The dystopian world of software engineering interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#651

Post by heartbeats » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #545

heartbeats wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARM have offices all over the world and are owned by the Japanese. The European "tech industry" is and remains a joke. American companies also have offices all over the world. For example, Google have several offices in Africa. This does however not mean that Ghana has a booming tech industry, it just means that sometimes you need domestic offices for minor regulatory reasons.

SoftBank only bought ARM in 2016, they are by origin very much from the UK and I don't think anyone is going to argue that ARM wasn't relevant before 2016. DeepMind was also founded in the UK and later bought by Google. Their HQ remains in London. DeepL, who are providing a much better translation product than Google or Microsoft by many accounts, are a German company. Spotify, which I'm sure needs no explanation, is…

Two of these companies are British, and the other two are complete jokes. It is like talking about the 'Ukrainian software industry'. Sure, some of them have computers, but that does not a tech industry make.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#652

Post by ajross » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

thedance wrote: post #638

ajross wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... demonstrating the ability to write subtle code is a useful question. "Describing" or "discussing" algorithms isn't the same thing at all. I mean, I can't speak to the thinking of the original interviewer, but this is what I'm looking for with that sort of question. And I don't see how a binary tree is a bad choice. Again, it's something that everyone sees in school, so it doesn't require a ton of description i…

I really can’t more strenuously disagree. At Giant Search writing “subtle” code is very strongly discouraged. The very last thing I want is candidates with a penchant toward subtlety.

The point is to demonstrate capability, not "penchant". I mean, look, subtle code happens. Maybe it shouldn't. But it does, and it has to be fixed. There was a story here just a few days ago about some Project Zero work to find a bug in Chrome that involved a state machine with something like 50+ states! And realistically finding people who can do that requires that they be able to also do things like traversing a binary tree, right?

So I'm going to ask the question one more time: if you won't traverse a tree in an interview, how else do you propose to select for people able to reason about that kind of problem in practical code?

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#653

Post by scottlocklin » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #582

scottlocklin wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, do you even data science? Not knowing Unix tools like cut and sort is a hard fail on a senior individual contributor in data science role, as is using sqlite which totally doesn't scale the way sort and cut does. Separates sheep from goats in data science land. You should really learn them if you're in the field and work with reasonably big data sets. Frankly you should learn them if you work with data at all,…

I’m not sure if I should be horrified or not. Both by the fact this happens, and by the fact that you seem proud of it. Learning sort and cut takes literally takes all of 10 minutes, so if it makes you pass over an otherwise qualified candidate you have your priorities completely backwards.

Feel free to be horrified: a data scientist who doesn't understand where and why to use unix command line tools for data preparation and ETL is about as useful to me as one who doesn't understand the conditions where a t-test breaks down or what a ROC curve is.

Generally speaking, people like this have never actually dealt with large data sets, never dealt with issues involved with installing "unapproved software" on a machine (ridiculously common in The Real World), has probably never cleaned a dirty data set (what do you do when your giant csv is formatted in a way that Wes McKinney didn't think of?), and will in a senior role be a long term liability for a data science team that works on serious problems. Sure at one point I didn't know about them either: I wasn't a senior data scientist then. I submit that if you don't know about them and haven't actually used them, you aren't either.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#654

Post by taeric » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

bostik wrote: post #534

taeric wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it? Because their strong data haven't helped them not screw up their messenger space. Or to have a fast email web client. Indeed, they seem to be going backwards on that chart. They flopped on wave and Google plus, hard. Those are the kinds of mistakes that kill most companies. Even Google glass still somewhat rankles and has left me with no confidence in any of their consumer things. And I say this as a happy G…

Not defending Google, but this is dangerous myopia: > Those are the kinds of mistakes that kill most companies. All companies make big mistakes and burn lots of money on failed projects. The difference between a medium-sized company and a huge company is that a huge one can absorb the cost of failure, shrug and carry on. Medium-sized one will indeed die. The difference between a large company and a huge company is th…

I'm not sure what the debate is. I'm all for changing strategies. My claim is that they don't have data on success from engineering. As evidenced by every pivot they have done being driven as much from marketing as technical.

Chrome, as an example, had a ton of marketing push behind it. Still some solid engineering, but not really any better than Firefox. Wasn't really any better than edge, but ms decided to drop the push for their own tech.

So, my question is what engineering successes do they have to back up their data on what will succeed?

I think you could pull in some of the ml work they are doing. Not sure how much data they actually have there, though.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#655

Post by ideal0227 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

crimsonalucard wrote: post #610

ideal0227 wrote: post #90

When my classmates were preparing interview coding questions, I was working on a mini TCP implementation and a toy kernel. AWS rejected me since I failed to write prefect code to traverse a tree in level order. Google did not even give me an interview since I told the campus recruiter I have not prepared for the coding questions. Then I ended up with an internship at CoreOS and created etcd. I am glad that they did n…

Two things. The google interview process was not made to filter you out. It was made to guarantee that they will not make a mistake on hiring you. People with the capability to do those interview problems have a high chance of being good programmers. There are many people like you who can't do those problems but are still very good programmers. Google doesn't need to hire you, the whole interview process is optimized…

Thanks for educating me about BFS.

I am major in computer science, and published paper in top conference. Tree traversal is trivial for me. So I guess I have decent CS background and knowledge?

Writing bug free and perfect code is not equal to simply solve the problem. If you have prepared coding interviews (especially for new grad and internship), you should understand it is less about knowledge but more about practicing and memorization for that specific purpose. The time spent on it is almost a waste in the future.

