Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry • Hacker News Board

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

#641

Post by stegosaurus » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 2:36 PM UTC

drakenot wrote: post #588

stegosaurus wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Also your flippant, dismissive attitude on quite important CS concepts wouldn't take you far. Please try to avoid this. We can discuss without resorting to attacks. >> "There's no point in testing for X or Y because ... e.g. we won't need X or Y to perform the job we are being tested for" That's what most people are arguing for I think, so I agree with you there. >> not being able to recognize what BFS even stands…

You seem to be arguing that non-CS trained devs can learn these things when they come across them. I wouldn't disagree with that. I think what I see as the real concern is a case of "not knowing what you don't know." If you aren't exposed to at least the fundamentals of this broad base of CS knowledge you aren't going to know that they are available to you when you need them. Learning about a tree when you first read…

Sort of, but not really.

I think really what we're arguing about now is the distinction between hiring for a Google position (pushing the absolute state of the art) and hiring for a position creating accounting software or something.

I don't think that it's reasonable to expect to be hired into a top tier position as a kernel hacker at RedHat or a database expert at Google with an English degree and a few weeks of github commits.

I think that most software development jobs don't need the level of technical chops that are being asked for - and that many of the developers that actually have this level of ability just don't need the company (this post might be an example of that).

Some of the job requirements I've seen make me think along the lines of - 'hell, if I can do all of that, why would I work for you for peanuts?'.

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

#642

Post by radnor » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 2:37 PM UTC

infinite8s wrote: post #609

pjlegato wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds nicer than what 95% of programming interviewers actually do, which is something rather different. Almost all are simply playing "programming trivia." They name an algorithm or a data structure, and then evaluate whether you can recite it from memory. That's it. There is no problem-solving element involved. It is purely a test of whether you can memorize and recite. This requires a lot less effort on the p…

If that's the case, is that really a company you'd want to work at?

When it's the case with nearly every company around you, and you really need a job right now, what choice do you have?

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

#643

Post by esja » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 2:40 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #429

esja wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, but the consequences of hiring bad developers are rising every year. I think licensing is coming whether the industry wants it or not.

Why? The vast majority of industry engineers in other disciplines are not licensed. Why would software engineers be any different?

I didn't say everyone would need licensing, just that it's coming. Safety critical areas will probably be first.

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

#644

Post by dclowd9901 » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 2:50 PM UTC

infinite8s wrote: post #608

dclowd9901 wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the example, but this is not a generalized problem, and is very specific to your domain, so it would be silly to receive such a question from companies that are not your company, which I have had happen. If I were applying for your company, I would expect to have to implement an algorithm like this on the job, but I don't see why I should have to know it to get the job. As long as I was capable of imple…

And how would the company know you were capable of implementing algorithms as described? Perhaps by asking you during the interview how you might go about implementing it?

Precisely!

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

#645

Post by johnward » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 3:10 PM UTC

Grishnakh wrote: post #449

halis wrote: post #375

I interviewed with Netflix for a front-end JavaScript position a few years ago. I had two technical phone screens. One with the engineering manager and another with a senior engineer on their team. Those went smoothly so I was asked to fly out to Los Gatos, CA. On-site I was supposed to talk first with the senior engineer I had already interviewed with over the phone. He was out sick so they changed at the last minut…

I wonder if he didn't like you because you didn't look like a hipster.... I'm totally serious: I really wonder how many of these baffling interview experiences where seemingly highly-qualified candidates get turned down is really about non-technical and non-work-related factors, but no one wants to actually admit it. How much of it is due to personal biases by the interviewers, who may discriminate against people for…

Those bloomberg recruiters must contact everyone. I'm like "yeah I play around with Rails on side projects". Then they want to interview me. I've never gone through with it because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be successful in that position.

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

#646

Post by vonmoltke » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 3:14 PM UTC

esja wrote: post #643

vonmoltke wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The vast majority of industry engineers in other disciplines are not licensed. Why would software engineers be any different?

