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In defense of coding interviews

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Re: In defense of coding interviews

#371

Post by krainboltgreene »

mikebenfield wrote: post #269
krainboltgreene wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to blow your mind but a ton of important software was written by people who have a hard time explaining these things.

Also a ton of important software was written as a giant mess of spaghetti code, or with horrible security vulnerabilities.

I've never been tested on my ability to not write spaghetti code or write security vulnerabilities in my 15 years doing many many interviews.

Unless you're suggesting that knowing the performance of a loop helps with that?

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#372

Post by mountainriver »

jordanpg wrote: post #230
d--b wrote: post #56

The dirty secret is that it’s never about the coding skills. It’s about the person’s behavior, the way he/she interacts with you. It’s about the person’s culture, tabs vs space, and that kind of things. And it’s mostly about whether you like the person or not. And I think it’s fine. You mainly need to be sure that the person knows what a for loop is, other than that, most people are ok at programming. What really mat…

SWE to lawyer here. The analogs of the traditional coding interview in the law school world are the LSAT and classroom timed memory tests. Both have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with being a lawyer or the kinds of activities that lawyers actually do. What they are are intelligence tests. They are easy ways for judges and top tier law firms to tell if you are "one of them." You can get your foot in the door if…

Sure but I can get a much better gauge of intelligence from OSS. I’ve seen some of the worst developers I know beat Leetcode because it’s really just memorization not actual intelligence

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#373

Post by tombert »

wiseowise wrote: post #333
tombert wrote: post #13

I used to defend coding interviews, until I had an interview about a month ago, and the leetcode questions came off as kind of insulting. I have a decade of experience, working as a senior and staff engineer at megacorporations, have experience as a research scientist, am in a PhD program for computer science research, but lets just double check that I know how to use a hash table.

Sorry you have to go through peasant ropes, your highness.

I jumped through the hoops plenty of times. Just because I have to do it doesn’t mean I have to like it, or think it’s a good use of anyones time.

I think one can fairly accurately determine my level of skill from my resume, and thus I don’t think that the leetcode interviews are all that useful. I keep hearing about senior engineers who can’t code, and maybe I’m just lucky, but that really has not been my experience when interviewing, and I don’t think “spent the previous night practicing on hackerrank” really gives you any useful information.

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#374

Post by vletal »

mihaitodor wrote: post #366
vletal wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I might be generalizing a bit, even though I made sure to emphasize that it is my isolated experience. On the other hand I felt like a sample of 8 different interviewers from different offices and backgrounds felt representative. If it is true that the interviews are overwhelmingly negatively received, what is the probability that I would get more than half of reasonable interviews? Let alone 7/8.

You're overlooking the fact that you're just one person. Each one of us reacts differently under such conditions and only a minority (which is likely small) happen to excel at this. The interactions and power dynamics between people differ wildly from person to person. While an interviewer might be the kindest person in the world for candidate A, they might be a total bully for candidate B. I was bullied constantly t…

> Even if I refuse to interview people as part of my job, will I really thrive in there? I'm certain this process permeates in one form or another throughout the company culture in various internal management, decisionmaking and promotion processes, but that's a separate discussion.

Are you sure you want to work at a FAANG company? You sure you would be happy? What motivates you to try so hard?

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#375

Post by mihaitodor »

vletal wrote: post #374
mihaitodor wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're overlooking the fact that you're just one person. Each one of us reacts differently under such conditions and only a minority (which is likely small) happen to excel at this. The interactions and power dynamics between people differ wildly from person to person. While an interviewer might be the kindest person in the world for candidate A, they might be a total bully for candidate B. I was bullied constantly t…

> Even if I refuse to interview people as part of my job, will I really thrive in there? I'm certain this process permeates in one form or another throughout the company culture in various internal management, decisionmaking and promotion processes, but that's a separate discussion. Are you sure you want to work at a FAANG company? You sure you would be happy? What motivates you to try so hard?

Bingo! I now know I don't, but it took me years to come to this conclusion. When I started this career, everyone around was telling me that getting into one of these companies will lead to meaningful and challenging work which is complete nonsense. I now know that a large number of people who join these companies are unable to find any meaningful work there.

Anyhow, several years ago, I added a disclaimer to my public profile on LinkedIn which states that I refuse any form of live / timed coding assessments during interviews and I'm not going to make any exceptions on it.

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#376

Post by native_samples »

lapcat wrote: post #361
native_samples wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obviously unpopular, but the brutal reality is that the vast majority of candidates don't panic during interviews and can in fact demonstrate their skills when asked. I've done lots of interviewing and you aren't going to convince me or anyone else actually that breakdowns in an interview are completely irrelevant, especially when all you've been asked to do is demonstrate that you're actually qualified. It's al…

> the vast majority of candidates don't panic during interviews and can in fact demonstrate their skills when asked Is this actually true? It's been widely and frequently claimed over the years that "199 out of 200 applicants for every programming job can't write code at all. I repeat: they can't write any code whatsoever." https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ > frankly a bit insulting to peopl…

By "demonstrating their skills" I meant demonstrate to what extent they have skills, not that they were all very skilled or could do the work. They were nonetheless able to prove what they did know.

