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Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

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Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#521

Post by philjohn »

cushychicken wrote: post #418
philjohn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see, I've had the opposite experience whenever I've been looking for my next challenge. I've had recruiters talk to me at length about each of the people I'd be meeting in the on-site, their backgrounds, what they'd be covering. I've had ones give me broad strokes about why previous candidates were passed on. At the end of the day, it's not in their interest to bring too many people to an on-site who will fail sp…

I'm reading a little between the lines of your comment, but two possible interpretations of your post are: 1) You've had the good fortune to work with good recruiters/HR reps, and 2) You're a qualified candidate for the role they're bringing you in for. I say that because of an HN comment I saw from a recruiter (maybe Aline Lerner? Don't remember) that they typically send in one unqualified candidate to interview for…

Good point - perhaps it's a little of column A, a little of column B.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#522

Post by jlokier »

RichardCA wrote: post #479
jlokier wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s just too many high quality candidates and too few positions. That can't be true simultaneously with "companies are having trouble finding good enough candidates", which is often said these days. What can be true: There are many high quality candidates, and many positions looking for high quality candidates, but they cannot find each other and overcome matching hurdles. So you have candidates applying to a l…

When two contradictory ideas are true at the same time we call that a paradox. There are reasons why the current IT hiring status quo seems to be so paradoxical. https://itnext.io/the-cloud-skills-shortage-and-the-unemploy...

I agree (and I'm fond of the word "paradox" too).

Interesting link, thanks.

I've tried to reconcile that paradox by seeing it as a matching problem which requires both candidates and companies to be overwhelmed with attempts to find a good fit with each other.

However, reading the linked article gives another perspective on it. Which is, frankly, a worrying perspective for candidates, in that it suggests the labour market is shrinking and bifurcating (just like everything else these days) into "haves" and "have nots", where crossing from the latter to the former group may be getting more difficult with time.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#523

Post by jlokier »

mnm1 wrote: post #507
jlokier wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whenever we want a great candidate, we go from resumes to hired in less than a month. A month is considered fast?! I guess as long as the great candidate you're hiring is not looking at other options. A recently saw a recruiter lamenting that their clients needed to be told that if they don't make a hiring decision within 2-3 days of introduction, they tend to miss out on the best engineers, who get offers from els…

It's not? Because I see people here complaining about open positions that stay open for months to years, or that they can't find candidates at all. The breakdown is roughly 1 week for phone screens, 1 week for main interviews, 1 week for the follow-up coding test / code review with a candidate, then the offer. So 3-4 weeks from start to finish. I simply don't see how it could possibly go any faster. We are still doin…

Fair enough.

If you have a steady stream of equally capable, qualified candidates, it's a buyer's market and you don't need to do anything. Carry on :-)

There are other companies who complain that they can't find qualified candidates though. Some of those have those positions that stay open for months.

Those are the ones the recruiters urge to change practices so they have a chance at getting "the best" engineers, on the rare occasions "the best" interview with them. The seller's market situation, where buyers need to compete.

It sounds like you don't have that problem though.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#524

Post by e40 »

thr0w__4w4y wrote: post #482
e40 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One has to wonder, then, why they didn't hire you. I have a theory. It's quite cynical, but it's taken me about 5 decades to arrive at it: life is a beauty pageant. I don't say this lightly. It was a very slow process to get to this point. A friend, colleague recently interviewed at a very popular, pre-IPO company that is often discussed (positively) here. He doesn't look like your typical engineer, but he's literall…

> He doesn't look like your typical engineer Can you elaborate on that?

He didn't conform to the "white guys, 20-30" part. I worded it badly.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#525

Post by p_l »

perl4ever wrote: post #458
p_l wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that they are composed as riddles, with the whole thing made so that unless you trained yourself on solving riddles, you might not figure out that it's a fermi problem. Meanwhile asking questions that are grounded in the actual work you're going to have the candidate do, often gets you people making the estimation even if they haven't heard of Fermi Estimation, ever. That's what makes them riddles, to…

People often confuse knowing things with being smart . It seems useful to me to ask questions that sound on the face of it like things nobody knows, but can actually be figured out based on knowledge everyone has, because it reduces the elements of chance and bias from testing arbitrary knowledge. When someone says they hate "logic problems", it sounds as though they're talking about this: https://www.pennydellpuzzle…

The thing you miss is that your assumptions of "things everybody knows" are not necessarily correct.

