting for the genie to pop out of a bottle. All the while your mind is frozen and stuck in a bad loop. This la…

It is also a cultural thing. I observe that anglo-saxon peoples teach their kids to voice their concerns, needs, wants, and opinions, and to expect (!) results from this. (Compare how american kids behave at airports, train station, and public places with kids from other countries, e.g. french speaking countries). This helps them approach situations in life with a healthy dose of self-worth and the baseline state of…

What's the best way to do hiring in your culture?

There's a lot of variation within Anglo-Saxon cultures too. In New Zealand, we're usually a bit more reserved, but I can see that we're more forward than in many Asian and Pacific cultures. Also people everywhere have variation in introversion/extraversion and in their self-confidence.

It would be great if there was a way to do hiring that could identify good candidates without bias among these different things. Probably the only good way to hire is to simulate the real work environment as closely as possible. That's difficult and expensive though.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#344

Post by PaulRivers » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 10:06 PM UTC

crasco wrote: post #321

jonahx wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it may have the effect of decreasing job liquidity, I don't see how that effect could be the main purpose unless you believe companies are mass colluding. Because the company running the interview is highly motivated to find a good candidate quickly and reliably. A less intriguing but probably more accurate reason is that finding good people is hard, nobody really knows how to do it, whiteboard interviews provi…

You mean collusion like this? http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-job... It was happening, only more blatantly than is suggested here. Of course they are all motivated to find good candidates, but they are also motivated to keep their existing folks. Decreasing liquidity and mobility serves the latter purpose at the expense of the former.

Yeah, that happened in 2010, they got sued for agreeing to not try to recruit programmers from rival companies. Right after that we saw these long tortuous white board interviews introduced which serve the same function but without them getting sued over it.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#345

Post by wolfgke » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 10:14 PM UTC

Why the universal hate for whiteboard interviews? I studied computer science at a German university and it was expected that in the exercise groups you are able to solve the exercises that you prepared on a whiteboard from the first semester on. If you did not solve it sompletely you still had to whiteboard-code the parts of the solution that you were able to and improvise the rest.

For more complicated algorithms I still love to draw lots of pictures before implementing them.

I can understand that people complain that they have to solve tasks (on a whiteboard) that won't have to do much with what they will do at the job. But this has nothing to do with whiteboard interviews, but with badly chosen tasks (say: data structure brainteasers) for the job interview.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#346

Post by PaulRivers » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 10:15 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #247

zzzcpan wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for a random employee of a random company there is no motivation to not haze people on the whiteboard, it's mostly a power play for them and oversupply of candidates permits it. They really don't care how good of an engineer they hire and how much value he can bring to the team or to the company.

I don't think that's true, actually. I've been both interviewer and interviewee, almost all my friends do interviews, and in every case I've seen, the interviewer is earnestly trying to make her best determination of whether you can succeed at the company. Most interviewers - both ones I know as friends and ones that have interviewed me - get very, very happy when they find a candidate that they know will meet the hi…

"I think that the perception that it's just a hazing process comes from a failure to look at it from the company's perspective."

Actually, speaking of looking at it from the companies perspective, in 2010 google and several other big name silicon valley companies were successfully sued because they all agreed with each other not to cold call each others employees to try to recruit them. They actively worked to try to make it harder to switch jobs from one company to another.

Right after that, they started doing whiteboard interviews, which serve the same purpose of making it painful to switch companies, but without the risk of being sued.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#347

Post by wolfgke » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 10:22 PM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #333

KamBha wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tell me about that one time you solved an interesting problem?" I agree if that was the only thing you asked, you wouldn't get a good answer. However, if you then dug into their answer you can probably tell if it is BS or not. I remember having this exact experience with a junior dev who claimed to worked on some interesting projects at Uni, but when you dug deeper, you realised he knew very little about the technol…

Worked with a guy once who was a pro at this. Every day he did nothing, but when higher ups asked the team what was done and how, he managed to take credit and explain how things worked well enough to convince them that he had done it all. The rest of the team was not amused. Just listening in on a team (while adding nothing to the code or discussion) might be enough to go into great depth in such a discussion.

