>Instead, I sent this email to the recruiter:
>If y'all
Enough with the Programming Puzzles
61–70 of 76 posts
Re: Enough with the Programming Puzzles
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, Laszlo Bock claims Google looked at the data and found zero correlation between having a degree from a well respected university and being useful at Google http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman... So no, using a degree isn't useful for hiring engineers apparently
That's pretty weird though. Is using a degree useful for hiring medical doctors, mechanical engineers, actuaries? It's really hard to believe that only Computer Science as a field has a problem where it's churning out people who are technically incapable of programming to such a degree that you need to explicitly test them in interviews through "puzzles".
For medical doctors, having a degree just means you get to spend years in a residency training program under supervision. SEs also have internships, but they usually want someone they don't need to train from 'scratch'.
Re: Enough with the Programming Puzzles
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems that other professions have solved this. Nobody is asking lawyers to run a trial on a whiteboard or solve a whodunit mystery in 2 hours. And I don't think that licensing process for lawyers guarantees anything other than the right to practice law (there are pretty bad licensed lawyers out there). Do construction workers draw diagrams of installing drywall in their hiring process? Do plumbers get challenged w…
Lawyers do not investigate crimes; solving a whodunnit is a terrible comparison. Plumbers, unlike computer programmers, are typically hired purely by referral or a small amount of marketing. Again, you make a terrible analogy. A plumber got hired because A) The risk of a bad plumber is less threatening than the leaking faucet I have right now. B) a friend said they were a good plumber. Since JavaScript refactoring is…
By your complains about my terrible analogies (which they are, intentionally) I am guessing you are one of the few programmers who actually does all the stuff from the interviews on the job?
Re: Enough with the Programming Puzzles
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lawyers do not investigate crimes; solving a whodunnit is a terrible comparison. Plumbers, unlike computer programmers, are typically hired purely by referral or a small amount of marketing. Again, you make a terrible analogy. A plumber got hired because A) The risk of a bad plumber is less threatening than the leaking faucet I have right now. B) a friend said they were a good plumber. Since JavaScript refactoring is…
By your complains about my terrible analogies (which they are, intentionally) I am guessing you are one of the few programmers who actually does all the stuff from the interviews on the job?
No. I freelance and don't have to do any of that.
However, when I was seeking permanent employment I understood that it was not my circus and not my monkey's. I had to jump through the hoops. The same for coding as it was product management as it was for consultancy.
Rather than complain, why not invent a startup that acts as a universal badge of coding ability and is widely accepted as the industry standard for benchmarking technological ability...
The post just screams (once again) "I am a coder you should simply accept my genius and leave me in peace to work."
Law of averages just tells you that there is a bell curve of ability...at least some of the individuals on Hacker News are precisely the individuals that white boarding and puzzles are designed to catch.
Re: Enough with the Programming Puzzles
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, many firms do set puzzles, normally by asking the candidate to create a brief based on materials provided. It takes far more than a couple hours. Bar exams, depending on where you are, also sometimes incorporate this sort of thing.
The California bar exam includes two separate performance tests of (IIRC) two- to three hours each. You're given a packet of "facts" and legal-reference materials. Your assignment is to write a motion for a court case; a memo to the client; etc. (Starting in July 2017 it'll be cut to one performance test of 90 minutes [0].) [0] http://abovethelaw.com/2015/07/california-bar-exam-cut-from-...
In my day, the multistate also had a "practical" exam option that involved creating a brief from a small pile of evidences. It only took a few hours.
Re: Enough with the Programming Puzzles
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
By your complains about my terrible analogies (which they are, intentionally) I am guessing you are one of the few programmers who actually does all the stuff from the interviews on the job?
No. I freelance and don't have to do any of that. However, when I was seeking permanent employment I understood that it was not my circus and not my monkey's. I had to jump through the hoops. The same for coding as it was product management as it was for consultancy. Rather than complain, why not invent a startup that acts as a universal badge of coding ability and is widely accepted as the industry standard for benc…
The issue is that many people already have a substantial proof of their coding ability in form of completed work. The rational approach would be to evaluate that work and, as safety, test that they have actually performed it. Whiteboarding them catches nothing other than inability to perform unusual tasks under stress.
Re: Enough with the Programming Puzzles
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. I freelance and don't have to do any of that. However, when I was seeking permanent employment I understood that it was not my circus and not my monkey's. I had to jump through the hoops. The same for coding as it was product management as it was for consultancy. Rather than complain, why not invent a startup that acts as a universal badge of coding ability and is widely accepted as the industry standard for benc…
The issue is that many people already have a substantial proof of their coding ability in form of completed work. The rational approach would be to evaluate that work and, as safety, test that they have actually performed it. Whiteboarding them catches nothing other than inability to perform unusual tasks under stress.
