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People suck at technical interviews

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Re: People suck at technical interviews

#61

Post by x0x0 »

fnbr wrote: post #25
Jemaclus wrote: post #3

My primary criteria when interviewing junior candidates are: 1) Do you have basic problem solving skills? 2) Can you communicate clearly? 3) Do I want to sit next to you for the next 6 months or longer? If you don't know Ruby, I can teach you. If you don't know Elasticsearch, I can teach you. What I can't and don't have time to teach you is how to solve a problem on your own without me holding your hand, and I especi…

As a junior developer, I find myself confused by your comment. It seems as if a large proportion of the posts on HN claim that, when looking to hire someone, they focus on problem solving abilities and and culture fit. However, in May when I was interviewing with companies (including YC backed startups), almost every company focused on quizzing me about trivia [1]. I was actually given a paper quiz by one of the comp…

Testing 4=='4' is far from pointless. For better or worse, programming as the majority of us practice it is no longer about flipping bits or moving bytes or red-black trees or building common collections data structures. It's now about a language plus an api or apis, and the language of front end web development is javascript. So checking if front end or fullstack dev candidates have a basic understanding of types in javascript is perfectly reasonable.

Re: People suck at technical interviews

#62

Post by allensb »

lnanek2 wrote: post #55

> The famous fizzbuzz test simply asks "are you aware of the modulo operator? No it doesn't. It could be implemented with counters you reset when needed. Didn't really read any further, I don't think this person should really be giving technical interviews anyway.

Yeah, but not knowing the mod operator would get you dinged.

Re: People suck at technical interviews

#63

Post by pastProlog »

tptacek wrote: post #20

This is a really excellent post. It talks about a bunch of things that are hobby-horses of mine (I help run recruiting for a large software security firm), and I find myself agreeing with more of it than I disagree with. I would go a little further than Laurie does. I think several of the goals he sets up for his process are not in reality achievable in an interview process. Starting axiom: job interviews are among t…

> job interviews are among the most hostile experiences professionals endure in our industry

I don't find being questioned during an interview hostile, although I do feel I need to be prepared to be tested.

The most bothersome part for me is companies asking for me to list several references, often specifically asking for previous managers. I am usually given a standard application form to write their names, phone numbers, e-mails etc. before I've even talked to anyone about the position.

An interview is just something I'm involved in. Since I have to hand over contact details of several former managers/coworkers before I even talk to anyone, I have to call up and ask a number of people for the favor of giving me a reference before applying for a job.

Due to this, I almost never apply for one job in a one-off sense. I usually work a few years, then decide I definitely am going to get a new job. I line up my references then apply to jobs until I get one. Then I'm completely off the market for another few years.

I could just not hand over the references until later in the interview process, even though they're requesting them from me before I meet anyone, but that starts things off on the wrong foot. As if I had something to hide.

Of course, there may be legal reasons for companies to ask for everything up front. Asking for references too early is the biggest thing that puts me off from looking around. I'm not going to ask several former managers/co-workers for a favor unless I am seriously looking.

Re: People suck at technical interviews

#64

Post by x0x0 »

lostcolony wrote: post #38
fnbr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a junior developer, I find myself confused by your comment. It seems as if a large proportion of the posts on HN claim that, when looking to hire someone, they focus on problem solving abilities and and culture fit. However, in May when I was interviewing with companies (including YC backed startups), almost every company focused on quizzing me about trivia [1]. I was actually given a paper quiz by one of the comp…

That kind of question can actually be useful as a proxy for experience with the language, and whether you're the type of person who digs into understanding your tools. If you say "I'm a rockstar Javascript dev", it's very hard to prove it; but if you've never been bitten by some of Javascript's type conversions, and/or have never really looked into some of its intricacies on your own, you probably aren't. It's just o…

I find it hard to believe anyone has spent a bunch of time writing js and never been bitten by a type conversion. Am I wildly off base?

I do data science, but everyone who writes R has been bitten by it's scoping rules, which are definitely not mainstream. Everyone I know who writes java or python has been bitten at least once by the pass object references by value (is there a better name for this?) function argument semantics. Everyone who writes java has accidentally written == when they meant .equals and stared at the code for far too long. etc etc etc You just can't claim you can competently use a language without understanding some basics, like how functions work, how arguments are passed, and how equality is decided.

