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In my personal experience, having interviewed dozens of candidates (data science), I believe that asking "easy" and "simple" questions is the most effective way to probe the problem-solving skills of a candidate. Fun and interesting solutions to easy questions are hallmarks of great individuals. The question would go like this: Suppose I have a column-oriented file and I want to print out a column in a reverse-sorted…
In addition to all of the very dystopian examples given in this post, there are other non-technical, super-dystopian things that have been popping up as "trends" in the tech industry. Ever heard of top-grading? It's the most oppressive interview technique of all time. A series of grueling multi-person interviews. A retrospective of all work experiences since high school . You also have to get multiple prior employers…
Personally I'd call off the interview and let them know they need to rethink their hiring practices. If that's how they interview the company probably is horrible to work for anyways.
I've been doing initial phone screens (small companies) this week (two just today, actually), and with all of them when the recruiter (internal or external) gets to the "we'd like to send you a coding challenge" I interject with: "Let's do a code exchange. I'll point you at some of my GH projects, and you send me some of your code". So far they've accepted ("I'll forward it to the hiring manager"), and it's far too s…
Also, I had the time available to spend ~8-10 hours on a take-home project (paid or otherwise); most of the time the best candidates already have jobs and will rightfully tell you to pound sand.
Is it possible to create a meaningful coding test that only takes 45 minutes? I would love some examples for front end tests if any one has any.
Though some would take longer than 45 minutes.
archived version from feb 2019 since cloudflare dns seems to be broken atm: https://web.archive.org/web/20190219135427/http://rosettacod...
In addition to all of the very dystopian examples given in this post, there are other non-technical, super-dystopian things that have been popping up as "trends" in the tech industry. Ever heard of top-grading? It's the most oppressive interview technique of all time. A series of grueling multi-person interviews. A retrospective of all work experiences since high school . You also have to get multiple prior employers…
Edit: just wanted to say I am a partner/founder at my company and we deeply give a shit about what we do and who we work with. Our turnover across 7 years is very, very low. We strive for a good work life harmony with everyone that works with us. You have to have some process to fit people into a company and that means you gotta talk to people and get to know them. The goal is to eliminate interviewer bias as much as humanly possible after the technical screening. So it goes. Not everyone can be pleased and I would defend our hiring practices as very reasonable and humanistic in an otherwise crazy tech interviewing system at the FAANGs of the world.
Comedian Daniel Tosh had a bit about people that claimed to be smart, it's just that they were just bad at taking tests. He said, "oh, so you struggle with the part where we find out what you actually know?" I hear a lot of complaints about the "typical" software engineering hiring process, and it usually comes from the people that don't do well within the current system. Could the process be improved? Almost certain…
For me personally the process gives me a lot of anxiety/fear to the point where I won't do them even when I know I want to. I suspect a lot of the negative sentiment around interviews or talk about their 'ineffectiveness' is just this fear being poorly interpreted.
I think the technical interview process is also just a separate skill to master that has some overlap with programming, but is mostly getting good at leetcode style problems. It reminds me of things like the SAT for college.
There's a lot of failure necessary most of the time to succeed that I think scares people away because they do one and fail and then think they're not good or smart enough. I think I did ten different phone screens and three or four on sites before getting hired by a famous company. Some of those I totally bombed and others went really well - there's a randomness to it depending on the question you get and the specific interviewer.
I wish this wasn't the case and things were better because it'd be really fun to work on interesting projects with different people at different companies, but the barrier to changing is so tedious it's often better to stay put at a local maximum.
Comedian Daniel Tosh had a bit about people that claimed to be smart, it's just that they were just bad at taking tests. He said, "oh, so you struggle with the part where we find out what you actually know?" I hear a lot of complaints about the "typical" software engineering hiring process, and it usually comes from the people that don't do well within the current system. Could the process be improved? Almost certain…
This is a non-sequitur. Being able to write good software has nothing to do with reading cracking the coding interview and practicing leetcode for an interview in an environment that bears no resemblance to how work is actually done.
But hey, that's fine—they just leave good talent for others to hire.
Comedian Daniel Tosh had a bit about people that claimed to be smart, it's just that they were just bad at taking tests. He said, "oh, so you struggle with the part where we find out what you actually know?" I hear a lot of complaints about the "typical" software engineering hiring process, and it usually comes from the people that don't do well within the current system. Could the process be improved? Almost certain…
People are completing 500+ problems on leetcode before heading into interviews at google. Don't believe me? Go read the teamblind forums. People might spend six months studying, after which they pass a bunch of interviews and get good comp. Getting just one offer from a FAANG company often doesnt pay well enough, you need multiple competing ones. If you think this has anything to do with incompetent people complainin…
but it is true that these questions bear no resemblance to software engineering so it does feel silly going through the process.
In my admittedly limited experience, there's one way to avoid such nonsensical interviews - run away from bureaucracy. Seek smaller organizations (startups in particular) and if you're lucky enough to have a minimally cross-disciplinary background, you can seek out niche organizations where you'll interview with technical specialists who'll ask reasonable questions that are actually related to your work and your inte…
Your mileage will vary depending on the team you land on.