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Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

jarednelsen.dev

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Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#61

Post by LordFast »

I've personally seen no correlation between people who can solve problems and program when watched by another person versus people who can solve problems and program when left alone with a real problem, and ample of time to noodle on and resolve it on their own.

The same is true for writers: most are likely not to be interested and/or able to do their best work when watched over the shoulder by another person.

The /real/ question is this: should software be like a factory job? If so, let's clearly acknowledge it and define it, so that people can set their expectations and self-select accordingly.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#62

Post by ChasingReturns »

Not a single person out of several thousand emails and messages came out in defense of the current state of interviewing processes

That's largely due to the position taken up in "The dystopian world of software engineering interviews". Had the article been a defense of current interview practices, you would have received sentiments to the opposite effect.

Here's a comment on the original thread doing what you said "not a single person" has done: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22332023

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#63

Post by a1369209993 »

scarface74 wrote: post #30
rekabis wrote: post #23

The “hopeless list”, no. 3: “If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.” This pretty much sums up my impression of these hiring managers that crank the bar sky-high: they are assholes through-and-through, and are full of shit to boot. If you crank the bar sky-high, all you will get are two kinds of people: those that interview/test well, b…

But while they are getting guidance and mentorship, they are not being a productive member of the team, taking time away from experienced developers and as soon as they level up they will change companies and the next company didn’t have to invest training time. I know everyone has to start somewhere but from the company’s perspective, hiring a junior developer doesn’t make sense.

If you're hiring new people because you need more people working on your current project, Fred Brooks would like to have a word with you.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#64

Post by protonfish »

deanCommie wrote: post #35

I got to the last thread too late for a comment to make a difference, but I'm exactly the person most of you want to talk to or hate. I'm an interviewer at a FAANG company with >500 interviews in the last 5 years, I teach multiple internal courses on interviewing, and I think the system makes a lot of sense for companies at our scale. Ask Me Anything :) I currently have a toddler on my lap, but I'll edit this post la…

It seems to me that it should be straightforward to objectively measure hiring practices by correlating different interview questions and techniques with subsequent job performance (compared to a control.) Has this been done? If so, I'd love to see the studies, if not, then it would be hard to argue that current techniques aren't voodoo.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#65

Post by fzeroracer »

scarface74 wrote: post #30
rekabis wrote: post #23

The “hopeless list”, no. 3: “If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.” This pretty much sums up my impression of these hiring managers that crank the bar sky-high: they are assholes through-and-through, and are full of shit to boot. If you crank the bar sky-high, all you will get are two kinds of people: those that interview/test well, b…

But while they are getting guidance and mentorship, they are not being a productive member of the team, taking time away from experienced developers and as soon as they level up they will change companies and the next company didn’t have to invest training time. I know everyone has to start somewhere but from the company’s perspective, hiring a junior developer doesn’t make sense.

I'm really not sure where people got this idea that junior developers that are being mentored cannot contribute to the team.

Are they going to contribute as much as a senior dev? No, but they can still contribute in significant ways. They can still fix bugs and find issues in your system, bring a fresh perspective on design and take ownership over smaller parts of the codebase.

The reason why junior developers jump ship is because companies aren't willing to even promote people. So of course developers (of all levels!) are going to leave after 2-3 years when it's the best way to actually get paid and not taken advantage of by stupid CEOs that would rather have high turnover than a happy workforce.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#66

Post by ipnon »

What is tragic here is the amount of effort that is now expended by young computer scientists into the game of algorithms. Whereas a young programmer in the past may have spent their extra days writing games in Basic or static web pages, hackers these days seem to do Leetcode until the wheels come off.

We are failing to bring certain softwares into existence by effectively requiring programmers to their effort into the World Wide Nether, finding the Kth smallest element in an unsorted BST for the millionth time, for seemingly no purpose except for it is "how things must unfortunately be done."

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#67

Post by throwawaytousan »

deanCommie wrote: post #35

I got to the last thread too late for a comment to make a difference, but I'm exactly the person most of you want to talk to or hate. I'm an interviewer at a FAANG company with >500 interviews in the last 5 years, I teach multiple internal courses on interviewing, and I think the system makes a lot of sense for companies at our scale. Ask Me Anything :) I currently have a toddler on my lap, but I'll edit this post la…

I’m a former interviewer for a FAANG competitor that had a successful IPO. I had to do over 1,000 interviews in 5 years. The VP of Eng told me I was “highly accurate.” We used leetcode-like programming questions.

I don’t think the FAANG-style coding puzzles have anything new to add to the conversation here. The reason big companies do that is because the questions are prompts are simple to write explain (hence interviewer has to do very very little), the answer space is generally well-defined (so it’s easy to grade, and easy for a Hiring Manager to check if the interviewer screws up), and they almost exclusively select for completion time (which is key in a high-pressure feature house company).

Most of the discussion here seems to be interested in alternatives. Through my experience, I can’t agree enough with the article author who posts:

Not a single person out of several thousand emails and messages came out in defense of the current state of interviewing processes - I’ll let this one stand on its own.

The only people I’ve seen to defend the current process in public are ex-FAANG people who were actively monetizing their experience (e.g. Gayle Laakmann).

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#68

Post by watwut »

a1369209993 wrote: post #63
scarface74 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But while they are getting guidance and mentorship, they are not being a productive member of the team, taking time away from experienced developers and as soon as they level up they will change companies and the next company didn’t have to invest training time. I know everyone has to start somewhere but from the company’s perspective, hiring a junior developer doesn’t make sense.

If you're hiring new people because you need more people working on your current project, Fred Brooks would like to have a word with you.

It is completely reasonable to hire more people when you need more people on current project. Fred Brooks definitely did not said you can never add people to currently running projects or change them up.

You dont have to stop the projects when people on them change jobs either.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#69

Post by matz1 »

sjc33 wrote: post #17

Honestly having an interview process that is highly standardized and teachable + learnable is a good thing, so I'm not sure why people complain. You know exactly what sort of questions you will be asked from company to company, and can spend nights and weekends over a couple weeks studying for it. Most jobs are not like that, and then you get extreme variance in expectation with little communication on how to prepare…

>Honestly having an interview process that is highly standardized and teachable + learnable is a good thing

Yes I agree but the current way we have is not even close to that.

He touch that issue in the article. So you spend a lot of time and effort to learn about binary tree, great, you pass with flying colors with company A, then you interview with company B, they ask you trie tree ...fuck.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#70

Post by scarface74 »

a1369209993 wrote: post #63
scarface74 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But while they are getting guidance and mentorship, they are not being a productive member of the team, taking time away from experienced developers and as soon as they level up they will change companies and the next company didn’t have to invest training time. I know everyone has to start somewhere but from the company’s perspective, hiring a junior developer doesn’t make sense.

If you're hiring new people because you need more people working on your current project, Fred Brooks would like to have a word with you.

Your “current project” is the ongoing success of the company. Are you claiming that companies never grow or need new people?
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