Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes • Hacker News Board

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#451

Post by baroffoos » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 3:58 AM UTC

je42 wrote: post #111

I usually ask what's your strongest language; then ask questions about that programming language. f.e. if it is python: > how would you explain the with statement to a junior developer ? then increasingly difficult questions that go into the language runtime/concepts. one other favourite question of mine is: > Imagine, you got a standard website the serves data from a database. When a customer types in the url into t…

> Go as deep as you can in the answering the question.

I'm not a fan of this because it wastes time. Its better to give an overview of the steps and then if more information is required the interviewer can ask for it. They can keep asking for more information until they are satisfied the person knows enough or the person can not answer anymore.

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#452

Post by sfw1k » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 4:01 AM UTC

warp_factor wrote: post #309

drblast wrote: post #273

Google recruiters call me a lot. I think I'd do a good if not stellar job working there. I've passed multiple FAANG interviews and been very successful as a senior developer. In my email I have an "interview prep packet" from them that essentially tells me to brush up on algorithms and read Cracking the Coding Interview to prepare for their interview process. I'm fairly happy in my job. If they offered more money or…

You wouldn't be a good fit for Google. With their algorithmic interviews that require college-grad level of studying, they filter for people that are ready to follow orders without complaining. That's who they want to hire at the end of the day: some coders that don't get too critical about their job and do what they are asked to do, even if it is repetitive, stupid and doesn't really make sense (such as re-studying…

  some coders that don't get too critical about their job

Couldn't be farther from the truth.

As someone who works there I've noticed this general trend of animosity towards Google, it seems to be fueled by the fact that people feel a sort of inferiority complex when they don't clear an interview or they feel they wouldn't be able to crack it if they ever gave it a shot, this leads to an overcompensation of attitude in the other direction, a sort of "sour grapes" narrative where there is an effort to downplay the prospects of working at Google or ridicule the people working there like you did just now.

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#453

Post by toasterlovin » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 4:04 AM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #434

akvadrako wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they cared about intelligence they would just give IQ tests.

IQ tests are a form of convergent preferential bias and they don’t test for abstraction or creativity which is more than half the definition of intelligence.

What is convergent preferential bias?

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#454

Post by chongli » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 4:04 AM UTC

meko wrote: post #385

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We convinced our parents to buy a computer because it would help our education when all we really wanted one for was playing computer games. Joke was on us though, because playing computer games at the time usually involved a lot of putzing around and figuring out how stuff worked, ultimately teaching us marketable skills.

I'm envious because my parents heavily restricted my computer use thinking it'd rot my brain or I'd get r*ped. They wanted me reading books, to become a lawyer or a doctor. I always had an affinity for technology. My folks meant well but I think not watering that seed has me in the middle of this lost life.

I'm envious of you. I had no restrictions on technology use, growing up. I dropped out of high school at 16 and spent the next 15 years doing very little of note (with video games consuming the bulk of that time). Now I'm 35, struggling through my undergrad, and surrounded by kids.

I have some ideas about where to go from here but it's not going to be easy. The search for real meaning and really meaningful relationships is ongoing.

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#455

Post by ggggtez » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 4:11 AM UTC

>Harder questions ultimately filter out too many qualified candidates to be optimal.

This was the key sentence if anyone missed it. "Optimal" for whom, exactly? Not for FAANG certainly. They don't need to worry about filtering too many candidates out, because they have a nearly infinite pool of applicants, and infinite money to conduct a search.

They can ask as difficult questions as they want, because they can pass hundreds and thousands of qualified candidates, and still have plenty more where that came from.

Edit: If you consider "optimal" to be the expected cost of a hire compared to the expected profit, it is fully plausible that if your margins are big enough, asking hard questions is the most effective way to ensure low false-positives. But as everyone knows, comments on articles about interviews are never about the economics, it's only about human ego of feeling rejected.

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#456

Post by rhizome » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 4:15 AM UTC

x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #436

toasterlovin wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that many job applicants apparently can't write a Fizz-Buzz implementation, I'd say that being able to implement an algorithm is probably a reasonable way to cull the herd by a hefty margin. https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

It's made me angry how many people I've interviewed who can't manage Fizz Buzz with only 2 conditions or at all.

I'm kind of angry that I've never been asked to do it.