Many common examples of interview riddles that are defended as "it's just Fermi Estimation!" end up "memorise, interview, forget" method for many people, because there's close to total disconnect between assumed background knowledge and actual background knowledge (a question I encountered recently asked for estimate of revenue of an MLB stadium. If not for being spelled immediately after, my questioning would start with "wtf is MLB?").

Then there is the other part, namely that unless you don't know (memorise) certain common tropes of a Fermi quiz, you might understand the question as asking correct answer, not showing that you can use random number for most of the input data.

That said, I have been asked things that are fermi estimation problems on interviews that didn't suck and didn't feel like pointless riddles of Mensa wanna-bees. They tended to be based on the work problems, thus allowing to have a real and concrete expectation that the interviewee shares the background knowledge (in fact, part of the reason for the question might be checking if they do share that knowledge!). That kind rarely gets the flak of "how many piano tuners in city of Chicago".

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#526

Post by frankzinger »

lubujackson wrote: post #250
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally find some of the current (if I can call them) standards of tech hiring to be very narrow in which skills and capabilities they test. What would you propose as an alternative? I’ve been involved in training new engineering managers how to hire and interview. Everyone starts with the best intentions, but reality quickly forces some compromises. The bottom line is that you only have a number of hours in w…

Honestly, the "coding" is rarely the issue. For most software engineering roles you generally want someone who can: understand problems, figure out possible solutions, decide on which is best, communicate why it is best and (importantly) be flexible when the company wants you to do some other solution. Meet all those requirements and you are a useful member at most companies. I think a general chat about a broad prob…

> than whiteboarding some memorized algorithm.

This is not how it works! There are over 1000 problems on leetcode. Sure, many of them are solved using the same techniques but there is usually a twist and you often need to combine multiple approaches or come up with something new (to you). And then there is usually a very problem-specific way in which the problem can be solved 10 or 50 times faster. Often these insights are very difficult to come up with. The people who created these questions are actually very smart and excepting some of the questions at the easiest level it's usually a far cry from simply implementing Dijkstra from memory!

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#527

Post by simonebrunozzi »

achievingApathy wrote: post #238

I will never forget the time I was given a coding "challenge" and sent home with the instruction to send it back whenever I felt it was complete. This sent my OCD into overdrive, of course. For the better part of two days straight I coded my heart out and came up with this (what I thought perfect) robust system with all the bells and whistles. Heard nothing back. At all. My calls into the recruiter went unreturned an…

Sue them.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#528

Post by zimpenfish »

cameronbrown wrote: post #432
zimpenfish wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s just too many high quality candidates and too few positions. That would be believable if the same positions weren't being advertised for a year or more[1]; e.g. I've had one position[2] sent to me at least 5 times in the last year by different recruiters. [1] In London, at least. [2] Interesting work and a job I'd want but unfortunately the corporate culture is 100% no-go for me.

London is just too expensive for the salaries some of these companies are offering though..

That was another reason I wasn't interested in that position - I'll suck up a lot of corporate nonsense for contractor money but not for low-perm money.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#529

Post by perl4ever »

p_l wrote: post #525
perl4ever wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often confuse knowing things with being smart . It seems useful to me to ask questions that sound on the face of it like things nobody knows, but can actually be figured out based on knowledge everyone has, because it reduces the elements of chance and bias from testing arbitrary knowledge. When someone says they hate "logic problems", it sounds as though they're talking about this: https://www.pennydellpuzzle…

The thing you miss is that your assumptions of "things everybody knows" are not necessarily correct. Many common examples of interview riddles that are defended as "it's just Fermi Estimation!" end up "memorise, interview, forget" method for many people, because there's close to total disconnect between assumed background knowledge and actual background knowledge (a question I encountered recently asked for estimate…

"your assumptions of "things everybody knows""

The fact that not everyone knows the same things is the whole point! And if you don't have any knowledge that is related to the interviewer's, then how are they going to evaluate you using any method?

But sure, there are specific, inflexible requirements. You have to know false precision is BS, and I have no sympathy for people who have a problem with that. You have to in general, know what you know and what you don't.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#530

Post by tasuki »

inertiatic wrote: post #505
tasuki wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry, but what you've outlined above doesn't show that you value the candidates' time. You require two rounds of technical interviews before any human contact. It's asymmetrical. By automating the first two steps, you've made it so that you can waste as much of the applicants' time as you want without expending any further time or resources on your part. I understand this was the goal. You can either waste your co…

That's playing the short game. If as mentioned previously wasting candidates' time filters out the most competent people, then you're not helping your employer. Also, I object to thinking that someone's time needs to be "wasted".

Good points, agreed.
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