I didn't say everyone would need licensing, just that it's coming. Safety critical areas will probably be first.

Even then, most engineers of other disciplines do not need to be licensed. Safety-critical products must conform to standards and must be signed off by someone. Dozens or hundreds of other engineers of multiple disciplines can be involved in designing and manufacturing those products, but only one licensed engineer of any discipline is needed to sign off on its compliance.

Companies that have the kind of engineering culture required to produce safety-critical products already treat software engineers like any other engineering discipline and expect them to act with the same rigor has other engineers. That's actually why I cringe every time I hear about a Valley software company wanting to pivot or branch into products like that.

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

#647

Post by johnward » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 3:24 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #546

Don't get hired then. Just freelance and be done with it. I as a developer can't understand why anyone skilled wants to be employed. I was employed for about 7 years and now I'm a freelancer. I don't have to discuss with my customers that I want to work from home, I just do it. I get more money than before, I spend less for health insurance and taxes, I start working when I want and not when some manager wants me in…

"I as a developer can't understand why anyone skilled wants to be employed."

I'm mostly scared of the lack of a "guaranteed" salary. I'm a consultant for IBM Watson. My skills are in demand. I could probably go on my own for about $150 an hour; work less and make more. I'm afraid to take that leap though. I have a family I'm responsible for and live paycheck to paycheck now.

I also have similar experience in my job search but I attribute it mostly to me just being a failure at interviews.

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

#648

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

p4wnc6 wrote: post #638

lawrjone wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell sort of library would you crack out to do a breadth first search traversal? This is my main problem with the OP, BFS isn't some arcane complex cryptic algorithm, it's a way of moving through a data structure that becomes natural and very obvious when you think about how you can effectively traverse it for some tasks. If I were ever to want to traverse something in a breadth first search manner, then I w…

> we've still avoided adding another potentially crappy dependency to our project. No, you've just added the crappy dependency == your off the cuff implementation (which is even more work since you have to handle issues and unit testing for it too). > What the hell sort of library would you crack out to do a breadth first search traversal? In Python I would use networkx probably, unless there was a good reason I coul…

In practice it's extremely easy to mess up gaussian elimination and get implementations that are bad or just plain wrong.

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

#649

Post by prakashk » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 5:03 PM UTC

snappy173 wrote: post #374

ckozlowski wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Technical interviews became 10x easier when I realized that most companies aren't necessarily looking for the right answer as much as they are trying to look into your mind. This is a great, great point. I'd like to add one more: Admitting when you don't know the answer. I've been in a number of recent phonescreens where we'd ask a technical question of a simple "good/bad" sort. My advise to those reading: If you do…

> I'd like to add one more: Admitting when you don't know the answer I'll +1 this, but with a slight caveat. Some interviewers don't get it, and will ding you for this. Those are the companies to avoid.

Since those are companies to avoid anyway, you are not losing if you are rejected because of an honest "I don't know" answer.

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

#650

Post by bpchaps » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 5:06 PM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #639

bpchaps wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I'm asking is for a bit of empathy. If you're willing to have someone fly out to you, that's an enormous hassle for them but very little for you. I kind of get the impression you're bitter or projecting something, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Not trying to be snarky, just saying.

Try re-reading the first paragraph as if you were the recipient of your message. And where do you think it's no hassle for me? I spend somewhere around 4 hours every week on interviews, for years now. Job hunting is a big deal. It's real work, and literally everyone who's doing an interview has been interviewed, almost certainly in the same process. I studied up before my interviews, and I worked to manage my energy…

The reason I can't put my finger on your reply is that you immediately applied everything I said to yourself and blew it up into a lengthy reply. If you're one of the "good" interviewers, then none of what I said applies to you - that simple. Yet, even if that's the case, I still can't help but notice that your reply then, and now, feels like personal projection of some kind.