Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 693 posts

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#51

Post by malbs »

joesmo wrote: post #32
malbs wrote: post #14

Just went through this process from the POV of employer. The risk of choosing the wrong person is so great, that it's often better to not choose anyone. If there is any doubt what-so-ever, it's better to not make a a hire, it can be too damaging to a team, manager, company. I've tried so many different "coding interview" scenarios. But I found the best one was a real task that a real staff member would be expected to…

"The risk of choosing the wrong person is so great" I assume you don't live in the US or if you do, please elaborate because in the US there are virtually no such risks with at-will employment. It's so incredibly easy to fire people in the US that such an idea is actually ridiculous, yet people keep bringing it up all the time as if it's real.

No, Australia. Once you've hired someone, there's a process you need to go through in order to get rid of them - multiple warnings for breaking company policy, mediation, it depends on what the problems are. If they know their rights, and play by the rules, it's basically not possible.

Worse, if you have someone who just doesn't play well with others, there are no grounds for dismissal. You end up having to cook up some sort of severance package for genuinely toxic staff, and hope they hate the environment as much as others hate them.

"Please take this package. In the long run it will be better for everyone" and hope they see the light and walk.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#52

Post by LamaOfRuin »

ams6110 wrote: post #18
jpatokal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not a test of whether you know it, it's a test of whether you can implement it. If the candidate doesn't know/recall what BFS is, it's trivial to demonstrate the basic idea on a whiteboard, and it's the candidate's job to convert the idea into code. (Which, at the end of day, is pretty much what the vast majority of coding is about.)

It's still not realistic. People don't code on whiteboards. You code (today) with all the resources of the internet at your fingertips, and if you need to invert a binary tree you will use a well-tested implementation from a standard library.

Which is why they're not asking you to do it in an actual job. It's a proxy problem that is easy to communicate so you're not spending the entire interview explaining the problem. Arguably, fleshing out a spec would also be a valuable test, but not the same one.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#53

Post by cottonseed »

As someone hiring right now, I feel your pain and, while I hope I compare favorably to the interviews your describe, I wish I was better.

My one piece of advice: read Nick Corcodilos's Reinventing the Interview:

http://www.amazon.com/Ask-Headhunter-Reinventing-Interview-W...

The basic idea is demonstrate you can provide value to the company, and you have the skills to do the job. If you're stuck with a disinterested interviewer asking irrelevant questions, make it about the job you'll do and your ability to succeed in the job. He has concrete suggestions. I say, if they're not open to that and it is clearly not working, tell them you it is not going to work out and stop the interview rather than enduring another miserable experience.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#54

Post by bcook »

tobz wrote: post #41
bcook wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, a good programmer (or worker in general) should be good at much more than programming; like being able to collaborate & socialize with other team members & management without immediately resorting to "Fuck you, I quit". The author seems to have a chip on his shoulder...

Just out of curiosity: how many bad interviews, or interviews with a rejection at the end, have you had in a row? Or total?

Zero(?), but I have also never had a "great" job that I had to fight for. Regardless, I think everyone knows through experience that an employee's technical skills are practically useless if said worker is socially inept.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#57

Post by odonnellryan »

daurnimator wrote: post #13

The purposes of these interviews is not (usually) to see if you know the answer. It's to see how you problem solve. If you knew the correct answer to e.g. the BFS algorithm, you'll get thrown another question that they hope you don't know. When interviewing, the thing I want to see most is how someone works through a problem: can they solve from first principles? do they go via trial and error? do they ask for a comp…

That's cool, but it's understood that it's a very complex process to "figure out something you don't know."

It absolutely includes talking to people. But not people you don't know, in a very high stress situation, under the pressure to solve the problem in thirty minutes :)

That is sometimes required, definitely. But I'd say that situation only applies to the .01% of real-life programming situations.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#58

Post by bryanlarsen »

The OP is describing the new grad tech hiring process. It looks like an exam because it's for hiring people straight out of school.

For experienced people, it's not what you know, it's who you know. You tell your connected friend that you're looking for a job, he tells you who's hiring and gives you a recommendation.

You still have an interview, but it's no longer adversarial, it's a formality, it's friendly, it's just a screen to make sure you're not faking it. One of the people on the other side of the table has seen your work before, so is on your side. So when you get those stupid questions, it's a joke that you all laugh at. You handwave at it, and it's enough.

There are obviously problems with the above process -- it leads to hiring friends rather than the "best" candidate, but I'm surprised that we've moved so far away from it that the obviously well-connected OP is having so much trouble.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#59

Post by robbiemitchell »

Most people are commenting about the technical nature of the interviewers, but the communication between company and applicant is often broken as well. It's the difference between not getting an offer and then (a) hating the company or (b) supporting it and recommending it to other potential applicants. Companies underestimate these effects.

Once you bring someone in for an interview, you owe them a phone call, with email as a backup.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#60

Post by LamaOfRuin »

robbiemitchell wrote: post #50
LamaOfRuin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a degree this is true, but there is also significant value in having (and retaining) that broad base of knowledge that a good CS program or some systematic personal studies will get you. Most of the time you're not going to get a "implement this algorithm" you're going to get a "solve this problem we have" and you need to know the standard tools that are available to get you to a first approximation solution. Depe…

Why would an interviewer assume a front-end dev has a CS degree or has invested personal time in studying algorithms rather than other (probably more) relevant topics, such as various frameworks?

That depends. Mostly because front end job listings still often list a CS degree as a requirement. Also, I think it's great when people enjoy working on the front end since I don't particularly, but I still want to work with people that aren't hyper specialized.
Post reply on HN