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Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

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Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#571

Post by daurnimator »

pjlegato wrote: post #472
daurnimator wrote: post #13

The purposes of these interviews is not (usually) to see if you know the answer. It's to see how you problem solve. If you knew the correct answer to e.g. the BFS algorithm, you'll get thrown another question that they hope you don't know. When interviewing, the thing I want to see most is how someone works through a problem: can they solve from first principles? do they go via trial and error? do they ask for a comp…

That sounds nicer than what 95% of programming interviewers actually do, which is something rather different. Almost all are simply playing "programming trivia." They name an algorithm or a data structure, and then evaluate whether you can recite it from memory. That's it. There is no problem-solving element involved. It is purely a test of whether you can memorize and recite. This requires a lot less effort on the p…

I'd say that VPs of engineering and CTOs have what I described in mind, but the execution faulters.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#572

Post by dryajov »

jfaucett wrote: post #260

I think this boils down to just knowing what you are. Are you a computer scientist or a programmer? These are two very different things - as much as many people like to think they are not. To be a good (or very good) general software programmer you need about as much math and physics as someone who has completed 9th grade. Some areas of programming will require specialized math knowledge of course i.e. basic linear a…

This, thats exactly what I think. We as an industry are so confused about what we do that it's starting to become a real problem. Engineering is very different from science and many companies are interviewing as if hiring a scientist, for what is essentially an engineering role, and when they get someone that can crack algos left and right, but can't code in real life situations, they wonder WTF?

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#573

Post by dclowd9901 »

stale2002 wrote: post #557
dclowd9901 wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love for you to try to explain to me how it's relevant to my front end javascript to write a moving window algorithm in 45 minutes on a white board. I have no problem with thinking engineers should be able to understand and implement algorithms. I have a real problem with thinking they need to know them off the top of their head. Wouldn't a more reasonable approach be to give an algorithm and ask the person to im…

Gladly! Lets say your software as a service website has a real time analytics graph, so that customers can look at statistics of how much they are using the service in real time. One potential question a customer might want to know is "How many API calls have I made over the last hour". This is a moving window average question, and it needs to be displayed/done on the front end. My company that I work at has such a f…

Thank you for the example, but this is not a generalized problem, and is very specific to your domain, so it would be silly to receive such a question from companies that are not your company, which I have had happen.

If I were applying for your company, I would expect to have to implement an algorithm like this on the job, but I don't see why I should have to know it to get the job. As long as I was capable of implementing algorithms as described, wouldn't that be the most important factor?

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#574

Post by ljw1001 »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #567
serge2k wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not BFS exactly, but I did a breadth first traversal of a graph a couple weeks ago. Could I have dug up a library to do what I needed, sure I guess. Easier to take 20 minutes and just write the tool.

> Easier to take 20 minutes and just write the tool. What? That would be a huge red flag in my book. Where are your unit tests? I'm not trusting your 20 minute off the cuff reproduction of classic algorithms in any business critical piece of the code, not ever. This would get you booted from a lot of places, or at least given a stern talking to for doing something that seems slick, cool, and time-saving in the short…

Agreed. Spending twenty minutes finding a good library would be time much better spent

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#575

Post by 1stranger »

m4tthumphrey wrote: post #253

Fancy moving to the UK? :) Seriously there's a job with your name on it if you're interested. When I interview candidates I sit with them for half an hour or so to get to know them. Then I give them purposely broken, poorly written piece of code which I tell them to pull apart. This proves incredibly effective as even if they miss some of the more obvious errors I can at least point them in that area and then see if…

You talk to them, like they're people or something? What is this witchcraft?

But seriously, I do the same thing. Have them look over some broken code for 10 minutes to collect their thoughts then have a discussion about the issues they found and various tangent topics relating to it. I'm amazed how uncommon this is.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#576

Post by akhilcacharya »

sagichmal wrote: post #11

Hiring isn't broken, dude. You just don't interview well, and you seem antagonistic even to the idea that your cachet and skills, insofar as they exist, aren't useful to the market. That's a problem -- for you. Interviews exist because employers need a way to quantify and qualify your ability. Typical computer science problems are a (flawed, but concrete) way of doing that. No reasonable interviewer expects you to re…

> No reasonable interviewer expects you to recollect breadth-first search flawlessly, on demand, onto a whiteboard.

Wait, really? I've had to do more than that just for internships, the bar for perfection at many companies is just that high or higher.

I agree with the rest of what you're saying.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#577

Post by ljw1001 »

Morgawr wrote: post #430
tptacek wrote: post #379

I'm torn. On the one hand: the interview processes this post describes are hilariously broken. Stand up at a whiteboard and implement breadth-first search from memory! You know, like no programmer at their desk staring at their editor ever does. I think "that's the one where you use a queue, right?" is a fully valid and complete answer to that dumb question. I also think you're within your rights to demand that your…

To be honest I was a bit taken aback by the author not being able to implement a BFS. It's a fairly standard and really simple algorithm and it's probably one of the most common ones to actually implement because of a need in your day-to-day work. What do you do if you have a nested data structure (like a tree) and want to print it in order? You write a simple BFS on it. It's not even a question where you need prior…

No. if you have a tree, you get an iterator on that tree, and print each element. Because your a pro, so of course your tree is based on a well-tested library component, one that provides a way to iterate it.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#578

Post by ljw1001 »

sagichmal wrote: post #11

Hiring isn't broken, dude. You just don't interview well, and you seem antagonistic even to the idea that your cachet and skills, insofar as they exist, aren't useful to the market. That's a problem -- for you. Interviews exist because employers need a way to quantify and qualify your ability. Typical computer science problems are a (flawed, but concrete) way of doing that. No reasonable interviewer expects you to re…

Hiring is broken if it weeds out people who don't interview well, rather than people who don't code well.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#579

Post by serge2k »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #570
serge2k wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Overfitted learning algorithms are generally worse at generalizing their ability to broader examples and new situations. Source? or just trying to justify your own shortcomings?

Here, let me Google that for you. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfitting > > Overfitting generally occurs when a model is excessively complex, such as having too many parameters relative to the number of observations. A model that has been overfit will generally have poor predictive performance, as it can exaggerate minor fluctuations in the data. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalization_error#Relation…

I apologize.

> The types of candidates who spend the time necessary to memorize algorithm trivia for the sake of passing these exams are exactly like overfitted learning algorithms.

I should have asked for a source for that portion. It's the part that is ridiculous.

Again, my bad.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#580

Post by serge2k »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #567
serge2k wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not BFS exactly, but I did a breadth first traversal of a graph a couple weeks ago. Could I have dug up a library to do what I needed, sure I guess. Easier to take 20 minutes and just write the tool.

> Easier to take 20 minutes and just write the tool. What? That would be a huge red flag in my book. Where are your unit tests? I'm not trusting your 20 minute off the cuff reproduction of classic algorithms in any business critical piece of the code, not ever. This would get you booted from a lot of places, or at least given a stern talking to for doing something that seems slick, cool, and time-saving in the short…

> It's like seeing someone write their own argument-parsing code. Holy shit, what a bad idea. Never (!) do that.

So we did that. works well. I dunno, maybe this company is just full of incompetents. I mean, I doubt it, but it is possible.

I appreciate judgement without context as well. Really, it's awesome.

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