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Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

darrenkopp.com

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Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#561

Post by metabagel »

kevincox wrote: post #250
nineplay wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the candidate has been assured that they will be asked 'leet' code questions where solving the problem isn't enough, they will also be asked about O notation and how the code can be optimized and whether to use memoization or recursion. This is what the books will tell you, this is what YouTube will tell you, this is what 'helpful' recruiters will tell you. And IME this is what most interviewers h…

I will ask all of those questions. But I don't expect perfect answers. You should at least know what big O is. I would really like it if you can tell an O(n^2) algorithm from a linear one. (That is often really important in real-world code). I would like you to consider different ways you can optimize the code. I don't expect you to quickly crank out a novel optimal algorithm. But I like to see that you can think abo…

As an electrical engineer who has basically always worked as an embedded programmer, I don't know what big O is. But, I'm probably not applying for your open positions.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#562

Post by bobthepanda »

willcipriano wrote: post #554
bobthepanda wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Codes on their spare time” is not part of the job description, but “codes at all” is. There are plenty of reasons not to code on spare time. If anything the people who are most likely to do that are often also the people who coding interviews are supposed to be privileging, fresh single college grads. I don’t know how people would square the statements “take-home assignments are unpaid labor and unfair to people wit…

If it would take the candidate "spending every waking moment of their lives coding" to have one or two small coding projects after a half decade plus in the field, that's a signal. If you went to college but never made anything, that's a signal. If you didn't go to college, and never made anything, just shut up and make something.

In a half decade plus some people pick up other commitments that are not side projects, like a pet, a child, sports, hiking, etc.

At the end of the day, it isn’t really relevant to the employer what is done in spare time off the job when they get hired, so it’s not like I should privilege their spare time projects over people who don’t do that, particularly if people don’t want to code off the clock. There are plenty of good engineers who do not code off the clock, and there are plenty of bad engineers who do.

Also, more often than not, coding off the clock for the sake of having a portfolio is not really indicative of anything. There aren’t, for example, review processes or anything like that in a one person side project, and unless I spend significantly more hours background checking who’s to say the side project is not plagiarized? People already lie on their resumes today.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#563

Post by kevincox »

metabagel wrote: post #561
kevincox wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will ask all of those questions. But I don't expect perfect answers. You should at least know what big O is. I would really like it if you can tell an O(n^2) algorithm from a linear one. (That is often really important in real-world code). I would like you to consider different ways you can optimize the code. I don't expect you to quickly crank out a novel optimal algorithm. But I like to see that you can think abo…

As an electrical engineer who has basically always worked as an embedded programmer, I don't know what big O is. But, I'm probably not applying for your open positions.

It definitely depends on the domain. In embedded programming you can often know that your n is small for your algorithms. If you are making a desktop app or web service it is very important to prepare for people using your service in unexpected ways and a super linear algorithm can result in terrible performance or downtime if not managed correctly.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#564

Post by spacebanana7 »

wanderlust123 wrote: post #381
dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also if a senior person can't in 30/45 min of talking with someone figure out the general experience level then the problem is them, really. Actually most of them, including the really inexperienced juniors have 'figured' you out in less that 15 minutes, or at least they have decided whether to hire you or not in 15 minutes. But they have to put on a charade of being fair. Also a 'white' older male is the least pre…

Got any evidence for the following claim: “ Also a 'white' older male is the least preferred even if he is smarter compared to all females and the minorities that are being interviewed as long as they are not terrible. Biases galore.”

Isn't that the definition of affirmative action? Which most companies claim to do (e.g Google [1]).

Admittedly Google also claims not to discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics, which is somewhat contradictory to the definition of affirmative action as positive discrimination [2].

[1] https://www.google.com/about/careers/applications/eeo/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#565

Post by gigel82 »

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…

There are very few options outside of coding interviews, and getting fewer by the day.

It's almost like everyone big and small is standardizing on this model. Feels like one of those mandatory courses you took in college: the teacher and all the students knew it was bullshit yet you needed to perform the parroting at some adequate level to pass.

I have 21 years of varied experience in software engineering, yet a recent "technical" phone interview was a kid asking me to "balance a B-tree"; I can tell his expectation was for me to start reciting some CS algorithm BS, probably that's what everyone else is doing. I politely declined and that was the end of the interviewing process with that company.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#566

Post by arcticbull »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #556
arcticbull wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not generally the responsibility of the person doing the technical screen to also obtain signal on past experience. At a company with recruiting process these fall on different people specialized in the specific interview types. I’ve done an average of 2-3 interviews a week over several employers for the last 12 years, so over a thousand interviews. I’ve also defined much tech interview loop for my current emplo…

If you don't have a resume, do you still ask about candidates experience? Many people can talk a good game and come across well but still be useless (e.g. hard fail on the simplest of white board tests). I haven't done interviewing (on company's side of table) for a long time, but my main tack was always to go over projects on resume, focusing on last 5 years, and drill down to see if they could fluently talk about t…

Maybe we were talking past each other a bit — for the specific technical portion of the interview where you are assessing coding ability (the thing you can leetcode to practice for), the resume doesn’t really add much value and can serve to bias the interviewer.

There is usually an experience and goals interview where a manager interviews the candidate to see if they would make a good fit for the team. That definitely involves a resume and a discussion of past work experience with the objective of confirm if they’re a cog or a tech lead :)

It can be important to split them up especially if you’re relying on more junior technical interviewers to validate coding skill. They won’t always know what they’re looking for yet along this axis.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#567

Post by around_here »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #551
OJFord wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 somethin…

> 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.? You may be underestimating people's ability to bullshit their way through this sort of discussion. It's harder to bullshit your way past a blank file in a code editor. I'd wager that something like FizzBuzz will eliminate 90% of the chaff. Yes,…

FizzBuzz is an incredible filter for devs. Any kind of async JavaScript that needs to do something with the data after it fetches it has also been a winner. Lately the biggest weeding tool has been asking candidates to fetch some JSON from a bucket, then visualize that data. I'd say that maybe half the people manage to fetch the data in 30 minutes, and of that, maybe 10% get the data fetched within 10. The other 20 minutes is trying to help them recognize that their data is initially being rendered with "undefined" and they have to update the viz.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#568

Post by weezin »

rockemsockem wrote: post #195
weezin wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is a very small part of the battle of being an effective software engineer. It leaves out: - communicating - teaching - dealing with ambiguity - navigating politics - working cross-functionally Most high level individual contributors at large tech companies don't even code.

What makes you say they don't even code? In my experience coding is indeed drastically reduced, but high level ICs still regularly code.

Looking at their commit history.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#569

Post by weezin »

whimsicalism wrote: post #210
weezin wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is a very small part of the battle of being an effective software engineer. It leaves out: - communicating - teaching - dealing with ambiguity - navigating politics - working cross-functionally Most high level individual contributors at large tech companies don't even code.

i have experienced a lot of people who have convinced themselves they are adding value despite not coding, yes

System design isn't coding and reviewing all designs across 40+ people and leading cross team tech initiatives is a full time job.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#570

Post by spacebanana7 »

dbcurtis wrote: post #408
ipaddr wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are testing on a skill you can train you are doing it wrong.

Your comment contains some interesting assumptions. I don’t think we are aligned on how to surface thought processes. Your comment, taken to extreme, would say there is no point in looking for software design skills at all, because we can “train” anyone with an internal coding boot camp. I doubt that is what you mean.

The whole nature versus nurture of skill comes into play.

On one hand anyone can learn anything with enough effort; and on the other any smart person can learn anything without trying much at all.

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