Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

darrenkopp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 679 posts

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#401

Post by OJFord »

xandrius wrote: post #257
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…

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.

Or it's not their call, theirs is just to work with them after.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#402

Post by dilyevsky »

_akhe wrote: post #375
dilyevsky wrote: post #139

Classic mistake of overthinking it and failing to realize what interviewer really wants - which is to make sure the candidate can actually write code, like at all. The question itself doesn't really matter as much as it's just a pretext. I actually asked a variation of this question for many years at Google and it was clear within first 5 mins who has been writing code day-to-day and who's been mostly "brining key st…

I disagree, I think it's a failure of recruiting if you got someone into an interview who can't code "at all". That must mean nobody at the company is technical "at all" either then, if you are getting people that far along without having any clue if they even write code at all. I don't have this problem - I can easily tell who is good and who is not good by looking at their stuff online, which repos they are contrib…

> That must mean nobody at the company is technical "at all" either then, if you are getting people that far along without having any clue if they even write code at all.

Lots of people skate by in technical roles by barely doing anything technical. Lots of people also overinflate their achievements in resumes and conversations aka lying. How is non technical recruiter supposed to evaluate their coding chops?

> People who say all their work is hidden under NDA or they're new grads and haven't done anything yet - sorry, if there's nothing to view online I just wouldn't qualify you to interview.

Lol, great method! I have a better one - just hire acm winners. No need to test them

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#403

Post by belmarca »

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…

Your "solution" is just another coding interview.

A typical engineer doesn't begin their day thinking "I should implement a streaming algorithm" out of nowhere (and if they do, they can always seek reference). They analyze a (typically underspecified) problem, figure out the constraints, and then start thinking about a solution. Note that both processes, analysis and solution, can take hours, days, weeks or months!

Coding interviews have everything backwards by providing synthetic solutions to mostly out-of-context problems.

For example, interviewers could:

- Share some portion of a codebase with the candidate prior to the interview

- Go over the code with the candidate

That's it. You will know really fast who's senior and who's never wrote software. It can't be faked. And it can be adapted to mostly any positions (backend, frontend, devops, architecture, whatever).

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#404

Post by bobthepanda »

godelski wrote: post #364
epolanski wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yeah I buy this theory. The problem I have with it is that for this to be a reasonably effective strategy you should change the arbitrary metric every few years because otherwise it is likely to be hacked and has the potential to turn into a negative signal rather than positive. Essentially your false positives can dominate by "studying to the test" rather than "studying". I'd say the same is true for college admissi…

so having done interviews, just because the latter may be more present, does not mean the hordes of people just throwing a spaghetti made-up-resume at the wall have gone away. our industry has a great strength in that you don't need official credentialing to show that you can do something. at the same time, it is hard to verify what people are saying in their resumes, they might be lying in the worst case but sometimes they legitimately think they are at the level they are interviewing for. it was bad before the interest rate hikes, i cannot imagine what the situation is like now that hiring has significantly slowed and a lot more people are fighting for fewer jobs.

i did interviews for senior engineer and had people fail to find the second biggest number in a list, in a programming language of their own choosing. it had a depressingly high failure rate.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#405

Post by Paul-Craft »

whimsicalism wrote: post #207
Paul-Craft wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in the US, "$400k" is almost certainly an outlier and not the typical case. Ever notice how people making these claims never provide data about actual comp distributions? I've been an engineer for almost 10 years and never had an offer come close to $400k per year.

in the sfba, levels.fyi shows it roughly at 85%-ile, not everyone - but hardly extreme outlier

I wonder what it is after accounting for self reporting bias.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#406

Post by BurningFrog »

godelski wrote: post #310
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…

> 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

One angle is that SWE is one of the very few professions where you don't need a formal degree to have a career. It's also a common hobby among a sizable population.

I think this is truly great. A holdout breathing hole where people can have lucrative careers without convincing and paying off a ton of gatekeepers!

But I also think that when you hire in other industries, you can get much more milage from looking at the candidate's formal degrees and certifications.

In our industry, you kinda have to start from scratch with every person.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#407

Post by valicord »

godelski wrote: post #310
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…

> 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…

To have good comparison/calibration between candidates, you should be asking the same question each time, so it can't be about the "problem the team is currently undergoing", because that's going to be something different every week/month.

In general however, of course, there is/should be a round of interview that covers architecture/system design. It's just that the coding interview is a different interview type, which gives a different kind of signal, which is still important. It doesn't replace architecture interview, it complements it.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#408

Post by dbcurtis »

ipaddr wrote: post #396
dbcurtis wrote: post #393

Lately, when I have to do a coding interview, I ask the candidate to test some code, not write some code. I learn a lot more about how they think that way, and if you have an argument as to why testing is not a relevant skill, I would like to hear it. Usually I do something like this: candidate picks a language (let's say Python) and I will put up a function prototype that is maybe almost Pythonic, and has a SphinxDo…

If you are testing on a skill you can train you are doing it wrong.

Your comment contains some interesting assumptions. I don’t think we are aligned on how to surface thought processes.

Your comment, taken to extreme, would say there is no point in looking for software design skills at all, because we can “train” anyone with an internal coding boot camp. I doubt that is what you mean.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#409

Post by belmarca »

jerf wrote: post #64

I find a simple realignment would solve a lot of this interview angst: Interviewers seem to interview on the premise that they need to find out what the candidate can't do. But this is not useful. I can tell you what they can't do. To a first approximation, the answer is "everything". I am an experienced and skillful developer, yadda yadda yadda, and I've never touched React, have no game development experience, have…

I just (barely) failed an automated interview by some company who posted on the last Hiring thread. Their approach was interesting but they definitely measure the wrong thing IMO. They were looking for senior Python devs yet assumed that every senior Python dev knew X, Y or Z Python API/feature by heart. I failed a single question, precisely one where I wasn't familiar with the particulars and couldn't "figure it out" live due to the nature of the platform.

I've worked on a Python interpreter (not CPython) for many years now, I just never used that particular module (because we do it differently in our implementation). I suppose businesses try their best, but aren't always measuring what they think they are...

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#410

Post by siliconc0w »

I secretly think that the current big-tech regime continues to use these because they limit job mobility. They have an intentionally high false negative rates and because they're unrelated to actual engineering work you don't want to have to study up and gamble on trying to pass it again.
Post reply on HN