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Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

darrenkopp.com

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Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#451

Post by godelski »

hintymad wrote: post #387
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…

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…

> yet they thought they needed to hire people who could turn any O(N^2) algorithms into O(N) or O(Nlog(N))

And the great irony is that most software is slow as shit and resource intensive. Because yeah, knowing worst case performance is good to know, but what about mean? Or what you expect users to be doing? These can completely change the desired algorithm.

But there's the long joke "10 years of hardware advancements have been completely undone by 10 years of advancements in software."

Because people now rely on the hardware for doing things rather than trying to make software more optimal. It amazes me that gaming companies do this! And the root of the issue is trying to push things out quickly and so a lot of software is really just a Lovecraftian monster made of spaghetti and duct tape. And for what? Like Apple released the M4 today and who's going to use that power? Why did it take years for Apple to develop a fucking PDF reader that I can edit documents in? Why is it still a pain to open a PDF on my macbook and edit it on my iPad? Constantly fails and is unreliable, disconnecting despite being To bring it back to interviewing signals, I do think the rant kinda relates. Because this same degradation makes it harder to determine in groups when there's so much pressure to be a textbook. But I guess this is why so many ML enthusiasts compare LLMs to humans, because we want humans to be machines.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#452

Post by rsyring »

rsyring wrote: post #191

We used four basic exercises during the first remote interview. Simple things like, "there is a number on each line of this text file. Find the sum of them." This was an effective method to screen out applicants who didn't have the basic coding skills to align with their stated resume experience. And there were a decent number of these. We did further development project exercises later in the process that took about…

For those wondering, we paid $50 an hour. It wasn't quite wage equivalent, but we felt it was reasonable to consider some of that "gap" as investment on the part of the applicant.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#453

Post by godelski »

kyle_grove wrote: post #446
godelski wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think (but cannot prove) that along the way, it was decided to explicitly measure ability to 'study to the test'. My theory goes that certain trendsetting companies decided that ability to 'grind at arbitrary technical thing' measures on-job adaptability. And then many other companies followed suit as a cargo cult thing. If it were otherwise, and those trendsetting companies actually believed LeetCode tested progra…

I think I have a much lazier explanation. Leet code style questions were a good way to test expertise in the past. But the same time everyone starts to follow suit the test becomes ineffective. What's the saying? When everyone is talking about a stock, it's time to sell. Same thing.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#454

Post by rsyring »

arp242 wrote: post #432
mylons wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this seems completely reasonable compared to endless whiteboarding?

Adding up all the overhead and stuff that comes before and after, we're talking about an interview process that's 3 full work days. That seems a lot, even when you're paying people. People will either have to take days off their job or sacrifice weekends.

It is a time commitment. We did have four separate exercises and they could be taken individually. So someone could do them a few evenings in a row or all in one day. Whatever worked best for them.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#455

Post by fileeditview »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #108
fileeditview wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've talked with applicants about their private projects. It gave me great insights. Also take home tasks with a discussion afterwards are a good thing and can be an alternative if candidates don't have private projects to talk about.

Oh... take home tasks. Theoretically, I agree these are a great way of generating some signal where there's not enough to be found by other methods. But, in practice, what I've found is that most of these types of exercises are way overscoped, and even those which are not put a hugely disproportionate time burden on the candidate with minimal return for most of them. In other words, nobody wants to take the time to p…

I absolutely agree with you. There are many take home tasks that are way overblown and expect too much. But I am convinced that you can scope it for say 1-2 hours and I think that's a reasonable time investment for an application.

And yes the interviewer has to review that stuff and ask good questions but nobody said this was easy. But for me it showed better outcomes than the usual live leet code interviews.. (I did them too).

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#456

Post by godelski »

bobthepanda wrote: post #404
godelski wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sometim…

I have junior and senior students that struggle with fizzbuzz... But damn, are they not allowed to even do a lazy inefficient `sort(mylist)[-2]` if they forgot about for loops? That's the most efficient in terms of number of characters, right haha

But I still think you can reasonably weed these people out without these whiteboard problems. For exactly the same reasons engineers and scientists can. And let's be honest, for the most part, your resume should really be GitHub. I know so much more about a person by walking through their GitHub than by their resume.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#457

Post by bobthepanda »

godelski wrote: post #456
bobthepanda wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sometim…

I have junior and senior students that struggle with fizzbuzz... But damn, are they not allowed to even do a lazy inefficient `sort(mylist)[-2]` if they forgot about for loops? That's the most efficient in terms of number of characters, right haha But I still think you can reasonably weed these people out without these whiteboard problems. For exactly the same reasons engineers and scientists can. And let's be honest…

Using GitHub is discriminatory against people who don’t code on the weekends outside of their jobs, and most people’s job related code would be under NDA and not postable on Github.

To be a capital E Engineer you have to pass a licensing exam. This filter obviously is not going to catch everything but it does raise the bar a little bit.

—-

As far as the root question goes, they are allowed to propose that, and then i can try and tease out of them why they think that is the best and if something is better. But you would be surprised at the creative ways people manage to not iterate through a full loop once.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#458

Post by onetimeuse92304 »

SuperCuber wrote: post #349
okwhateverdude wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unfortunately, it is very hard to judge somebody's coding ability in discussion alone. You can sort of get the idea whether they have or don't have experience and whether they have luck being asked about topics they know (although you can help your luck just knowing a lot of stuff). I disagree with your stated difficulty in judging coding ability by discussion alone. A skilled interviewer is easily able to ascertain…

> A skilled interviewer is easily able to ascertain breadth and depth of the candidate's experience [without a coding test] And yet, many interviewers' experience shows that there are people that would pass a discussion-only interview and fail at basic coding tasks. There's plenty such people holding down jobs for a while, so even that may not be a sure indicator of skill. > The intentional ambiguity is deceitful. Th…

You are right on point.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#459

Post by onetimeuse92304 »

xandrius wrote: post #293
okwhateverdude wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unfortunately, it is very hard to judge somebody's coding ability in discussion alone. You can sort of get the idea whether they have or don't have experience and whether they have luck being asked about topics they know (although you can help your luck just knowing a lot of stuff). I disagree with your stated difficulty in judging coding ability by discussion alone. A skilled interviewer is easily able to ascertain…

Yeah, OP sounds dreadful to interview with. Especially the: omg, I basically gave them the solution!! When they themselves didn't have to solve it, since they came up with it.

Actually, for the past two years I was using the coding task I got to do when I joined the company. This helps me appreciate how I felt when I have seen it for the first time.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#460

Post by cwalv »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #405
whimsicalism wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The numbers are real. I was in a similar incredulous position 4-5 years ago. Hiring is still relatively weak, but you can always try to get an offer yourself. Or even just talk to and ask recruiters; they have no reason to lie. You don't have to take your cousin's girlfriend's uncle's word for it.
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