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The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

jarednelsen.dev

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Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#441

Post by scarmig »

This will probably be lost in the pile of comments, and I'm sure some people will interpret it as humble bragging. But I genuinely do not get the angst and anger over the tech screen, from the perspective of an applicant. So I want to explain why I like them.

My background: I've never taken any kind of CS or programming class in my life. Mediocre grades in college. My first exposure to programming was at age 24, as I fell into it with an IT tech position. Went from there to a series of jobs at several startups. Before applying to a FAANG, I went through Elements of Programming Interviews and solved all the problems in it, which at around 10 hours/week took maybe 6 months of prep. I then sent in two applications, one to FB and one to GOOG, immediately got phone screens, passed, and then two weeks later went through the on-sites. Every one of the questions was either lifted from the coding prep book or trivial.

End result? Offers from both, joined as an L4, at a total comp higher than I had ever dreamed of, and significantly higher than friends in medicine who have easily spent over a hundred times as much time preparing and studying as I have.

So I'm kind of left flummoxed. Am I just incredibly lucky? There are huge issues in the hiring process, but if you want a job at FAANG, as far as I can tell it's incredibly easy to game the system. Set aside some time each week (easy, if you don't have kids), study for a couple months, and then apply. There's literally no other field than ours that is so open to motivated people without paper qualifications and that simultaneously offers so much in terms of lifestyle and compensation. Whether it hires the best candidates is another question entirely, but that's an issue for the company, not for the applicant.

But, when I give an interview to an applicant and use my go-to question, which I initially feared would provide no useful hiring signal for being too easy (and which, yes, I've tested on all my coworkers, who solve without any difficulty), I find that only maybe a third of applicants complete it at LH or higher.

To be clear, I'm calling this out as a blind spot I have--there's clearly a massive gap in perspective here--but hopefully it'll provide a useful data point for why tech screens aren't universally hated and why they manage to persist.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#442

Post by BlueTemplar »

chillacy wrote: post #223
taeric wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it? Because their strong data haven't helped them not screw up their messenger space. Or to have a fast email web client. Indeed, they seem to be going backwards on that chart. They flopped on wave and Google plus, hard. Those are the kinds of mistakes that kill most companies. Even Google glass still somewhat rankles and has left me with no confidence in any of their consumer things. And I say this as a happy G…

I don’t think those products failed due to poor engineering, google just hasn’t been great at social (if you don’t count YouTube). Other companies which use the same interview techniques are winning in those exact product spaces.

Google has been pretty good at social. With the community around gReader. Which they killed to make space forfor Google+. How did it fare, already?

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#443

Post by ip26 »

gonehome wrote: post #222
mullingitover wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to live and raise a family in your own house in the bay area (2.5 Million for a reasonable house), this matters. I love the bay area, and I have terrible judgement, but even my terrible judgement and my love of the bay area combined aren't a bad enough combination to make me think it's a good place to raise a family.

Except for housing costs, I think it’d be a great place to raise kids.

It does have many top schools, relative safety, and an achievement oriented culture. Which comes with problems, but upsides as well.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#444

Post by throwaway22527 »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #33

Comedian Daniel Tosh had a bit about people that claimed to be smart, it's just that they were just bad at taking tests. He said, "oh, so you struggle with the part where we find out what you actually know?" I hear a lot of complaints about the "typical" software engineering hiring process, and it usually comes from the people that don't do well within the current system. Could the process be improved? Almost certain…

It's worse than that, those "algorithmic" interviews are testing IQ, more-so than knowledge. The hard knowledge that is tested is pretty much only the syntax of the programming language candidate decides to solve the interview question with.

I put "algorithmic" in question marks, because those aren't even that hard as problems in programming contests or questions from uni comp sci coursework. For a phone screen with an online doc, it can be even something concrete, maybe implement a simple feature of a text editor (does not have to be as complex as the online doc the interview is in - it's important that the subject matter is easy to understand).

For an onsite interview, it would be something not likely to have been practiced in advance (questions leaked to websites get banned). Still, it would be something that reasonably fits in RAM, so there's no need to use a database or any networking technology (we can discuss those, too, just not necessarily request to use it in code - similarly, it may be taken for granted that the input data will be valid and there's no need to code defensively, the interview duration time is kinda fixed).

