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Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

darrenkopp.com

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Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#481

Post by usrusr »

godelski wrote: post #339
markwkw wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mechanical engineering interviews seem to do the same as software: "Engineers always ask about beam bending, stress strain curves, and conservation of work. Know the theory and any technical questions are easy." Basically an equivalent of simple algorithmic questions. Not "real" because it's impossible to share enough context of a real problem in an interview to make it practical. Short, testing principles, but most…

> Mechanical engineering interviews seem to do the same as software: I've been an engineer in the past (physics undergrad -> aerospace job -> grad school/ml). I have never seen or heard of an engineer being expected to solve math equations on a whiteboard during an interview. It is expected that you already know these things. Honestly, it is expected that you have a reference to these equations and you'll have memori…

I've had a coding interview (screen, not whiteboard) fail where the main criticism was that one routine detail I took a while to get right could have been googled faster. In hindsight I still doubt that, given all the semi-related tangents you end up following from Google, but that was their expectation, look up the right piece of example code and recognize the missing bit (or get out right immediately).

For a proper engineering question (as in not software), I'd expect the expected answer to be naming the reference book where you'd look up the formula. Last thing you want is someone overconfident in their from memory version of physics.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#482

Post by usrusr »

morgante wrote: post #476
dclowd9901 wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And how would it scale to a number of candidates greater than one? A classroom full of competing peers? That's what talent shows are for.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#483

Post by azangru »

godelski wrote: post #310
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…

> 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. This is why I've always been so confused. Why is the software engineering interview wildly different from the traditional engineering interview (seniors sit down with candidates and discuss how to solve a relevant proxy problem the team is currently undergoing (has the side benefit…

> Why is the software engineering interview wildly different from the traditional engineering interview

I am guessing here, but wouldn't a candidate for a traditional engineering role normally hold a college degree in a relevant field, so that part of quality assurance is expected to have been done by the college?

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#484

Post by s_dev »

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…

>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.

What about the lad who develops homebrew who got rejected from Google because he wasn't able to invert a binary tree on the spot? Many Googlers use his software internally and externally. If the purpose of the interview is to make sure he can code why did he fail?

https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...

He seems to have a great attitude and would fit right in but it's clear Google is optimising to keep people out rather than find great software Devs.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#485

Post by musicale »

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…

> And the great irony is that most software is slow as shit and resource intensive

You really need those 100x faster algorithms when everything is a web or Electron app.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#486

Post by shawabawa3 »

s_dev wrote: post #484
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…

>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. What about the lad who develops homebrew who got rejected from Google because he wasn't able to invert a binary tree on the spot? Many Googlers use his software internally and externally. If the purpose of the interview is to make sure he can code why did…

Why does "Many Googlers use his software internally and externally" mean he would be a good hire for Google?

From all his public complaining about failing an interview it seems Google did the right thing not hiring him, he has a massive ego and it's very possible that "writing homebrew" is less useful to google than "inverting a binary tree"

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#487

Post by nvarsj »

feoren wrote: post #262
darrenkopp wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, personally, cannot _think_ and _talk_ at the same time. It's just a stream of half-sentences, many of which my brain has already moved on from because what I originally thought won't work. After writing this article it became very apparent to me that I'm complete garbage at interviews, but I'll outperform and exceed at the actual job function.

In my work, if you literally cannot write any code while also discussing the code, and if you literally cannot express thoughts while also thinking them, then you actually wont exceed at the actual job function, at all. You're not the only programmer on the team. I don't know why people think communication skills are not required for programmers. You won't be coding the correct thing unless you can talk about what yo…

The vast majority of engineering design happens async - by typically a single engineer, puzzling/experimenting over possible solutions and then creating a design doc. Discussion then happens synchronously. Solving a complex design problem on the spot is not the norm.

I personally find system design interviews pretty tough - it's not a mode of operation I ever experience on the job. To solve them at Big Tech, you pretty much have to memorize many design patterns and be able to regurgitate them on the spot. Like algo questions, it's testing your ability to work hard to prepare more than anything else.

Not to say this doesn't have value as a filter, it's just not testing the thing you think it is.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#488

Post by tgv »

YZF wrote: post #433
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…

I have a different take on this. I ask a fairly simple coding question and have them write code. No fancy algorithms to memorize or competition style coding. I want to see if they can think in code. If they can translate something simple to written code. There's always a chance to have a conversation as well to probe different aspects of their understanding. A few of those by a few people and I think you get a pretty…

I used that approach too for a beginning frontend dev: see if they can get a solution to straight-forward problems, and ask them to explain it afterwards. They got all the time they needed, and a clean laptop with wifi. Two candidates came out well, two others didn't. That was a bit shocking, given the low bar.

But it won't cut it for a senior. Such people should be able to answer a wide range of questions, including some algorithm and data structure stuff. Not that they have to be able to code a min-max-heap from scratch, but they have to know what's out there, how to use it, and how to keep the overview of an entire project. That's not going to be evident from a coding interview.

So, horses for courses.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#489

Post by geraldwhen »

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 do code interviews because most candidates cannot declare a class or variable in a programming language of their choice.

I give a very basic business problem with no connection to any useful algorithm, and explicitly state that there are no gotchyas: we know all inputs and here’s what they are.

Almost everyone fails this interview, because somehow there are a lot of smooth tech talkers who couldn’t program to save their lives.

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