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Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

darrenkopp.com

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Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#511

Post by lr4444lr »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #500

My attitude towards code interviews is to politely decline them and encourage people best of luck hiring a junior developer; because that's obviously what they are looking for. I'm closing in on 50, so not that junior anymore. If anyone has any doubts about my coding abilities after reading my CV, browsing my Github repos, and talking to me, then it's not going to work and we can both save ourselves some time. I've s…

I think you're completely ignoring the reality of frauds. Jeff Atwood was writing about this over a decade ago with "FizzBuzz".

There are many people who spend more effort creating the illusion of competence on paper and on the job, getting harder to detect the higher they go.

We as a profession (software engineers) have continually resisted broad unified certification like other engineers which could be a replacement for code interviews to assess competence, but would have other drawbacks.

So we are stuck with code interviews to ferret out BSers. And even then it sometimes fails. But it appears to be the best tool we have, because there is nowhere to hide. Don't take ot so personally.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#512

Post by OJFord »

willvarfar wrote: post #504
jillesvangurp wrote: post #500

My attitude towards code interviews is to politely decline them and encourage people best of luck hiring a junior developer; because that's obviously what they are looking for. I'm closing in on 50, so not that junior anymore. If anyone has any doubts about my coding abilities after reading my CV, browsing my Github repos, and talking to me, then it's not going to work and we can both save ourselves some time. I've s…

FWIW I always ask some really super simple coding questions in interviews, even for really senior people with apparently stellar CVs. Let them pick their language or use psuedocode or whatever. It's surprising how many 'senior' engineers are actually BSers who will slow you down or derail you completely rather than speed you up and you need to spot them because they will excel at getting through the non-technical int…

> Also, I'm interested in how you explore things and explain things. I'm not actually interested in acquiring an implementation of FizzBuzz or whatever. I just want you to show me that you 'get' it and then we can get on to the interesting stuff like 'tell me about your last project' etc.

Sounds like you'd more valuably/realistically get that from the discussion of a previous project though? How it works, or something interesting they had to figure out, etc.?

> don't be too hasty to think the people doing technical interviews are idiots

I don't think anyone has a problem with technical interviews? At least I agree that's not reasonable. That doesn't have to mean 'coding' though, you can ask about how they'd approach a particular problem, quiz on some fundamental knowledge in a fizzbuzz sort of way, etc.

You can more easily tune it to the kind of candidate you're looking for then too, for example I've asked how they'd tackle improving the performance of a particular SQL query that's been identified as too slow. There's a tonne of possible answers to that ranging from naïve/they don't really know, through pragmatic good fit responses, to way overkill I hope they understand we don't need them doing that here/not operating at that scale etc. - and it's fairly open-ended in what you can discuss driven by what they volunteer and know about. (Which is another good thing IMO, I don't like being on either side of interviewer quizzing and candidate umming and ahhing not really knowing! Both more comfortable and more beneficial to have a discussion about whatever is known IMO; to quickly move along the perimeter if you hit the edge of that.)

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#513

Post by OJFord »

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.

Aren't probationary periods pretty standard, in many/all industries and countries too not just software?

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#514

Post by mrweasel »

M4v3R wrote: post #505
jillesvangurp wrote: post #500

My attitude towards code interviews is to politely decline them and encourage people best of luck hiring a junior developer; because that's obviously what they are looking for. I'm closing in on 50, so not that junior anymore. If anyone has any doubts about my coding abilities after reading my CV, browsing my Github repos, and talking to me, then it's not going to work and we can both save ourselves some time. I've s…

I totally understand your point of view, but looking at it from the other side it’s not as simple. We had candidates with 10+ years of experience in their resume, talking to them it seemed they know what they’re doing, they showed some of the code they’ve supposedly written. Then they got hired and it turned out they can’t code - their PRs are below junior level, constant bugs, communication is abysmal, they overshoo…

We recently interviewed a candidate, with 7 years of experience at a FAANG company, fail a really basic coding interview and we don't even make you write code.

