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Interview Street (YC S11) streamlines the search for great programmers

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Re: Interview Street (YC S11) streamlines the search for great programmers

#51

Post by timr »

rickmb wrote: post #42

Maybe it's just me, but when I look for great programmers, their ability to solve coding challenges is really the least of my problems. In my experience, the ability to leverage those skills into delivering mature, stable, maintainable and generally high quality software is considerably rarer than the skill to solve puzzles. And don't even get me started on non-technical skills, like being able to organize and plan t…

You're not the only one. The more experience I get developing software with other people, the more I value stuff that isn't really captured by coding interviews:

  * do you thoroughly document your code without nagging?
  * do you value simplicity over cleverness?
  * do you think communication is a chore?
  * do you enjoy human interaction?
  * do you have empathy?
  * are you creative?
  * do you have good taste?
Googrosoft-style interviews are great for selecting people with raw intelligence, a competitive streak and some level of arrogance. They're not quite as hot at selecting reasonably smart people who are personable, creative and tasteful. And that's a huge portion of the job when you're writing software in a group. Very little day-to-day software work requires raw brilliance, but nearly all of it requires communication, empathy, creativity and taste.

Re: Interview Street (YC S11) streamlines the search for great programmers

#52

Post by yid »

gleb wrote: post #50
bugsy wrote: post #43

A computer program automatically torturing applicants with endless puzzle tests is not a way to find talented qualified people with experience delivering working results that delight the user. It's a good way to find people that have a lot of free time to play games because they are unemployed. In the years following my first job out of school (decades ago) I can't recall any work that I have gotten by going to these…

Not every developer has a brand. This service appears to target companies hiring developers that don't. Fortunately that is 99.99% of the market.

I think OPs complaint is that the service purports to find "great" programmers where they really mean "adequately competent to perform most tasks and able to learn". Another case of marketing speak annoying the nerds.

Re: Interview Street (YC S11) streamlines the search for great programmers

#53

Post by diego »

rickmb wrote: post #42

Maybe it's just me, but when I look for great programmers, their ability to solve coding challenges is really the least of my problems. In my experience, the ability to leverage those skills into delivering mature, stable, maintainable and generally high quality software is considerably rarer than the skill to solve puzzles. And don't even get me started on non-technical skills, like being able to organize and plan t…

Relevant, my blog post from a couple of weeks ago.

http://blog.indextank.com/1030/interviewing-engineers-enough...

TLDR: Most companies put too much emphasis on testing IQ and don't know how to evaluate what makes people great at building stuff that the company needs.

Re: Interview Street (YC S11) streamlines the search for great programmers

#54

Post by dlss »

rvivek wrote: post #24
ForrestN wrote: post #18

This looks really cool! A bit of design/copy feedback, none of it terribly urgent of course. Using Chrome 13 on OS X. - Copy problem on the main challenges page: "Solve challenging programming questions and land -on- your dream job." - On the challenges page "Solve This" buttons, the text is too high within the button, isn't centered. - "Are you a great company for hackers?" box on the challenges page has weird stray…

Wow! Thanks a ton :) Fixing all of them. Please check up the site in 20-30 mins, everything would be up

Button text is still broken for Windows Chrome 13.0.782.107

Re: Interview Street (YC S11) streamlines the search for great programmers

#56

Post by anonymoushn »

bugsy wrote: post #43

A computer program automatically torturing applicants with endless puzzle tests is not a way to find talented qualified people with experience delivering working results that delight the user. It's a good way to find people that have a lot of free time to play games because they are unemployed. In the years following my first job out of school (decades ago) I can't recall any work that I have gotten by going to these…

All of the companies I have applied to have asked that I spend several hours solving programming problems before giving me an offer. And why shouldn't they? My experience as an interviewer has been that such great things as "decades of industry experience designing and implementing very complex systems", or a Ph.D, or a 4.0 GPA from a top school are only very loosely correlated with whether or not a candidate can code his way out of a paper bag. As such, it is reasonable to think that there is a profit to be made filtering out the >80% of candidates who cannot code their way out of paper bags.

I've never been particularly desperate or unemployed (though I did not have a job while I was in university), and I think that the few minutes necessary to solve any of these problems is a reasonable use of time if it can signal a potential employer that you are more likely to be competent than a huge majority of their applicants. You are correct to say that nepotism is a better way of getting places, but I don't think it is reasonable to expect everyone to do it.

Re: Interview Street (YC S11) streamlines the search for great programmers

#57

Post by reinhardt »

bugsy wrote: post #43

A computer program automatically torturing applicants with endless puzzle tests is not a way to find talented qualified people with experience delivering working results that delight the user. It's a good way to find people that have a lot of free time to play games because they are unemployed. In the years following my first job out of school (decades ago) I can't recall any work that I have gotten by going to these…

If you haven't already seen examples of someone's work before you contact them, maybe you shouldn't be hiring them.

Because obviously all great programmers are expected to have built their online cred before applying for a job, right? I'm sure candidates with background in, say, HFT love sharing their work on their blog, or enjoy hacking on their pet projects after toiling away at their 60+ hour work weeks.

Re: Interview Street (YC S11) streamlines the search for great programmers

#58

Post by Jd »

swanson wrote: post #9

I get frustrated because I am pretty horrible (in my mind) at these kind of math puzzles ("Given N numbers , [N 0 and K Your company is a web app, I can write web apps; why am I solving problem sets from undergrad Discrete Math to demonstrate competence? Why not have the tasks be like "Use AJAX to pull down a users last 10 tweets and display them on a web page"? Maybe it's because the only samples are generic and not…

At least it is better than getting asked questions about the O-notation of the solution you've just whiteboarded. There has to be a better way...

Re: Interview Street (YC S11) streamlines the search for great programmers

#59

Post by Skywing »

sriramk wrote: post #46
rvivek wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just moved to valley :)

Nice. We should meet up :) Also, another tidbit for folks here - Yuvi is following the startup lifestyle by taking a break from college and joining this startup. Which is a big, big deal in India. I'm very impressed

It's a big decision for anyone to make, in my opinion.

Re: Interview Street (YC S11) streamlines the search for great programmers

#60

Post by Jd »

doctoboggan wrote: post #14

The guy in the live chat said they look negatively on large numbers of submits. I think this is a poor idea for two reasons. 1) This will simply encourage people to develop offsite and submit when they have working code. On their site they allow recruiters to see what applicants are typing in real time, and pushing people off site will render this function useless. 2) In interpreted languages like python my work flow…

Codility has a great test feature. You can load test data and see if the output is what you expect it to be.
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