Coding interviews are stupid (ish) • Hacker News Board

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#471

Post by xandrius » Wed, May 08, 2024, 7:01 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #356

xandrius wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't get why such questions are even asked as most jobs I've ever had not even remotely touched those and I've touched quite a few industries, technologies and types of companies. To me, the value of a software engineer is to ask questions, make hypotheses and be able to iterate quickly. Balancing trees, leetcode and other algorithmic stuff on the spot sounds like bringing the dreadful education system struc…

> Also if a senior person can't in 30/45 min of talking with someone figure out the general experience level then the problem is them, really. OK take it as read that your posturing has succeeded and we all agree that you're a brilliant interpersonal genius and the rest of us are all useless chumps. What then? The rest of us still need to interview and make hiring recommendations. Or are you suggesting that employers…

Why would you read that?

I just mean that if you put 2 experienced people talking about a topic they both know, it should be pretty easy for both (or at least the interviewer) to get a rough understanding of the level of the interviewee.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#472

Post by z3t4 » Wed, May 08, 2024, 7:11 AM UTC

The most difficult part is figuring out what they are measuring, and how they want you to solve the problem, there are hundreds of ways to solve a problem. And once you have a solution, there is no time to make it o(n) effective, or do micro optimizations. That's why I hate automated coding tests. If there is an actual person with you - talk to that person! Ask how they will measure your performace, and ask how they want the problem to be solved! Then explain how you are thinking - can't do that to an automated code test.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#473

Post by android521 » Wed, May 08, 2024, 7:19 AM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #239

Assuming that a company does not look for candidates who are naturally good at ICPC-type of questions or geniuses who can come up with amazing algorithms in a matter of minutes, there is actually a different way to do coding interview: just give a high-level description of a sophisticated enough algorithm to a candidate and ask the candidate to turn that into code. I think it strikes a good balance between depth in C…

Good idea. But the focus on algorithms is maybe overkill for at least 80% to 90% of companies. Perhaps lay out some subset of the business requirements or problems the company is working on and ask them to turn that into working code is more suitable

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#474

Post by cryptonector » Wed, May 08, 2024, 7:29 AM UTC

tantalor wrote: post #15

mytailorisrich wrote: post #3

> Q: Assume that you have an infinite stream of data that is coming in from multiple threads in an unordered fashion. Write the stream items to the console in order. If I were the interviewer I would be interested in what clarifying questions the candidate would ask and/or how they would highlight parameters and assumptions needed because the question is vague to the point of being unanswerable otherwise.

As written this problem is impossible to solve. Proof: suppose there is only 1 infinite stream which is always descending. You will never find a lowest value, so you cannot rewrite the stream "in order".

Depends. If there is a minimum value, every value will appear, and you don't want dups, then this is doable. Say the streams are of natural numbers starting with 1, and every natural number will appear within each stream. The obvious thing to do is to not even bother doing anything with the streams except to drain them, and just write the natural numbers in order to stdout! Yes, I'm chuckling.

It's a trivial toy problem. It's not a useful problem to solve. But the question may be there just to get you to think of just this, and to ask questions.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#475

Post by varjag » Wed, May 08, 2024, 7:37 AM UTC

pseudalopex wrote: post #384

varjag wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno man. A good third of my class seems to be working at FAANG and we're all from an unremarkable university in Eastern Europe. I'd imagine the prospects are much better if you start in the States already.

The official estimate of software developer positions in the United States was 1,656,880 in 2023.[1] 10% of that would be a high estimate of FAANG software developers in all countries. And most in those companies make less. [1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm

A high estimate? Google alone stands at 180k employees. I'd imagine at least a half of those are technical positions.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#476

Post by morgante » Wed, May 08, 2024, 7:37 AM UTC

dclowd9901 wrote: post #464

mandevil wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half a dozen years ago in a conference talk, Joel Spolsky claimed credit for inventing these sorts of whiteboard interviews (with his Guerilla Guide to Interviewing), and that it had broken software engineering hiring. https://thenewstack.io/joel-spolsky-on-stack-overflow-inclus...

FTA: “I think you need a better system, and I think it’s probably going to be more like an apprenticeship or an internship, where you bring people on with a much easier filter at the beginning. And you hire them kind of on an experimental basis or on a training basis, and then you have to sort of see what they can do in the first month or two.” Well, if he fucked it up, I don’t see any reason why his ideas can’t also…

Unfortunately this only works for interns and new grads. Nobody experienced want to take a job on an experimental basis.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#477

Post by schneehertz » Wed, May 08, 2024, 7:41 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #451

hintymad wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 advancement…

Many software programs fail to achieve ultimate efficiency either because the software engineers are unable to do so, or because external factors prevent them from achieving it. I believe that in most cases, it is the latter.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#478

Post by robbyiq999 » Wed, May 08, 2024, 7:44 AM UTC

It was always just gatekeeping that sweet sweet VC money during the ZIRP era. Games to play and egos to inflate for middle management can-you-even-code-bro? bros for companies with growth stock modus operandi.

Everyone was asleep at the wheel anyways

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40292924

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#479

Post by usrusr » Wed, May 08, 2024, 7:45 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #430

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 had a candidate claiming over ten years of experience who couldn’t sum an array of ints in any language of his choosing. This wasn’t an off-by-one or didn’t handle overflow, but rather was couldn’t get started at all .

Ten years of experience at one of those places where every keystroke outside powerpoint is offshored. Why would they know how to sum ints? Some people do start their careers as what could best be described as software architecture assistants. They never touched a brick in their lives, to go with the architecture image.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#480

Post by globular-toast » Wed, May 08, 2024, 7:55 AM UTC

dilyevsky wrote: post #139

Classic mistake of overthinking it and failing to realize what interviewer really wants - which is to make sure the candidate can actually write code, like at all. The question itself doesn't really matter as much as it's just a pretext. I actually asked a variation of this question for many years at Google and it was clear within first 5 mins who has been writing code day-to-day and who's been mostly "brining key st…

Yes. I've filtered out countless candidates who can't code like this. It's amazing how people will fire off applications to jobs they can't do. You might doubt this because you wouldn't do it, but just wait until you get to sift through a fresh wave of applicants.

Has everyone I hired got "perfect marks" on the test? Of course not! It's not about that. It's about seeing how they react to a problem, watching them break it down, ask questions, and, ultimately, get on with it. If the job is too sweep floors you need to be able to hold a broom. It's as simple as that.