I think this is the wrong sort of attitude to have towards hiring. Maybe interviews are suboptimal for finding good talent. Whatever. But if you want a job and you already KNOW the sort of tricks and games go on for these interviews, then why not just play the game? Do the adequate interview prep and land the job. It's that simple.
Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
521–530 of 693 posts
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
I run a small company and I absolutely refuse to have an HR department. We're still small enough that this is fairly easy to work around. My recent hires are all just people I met at events. I'm told by people outside the company that they're all very happy workers. We do not do technical interviews. We talk casually about past work and what people want to achieve. After hiring we usually find out they have a differe…
That does sound like a nice play to work. How do I get in touch?
I wish I were hiring! I just doubled the team though so I'm not bringing anyone new on for the next ~6mo probably. Sorry!
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. I cringed when I checked out his Github profile because its one of those things that immediately throw up a red flag. To each their own on their personal time, but you can't seriously expect that being associated with a stigmatized hobby is going to gain you anything.
While it's hardly fair I have to agree. I'm acquainted with a few and they are generally cool people but part of the brony identity does seem to be tied directly to the stigma against them. I wonder if feeling like they have to hide it makes them more resistant to hiding it? It's such a silly thing, but humans are animals and we have annoying or shitty things like pack/tribe mentalities.
From knowing these guys for so long, they try their absolute best not to hide it and go pretty far to show it off in a way that's not really in your face. Gotta hand it to them for sticking up for their interests considering how much negativity the crowd receives. That said, the friends I mentioned really, really dislike most other bronies for being consistently over the top.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's what he meant by "[...] if I had looked at Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm and breadth-first search one day before my interview, this would have been a trivial problem to solve [...].". Sure, BFS is 'easy' but it's not really something that stays fresh in your memory after years of not having to use it. I completely agree with his point that it if you have to study for an interview, the process is b…
I mean... I'm 17 years out of college and I remember it. I don't have an implementation that I can just write out from memory or anything, but I remember the basics of how the algorithm works and I assume I could come up with an implementation that works.
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Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#525Here's an O(N) solution to the `findSum` problem in Ruby:
def findSum(array1, array2, sum)
complements = array1.map{|x| sum - x}.reverse
i = complements.count - 1
j = array2.count - 1
while i >= 0 && j >= 0
return true if complements[i] == array2[j]
if complements[i] > array2[j]
i -= 1
else
j -= 1
end
end
false
endRe: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#526The author claiming he'll never need to do a BFS, and thus does not need to know it is kind of funny to read. You should never be proud of your ignorance.
Oh, you think you're a front-end dev and will never need to do anything else? What happened to striving for growth (personal and professional)? Why not learn how to write a BFS instead of writing a rant about your pride in not knowing it? Are you really just proud of doing your one thing, doing it well, and have no interest in ever branching out? If so, it is not surprise nobody will hire you (who needs a single-use tool?). If not, then also no surprise as you've shown a complete lack of desire to learn (who needs an inflexible employee?).
I am further sorry to tell you that your github history is irrelevant. I've seen _my_ code on github under 10 names. None of them mine. I'd never trust anyone's github profile - no reason to believe they wrote the code, they did it themselves, and how many attemtps of guess-and-check they needed (or not). You know what I do trust? Your ability to prove your "skills", in person, under realistic pressure, on demand, and on a schedule. You know, by solving a problem perhaps a bit out of your comfort zone. Maybe a simple maze?
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
Author learned that hiring is broken.
This isn't a fact set in stone. These are objective observations. It completely depends on the goals of those involved. Even in 'bad' interviews, there is an argument that there's value there. Is efficiency trending upwards or downwards in building our professional relationships? It's Impossible to quantify from these anecdotes.
"Even in 'bad' interviews, there is an argument that there's value there."
You must have lost your mind.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#528The author claiming he'll never need to do a BFS, and thus does not need to know it is kind of funny to read. You should never be proud of your ignorance. Oh, you think you're a front-end dev and will never need to do anything else? What happened to striving for growth (personal and professional)? Why not learn how to write a BFS instead of writing a rant about your pride in not knowing it? Are you really just proud…
A jack of all trades isn't inherently better at all trades. There's great value to be found in a specialist.
And if you're hiring a front-end pay him as such. If you want him to know more than front-end beforehand, pay him extra.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#529The author claiming he'll never need to do a BFS, and thus does not need to know it is kind of funny to read. You should never be proud of your ignorance. Oh, you think you're a front-end dev and will never need to do anything else? What happened to striving for growth (personal and professional)? Why not learn how to write a BFS instead of writing a rant about your pride in not knowing it? Are you really just proud…
A jack of all trades isn't inherently better at all trades. There's great value to be found in a specialist. And if you're hiring a front-end pay him as such. If you want him to know more than front-end beforehand, pay him extra.
specialist != only know one thing
specialist = know one thing well, many things a little
only know one thing = useless one-time-use-tool whom i will contract for exactly my one-time-problem and then move on from
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#530I've been doing a little interviewing at my company, hiring engineers. I tend to avoid the pop quiz questions because I, having been asked them in interviews before, can't imagine they're that valuable, and, considering our field has plenty of introverts and autism spectrum-types, it's probably not representative of their abilities in a real work environment.
HOWEVER. One candidate had a PhD and was very agreeable, had lots of experience in other companies in our field. So I skipped the programming test, since I figured a PhD with loads of experience must be able to code...
A colleague of mine saw the candidate as they were leaving and ducked. I asked them why. "Well, I personally lead to them getting fired a few jobs ago." Turns out Colleague worked very closely with Candidate and Candidate can't code worth shit: Colleague ended up personally redoing a ton of Candidate's botched work, Boss noticed Colleague working way late for no good reason, and after several chances, had to let Candidate go since they couldn't do their job.
Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that I need to ask in-depth technical problems, but I'll phrase it like this: "I'd like you to describe an A* path-finding algorithm the best way you can (pseudocode, diagrams, assembly, whatever). I'm not looking for a 'correct' answer, or syntax or class diagrams. I want to watch how you solve problems of which you only have a vague knowledge. If you'd like to refer to some resource, feel free to ask, and I'll tell you if I know, or I'll find out."
I suspect this is the point of the technical question, but it's hard to tell what interviewers actually want.