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It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

simonwillison.net

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Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#341

Post by sgtnoodle »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #299
throwawaylinux wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To play devil's advocate, having a standardized process for all candidates has some benefits. I've witnessed otherwise stellar candidates with amazing open source contributions absolutely bomb coding interviews. Real "write a function that does X" in whatever language you're comfortable with and whatever tools or resources you want. Simple stuff. I'm not sure if you're playing devil's advocate very well here, becau…

> I'm not sure if you're playing devil's advocate very well here, because this suggests to me that the interview process did not work well. Do you want to hire someone who can write a binary tree insertion in 30 minutes, or someone who can make amazing contributions to real software projects? Most companies want malleable, fungible engineers. Most companies are not stable, something is usually in flux -- projects, te…

I'd say I'm in a qualitatively similar position as you. If I'm going to interact with a candidate in any capacity, I always spend at least 30 seconds to skim their resume if I have the means to.

When I'm acting as a hiring manager for a role, I read through applicant's materials in detail before deciding whether to advance them in the process. It's at least 50% of my work time, and my technical work suffers. I communicate that to the relevant managers and stake holders, and they can help decide whether it's the best use of my time.

I also regularly receive followup emails from rejected candidates saying that they thought the interview was the most fair and thorough of anywhere they applied, they understood why they didn't get the job, and in the process they learned where they need to focus on to be a better fit for the same type of role in the future.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#342

Post by starkd »

MillenialMan wrote: post #265
z3t4 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are over qualified, like having published several games on your own, it's not like they don't think you can do they job, they might think you will get bored and miserable.

Do people really pass on candidates that often because they're too impressive? Overqualification in general seems like the kind of spectre that I just can't see translating to the real world.

Are people really passed on for being over-qualified? Or is it a polite way of declining some applications? Or maybe even a little of both?

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#343

Post by kragen »

Vvector wrote: post #316
sedeki wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the overall point is the risk of forgetting something judged as "fundamental."

Can you clarify what you mean here? I would argue that any decent programmer could hack out a sorting routine, without having the code memorized. If you cannot write a binary search routine from scratch, how can you be expected to solve much bigger problems?

Sure, but there are a lot of subtle issues in both sorting and binary search. The simplest sorting routine is probably dumbsort:

    void
    dumbsort(int *p, int n)
    {
      for (int tmp, i = 1; i
But it lives up to its name; I can't imagine any reason you should ever use this algorithm. It compiles to 16 instructions but it's O(N³). Insertion sort is more complicated—it compiles to 17 instructions—and is actually a reasonable thing to use in some circumstances:

    void
    isort(int *a, size_t n)
    {
      for (size_t i = 1; i  0; j--) {
          if (a[j-1]
That's because it has the lowest constant factor of all the O(N²) comparison sorts on common machines, so it's the absolute fastest way to sort small arrays. (On my laptop it sorts N items in 0.34 ns × N² ± 2%.) And it's also very fast for large arrays of nearly-sorted data, so it's a reasonable way to finish up after a rough quicksort.

It took me about five minutes to write that, and it worked the first time I tested it. But that's in part because I find sort routines fascinating and I've been studying them, and programming in C, for almost 30 years. Even if it took you an hour or four hours and required a lot of debugging, you still might be a decent programmer. Especially for jobs where things are less well defined and you have to do a lot of debugging anyway!

(By contrast, I've actually spent most of the last hour trying to write a properly working quicksort, the variant that finishes up with a single call to insertion sort, using both notes and a compiler. Of course it produces correct results because of the final insertion sort but it's not as efficient as it should be and I can't figure out why. Apparently I can't brain today... good thing I'm not in a job interview!)

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#344

Post by lobocinza »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #254
cableshaft wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I've had a portfolio of full video games I've coded and released on my own, as the sole programmer, that could be played on the web, had my name credited on the title screen, and you could even see the code on some of them, and I proudly included the link on my resume. Never brought up during the interview process, I was still expected to take the coding tests, and if I did a little poorly on one question I almo…

I've made lots (thousands? hundreds at least) of commits to the Linux kernel and have been working on it since pre (git) history, have developed a number of novel concurrent data structures / algorithms for it. I decided to talk with a FANG recruiter a couple of years ago who must have scraped my name from mailing list or commit histories. Despite first making it clear by email I wasn't interested in a job interview…

Getting frustrated by that after graduation I decided to work as contractor instead of "getting a job".

