Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry • Hacker News Board

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#351

Post by pklausler » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 5:02 PM UTC

sickbeard wrote: post #70

sagichmal wrote: post #11

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 think hiring is really steered to avoid hiring idiots. After all it's the interviewer that will have to answer if they hire someone who can't do the job. So all questions are very technical/random and difficult. Most of these people just lookup stuff from textbooks and fling them at interviewees. It eliminates the top and bottom contenders while catching mostly people who just came out of school (or ridicilously sm…

Hiring does need to avoid hiring idiots, but I've found that it's more effective to ask easy questions. Seriously. People who can't program a digital computer have just as much trouble, and there's less opportunity to fake it. Easy questions produce better signals.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#352

Post by ionforce » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 5:02 PM UTC

beambot wrote: post #207

tachion wrote: post #170

After reading author's post I've a feeling that its not the programming skills that the author has issues with, but instead the attitude, stress durability, expectations to the world around him. True, hiring can be broken, it often is, but as with everything, the persistence usually allows us to find the proper company with proper hiring process. He's getting frustrated pretty quickly, complains when is asked to perf…

Indeed. You would think that someone who is smart, capable, and clearly determined early on (as in pre-Google interview) that many potential employers would ask algorithm questions.... Would, you know, study up on some algorithms? It probably isn't the "right" way for programming interviews, but once you identify the rules of the game, it behooves you to play the game accordingly, no?

Maybe some people are too proud to play the game.

Fundamentally, I agree that it is silly to ask questions that don't have a high degree of relevance to the job in question. But I am conflicted.

Why haven't we (as an industry) done better with this? Clearly there must be a reason or friction in asking relevant questions in lieu of the current batch of algorithmic type interviews. What is that reason?

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#353

Post by mixmastamyk » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 5:02 PM UTC

wdewind wrote: post #332

mixmastamyk wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well the idea is that they aren't memorized by chance first, they are known pretty well because ideally you have a track record of applying them to real life problems (even if they are just school projects or side projects). I can describe times I've used queues to solve various problems, for instance. The other thing is, as others have pointed out, seeing how someone breaks down and approaches and unfamiliar problem…

Very few people are working as comp scientists, but rather software engineers, making BFS=Queues a random trivia question that must be prepared for in advance.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#354

Post by fweespee_ch » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 5:02 PM UTC

Scea91 wrote: post #64

yownie wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring IS broken, unfortunately everyone isn't realizing it simultaneously, so half of us end up speaking about it to the other half who are already employed and feel the need to justify their employment. Since these discussions never happen out of CS / IT circles they very rarely propogate upwards to changing company practices unless the CTO/CEO happens to read HN. You're just further contributing to the rigged scen…

Hiring in CS / IT is massively more objective compared to most of other fields.

> Hiring in CS / IT is massively more objective compared to most of other fields.

That is the illusion many people have convinced themselves of but literally 0 of my coworkers could answer the questions I was asked simply because don't have similar responsibilities despite us applying for literally word-for-word identical job ads.

The reality is, unless you do X regularly, you simply aren't going to be able to impress people with your answer to X.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#355

Post by bpchaps » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 5:02 PM UTC

ionforce wrote: post #348

reitoei wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flew to Ireland from the UK for a interview (at my own expense). Did a decent interview, never got a call/email back. People can be assholes.

But paying out of pocket and commuting, wasn't that your decision to put yourself into that scenario? It's immediately (and clearly) lop-sided.

Honestly, does it matter?

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#356

Post by ionforce » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 5:02 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #175

tachion wrote: post #170

After reading author's post I've a feeling that its not the programming skills that the author has issues with, but instead the attitude, stress durability, expectations to the world around him. True, hiring can be broken, it often is, but as with everything, the persistence usually allows us to find the proper company with proper hiring process. He's getting frustrated pretty quickly, complains when is asked to perf…

Persistence is a pain in the arse if you have to spend 1.5 hours every Hackerrank challenge (plus you are likely to want a warm up of at least half an hour). Say you have to do ten of those. Why can't employers ask you to bring in some previous work and discuss it? Surely that is a lot more relevant than algorithmic stuff that you likely haven't used for years.