Give each team member a different assignment - this should avoid the mentioned problem.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#348

Post by george_ciobanu » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 10:22 PM UTC

NTDF9 wrote: post #342

george_ciobanu wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course computer architecture, compiler knowledge etc is valuable and part of the interview process. I was referring to the general process of evaluating- - thus the question was focused on methods not content. Additionally, explaining how a system works is valuable, and I captured it when mentioned communication abilities.

>> Of course computer architecture, compiler knowledge etc is valuable and part of the interview process. I was referring to the general process of evaluating- - thus the question was focused on methods not content. The general process is fucked up because the interviewers are incompetent enough that they can't tell who is actually a smart guy. This is why incompetent interviewers resort to binary decision making on…

Like I said I speak for myself not Google.

They're both valuable, perhaps for different types of work.

A balanced tree does not tell me much about a person's knowledge but how they are able to apply and learn CS concepts does. Deep knowledge of a problem domain is valuable, but also highly perishable - the world changes fast and good engineers need to learn and adapt. Furthermore, if a candidate speaks about a domain they have deep expertise in, we have two more problems: 1. The interviewer might not know enough about the field to assess the candidate. (Generic CS algs and data structures are a good common denominator). 2. A candidate's knowledge about a field doesn't tell me how good they are at reasoning. They may have spent 5 years doing that one thing - that's enough time to learn almost anything in a limited domain - say OS schedulers.

How would you structure an interview process?

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#349

Post by stagbeetle » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 10:24 PM UTC

NTDF9 wrote: post #342

george_ciobanu wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course computer architecture, compiler knowledge etc is valuable and part of the interview process. I was referring to the general process of evaluating- - thus the question was focused on methods not content. Additionally, explaining how a system works is valuable, and I captured it when mentioned communication abilities.

>> Of course computer architecture, compiler knowledge etc is valuable and part of the interview process. I was referring to the general process of evaluating- - thus the question was focused on methods not content. The general process is fucked up because the interviewers are incompetent enough that they can't tell who is actually a smart guy. This is why incompetent interviewers resort to binary decision making on…

The process is not designed to find "real talent."

"Real talent" is innate and thus no amount of outside valuation will ever do it justice. No one else, but the "real talent" holder, can effectively judge his "real talent" so it is up to him to make it known to others that he does, in-fact, hold "real talent."

The process is designed to find people that are good enough to do an array of jobs. "Real talent" gets scouted, because it's shown that it "has got the right stuff."

This argument boils down similarly to the "smart but lazy" exasperations. "I'm talented, but no one realizes it!"

Candidate 1 is getting the job at my startup and Candidate 2 will be getting a referral if he ever decides to take up a teaching position. Deep specialization is useless unless you're doing consulting (in-house and out-house) or teaching.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#350

Post by NTDF9 » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 10:40 PM UTC

george_ciobanu wrote: post #348

NTDF9 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Of course computer architecture, compiler knowledge etc is valuable and part of the interview process. I was referring to the general process of evaluating- - thus the question was focused on methods not content. The general process is fucked up because the interviewers are incompetent enough that they can't tell who is actually a smart guy. This is why incompetent interviewers resort to binary decision making on…

Like I said I speak for myself not Google. They're both valuable, perhaps for different types of work. A balanced tree does not tell me much about a person's knowledge but how they are able to apply and learn CS concepts does. Deep knowledge of a problem domain is valuable, but also highly perishable - the world changes fast and good engineers need to learn and adapt. Furthermore, if a candidate speaks about a domain…

Good arguments and we're getting there. You seem open minded unlike others and so I'd like you to answer the following:

-- Furthermore, if a candidate speaks about a domain they have deep expertise in, we have two more problems: 1. The interviewer might not know enough about the field to assess the candidate. (Generic CS algs and data structures are a good common denominator).

So the problem is with the interviewer and not the candidate right? The interviewer is unqualified to interview this person

2. A candidate's knowledge about a field doesn't tell me how good they are at reasoning. They may have spent 5 years doing that one thing - that's enough time to learn almost anything in a limited domain - say OS schedulers.

Couldn't the same be said of candidates good at whiteboard tiny algorithm puzzle solving? They may have spent 5 years doing that one thing - say algorithmic puzzle solving. The fact that books and coaching sessions industry exists should prove this right? Your process doesn't give as much weight to someone who has the passion to go deep in something productive as much as passion to solve toy algo puzzles