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Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes

triplebyte.com

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

#461

Post by je42 »

baroffoos wrote: post #451
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.

you test different things. you could go with breadth first and then depth.

however, i would not skip depth, since depth indicates how deep this guy/girl can go if necessary to solve problems.

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

#462

Post by ggggtez »

avip wrote: post #106
joker3 wrote: post #101

There's a problem here. The only thing that Triplebyte can claim based on their data is that easier programming questions are more predictive of performance among candidates who received an offer . Since candidates who get offers are (in theory) different from candidates who don't get offers, we can't necessarily generalize from one population to the other. There's also a question about how to mix question difficulty…

Yep. Lot's of "data analysis" without even defining what would be a "false positive" (someone who did well in an interview, got an offer but turned out to be a bad hire? how is TB exposed to that critical data exactly?)

If a "bad hire" means fired before 3 months...

Then I really have to question exactly how they did this analysis. I can't imagine most companies would have the same objective function.

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

#463

Post by lliamander »

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.

They don't test for creativity (though seeing a correlation between IQ and creativity would be interesting) but they almost certainly test the ability to deal with abstractions. That's pretty much what an I test is! What reason do you have for thinking otherwise?

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

#464

Post by pedrosorio »

Balgair wrote: post #224
bunderbunder wrote: post #120

Aside from all the things mentioned in the article, this also seems like a fairly predictable application of Goodhart's Law: "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes." Once upon a time, skill at doing these sorts of problems might have correlated (imperfectly) with general aptitude as a programmer or software engineer. But the very act of trying t…

I'm not sure if HackerRank has updated itself recently, but the last time I poked my head in there (years ago), all the answers were in the "Talk about this challenge" section. You'd just go in there and copy paste the code in, maybe change the variable names/order a bit. Ever since I learned that, it's never been that 'wowzers' for me.

"Ever since I learned that, it's never been that 'wowzers' for me."

I am not sure I follow. For people who want to, there is a section where they can find answers even if they have not solved the problems. What was 'wowzers' about HackerRank before you learned that?

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

#465

Post by pedrosorio »

tombert wrote: post #271
entee wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agreed. Most questions I got when I started out as a data scientist interviewing for jobs were pretty simple: "use a hash table to count stuff, join stuff, lookup stuff". However not once did I get asked, "why do databases not exclusively use hash tables if they're so good?" That's a much more interesting question, though perhaps out of scope for a data scientist. I'd add that I've never heard that question bei…

I actually got that exact question once, or pretty close to it. I'm paraphrasing, but the question was "Hash tables are cool, but what's a data structure they might use in a DB besides that?". This was pretty early in my career, so it stumped me, and he pointed out that a binary tree is used semi-often because of ordering.

I am surprised B-trees were not the first data structure in that discussion, as they are "famous" for being used in DBs.

Although these days one should talk about "learned index structures" instead, I guess :)

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

#466

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

chcknsammich wrote: post #332
drugme wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's called having a life and a sense of proportion. The sooner tech companies learn to embrace and work with this very basic fact, the better.

So the sooner they abandon all of their own priorities and instead adopt only yours, the better?

Rather than the reverse? Yes.

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

#467

Post by austincheney »

toasterlovin wrote: post #453
austincheney wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It means a bias of coming together toward a tester's preferences. Do people excel on the few narrow performance meausures you find most correlated with intelligence?

There are divergent aptitude tests measure quantity and diversity of answers to a given question opposed to the one desired answer. Divergent tests are rarely performed, but at a stronger measure of creativity and problem solving which is typically what people actually want when they say intelligence. The reason why convergent testing is preferred over divergent test is because it is easier to measure and those simplified measures are easier to compare.

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

#468

Post by Nitramp »

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…

> they filter for people that are ready to follow orders without complaining.

Well, if that was the goal, boy did we ever fail to deliver on that one ;-)

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

#469

Post by austincheney »

lliamander wrote: post #463
austincheney wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They don't test for creativity (though seeing a correlation between IQ and creativity would be interesting) but they almost certainly test the ability to deal with abstractions. That's pretty much what an I test is! What reason do you have for thinking otherwise?

They test for puzzles that appear as visual shape complexities which require use of the visual cortex. That is something a person might refer to as a visual abstraction. That isn't a practical abstraction, such as requiring a person to form an answer from the absent of acceptable criteria (to abstract or form something new to solve a problem).

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

#470

Post by [deleted] »

mikekchar wrote: post #459
chrisbennet wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

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