> bring in some previous work

Surely your prior work is under some sort of NDA? It's all proprietary (unless it is open source).

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#357

Post by p4wnc6 » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 5:03 PM UTC

liquidise wrote: post #233

I recently wrote a post on designing better tech interview questions. [1] But one thing i never see interviewees do is outright ask, "Wait, what does this question actually tell you about me?" I find myself asking it in nearly every interview i go to. If you ask and your interviewer gets glassy-eyed or gives you the laughably generic "it shows how well you think algorithmically" you know that you are being interviewe…

"We want to see how you think" is a hallmark of dysfunction. You cannot see how someone thinks from short interviews and coding puzzles. You just cannot. Anyone trying to is so far from doing things right that you want to run, don't walk, away from them.

The only way to really see how someone thinks is to just hire them, work with them for a while, and fire them if they can't do the job. You can either pay the costs of hiring and firing (like on-boarding, benefits, administration, severance) and get useful signal about their performance, or you can spend the same money by throwing it away on useless shit like HackerRank-style trivia tests. Per applicant, the HackerRank thing seems cheaper, but you typically have to spam it across many more applicants, endure losses due to great candidates who won't agree to your bullshit hiring process, and still end up firing people sometimes when they pass the trivia but (surprise) it didn't mean they would be good at the job. So overall, it's just as expensive.

You spend the money either way, might as well get useful signal out of it.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#358

Post by Disruptive_Dave » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 5:05 PM UTC

tachion wrote: post #170

After reading author's post I've a feeling that its not the programming skills that the author has issues with, but instead the attitude, stress durability, expectations to the world around him. True, hiring can be broken, it often is, but as with everything, the persistence usually allows us to find the proper company with proper hiring process. He's getting frustrated pretty quickly, complains when is asked to perf…

Agreed. He made some valid points, and I don't think many people would call today's hiring process (or variations of) in a great place.

> I do not consider myself to be an excellent programmer, maybe an average at best (who can’t even pass a single tech interview), and a GitHub commit streak has absolutely nothing to do with one’s competence, skill or ability to code...my job at Yahoo was my first and will likely be my last one. From this moment on, I would rather be unemployed and homeless rather than do another tech interview. Enough is enough. I’ve hit my limit with this broken hiring bullshit in tech. No. More. Interviews. Done.

This comes off more as a "Oooh, I have a great post idea that will pick up traction on Medium!" move than anything else, unfortunately.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#359

Post by autotune » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 5:06 PM UTC

vijucat wrote: post #68

Experiment : hire 10% of candidates without conducting any interviews. Use Machine Learning to quantify internal or external candidates' code quality. Use that model to score candidates' GitHub. Hire them. Well, OK, throw in a sociability / not-a-psycho score using LinkedIn or twitter or whatever. I'd outsource this to gild.com who seem to know what they're doing. Methinks management will be surprised at how well the…

One caveat: you can't use Machine Learning to quantify someone's overall personality and whether you actually want to work with them or not. Sure they can contribute quality code, but if they come in and have to do a 5 minute breakdance after each contribution or throw a hissy fit when their code gets critiqued, probably not a good culture fit.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#360

Post by malz » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 5:07 PM UTC

tachion wrote: post #170

After reading author's post I've a feeling that its not the programming skills that the author has issues with, but instead the attitude, stress durability, expectations to the world around him. True, hiring can be broken, it often is, but as with everything, the persistence usually allows us to find the proper company with proper hiring process. He's getting frustrated pretty quickly, complains when is asked to perf…

Exactly. If you think hiring is broken, wait until you try working. Working is totally broken. Why was I asked to implement X and then it was cancelled two weeks later? How am I supposed to concentrate in a room full of 40 people? Why do my bosses drive Benzes while I do all the work?