I have no idea what these people expect. We ask coding questions, we have basic programming skills as a requirement, what do they think will happen if they get the job? Do they expect to just magically learn the required skills or hope that nobody will notice that they're not able to close their tasks?

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#515

Post by vntok »

mrweasel wrote: post #514
M4v3R wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally understand your point of view, but looking at it from the other side it’s not as simple. We had candidates with 10+ years of experience in their resume, talking to them it seemed they know what they’re doing, they showed some of the code they’ve supposedly written. Then they got hired and it turned out they can’t code - their PRs are below junior level, constant bugs, communication is abysmal, they overshoo…

We recently interviewed a candidate, with 7 years of experience at a FAANG company, fail a really basic coding interview and we don't even make you write code. I have no idea what these people expect. We ask coding questions, we have basic programming skills as a requirement, what do they think will happen if they get the job? Do they expect to just magically learn the required skills or hope that nobody will notice…

> Do they expect to just magically learn the required skills or hope that nobody will notice that they're not able to close their tasks?

It obviously worked for the candidate you mention, didn't it? Spent 7 years at FAANG, didn't know how to code.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#516

Post by triceratops »

Terr_ wrote: post #468
triceratops wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs at software companies in the US. Other industries don't pay very much for technical talent. $40k is extremely low for a senior role. Even in places like India or China.

> Jobs at software companies in the US. A few very rare jobs at software companies in the US. The BLS median for 2024 is way lower, at $110k. (Yet at the same time, still much higher than parent-poster's $40k figure.)

I assume the BLS median accounts for all software jobs. That would include software jobs at GM (the US equivalent of BMW), banks, insurance companies, and the rest of the economy. Does it control for industry?

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#517

Post by wasteduniverse »

xandrius wrote: post #257
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 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…

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Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#518

Post by andai »

lr4444lr wrote: post #511
jillesvangurp wrote: post #500

My attitude towards code interviews is to politely decline them and encourage people best of luck hiring a junior developer; because that's obviously what they are looking for. I'm closing in on 50, so not that junior anymore. If anyone has any doubts about my coding abilities after reading my CV, browsing my Github repos, and talking to me, then it's not going to work and we can both save ourselves some time. I've s…

I think you're completely ignoring the reality of frauds. Jeff Atwood was writing about this over a decade ago with "FizzBuzz". There are many people who spend more effort creating the illusion of competence on paper and on the job, getting harder to detect the higher they go. We as a profession (software engineers) have continually resisted broad unified certification like other engineers which could be a replacemen…

>even then it sometimes fails

How can a code interview fail? Hidden earpiece?

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#519

Post by wasteduniverse »

speeder wrote: post #51
citizen_friend wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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).

[dead]

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#520

Post by DrDroop »

M4v3R wrote: post #505
jillesvangurp wrote: post #500

My attitude towards code interviews is to politely decline them and encourage people best of luck hiring a junior developer; because that's obviously what they are looking for. I'm closing in on 50, so not that junior anymore. If anyone has any doubts about my coding abilities after reading my CV, browsing my Github repos, and talking to me, then it's not going to work and we can both save ourselves some time. I've s…

I totally understand your point of view, but looking at it from the other side it’s not as simple. We had candidates with 10+ years of experience in their resume, talking to them it seemed they know what they’re doing, they showed some of the code they’ve supposedly written. Then they got hired and it turned out they can’t code - their PRs are below junior level, constant bugs, communication is abysmal, they overshoo…

The IT job market is a two sided lemon market, people may lie on their CV but companies can be very abusive as well. If you don't do what OP suggests, people will not respect you. I've had five developers join my interview call to see if I can implement a palindrome checker. This is proof that non of them bothered to read my CV and check out my github projects. This is not respectful, and you have to stand your ground against such nonsens. Let them now this is not what you expect from people working for you and and that you expect better from them in the future. If they don't like that you won't have lost anything.
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