Coding interviews are stupid (ish) • Hacker News Board

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#51

Post by speeder » Tue, May 07, 2024, 1:51 PM UTC

citizen_friend wrote: post #20

teeray wrote: post #10

The coding interview looks different when you view it for what it would be called in other industries: a licensure examination. It looks particularly insane to relicense for every single job you apply to. It also looks supremely unfair to have proctors for this exam with varying expectations and training to actually correctly administer it.

- licensing ensures only a minimum level of quality - people with licenses still do interviews, often just as grueling - licensed careers with high performers (lawyers, doctors, ib, etc) have other forms of filtering which are much more painful, like years of low pay internships Studying for a few weeks to solve fun puzzles to make 400k sounds like a deal to me.

What kind of job pay 400k? Even when I worked as C++ guru at BMW and was hired as very senior my before taxes compensation was 40k (year).

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#52

Post by ok123456 » Tue, May 07, 2024, 1:51 PM UTC

I've found that asking them to review some obviously bad code with glaring errors and problems is more informative than asking them to solve some random DSA problem.

Candidates who can code well can point out code that has obvious problems. Just ask if this is good or bad, and if it is bad, how they could improve it. This demonstrates competency and doesn't make the interview seem like a grind but instead more like a conversation.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#53

Post by relaxing » Tue, May 07, 2024, 1:52 PM UTC

sshine wrote: post #18

At this point, I’ve had enough successful positions at hard jobs that I don’t question my competency when I fail a pop quiz. I still don’t know what my favourite Rust crate is. I feel I should have one after being asked more than a couple of times.

Don’t overthink it, just talk about something you like about the language. The interviewer wants to hear relevant words that demonstrate you’ve actually worked in the space (and not just did a tutorial or read a blog post.)

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#54

Post by fileeditview » Tue, May 07, 2024, 1:53 PM UTC

lazide wrote: post #35

To bastardize a quote - ‘it’s a terrible system of government, but it’s the least terrible one we’ve been able to find’ Seriously, what are the alternatives?

I've talked with applicants about their private projects. It gave me great insights. Also take home tasks with a discussion afterwards are a good thing and can be an alternative if candidates don't have private projects to talk about.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#55

Post by relaxing » Tue, May 07, 2024, 1:53 PM UTC

leetrout wrote: post #27

I have never heard of the negative base question (I would have never passed that without help): https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/216800/how-i-conver... My worst interview questions that were silly: • number theory for django dev: how many prime numbers are there. • random brain teaser for django dev: infinite lasers pointed in space that turn at each other at the rotational speed of light- does the intersecti…

The paint fill one is funny because the answer they’re probably looking for (demonstrate you’re comfortable with recursion) is actually the naive answer (blows up in practice.)

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#56

Post by whstl » Tue, May 07, 2024, 1:55 PM UTC

Mashimo wrote: post #13

cranberryturkey wrote: post #2

[flagged]

I think I only know a single programmer that does side projects. Work gives me time to look a new stuff and pays for courses. I mean I do have side projects, but those are all in a language I'm not specialized in and often single class small helper programs.

I'm often the only one when I work in smaller companies.

And the best developer I ever worked with had zero public repositories in Github. Now that gave me some perspective.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#57

Post by naw1 » Tue, May 07, 2024, 1:55 PM UTC

My approach has been giving candidates simple real world problems, e.g. extract the URLs from this file given a spec and a description of a few language builtins. I'll throw a few curveballs in depending on how they do but my goal isn't to stump them.

I'm mostly looking to filter out the candidates that flat out can't code or describe their thought process while coding. You'd be surprised how many candidates I've interviewed pass the resume check, get to the interview and can't reason out a problem that could be solved with two for loops and an if statement.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#58

Post by cmrdporcupine » Tue, May 07, 2024, 2:01 PM UTC

parpfish wrote: post #46

eep_social wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40211188

The company that demands cutting edge experience is a strava for skateboarders app? I thought he was going to say that it was something like a foundational R&D lab or cybersecurity firm

Yeah sounds like the measure of "cutting edge experience" here is defined as "has recently thrashed around in latest trendy JS framework"

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#59

Post by BerislavLopac » Tue, May 07, 2024, 2:03 PM UTC

spicyusername wrote: post #44

lazide wrote: post #35

To bastardize a quote - ‘it’s a terrible system of government, but it’s the least terrible one we’ve been able to find’ Seriously, what are the alternatives?

Standardized licenses, per language / domain / etc, that expire and / or something analogous to professional engineering licensure in harder engineering disciplines. Take the leetcode tests once every 5 years or so. Mentor for a few years with an experienced, and already licensed, engineer and get their approval. Then the interviews can skip the drudgery and can be higher level and higher quality.

Standardised on what exactly? There are so many methodologies and/or tools, with endless possible combinations, each of which can reach the desired result in terms of functionality and even quality. And enforcing just one means no possibility of progress.

In physical engineering, things are very much limited by physical laws, which don't change (and even if our understanding on them might, that happens rarely enough to adapt). In software engineering, the foundational principles can and do change many times in an average engineer's career.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#60

Post by HarHarVeryFunny » Tue, May 07, 2024, 2:06 PM UTC

benreesman wrote: post #19

The modern FAANG Frankenstein interview is a mess. It was so/so at Google 15-20 years ago, it was so/so when initially FB but most everyone cargo-culted it 10-15 years ago. It’s become “grind leetcode” which is clearly a failure mode. The trouble is it’s a hard problem, and it usually gives - some signal, so it’s sort of better than nothing? I guess? In cases where contract-to-hire make sense for both the company and…

Google did the "how many gas stations in the us" interviews for years before finally realizing that doing well on questions like this had no correlation to success on the job. Now, in reaction to that failure, everyone is doing the LeetCode thing instead, and presumably will eventually realize that this doesn't correlate either (especially irrelevant in this CoPilot era when ability to memorize and code up an algorithm is becoming about as relevant as ability to drive a stick-shift car).

There's really no substitute for interviewing based on candidate's experience.

Apparently the new job market trend is applicants firing off dozens/hundreds of AI generated applications, which are then screened by an AI on the other end.