As as we know, engineers are never in stressful situations so no point testing it.
Production never goes down, critical errors don't arise and time-pressure tasks are rare.
Re: Enough with the Programming Puzzles
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue is that many people already have a substantial proof of their coding ability in form of completed work. The rational approach would be to evaluate that work and, as safety, test that they have actually performed it. Whiteboarding them catches nothing other than inability to perform unusual tasks under stress.
As as we know, engineers are never in stressful situations so no point testing it. Production never goes down, critical errors don't arise and time-pressure tasks are rare.
People do not behave consistently under stress so such a testing value is close to 0. It's a fight or flight response. If "fight" rolled up on the interview there is no guarantee it will roll up next time your production goes down. You can just as well toss a coin.
Re: Enough with the Programming Puzzles
#69I'm actually in the middle of a bunch of interviews right now. The most ridiculous interview process I encountered so far was one that was supposed to be 7 (!!) steps long (that usually takes 3-4 weeks by their own estimates), beginning with a 45 minute HackerRank challenge, then a technical project that was said to take 2-5 hours on average (but the time given was a whole week, so I have my doubts about that estimat…
You dismiss this as "esoteric", but that's the whole point, the purpose of a puzzle like this is for you to be unable to map it to something you've done previously or to something you learned in school, and instead to force you to invent an algorithm on your own. It is the opposite of what the author of the article complains about - "academic", "targeted at cs grads" - it goes against that. It is an attempt to test p…
> I am not sure why so many developers dismiss the value of this and are in fact often actively hostile to any suggestion that it might be ONE of the indicators of programming ability.
No disagreement there. I certainly wasn't trying to dismiss the ability to come up with novel solutions to problems never encountered as an indicator for programming ability and general intelligence completely. However, I certainly don't believe it's a good enough indicator to use as the sole basis for simply rejecting otherwise perfectly capable candidates before you've even talked to them.
I'm also of the opinion that interviews should strive to assess how well candidates can perform on the specific position you're hiring for (that is the main purpose of interviews, is it not?). In my own case (I was applying for a front-end engineer), and in the case of most other engineering positions, I don't believe puzzle solving is a very useful indicator for that purpose, because an overwhelming majority of engineering tasks involve applying the scientific method and engineering knowledge to solve variations of well-known engineering problems in their specific fields.
EDIT: Another point that I forgot to mention: If you are in fact interested in a candidate's ability to solve novel problems they've never encountered, at least do a better job of ensuring the problem you give them is actually novel. I found the StackOverflow thread for the problem they gave me in about 30 seconds of Googling. By not ensuring the problem novel enough that searching for it won't do you any good, you're going to be disproportionately passing dishonest candidates who would simply cheat to get through this part of your process. Certainly that can't be the result you're looking for.
Re: Enough with the Programming Puzzles
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
You dismiss this as "esoteric", but that's the whole point, the purpose of a puzzle like this is for you to be unable to map it to something you've done previously or to something you learned in school, and instead to force you to invent an algorithm on your own. It is the opposite of what the author of the article complains about - "academic", "targeted at cs grads" - it goes against that. It is an attempt to test p…
> I am not sure why so many developers dismiss the value of this and are in fact often actively hostile to any suggestion that it might be ONE of the indicators of programming ability. No disagreement there. I certainly wasn't trying to dismiss the ability to come up with novel solutions to problems never encountered as an indicator for programming ability and general intelligence completely . However, I certainly do…
Regarding the first, I think they basically do this to test how "programming smart" someone is. Like my boss tells me when I interview, "determine potential". However, I agree that this shouldn't disqualify someone for a more technical kind of job. For me it is more of a "if he is really smart we should hire him despite the fact he is perhaps unqualified, he will easily learn" thing. The disqualifying questions are easier than this one.
Regarding the second, I agree completely. This problem is good because it doesn't give an advantage to rote memorization of basic CS from college (unlike asking about red-black trees etc), but when stolen from the internet and reused becomes bad because it gives an advantage to something worse - googling questions and memorizing answers.
I assume (or hope) Google switches up the problems they use all the time and hopefully doesn't use automated testing (because I care how someone thinks, not just whether they produce the solution in X minutes), but since you interviewed at a different company perhaps it is a cargo cult effect: Google has some of the smartest programmers and they asked this, so obviously we should also ask the same thing! Cargo culting is extremely common in IT in less-established companies, my workplace is not immune to it either. Pick things a super-successful company does that require almost zero investment, effort or true change, and copy those. It is ridiculous.
Of course, the things these companies really do right, they are too much effort, let's just copy them in superficial ways and hope for the best!