Re: People suck at technical interviews

#65

Post by potatolicious »

russelluresti wrote: post #23

I'm not sure I agree with the "team fit" thing. I get his point - most people don't understand what team fit is or can't separate it from personal bias. But here's my counter-argument. Every company and team has different core values. "Team fit" means matching company and team values. For example, I work on educational software for teacher and students. My definition of "team fit" (for this particular team/company) i…

So don't call it "team fit" or any such vague terms. The problem with these generalities is that they can be (and are often) used to hide personal biases and discrimination.

You work on educational software for teachers and students, so evaluate your candidates based on clear, specific complaints. It's not "bad team fit", it's "this candidate doesn't care about education software".

Eliminate these vague generalities in favor of specifics. This is useful for yourself and your team, since people are forced to be more introspective when they must be articulate about why they dislike someone.

"Bad fit" is a cop-out that allows people to dismiss others without having to issue specific complaints that might cause their brain to go "wow, these words make me sound like a dick".

Re: People suck at technical interviews

#66

Post by bcantrill »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #53
bcantrill wrote: post #40

I think a more apt title is "technical interviews suck", and speaking personally, I have entirely given up on them. (I would say that I gave up on them after two decades, but the truth is that I gave up on them a decade ago -- and I really tried hard in that first decade to develop the perfect technical interview.) My belief has become that the only way to hire the traits that I'm looking for (high technical ability,…

Homework is great, but only if a job offer is guaranteed if submitting a sufficient project. It is hubris to think someone will care enough about your company to spend 8 hours of their time for the small chance to be hired. Presumably you are giving the same assignment to a handful of other candidates. You are simply outsourcing much of the investment of hiring to the candidates. This is simply unethical (one of many…

It's not a small chance at all -- and it only comes after a conversation where I have done basic vetting and where I have explained why the problems that we're solving are exciting to me. (That is, if you're not ginned up to do the homework, I haven't done my job -- or it's not a fit.)

And as an aside, your test for ethics is entirely asinine, as it renders anything of sub-infinite scale unethical. (Among its more obvious failings, anyone who chooses not to have children is behaving unethically -- as is anyone who has children, for that matter.)

Re: People suck at technical interviews

#67

Post by pmiller2 »

Jemaclus wrote: post #3

My primary criteria when interviewing junior candidates are: 1) Do you have basic problem solving skills? 2) Can you communicate clearly? 3) Do I want to sit next to you for the next 6 months or longer? If you don't know Ruby, I can teach you. If you don't know Elasticsearch, I can teach you. What I can't and don't have time to teach you is how to solve a problem on your own without me holding your hand, and I especi…

I'd like to know what company you work for so I can apply there. My email is in my profile.

Re: People suck at technical interviews

#68

Post by VLM »

Peroni wrote: post #54
tptacek wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criteria #3 is toxic. It's one of those things people adopt with the best intentions, but (a) is often at odds with the best interests of the firm and (b) provides an enormous amount of cover for prejudices and, more perniciously, cognitive biases. When you're interviewing a candidate, assume your brain is trying to trip you up (it is!). Build a hiring process that treats your intuition as an adversary and eliminates…

Criteria #3 is toxic. Nonsense. It's as toxic as screening a resume. On one hand you have people with immense industry experience (such as yourself) advocating to drop the "do I actually like this person" approach and on the other hand you have people who also have immense industry experience advocating that culture fit should be one of the most important criteria. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on elimin…

To clarify, the difference you aren't seeing between the groups is the incompetent managers define "sit next to" as "sit next to at the nudie bar" or gaming table or harry potter movie premier or frat house or pretty much any place other than work. AKA young inexperienced white frat boys only need apply.

In comparison, competent managers define the same "sit next to" as "sit next to during an emergency bug fix" or while hashing out a new feature idea or optimizing a slow task or automating a process or just gossiping about a new technology. These are the kind of managers who "dare" to hire non-white people or women or older than 25 yrs old etc. Usually their company is much more successful for obvious reasons.

Re: People suck at technical interviews

#69

Post by walshemj »

greyskull wrote: post #15

I'm just about to finish a B.S. in CS, so I've recently been on the other side of the table. I like to think I'm "aware" enough to give good feedback about my experiences. I've interviewed with two of the large "top" companies. They were two very different experiences. One decided to have me do multiple interviews, with whiteboard coding. The first interviewer was my favorite, because we got to talk about the design…

Outwith very senior C level roles you should need no more than 2 interviews to decide which candidate to make an offer to.

Spending an entire day with 5 or 6 different interviews is just a waste of the candidates and the company's time.

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