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Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

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Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#621

Post by kkapelon »

jmaley wrote: post #174
kkapelon wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my example I did not say that the first developer is ignorant about performance. I only talked about knowing data algorithms by heart. So let me rephrase this. Isn't it possible that a developer knows about computer performance but at the same time does not know by heart? Do you really think that "knowing BFS by heart" equals "knowing everything there is to know about computer performance"? In your scenario, a dev…

BFS is a 4 line algorithm that doesn't need to be memorized. I wouldn't trust a developer who can't even reason this out with understanding runtime order complexity. bool bfs(int x) { q = new LinkedList ; q.push(root) while (q.size != 0 && q.peak() != x); return q.size ? true : false; }

I just said "". BFS is just an example.

Oh, well...

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#622

Post by oarsinsync »

falcolas wrote: post #181
Aissen wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do not need to be in position of power to refer someone.

The usefulness of contacts only really matters when they are managing (or are a key-decider in) the team you wish to apply for. Otherwise, a reference will only add to the burden you have to overcome with the interviewers - they will consider not only your qualities, but the referrer's qualities as well. "Richard vouched for Jane? But Richard is writing testing software, and we're hiring for backend. We don't need a…

I'm incredibly fortunate then, as that has never been my experience. Working in infrastructure engineering, I've been referred by devs for most of my jobs and in each instance the referral has been a positive. I've also referred a number of devs despite not being one myself, who have also benefited.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#623

Post by kkapelon »

unoti wrote: post #186
tobz wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not find it strange, or at least confusing, that you're arguing a point here that is predicated on studying for an interview, rather than the actual position? "This person didn't study for the interview, so what did they expect to happen?" Oh, I don't know, maybe to be asked questions directly related to the position, amongst other things.

> Do you not find it strange, or at least confusing, that you're arguing a point here that is predicated on studying for an interview, rather than the actual position? No, I don't find it strange that I want them to prepare for something they're not going to use normally, but agree it might be confusing. For the actual positions I'm hiring for, nobody in the world outside our teams understands the systems. The candid…

> I want them to prepare for something they're not going to use normally

I think this pretty much sums up what is wrong with hiring.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#624

Post by kkapelon »

Xyik wrote: post #415
zeemonkee3 wrote: post #406

Why don't companies who ask these kinds of CS questions in interviews just put in the job ad something along the lines of "if you pass the initial filter we'll invite you for an interview. We'll grill you on some data structures & algorithms & give you some whiteboard challenges". Which is absolutely OK. If that's what you're going to do - regardless whether it's sensible or not - then potential candidates can either…

I've interviewed at companies like this (Amazon / Google / Microsoft) and they do indeed tell you ahead of time there will give algorithms / data structures / coding.

No they don't. I had interviews with both Amazon and Google and nobody told me that.

After two years Amazon called be back for a second interview. I told them that I am not interested if they still have that kind of questions. They said they don't.

I flew to a different country for that second interview and guess what! They still asked those kind of questions.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#625

Post by reitoei »

ionforce wrote: post #348
reitoei wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flew to Ireland from the UK for a interview (at my own expense). Did a decent interview, never got a call/email back. People can be assholes.

But paying out of pocket and commuting, wasn't that your decision to put yourself into that scenario? It's immediately (and clearly) lop-sided.

Yes, I made the decision to travel on my own bat. I could easily afford it, that's not what I was annoyed about.

It was the fact that I'd taken the time & effort to meet with these people and to not even get so much as an email back... it's not right. People shouldn't be treated that way, job candidate or not. It's basic manners.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#626

Post by ddebernardy »

riyadparvez wrote: post #235

The problem with interviews I am having (I am about to graduate and have not got a job yet) is that the whole hiring process is too one-dimensional. Some companies only care about algorithmic coding competition skills that you can only achieve via competing in some sites like TopCoder, CodeChef and some other companies only care about how many years of experiences you have - does not matter what you have learned from…

FYI there actually are very few "new developers who do not have the experience but smart enough to learn and outperform many developers with experience".

Developers like to think they're on top of their game straight out of school and are able to design and develop 100k LOC apps off the bat. They could use a healthy dose of humility, because those that can are few and far in between.

The sorrier reality is that most of them spend their first couple of years learning how to work in a team, and then next 5-15 years picking up good habits and design patterns, and subsequently learning to not systematically use them once they know better. (I can't say first hand what comes after, but I would imagine yet more of the same.)

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#627

Post by linux_devil »

Hiring is broken , but not everywhere , its hard to set standard rules for technical hiring across different organizations , as every organization have different needs. I had similar experience in few organizations but not all organization are same.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#628

Post by ddebernardy »

drinchev wrote: post #155

Wow! As a person that interviewed other people for front-end developers, here in Berlin, I would say that I will probably offend half of the candidates if I ask them to code on a whiteboard. Not to mention that I would feel offended if I'm asked by a hiring team to solve complex logic task while visiting an office for a first time. Usually what I do as an interviewer is to select a bunch of questions out of [1] githu…

Still, you'd be surprised by how may devs can't do a fizzbuzz. Even amongst the competent looking ones.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#629

Post by ddebernardy »

ktRolster wrote: post #308
liquidise wrote: post #233

I recently wrote a post on designing better tech interview questions. [1] But one thing i never see interviewees do is outright ask, "Wait, what does this question actually tell you about me?" I find myself asking it in nearly every interview i go to. If you ask and your interviewer gets glassy-eyed or gives you the laughably generic "it shows how well you think algorithmically" you know that you are being interviewe…

I like your post, and I was going to comment on it, but the login process is rather onerous. So..... The first thing that jumped out was that you are trying to fit programmers into a bell curve, when they're really distributed by the power law, see: http://blog.benroux.me/4-steps-to-making-your-interview-suck... That was kind of a side piece to your blog, though. Secondly I wanted to give you some ideas I've had on a…

Two pretty good questions for that last bit are variations of 1) walk me through a project that you're really proud of, and 2) walk me through your biggest screw up and how it got solved. The first tells loads about how candidates view their role and how they approach working with others. The second often reveals when a candidate tends to own up to their responsibilities or dump them on someone else.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#630

Post by vijucat »

autotune wrote: post #359
vijucat wrote: post #68

Experiment : 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 the…

One caveat: you can't use Machine Learning to quantify someone's overall personality and whether you actually want to work with them or not. Sure they can contribute quality code, but if they come in and have to do a 5 minute breakdance after each contribution or throw a hissy fit when their code gets critiqued, probably not a good culture fit.

True. Maybe (non-technical) team lunches / one-on-one lunches together before one seals the deal?
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