If the interview is knowledge based or problem solving oriented, I am all for it. Sadly, it is not today in many places. And that is exactly why website like Leetcode exists.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#656

Post by proximitysauce » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

bitexploder wrote: post #322

DenisM wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, do you actually ask the candidate to arrange calls with ex-managers and conduct these calls for all previous jobs? What does it mean that you are "flexible"?

We generally ask for two references and a warm introduction to each reference. We take it from there. We aim for more recent references. Doing it for all previous jobs is overkill and time consuming. The feedback is generally candid and useful. In some cases (limited work history) we only follow up on one reference. In others the best reference is also the current employer so that obviously can be tricky. The spirit…

I think it's important to understand that you're asking candidates to burn "social capital" by arranging those introductions. I've worked for pretty high end people (successful founders, ceos...). I'm not going to call in any favors from them for a job interview. Most senior people feel the same way. Don't ask your candidates to expend their own personal or social capital.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#657

Post by fsniper » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

peferron wrote: post #647

fsniper wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please look around, here you can find hundreds or thousands of people probably never used advanced algorithms for their lifetime except once or twice for their interviews. And you can see some who uses these daily who never implement them out of their heads but with intuition, preparation, effort, books and research. Oh and don't get me started that they all are compansated for. Which type do you think these intervie…

I'm not disputing that it's imperfect or wasteful, and I'm happy to see some companies trying different ways of interviewing that may not have these flaws. I'm disputing that spending a few months to prepare for free and on your own schedule is particularly abnormal or unacceptable. Maybe we could do even less, but it's extremely benign in comparison with many other high-paying jobs. Some people in this thread call t…

The industry is not interested in people from the street. We are always interested with people with years or decades of experience.

The problem arise from the discrepancy between how the expertise is and what the interview process searchs for. They are not the same thing or even signal each other.

I hate interviews. Just the idea of need for a job search is hurting my bones.

I did this on both sides multiple times in 2 different countries with different work ethics which are not SF or USA. I still not sure what are the good signals are. It is a lottery for both parties.

Also my concern is not about this, it's about peoples perception of the process. Some, like you consider preparation for the exam, but not the work ok. Some don't. And they both can't understand each others views. We have our perception filters tuned only for own.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#658

Post by fsniper » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

peferron wrote: post #647

fsniper wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please look around, here you can find hundreds or thousands of people probably never used advanced algorithms for their lifetime except once or twice for their interviews. And you can see some who uses these daily who never implement them out of their heads but with intuition, preparation, effort, books and research. Oh and don't get me started that they all are compansated for. Which type do you think these intervie…

I'm not disputing that it's imperfect or wasteful, and I'm happy to see some companies trying different ways of interviewing that may not have these flaws. I'm disputing that spending a few months to prepare for free and on your own schedule is particularly abnormal or unacceptable. Maybe we could do even less, but it's extremely benign in comparison with many other high-paying jobs. Some people in this thread call t…

About hazing, I absolutely totally agree it's hazing and from what I read here is getting worse.

Take a surgeon. for interviewing ask her to do a frog dissection for a take home project, and than ask her for a 10 hours long lead neural surgery, without meeting the patient before and preparing for it before. Oh you won't be paid, you can ask anything while patient is on the table. Oh I forgot you can't use the latest auto surgeon functionalities that we have which would improve or perfect the chances of success.

Now you know we are paying top notch, also have sushie served to your open office. You won't find a better option!

I know this is ridiculous, but why don't you think what we are exercising is not?

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#659

Post by fsniper » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

fsniper wrote: post #658

peferron wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not disputing that it's imperfect or wasteful, and I'm happy to see some companies trying different ways of interviewing that may not have these flaws. I'm disputing that spending a few months to prepare for free and on your own schedule is particularly abnormal or unacceptable. Maybe we could do even less, but it's extremely benign in comparison with many other high-paying jobs. Some people in this thread call t…

About hazing, I absolutely totally agree it's hazing and from what I read here is getting worse. Take a surgeon. for interviewing ask her to do a frog dissection for a take home project, and than ask her for a 10 hours long lead neural surgery, without meeting the patient before and preparing for it before. Oh you won't be paid, you can ask anything while patient is on the table. Oh I forgot you can't use the latest…

Also to make it clearer, let's add that this is a job for plastic surgery.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#660

Post by senordevnyc » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

allovernow wrote: post #11

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…

In any case, I have a strong suspicion that, aside from compensation, working for FAANG is hugely overrated. And that's not just sour grapes talk - mountains of red tape, processes upon processes, overwork and burnout, and best of all, you get to spend your best years infecting society with the cancer that is adtech.

It’s a little weird to say “other than comp”, given that almost no one would work for their employer, whether startup or FAANG, if they weren’t getting paid for it. And the difference isn’t small. Multiple startups in NYC offered me comp of around $200k, while the public tech companies were all in the $400k to $500k+ range.

Additionally, I think overwork and burnout are much worse at startups vs big tech. The offer I took pays more than twice as much as the startups and the people on my team are in the office for 40 hours at best, work from home as needed, no emails or slack on evenings or weekends, and take 4-5 weeks of vacation. It’s definitely not the grind that startups are.

Your complaints about bureaucracy and ad tech are fair, which is why I went with Square over G or FB. I like their business model and they’re a fraction of the size of the bigger tech companies, but still pay much better than most startups.