Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting outcomes • Hacker News Board

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

#491

Post by bradleyjg » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 10:08 AM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #476

bradleyjg wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not illegal. Here’s Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971) https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/401/424/#tab-opi... . Go read it and see for yourself what it says.

Right at the top of that link: > Testing or measuring procedures cannot be determinative in employment decisions unless they have some connection to the job. IQ tests are not directly related to the job, and so are illegal according to that ruling. Coding tests are directly related, which is why they get a pass.

You didn’t read the opinion and you added the word “directly” to the summary.

Do you scan source code and draw firm conclusions about what it does based on skim reading the first comment you see?

Perhaps my old contracts prof could have a second career as a google interviewer. (He was notorious for cold calling people that hadn’t briefed their cases and eating them alive.)

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

#492

Post by 420codebro » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 11:09 AM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #383

whatshisface wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If work is everything, shouldn't we set aside some time to raise the next generation of workers? Working all the time is so defeating it even defeats the amount of work being done 30 years from now.

> If work is everything, shouldn't we set aside some time to raise the next generation of workers? I don't think work per se is everything. But working on world-changing things is. At least concerning the situation in Germany, where there is compulsary school with a compulsary curriculum (vulgo: 18-19 years of brainwashing), I am working a lot time in the evening on an alternative curriculum (currently focusing on co…

You won’t change the world. Best case you’ll be vaguely known for a dead front-end tech in 20 years.

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

#493

Post by 420codebro » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 11:10 AM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #325

smadge wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A person can choose to spend less time on a hobby at any point, but once a child is born their parents have an ethical obligation to their children.

> but once a child is born their parents have an ethical obligation to their children. Indeed - and that is why you should be very cautious to give birth to children; in particular if you have career plans.

I guess we can all import a bunch of skill-challenged worker from elsewhere then, right?

/s

Btw I loathe everything to ever come from Germany. You have ruined so many things.

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

#494

Post by devocracy » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 12:36 PM UTC

x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #436

toasterlovin wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that many job applicants apparently can't write a Fizz-Buzz implementation, I'd say that being able to implement an algorithm is probably a reasonable way to cull the herd by a hefty margin. https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

It's made me angry how many people I've interviewed who can't manage Fizz Buzz with only 2 conditions or at all.

I'm curious to find out what people define as fizzbuzz, do you have a good example of something you've asked in the past?

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

#495

Post by em-bee » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 12:42 PM UTC

davidhyde wrote: post #25

I think that asking a candidate to perform a code review can be an effective method of evaluating quite a few desirable qualities. Can they understand someone else's code? Can they engage in constructive critical discussion? Are they able to effectively refactor something to make it better? Can they spot mistakes and do they have an opinion about how to avoid such mistakes?

i did something similar with junior candidates a few years ago. put them in front of a piece of code and ask them to fix the problem. not a code review, but debugging. that covers many similar qualities.

i didn't expect critical discussion because they were not native english speakers. (in fact they hadn't had an opportunity to even use english outside of talking to their teacher, so when they were able to engage in friendly arguments over how to solve a problem, that was quite an accomplishment, even more so for asian culture which is generally rather submissive (you don't argue with your boss))

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

#496

Post by em-bee » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 12:53 PM UTC

Zelphyr wrote: post #114

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…

You touch on a very important part of this equation: there are good interviewers and bad interviewers. A good interviewer, in my opinion and experience, will try to get to know the person first. They'll put the candidate at ease. They want to try as much as possible to be talking to the person they're possibly going to be working with, not the anxious candidate that just walked into the room.

i am interviewing this week. at the end of the interview i ask the candidates how they felt about the interview process. i was mostly interested in finding out how they felt about having to do live code challenges while i observe them. (i let them "play" elevatorsaga.com for an hour and then implement a small project of their choice from freecodecamp)

yesterdays candidate told me he felt very relaxed, much different from all the other interviews he was doing.

and yes, figuring out if i want to work with this person is my primary goal.

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

#497

Post by em-bee » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 1:03 PM UTC

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #110

> However, whether or not a candidate answers a question correctly is not the only source of signal during an interview. You can also evaluate their process by, for example, observing how long it takes them to finish, how clean their code is, and how much they struggle while finding a solution. Our analysis shows that this second source of signal (process) is almost as predictive as the first (correctness). I seem to…

regarding the simpler solution, i just had that situation today. working on elevatorsaga.com the candidate clearly wanted to solve the full problem correctly (the way a real elevator works) from the get-go. however doing so would have taken him several hours without him knowing if he got any closer to a working solution.

i had to push him to try something simpler first just so that he would get to somewhere meaningful within the hour available.

so which approach is better depends on the goals. in my case i wanted the candidate to solve the basic problem first: (make every person get to their destination, no matter how long the elevator needs) and then optimize to make it go faster.

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

#498

Post by mooreds » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 1:10 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #475

sfw1k wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some coders that don't get too critical about their job Couldn't be farther from the truth. As someone who works there I've noticed this general trend of animosity towards Google, it seems to be fueled by the fact that people feel a sort of inferiority complex when they don't clear an interview or they feel they wouldn't be able to crack it if they ever gave it a shot, this leads to an overcompensation of attitude in…

I have no idea whether I could study hard enough to work at Google. What I do know is that I don’t like large companies and I have no desire to move to the west coast.

> What I do know is that I don’t like large companies

I think this is a key thing to learn about oneself. Very large companies often have a lot of cachet and can provide opportunities that small companies cannot (scale is scale, after all).

But small companies (not even start-ups, just companies with * Interaction with different parts of the business

* Opportunity to wear multiple hats

* Less likely to be in the Bay area

* Nowhere to hide incompetence

Of course this isn't every small company, but I have worked in a few that were like this.

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

#499

Post by mooreds » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 1:17 PM UTC

knightofmars wrote: post #355

cubano wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without a doubt it's age discrimination...you've hit the nail on the head. Also, God help you if you have followed a non-traditional career path where you decide at points in your life that you wanted a break from it all. I, too, in 1988, fresh out of my BS in CP with no family or life experiences and a strong desire to code day and night would have sailed past the technical side of these often ridiculous interviews…

They don't want to pay you what they think (the you in their heads think you think) you are worth. That sounds convoluted but I've watched it happen repeatedly. Bill budget IT guy, "What? We need to harden a server? Why do we need to pay this guy over a hundred thousand a year to do that? The internet is full of documentation. Let's hire someone with just enough technical know how to implement it." The reality on the…

> The reality on the other side is that hiring an experienced engineer has it's risk.

Totally agree and have seen it from the interviewee side. I interviewed in March last year as an experienced engineer, and my network was the number one source of interviews and how I found my current job.

Don't neglect your network, folks. As you age, it will become ever more important for your next position.

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

#500

Post by Ensorceled » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 1:17 PM UTC

koube wrote: post #334

Ensorceled wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We ... had different experiences. It was a day of implementing algorithms on a whiteboard. I was supposed to be interviewing for a management position so I didn’t get the study packet either.

I also interviewed at google, in the in-person all of the algos I got were very fair in my opinion, in that it took a little bit of thought to figure out what I needed to do, and then after that, most of the work was just turning that idea into an algorithm. It was all on the whiteboard but I thought it was fair. They were fine with little errors and we talked through them. On the phone interview I was asked how to s…

Interesting. My interview process was one of the most negative interviewing experiences of my life. Two of the people interviewing me were mostly silent except when they were combative. One algorithm I implemented was essentially the internals of a popular vi clone and was dismissively told the algorithm wouldn’t work in practice. I also argued Big O with a another interviewer who said nothing except my value was wrong (it wasn’t).