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#457

Post by fpalmans » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 4:18 AM UTC

cubano wrote: post #341

glangdale wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure it's age discrimination plain and simple. The only time in my life I would have been in great shape for the standard interview process without a good deal of study was a couple years in early graduate school, where nearly all of this "breadth" stuff was fresh in my mind. The relentless scepticism about people's achievements is to some extent understandable (we've all run into the senior person who can…

Without a doubt it's age discrimination...you've hit the nail on the head. Also, God help you if you have followed a non-traditional career path where you decide at points in your life that you wanted a break from it all. I, too, in 1988, fresh out of my BS in CP with no family or life experiences and a strong desire to code day and night would have sailed past the technical side of these often ridiculous interviews…

It is baffling that someone with over three decades of experience would be expected to go through the same interview process as a recent graduate.

When I graduated (over two decades ago, and in Belgium), testing was a regular part of the interviewing process. However, it was understood that this was only done for people with no or very little experience. Later in my career, this fact helped me weed out the jobs which were below my experience level. After stating such and withdrawing candidature for the position, in several cases I was even contacted to come in for a more senior position.

The world has certainly changed.

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#458

Post by ggggtez » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 4:20 AM UTC

drblast wrote: post #284

esoterica wrote: post #257

Why do developers complain so much about hard interview questions that can be supposedly be gamed by studying to the test? Every high paying industry heavily engages in gatekeeping, because the number of people who want to make 400k/year is far larger than the number of 400k/year jobs available. The traditional forms of gatekeeping involve requiring that people have the right personal/familial connections, or have an…

I already make plenty of money in my current job and I'm fairly happy. If I wanted to switch companies I'd be interviewed as if I were a recent college graduate. Anyone experienced and good at this isn't going to have time for that because they're not going to jump through hoops to increase a 275k salary to a 300k one. So what the interview selects for are people desperate enough to study hard enough to fool the inte…

>I'd be interviewed as if I were a recent college graduate.

>leans heavily toward young

So, it's a problem to interview everyone the same way? But it's also ageist because the interviews are accessible to people with no industry experience yet?

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#459

Post by mikekchar » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 4:24 AM UTC

chrisbennet wrote: post #442

mikekchar wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find weird is why does anybody want to work at Google? I use their tools all the time at work. If you go to console.cloud.google.com... I mean... Wow. Just yesterday I was trying to find the logging for our cloud endpoints on Stackdriver. They should use that as their interview question ;-) And this is the big thing I've noticed about many Google apps (especially dev tools): they are all incredibly (for want o…

Maybe google employees aren’t incentivized to fix things as much as they are for making new things?

I'm probably responding more to this thread than I should, but I'm an a chatty mood today :-) I think there are a lot of factors and this is almost certainly one of them. Having worked in a couple big, wealthy and famous companies before, one of the biggest problems is that they are always making acquisitions. One day you're building X and then upper management thinks, "Woah... X + Y would be awesome. But we don't want to spend time to build the Y part. Let's acquire a company and glue it onto X." Usually that happens with great grumbling from the programmers who complain that X and Y were never meant to work together and it would actually take more time to get them to work well than it would have to build Y in the first place. Upper management doesn't believe this and says, "Stop grumbling". And, well, the programmers do what they have to do. So it ends up being super hacky... because it is super hacky :-)

But I think it's more than that. You know how certain things are obviously built by committees? You can see it because everything is consistent, but it's often got a lot of compromises. On the other hand some things are obviously built by individual contributors. It's got some things that are really great, but other things that are horrible because the developer just has blinders on. Many Google apps give me the latter experience. Also, when they have a suite of tools, although they are tied in together, they have wildly different UI, naming conventions, placement and layout of information, etc. Usually there are some really cool bits, but these bits are often not the point of the project and look a bit out of place.

I think teams in Google often have people who are confident and smart and the tools reflect that. It's a kind of "This is the way to do X", shouted 500 different ways. One of the biggest things I find frustrating is the mountain of trivia that I have to commit to memory in order to use their tools fluently. I really do think it reflects the type of people that Google chooses when they hire people. While they may be good at the things that Google screens them for, they may not be the best people overall when it comes to building finished products.

Re: Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

#460

Post by ggggtez » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 4:29 AM UTC

Chyzwar wrote: post #375

esoterica wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're experienced and good you can do way better than 300k at some companies. Also if you think spending a few hours practicing leetcode makes you desperate, wait till you hear the hoops people have to jump through to become a doctor or investment banker.

There are more interesting things to do. Coding your side project, contributing to the opensource project, learning a new programming language or even reading random GitHub project code and issue trackers. All of these activities help to improve your programming skills more than leetcode. If I am making max for my local area and I am not willing to relocate, why would I waste time for interview preparation?

I don't know what you are replying to the parent poster at all. If you don't want to interview for a job in a new location, or for more money... then the advice to study isn't meant for you. Like, sure some people find studying fun for it's own sake, but the purpose of studying is for the interview which you just said you don't even want to do.