651–660 of 731 posts
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English is not my first language, and yet I'm fluent, but some of the questions I've been asked to solve are insanely confusingly worded and so I have a harder time because the interview process at some places is unrealistic.
Many interview coding questions are purposefully worded weird with the intent of seeing if you ask clarifying questions.
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> So what if a candidate wants to look good? How you feel about your looks affects your confidence, and you want to be confident in an interview. Like it or not, if someone needs to wear a suit to feel confident that says something about them. It may just be a personality quirk of them unrelated to their skills, but it often is not. There’s no reason you need to wear a suit to feel confident. > You get judged on your…
You do see how discriminatory your statement is right? Replace “wearing a suit” with literally anything else unrelated to programming skills. Wearing a dress. Having a particular speech pattern. Being old. As soon as you start judging people for anything other than their performance you fucked up. People’s personality comes through in the interview process. By the end of an hour working with someone you should have a…
> I’m not advocating for it being an absolute state, but you certainly have to give some consideration to the fact that dressing up far more than is needed implies you don’t culturally understand. It’s as simple as that.
I'm not saying you immediately throw a candidate out for wearing a suit. It's entirely possible I'm wrong and my mind can be changed by their performance, but it is something that would make me take a closer look.
I'll give you another example I experienced recently: a candidate who would not stop drumming their fingers on the table throughout the interview. Is that specifically related to their performance? No, not really. Is it annoying, a bit disrespectful, and shows a lack of restraint? Yeah, it is. This candidate had other flaws that made them disqualifying, but their finger drumming didn't help them at all.
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>The issue is lying about your experiences Side note, as far as a job requirements goes the bigger issue is asking for impossibly diverse experience and asking for things that can be easily learnt. This promotes lying because the liars are the ones that are rewarded with an initial interview. I was talking to a fresh graduate with some volunteer experience who was having difficulty getting a job, and all I could hesi…
Nope, that's just rather bland justification of cheating. Not sure how US corporations work, but in Europe any big company would flag you internally so you won't be able to work there for a decade, and the mark still remains in their hiring system afterwards. Just a stupid thing to do, as lying always is. This are not school exams, company wants to hire the best candidate. If all fail then best failing is still the b…
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People who run businesses don't do it for an hourly wage.
"it's like that because that's how it is"
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> What if there are no open positions on my experience and I have to pivot to another completely different tech stack that I studied in my spare time? What then? I had some trouble finding a sw position after leaving mechanical engineering, but I went to the interview prepared to show I could do it, and it worked.
But you still had to get an interview first, which is often the most difficult part. Not everyone is so lucky to get such a chance. What then? Go homeless or lie till you get an interview? The funny thing is I'm not even a mechanical engineer, but a a CS engineer, just mostly experienced in a stack that's not used much anymore but it's not like I can't learn another stack, I just refuse to put up with discriminatory…
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I would say "we solved this issue" if all someone did was hand me a coffee while I was debugging. What compels you to play lingual games with peoples' livelihoods?
Well I find conversations with people in interviews to be less of a game than giving them “homework” to do, given that unless they’re totally green with no work experience, I’d assume they would actually have some stuff they’ve worked on and would like to talk about. It’s completely bizarre to me that take home assignments have been normalized as part of an interview with professional working people.
I personally prefer hypotheticals, or some variant on live pair programming. Also, as someone with enough free time to do take-homes, I also prefer code reviews over that one-off code which then becomes a case of 100% "I did this and here's why".
Even with that last example I would say, "well to optimize, etc., we could do this".
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> Literally no other industry except for the performing arts interviews like this. No, not really. Take for example FANGs. Their hiring process is notorious for culminating with an on-site interview, where 4 or more interviewers grill you on all topics they find relevant. Some FANGs are also very clear that their hiring process focuses particularly on soft-skills. Where in the world do hope to find an engineering job…
You’re comment was talking about performing under pressure and failing to perform with people watching them. In this context when you say perform I assumed (as would most people) that you’re talking about technical/work sample interviews not culture fit tell me about a time you did x interviews. If you’re talking about those, then yes every job in every industry does that. If you’re talking about stand at this white…
I think you're failing to understand what actually happens in hiring rounds. You stand in front of a whiteboard to showcase your knowledge on abstract topics like systems architecture. This is exactly what happens in the real world in design rounds. I lost count of the amount of time I spent in front of a whiteboard this year alone. Perhaps you don't work with systems architecture, but if you are applying for a position where in the very least you are expected to have a cursory understanding of systems architecture, you are obviously expected to showcase your skills to help hiring managers compare you with other applicants.
And no. The point of whiteboards is not to solve problems. Their point is to help you present and clarify your thoughts in a dialogue with people in the room. It's a communication tool.
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I’ve always wondered: is there a LeetCode equivalent for doctors? When a hospital interviews a surgeon, do they roll out a cadaver and ask them to remove the gall bladder in 15 minutes while the interviewer scrutinizes how they hold the scalpel?
It’s because medicine, with its residencies and HN-mocked credentialism , is closer to traditional craftsmanship and the progression of apprentice-journeyman-master than the “every hacker for themselves” world of modern tech.
The whole point of credentials is that they are designed to be revoked. That's their whole point. If your credentials are pulled, you lose your ability to practice. That's by design. They are not gate-keeping tools. They are "this guy killed patients, so let's keep him far away from them" tools.
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It’s because medicine, with its residencies and HN-mocked credentialism , is closer to traditional craftsmanship and the progression of apprentice-journeyman-master than the “every hacker for themselves” world of modern tech.
> is closer to traditional craftsmanship and the progression of apprentice-journeyman-master than the “every hacker for themselves”. Let's fix the real problem then? Why can't tech be like this?
Why should it? What problems would they solve? Are you so afraid of competing with those who might not get a certiciation?
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As a candidate, this sort of test gives me the worst possible impression of the company. - 0 effort on your side - very stressful for me - completely unrelated to job - ridiculous definition of someone being “smart” Actually, I would not even do the test most likely and I bet many others neither.
We have to use some criteria when all applicants are effectively the same - 4000 applicants and 6 interviewers. We interview each applicant at least 3 times. Definition of being smart is to be quick at mental math and logic, but the puzzles are represented visually. And yes, both those skills are needed in the course of our work. Contrary to what you might expect, over 80% take the test. I suppose during next hiring…
That's not smart. That's being quick at mental math and logic.
Very different things