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#345

Post by 908B64B197 »

thewarrior wrote: post #171
kebman wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this mean that the whiteboard coding interviews are flawed, or that guys like us, who has made a ton of more or less great projects are flawed? Why would a company rather have a guy that can solve binary search in five seconds, than one that has showed continuous progress with several finished projects over the years? Do they think accomplished guys somehow are a liability? Or is it that they want a blank sheet…

The book Disciplined Minds goes into some of this. It helps one understand the answers to questions like why companies prize things like performance on coding tests that don’t correlate very well to the job. Even FANGs are not looking for truly innovative engineers. Most of the innovation comes via acquisitions or when they hire some industry luminaries to lead projects. The rest are only there to fill in the lines a…

> Even FANGs are not looking for truly innovative engineers. Most of the innovation comes via acquisitions or when they hire some industry luminaries to lead projects. The rest are only there to fill in the lines and be highly productive coding machines that will learn the “syllabus” just like they learn to leet code.

FAANMG also has a deluge of resume thrown at it every semester. Ever since mainstream media filmed at the Google Campus/Facebook HQ, every parent wants their kid to work there since "he's really good at this computer stuff" and "he's gaming all the time, he might as well make money at the computer!".

And then you get to interviewing and realize this candidate cannot write 2 lines of code...

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#346

Post by maxk42 »

whatshisface wrote: post #111
maxk42 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's a counterexample to the OP's thesis that "it doesn't take much". An "NES emulator that is cycle accurate and supports a game with a specialized chip that I reverse engineered that no other emulator supported" is a MASSIVE undertaking that would take a huge amount of time and effort. I would certainly give a candidate like that a second look - if NES emulators were remotely related to the kind of skills I w…

You're presupposing that the hiring manager would be able to tell what skills are involved in making an NES emulator, or even what skills they are looking for.

I'm presupposing that I'm the hiring manager. That's why I said "I would certainly give a candidate like that a second look."

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#347

Post by TheCoelacanth »

N00bN00b wrote: post #162
EvilEy3 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flaw in the capitalistic system. ???

What is it called.. Market failure? It's got a name, I don't remember it. The job market doesn't support certain overqualified people. I gave you an example. Rationally, you'd think that a cashier that works 3x faster than other cashiers can make 3x the income. Or even 2x. A plumber could do that, or a woodworker (they might have to start their own company, but they can do it). But a cashier relies on employers and t…

> Rationally, you'd think that a cashier that works 3x faster than other cashiers can make 3x the income. Or even 2x.

I don't think so, because a cashier's main job is just to wait for customers to show up. They are faster at clearing bottlenecks when a lot of customers show up at once, but they don't handle anywhere close to 3x as many customers over the course of their entire shift.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#348

Post by simonw »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #280
kebman wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this mean that the whiteboard coding interviews are flawed, or that guys like us, who has made a ton of more or less great projects are flawed? Why would a company rather have a guy that can solve binary search in five seconds, than one that has showed continuous progress with several finished projects over the years? Do they think accomplished guys somehow are a liability? Or is it that they want a blank sheet…

One of the things these discussions rarely bring up is that companies want to have a similar process for evaluating everyone . This is especially important if a rejected candidate accuses the company of illegal discrimination. If you can show that you applied the same criteria to everyone, then you have a better defense. I think side projects are great, and can be useful in evaluating how well a candidate will "fit"…

I interviewed for a job at the BBC many years ago and there was an HR person in the room with the interviewer making sure that they stuck exactly to the script.

As someone who thrives on talking about side-projects, I did not do well in that interview.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#349

Post by quantumofalpha »

bawolff wrote: post #146
eru wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was working for Google at the time, and saw an internal post by the guy who interviewed the candidate. I'm not sure if there's anything public (and what I am even allowed to say.) See https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin... where he (at least partially) admits that he was bullshitting: > I want to defend Google, for one I wasn't even inverting a binary tree, I wasn’t very clear what a binary…

That was interesting. > But ultimately, should Google have hired me? Yes, absolutely yes. I am often a dick, I am often difficult, I often don’t know computer science, but. BUT. I make really good things, maybe they aren't perfect, but people really like them. Surely, surely Google could have used that. To me at least, being a dick is a negative that outweighs making good things, especially for a large organization.…

Right, Google actually has a 'no jerks' policy and values being a good team player more than pure technical brilliance. Being a good engineer gets you L4 (mid) or low L5 level at Google. Growing beyond that is mostly about soft skills and influencing other people - that's not compatible with being a dick. It probably wasn't the case for him in 2015 yet, but these days google has a mandatory 'googleyness' behavioral round that the guy would fail hard with that attitude even if he could invert the proverbial binary tree.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#350

Post by stronglikedan »

ericd wrote: post #328
colonelpopcorn wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It filters out those who know how to structure code, but don't know how to write it. Stack overflow copy and paste can still create public projects.

It also filters out people who get anxious in interview situations, since anxiety tends to put people in fight or flight mode and shut down the critical thinking parts of the brain.

Sound like it filters out all types of weaknesses, which makes it a good thing when you have a large pool of candidates to filter through.
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