But as a policy we don't tell the candidates what their mistakes were, so those who failed may never know what they were up to. Goes without saying, we get to interview software engineers from different backgrounds - physics PhD s, or high-school IMO medalists, too.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#445

Post by BlueTemplar »

bretpiatt wrote: post #185
newfeatureok wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be curious to see this data. Have a link?

Google's 2013 study called Project Oxygen says different, "The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connection…

Since when the last two are "soft skills" ??

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#446

Post by d1zzy »

It's good to see people complaining about interview processes from Google&co as it's a good idea to always try to improve the current situation. However, I feel there needs to be some context here. While the interviews at FAANG seem not ideal, they are HUGELY better than most other tech interviews I've had experience with. In most other interviews you get to have a chat with some HR person that has no idea what the word "variable" means. You answer a set of standard questions and they barely know how to map your answers to the expected list of answers they have. Then they score you based on that.

Let's not lose that perspective in discussions like these.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#447

Post by ampdepolymerase »

monoideism wrote: post #406
ampdepolymerase wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually pretty well known that the second way into FAANGs is through acquisition.

I've heard of at least some of the FAANGs do the typical interview process for acquisitions.

That sounds terrible, can you elaborate?

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#448

Post by Rury »

LordFast wrote: post #100
proximitysauce wrote: post #3

In addition to all of the very dystopian examples given in this post, there are other non-technical, super-dystopian things that have been popping up as "trends" in the tech industry. Ever heard of top-grading? It's the most oppressive interview technique of all time. A series of grueling multi-person interviews. A retrospective of all work experiences since high school . You also have to get multiple prior employers…

My experience as both a 50+ hiring manager and as a candidate tells me that we are collectively living in an illusion of whacked up expectations. Yes, it's super hard to hire good people, but most of the time it's because "good enough" isn't good enough anymore, and while we may think our company is a 9 and we deserve 9s, we are probably more of a 4 based on what people are actually working on. Yes, interviews suck,…

>we are collectively living in an illusion of whacked up expectations... it's super hard to hire good people, but most of the time it's because "good enough" isn't good enough anymore

So much this. When hiring in this field, people seem to expect candidates to know anything and everything software wise, yet reality is software is more complicated than it ever has been.

The problem isn't alone to this field however, it's fundamental to all fields and the progress of civilization. Discover or invent something new and suddenly everyone else is illiterate about it and must learn it. The build up of knowledge is so immense that we don't expect any one person to know all that there is to know in society, hence why people specialize in what they do. It's why doctors have areas of expertise (feet/skin/teeth/neurology etc), why engineers have areas of expertise (mechanical/electrical/nuclear), why doctors aren't expected to know what engineers know. Why physicists aren't expected to know everything that chemists know, etc...

The software field is just a rapid microcosm of this progressive knowledge problem as software is invented at rapid pace. Yet some reason people seem to expect potential candidates to know everything...

Additionally, IDK how many times I've found people using different lingo to describe the same thing in this field. It's like a bigger version of this: https://hbr.org/2018/07/what-to-do-when-each-department-uses...

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#449

Post by raz32dust »

The priority of a big company is to get a "good enough" person as quickly as possible. They have tons of applications, and interviewer time is expensive. Naturally, the process is geared towards minimizing false negatives, and getting a reasonably good hire in the minimum time. The current process works well for that. People who clear these interviews are usually not terrible, and are good enough. There is no incentive for a large company to do anything differently, unless they are looking for a very specific skillset, which is rare.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#450

Post by monoideism »

ampdepolymerase wrote: post #447
monoideism wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard of at least some of the FAANGs do the typical interview process for acquisitions.

That sounds terrible, can you elaborate?

I've read from blog posts and even from conversations that companies require acquihires, particularly non-founder employees, to go through an interview process. It may be shortened, but they still often have to do the typical algorithmic interviews.

I'll see if I can find one of the blog posts I've read about the process.

Note: to be clear, I'm describing the process for acquihires, not founders just wanting to sell their company and walk away with some cash (which actually seems to be somewhat unusual).

Edit: this was discussed in a similar thread on HN just last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18943500

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