Last year I did the initial phone screen for a management level role at large search company and the next step was the infamous code test. Such a hard pass. Maybe it's different at a FAANG but my day job is communication and coordination, being technical enough to unblock and optimise work across multiple teams. The process just felt like it was optimising for the wrong thing. Not to mention that it's 20 years since my degree and I have better things to do.
The dystopian world of software engineering interviews
451–460 of 851 posts
Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hah! Reminds me of https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 . Cynical answer though — Google does not want people like you. They don't want to hire entrepreneurs or inventors. They want people who can churn out code when given specific instructions, and that is what their interview process optimizes for.
This is absolutely true. I work at Giant Search and Advertising Company, and joining was a huge mistake. I thought I would be working interesting technical problems with a high degree of autonomy — instead the work is extremely boring, and you get ahead by playing political games rather than by innovating. I’m one of the rare few here who managed to get through the interview without really preparing. Before joining,…
I worked there in the early 2000s. It was fun. Then it wasn't any more. I was much earlier in my career and when I left, having it on my resume meant a lot. Now I've done more and more interesting things. I told the FAANGs, in no unclear terms, I'm not interested. They seem to have gotten the message eventually. I like small companies. You work harder and have a lot more impact. The compensation is good too.
Leave. The grass is greener.
Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
I realise this is tangential to the original topic, but this notion that the UK is not a part of Europe (and therefore mentioned separately) seems really weird to me. They can leave the EU as much as they want, but it doesn't change the fact that physically they're still in Europe. Is this because of some perceived notion of cultural differences? Because if we're starting to draw lines based on that we probably need…
Mexico and Canada are technically part of America (North) and Russia is in Asia, yet most people don’t say that Canadians are Americans and Russians are Asians. One of the great funs of language.
Russia is mostly in Europe, population-wise.
Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love these anecdotes, thank you! The greatest programmer I've had the privilege of working closely with could easily pass most technical screens, but he's an odd fellow, and I don't think could handle the stress and anxiety of these crazy interviews. Lots of diamonds in the rough out there, but I suppose large companies understand that and just consider it acceptable loss.
That's what every bitter HN comment on the topic forgets. If Larry Page could sit down and talk to each candidate, I'm sure he'd be able to properly assess these kinds of corner cases. The challenge isn't being able to do that at an individual level; it's being able to do it in a way that's somewhat consistent and scalable across tens of thousands of interviewers and millions of candidates. Any large system is going…
There must be people who'd want to specialize in that, though, if it's possible. It sounds like a fun job.
Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews
#455When my classmates were preparing interview coding questions, I was working on a mini TCP implementation and a toy kernel. AWS rejected me since I failed to write prefect code to traverse a tree in level order. Google did not even give me an interview since I told the campus recruiter I have not prepared for the coding questions. Then I ended up with an internship at CoreOS and created etcd. I am glad that they did n…
Hah! Reminds me of https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 . Cynical answer though — Google does not want people like you. They don't want to hire entrepreneurs or inventors. They want people who can churn out code when given specific instructions, and that is what their interview process optimizes for.
Agree, they want smart workers (well you have to be smart at some degree to do software). And they don't care if they will miss some genius, they just let other companies help the selection process, and if you turn out to be gold, they will pay a big money to get you.
Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews
#456I honestly don't know why anyone gives FAANG recruiters the time of day anymore. I have yet to meet anyone who feels good about the prospect of working for them, anyone who works there who's super proud of their mission, and the competitors who are looking to hire at that level of talent pay roughly similar wages from what I've seen. My advice for this poor kid is to look around at startups and do more networking. FA…
> I have yet to meet anyone who feels good about the prospect of working for them, anyone who works there who's super proud of their mission I worked at the N in FAANG. It was the best large company work environment I ever worked in. The people I worked with were top notch, I looked forward to going into to work. Our mission was to deliver entertainment around the world. I believed in that mission. I think entertainm…
What about delivering MAFIAA's DRMs around the world ? (after the second attempt by Netflix to get in the streaming market.)
Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hah! Reminds me of https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 . Cynical answer though — Google does not want people like you. They don't want to hire entrepreneurs or inventors. They want people who can churn out code when given specific instructions, and that is what their interview process optimizes for.
I don’t think there’s any intention to it at all. Unless one takes extraordinary steps to examine what brings truly brings value, most people interview for clones of themselves. Or worse: their idealized self-image. Google started off with very mathy people, and highly competitive people, and interviewing this way has always worked for them, so why change? Some people have done internal studies showing how wildly cou…
One thing I wasn't aware as a nerdy teenager was how everything is valued IRL in its guaranteed minimum performance, not conditional maxima.
No one is interested in your peak performance, all it matters is consistency, predictability, stability, those robustness metrics. Say interview questions kinda sucks, but you show some competency still, means predictable most of what they have to throw at you will at least partially stick, minimizing factors.
You could argue that a workplace that prefers a trait like that doesn't sound like a place for artists' dream place we all desire, but more towards a "software manufacturing factory" envisioned by electric companies like Hitachi in the '80s, if you do I think maybe it is and maybe they were right to a certain extent.
Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing to note about coding interviews, they're very simular to somone looking over your shoulder while you're working. Nobody can perform well like that.. One great colleague who I wish I was in the interview for, simple started thinking out loud. Everything he was thinking, he said out loud, and of course, the team loved it. Because thats all it's about. If its not over a video chat/submission, comment your code…
So I had an interview that was like that, but I wasn’t given enough information. I was asked to implement the “inverse square law in code” ... and I explained to the interviewer who was two years out of college (I looked up all of the interviewers on linkedin, so I had a good idea of their experience and areas of expertise) that my first step as someone who hadn’t been in an academic environment or exposed to this ki…
This sounds like bad company practice of hiring..
If what you're saying all checks out, someone straight out of college (2 years is young) unless he has been working on those kind of things all the time, its an edge case at best.
The fact that he said : "No, you should know this" - Even if he knew it, it shows how they would be work with. Probably dodged a bullet there.
Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews
#459I think this person was not rejected for their coding. They were passed over for an MS or PhD with similar skills. It is necessary to do well on coding interviews, but not sufficient. optimizing for coding interviews is the wrong approach.
Wrong crushing the code interview is all that really matters.
Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love these anecdotes, thank you! The greatest programmer I've had the privilege of working closely with could easily pass most technical screens, but he's an odd fellow, and I don't think could handle the stress and anxiety of these crazy interviews. Lots of diamonds in the rough out there, but I suppose large companies understand that and just consider it acceptable loss.
That's what every bitter HN comment on the topic forgets. If Larry Page could sit down and talk to each candidate, I'm sure he'd be able to properly assess these kinds of corner cases. The challenge isn't being able to do that at an individual level; it's being able to do it in a way that's somewhat consistent and scalable across tens of thousands of interviewers and millions of candidates. Any large system is going…
> assessing whether someone will be a good employee for the next few years based on a few short meetings is really hard
Predicting the future is very difficult, and therefore probably not what interviews are designed to optimise for.
Interviews probably optimise for something like: The candidate seemed like a reasonable choice at the time / cover-your-arse scenario.