I've done hundreds of interviews as the interviewer. I've had people seriously panic maybe once or twice in that entire time. I've heard occasionally that the rates for other interviewers were higher (but still low), if that's the case then they just sucked at interviewing.

Where did therapists come into it? I've never heard of anyone going to a therapist to pass coding interviews, that would be ridiculous. Learning to control your emotions is something people are meant to learn as children. It's a standard skill you're supposed to have to interact with others, like basic politeness. If you're having breakdowns as adults then it's expected that the situation is really intense, like the death of a loved one, breakdown in a relationship etc. Job interviewing is a normal part of life and shouldn't be as stressful as those things.

"It's already bizarre that candidates with many years of experience in the field have to study intensely for job interviews."

The whole "cramming leetcode" thing is way overblown, or possibly a modern feedback loop in which crammers are making it harder to detect genuine skill and experience. Again I've done a lot of interviews and nobody ever mentioned having to prepare for them. That idea seems to be a relatively recent idea (last ~10 years or so) and is probably a result of so many people competing for very highly paid jobs at a small number of firms. Normal software jobs should ask people to demonstrate their skills, but it shouldn't be something that requires exam-like prep for any working programmer.

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#377

Post by native_samples »

weatherlite wrote: post #360
native_samples wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obviously unpopular, but the brutal reality is that the vast majority of candidates don't panic during interviews and can in fact demonstrate their skills when asked. I've done lots of interviewing and you aren't going to convince me or anyone else actually that breakdowns in an interview are completely irrelevant, especially when all you've been asked to do is demonstrate that you're actually qualified. It's al…

> the brutal reality is that the vast majority of candidates don't panic during interviews and can in fact demonstrate their skills For a given job most candidates actually don't get hired, often because they are not a good fit but many times because they are too nervous to think straight.

I've done hundreds of interviews and that is only very rarely a problem. Normally candidates aren't nervous, but just can't program. They don't have the knowledge, they're flummoxed by basic errors from their compiler/interpreter even when they got to pick what language they used, they're asked to write something (anything) in a language they advertise knowing on their CV and then admit they don't actually know it, etc.

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#378

Post by lapcat »

native_samples wrote: post #376
lapcat wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the vast majority of candidates don't panic during interviews and can in fact demonstrate their skills when asked Is this actually true? It's been widely and frequently claimed over the years that "199 out of 200 applicants for every programming job can't write code at all. I repeat: they can't write any code whatsoever." https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ > frankly a bit insulting to peopl…

By "demonstrating their skills" I meant demonstrate to what extent they have skills, not that they were all very skilled or could do the work. They were nonetheless able to prove what they did know. I've done hundreds of interviews as the interviewer. I've had people seriously panic maybe once or twice in that entire time. I've heard occasionally that the rates for other interviewers were higher (but still low), if t…

> I've had people seriously panic maybe once or twice in that entire time.

I think you're making too much of the example of the candidate crying. That is indeed an outlier case, not the norm. But the crying case is an undeniable sign that job candidates can get extremely anxious during an interview, in a way that affects their performance. The issue isn't "breakdowns" per se, the issue is that coding tests are testing anxiety level rather than skill level. Ironically, most job candidates are in fact "controlling their emotions", as you say: they may show no outward sign of breakdown or panic, but on the inside, their mind and stomach are churning heavily, and this makes it difficult to perform at their normal level. Everyone is trying to act calm and collected during an interview, but often it's merely an act, and they're actually not calm and collected at all. What you perceive from the outside as incompetence may be a whole different story on the inside for the candidate. https://www.engr.ncsu.edu/news/2020/11/11/tech-sector-job-in...

Anxiety isn't all or nothing. There's a wide spectrum between totally calm and crying breakdown. When there's a crying breakdown, it's easy to recognize, but anxiety is not so easy to recognize if there's not a breakdown.

> I've done a lot of interviews and nobody ever mentioned having to prepare for them.

Why would they mention it, even if they did prepare?

> That idea seems to be a relatively recent idea (last ~10 years or so) and is probably a result of so many people competing for very highly paid jobs at a small number of firms.

Regardless, we're living in the present now, under current conditions, not living in the past, so for the purposes of getting a job, it doesn't really matter when the idea originated.

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#379

Post by lapcat »

native_samples wrote: post #377
weatherlite wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the brutal reality is that the vast majority of candidates don't panic during interviews and can in fact demonstrate their skills For a given job most candidates actually don't get hired, often because they are not a good fit but many times because they are too nervous to think straight.

I've done hundreds of interviews and that is only very rarely a problem. Normally candidates aren't nervous, but just can't program. They don't have the knowledge, they're flummoxed by basic errors from their compiler/interpreter even when they got to pick what language they used, they're asked to write something (anything) in a language they advertise knowing on their CV and then admit they don't actually know it, e…

> Normally candidates aren't nervous, but just can't program.

How do you know their level of nervousness? You can't read minds.

Re: In defense of coding interviews

#380

Post by cableshaft »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #257
cableshaft wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, I would also be quite surprised if Google didn't allow candidates to Google information during the interview I did a Google onsite several years ago (probably 7 or 8 years ago at this point). Each interview was just me in a room with a whiteboard and a person sitting at a table across from me with a notepad. No computer present. I suppose I could have dug out my phone and Googled, but that feels unprofessiona…

Did you pass the interview?

I did not, no.
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