TLDR: Doesn't know computer science fundamentals, doesn't get hired in a role that requires computer science fundamentals. Is this Hacker News or Script-Kiddie News?
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Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
61–70 of 693 posts
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#62"How many people can actually write BFS on the spot, without preparing for it in advance?" A lot of people. You should too, even if you're just a front-end.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#63Just went through this process from the POV of employer. The risk of choosing the wrong person is so great, that it's often better to not choose anyone. If there is any doubt what-so-ever, it's better to not make a a hire, it can be too damaging to a team, manager, company. I've tried so many different "coding interview" scenarios. But I found the best one was a real task that a real staff member would be expected to…
> The risk of choosing the wrong person is so great, that it's often better to not choose anyone. If there is any doubt what-so-ever, it's better to not make a a hire, it can be too damaging to a team, manager, company.
That's bullshit. Sorry, but it is.
If it was such a big risk, companies would:
1) Do much better jobs at retaining employees (that are known to be good).
2) Be in a lot of trouble currently, because companies hire all the time and fire all the time.
If you're having this problem you seriously need to reevaluate what you consider damaging. Hiring someone your team thinks is an idiot is not damaging.
Making your current team go home and talk to their roommate/spouse/so each night about how "we really need to fucking hire someone, this is ridiculous" while making your devs set through interviews is damaging :)
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#64Hiring 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, unfortunately everyone isn't realizing it simultaneously, so half of us end up speaking about it to the other half who are already employed and feel the need to justify their employment. Since these discussions never happen out of CS / IT circles they very rarely propogate upwards to changing company practices unless the CTO/CEO happens to read HN. You're just further contributing to the rigged scen…
Hiring in CS / IT is massively more objective compared to most of other fields.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#65WOW. I thought I was in a weak spot by being self-taught and scattered. So just who the hell is passing these inquisitions? What's really necessary?
I'm right there with you. There is a lot of FUD on both sides of this issue, it would be nice to know what the reality of tech interviewing is. I can't seem to get passed perfunctory phone screens right now (if I even get those.)
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#66I sympathise. I have not agreed to tech problems in interviews for years. In my experience I get more job offers for more $ if I refuse to do them rather than answering problems either rightly or wrongly. Either makes no difference. I have even turned offers down because of the stupidity of the interviewers.
Stop doing silly interview questions professionals should be above that.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know what BFS is. I just googled it. Oh, I know what it is now. If you haven't been exposed to it, it's just jargon. That's the point. You are testing for jargon rather than ability. It is the distinction between saying 'implement FizzBuzz' and going silent, and actually explaining what it is. As an interviewer it is easy to forget that whilst you may have asked a question 20 times, this may be the candidate'…
Trees and graphs are fundamental to computer science and there are only two ways to traverse them. I don't know what kids are doing these days, but I learned this because of my high-school curricula. In other words, it's OK if you don't have a formal education in computer science, but when you don't have it, you need to make up for it by learning on your own, because this is basic stuff that high-school kids are lear…
You're right about learning. Everyone should be doing this ALL THE TIME. Problem solving and learning ability are what you should be measuring and then deciding if their past experience justifies the position/starting rate. This is far more likely to serve you well than testing the finer points of some algo/tech that is simply a building block of a solution to a far bigger set of business/technical challenges.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#68Experiment : hire 10% of candidates without conducting any interviews. Use Machine Learning to quantify internal or external candidates' code quality. Use that model to score candidates' GitHub. Hire them.
Well, OK, throw in a sociability / not-a-psycho score using LinkedIn or twitter or whatever.
I'd outsource this to gild.com who seem to know what they're doing.
Methinks management will be surprised at how well these 10% do despite not passing the usual "What happens when I flip all the color bits in a red-black tree" or whatever shibboleth is being used these days. Admit it : most work, even at Google, doesn't involve knowing how self-balancing trees work. On the other hand, getting things done matters everywhere.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would an interviewer assume a front-end dev has a CS degree or has invested personal time in studying algorithms rather than other (probably more) relevant topics, such as various frameworks?
That depends. Mostly because front end job listings still often list a CS degree as a requirement. Also, I think it's great when people enjoy working on the front end since I don't particularly, but I still want to work with people that aren't hyper specialized.
I think you might be underestimating the breadth of front-end skills required to properly develop, test, deploy, deliver, monitor, analyze, and optimize front-end applications. Including the myriad third-party integrations that other teams need, from CS to marketing.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#70Hiring 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…
I think hiring is really steered to avoid hiring idiots. After all it's the interviewer that will have to answer if they hire someone who can't do the job. So all questions are very technical/random and difficult. Most of these people just lookup stuff from textbooks and fling them at interviewees. It eliminates the top and bottom contenders while catching mostly people who just came out of school (or ridicilously smart).