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Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

darrenkopp.com

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Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#381

Post by wanderlust123 »

dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #366
xandrius wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't get why such questions are even asked as most jobs I've ever had not even remotely touched those and I've touched quite a few industries, technologies and types of companies. To me, the value of a software engineer is to ask questions, make hypotheses and be able to iterate quickly. Balancing trees, leetcode and other algorithmic stuff on the spot sounds like bringing the dreadful education system struc…

> Also if a senior person can't in 30/45 min of talking with someone figure out the general experience level then the problem is them, really. Actually most of them, including the really inexperienced juniors have 'figured' you out in less that 15 minutes, or at least they have decided whether to hire you or not in 15 minutes. But they have to put on a charade of being fair. Also a 'white' older male is the least pre…

Got any evidence for the following claim:

“ Also a 'white' older male is the least preferred even if he is smarter compared to all females and the minorities that are being interviewed as long as they are not terrible. Biases galore.”

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#382

Post by josephg »

sanderjd wrote: post #330
josephg wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. In a project I’m working on at the moment (collab text editing), I’ve implemented 2 different b-trees, a skip list, 2 custom file formats and a dozen or so algorithms which do various graph traversals. I get that this is uncommon, but if you scratch beneath the surface, most software (browsers, databases, compilers, OSes) are full of this stuff. Even while I was consulting stuff like this would come up. At one c…

> But if you ever want to go deeper, you’ve gotta understand data structures and algorithms. I don't think this is quite right. I think it's more like: If you ever want to go deeper, you've gotta be able to recognize when the problem you're solving fits a pattern for which good data structures and/or algorithms exist, and you've gotta be able to find, understand, and apply good reference material. Solving this "knowi…

Yeah I think that’s what I mean by “understand data structures and algorithms”. Or, I think your description is exactly what a useful working understanding looks like. You should know broadly what’s out there so if a problem comes up, you know where to look. (Would a hash table help? A priority queue? etc). And you should be skilled enough such that if you decide to use a red-black tree, you can find a good library or implement it yourself - with access to the whole internet as reference material. (And test it).

Nobody expects you to memorise a text book. But if an API gives you a list of items and you want to count the occurrences of each item, you should be able to figure out how to do that. And ideally in less than O(n^2) time if necessary. It’s surprising how many otherwise productive coworkers I’ve had who struggle with stuff like that.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#383

Post by esafak »

Ekaros wrote: post #145
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've even seen people in top ML jobs glowingly describe the main value of CoPilot as (just) smart autocomplete, but copying/regurgitation of algorithms ought to be something that even today's LLMs should be capable of. Of course there's always Google search too if you are just looking for an algorithm, but LLMs help in the discovery process since you can describe what you need without knowing the name of it.

Using LLMs to find reasonable subset of algorithms for a problem sounds like a valid use case. Could even get naive implementation and lead to comparing them to pick right one.

If they take the LLMs advice were they astute or just lucky? You'd have to ask the candidate to go into details to get any signal, and if the algorithm is hard enough for them to have to consult an LLM, they might not be able to do that.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#384

Post by pseudalopex »

varjag wrote: post #290
ryandrake wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone on HN knows someone whose brother's uncle's girlfriend's nephew's former roommate works at Facebook and made $400K as a developer. And they'll point to that one person and say "See, it is possible to make $400K in tech." Yes, it is technically possible , just like it's possible to do plenty of difficult things. That doesn't make these salaries common. For every 1 person making $400K-800K at FAANG in the Bay…

I dunno man. A good third of my class seems to be working at FAANG and we're all from an unremarkable university in Eastern Europe. I'd imagine the prospects are much better if you start in the States already.

The official estimate of software developer positions in the United States was 1,656,880 in 2023.[1] 10% of that would be a high estimate of FAANG software developers in all countries. And most in those companies make less.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#385

Post by simoncion »

arcticbull wrote: post #89
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google did the "how many gas stations in the us" interviews for years before finally realizing that doing well on questions like this had no correlation to success on the job. Now, in reaction to that failure, everyone is doing the LeetCode thing instead, and presumably will eventually realize that this doesn't correlate either (especially irrelevant in this CoPilot era when ability to memorize and code up an algorit…

> There's really no substitute for interviewing based on candidate's experience. That always happens in an interview loop too though.

It absolutely does not always happen. I was asked to do interviews twice with one employer. Both times, I requested the interviewee's resume. Both times I was refused because they didn't want me to "bias" my interview.

So, yeah, go figure.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#387

Post by hintymad »

epolanski wrote: post #357
godelski wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if a senior person can't in 30/45 min of talking with someone figure out the general experience level then the problem is them, really. This is why I've always been so confused. Why is the software engineering interview wildly different from the traditional engineering interview (seniors sit down with candidates and discuss how to solve a relevant proxy problem the team is currently undergoing (has the side benefit…

> Why is the software engineering interview wildly different from the traditional engineering interview I have my personal theory. 1) Top companies receive way more applications than the positions they have open. Thus they standardised around very technical interview as ways to eliminate false positives. I think these companies know this method produces several false negatives, but the ratio between those (eliminatin…

Yup. And 3) is particularly interesting. Lots of companies actually need to hire people who can get things done and who can build user-friendly software, yet they thought they needed to hire people who could turn any O(N^2) algorithms into O(N) or O(Nlog(N)).

And even for Google, leetcode has become noise because people simply cram them. When Microsoft started to use leetcode-style interviews, there were no interview site, and later there was this Cracking the Interview at most. So, people who aced the interview were either naturally talented or were so geeky that they devour math and puzzle books. Unfortunately, we have lost such signals nowadays.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#388

Post by renewiltord »

wanderlust123 wrote: post #381
dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also if a senior person can't in 30/45 min of talking with someone figure out the general experience level then the problem is them, really. Actually most of them, including the really inexperienced juniors have 'figured' you out in less that 15 minutes, or at least they have decided whether to hire you or not in 15 minutes. But they have to put on a charade of being fair. Also a 'white' older male is the least pre…

Got any evidence for the following claim: “ Also a 'white' older male is the least preferred even if he is smarter compared to all females and the minorities that are being interviewed as long as they are not terrible. Biases galore.”

He's close. The real bias is against extremely good looking guys named Rene who are also way smarter and charismatic than everyone else. Terrible bias.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#389

Post by paulddraper »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #336
paulddraper wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To use an existing one. And tools are best used when they are understood.

I don't know anything about quantum mechanics. Does that mean I don't understand how computers work?

The common advice is to understand one level above and one level below where you operate.

For example:

If you build computers, you should understand how the individual components are implemented.

If you build computer components, you should understand materials science and electromagnetism.

If you study electromagnetism, you should understand quantum mechanics and relativity.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#390

Post by hintymad »

hintymad wrote: post #239

Assuming that a company does not look for candidates who are naturally good at ICPC-type of questions or geniuses who can come up with amazing algorithms in a matter of minutes, there is actually a different way to do coding interview: just give a high-level description of a sophisticated enough algorithm to a candidate and ask the candidate to turn that into code. I think it strikes a good balance between depth in C…

And even for Google, leetcode has become noise because people simply cram the questions. When Microsoft started to use leetcode-style interviews, there were no interview site. So, people who aced the interviews were either naturally talented or were so geeky that they devoured math and puzzle books. Unfortunately, we have lost such signals nowadays.
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