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Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

darrenkopp.com

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Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#661

Post by camgunz »

josephg wrote: post #641
camgunz wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this isn't what the leetcode interview tests for. Reversing a binary tree, or figuring out how to arrange the parking lot to fit the most cars or whatever isn't a working understanding, it's essentially memorization. Being able to memorize something like that takes intelligence and dedication, so it does a pretty good job selecting for that, but it also filters out a lot of people who for good and valid reasons d…

> isn't a working understanding, it's essentially memorization Boring questions that you've seen before are memorization. But there's thousands of interesting questions out there that will never show up on leetcode. Two examples from times I've been interviewed: - One time my interviewer gave me about 15 lines of C code that used multiple threads and asked me if it was threadsafe (it wasn't). Then he gave me some thr…

There's not a lot of difference between the algorithm interview and the leetcode interview--leetcode is just a story problem around some kind of basic algorithmic problem.

I've done multiple interviews where they use some site and you're expected to plow through 10 questions or whatever in 60 minutes. You can subscribe to the site to practice. Gazillions of employers use this site or one like it.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#662

Post by MichaelZuo »

lmm wrote: post #636
xandrius wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you read that? I just mean that if you put 2 experienced people talking about a topic they both know, it should be pretty easy for both (or at least the interviewer) to get a rough understanding of the level of the interviewee.

> I just mean that if you put 2 experienced people talking about a topic they both know, it should be pretty easy for both (or at least the interviewer) to get a rough understanding of the level of the interviewee. Well, in my experience it's not, at least not in a "hostile" context. Most technical people are used to assuming good faith in technical conversations, and there are some very smooth bullshitters around; i…

Anyone who can't see through the 'verbal facade' is not that good. They may be very smart, but not at a bonafide genius level.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#663

Post by YZF »

niccl wrote: post #441
YZF wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't discard good anecdotal evidence because there's no proper randomly controlled trial. If you're experienced/senior in the industry you probably worked with dozens of developers closely, with hundreds less closely, you've seen many projects and designs, you've interviewed and was involved in the hiring of dozens of people. This random controlled trial you're talking about is so hard to do because there are infini…

I guess we could make some reasonable evidence about hiring approaches based on HN hirers: What percentage of hires using your favourite technique/interview question do you think worked out as a success? My rate is around 50% good, 50% I wish I hadn't hired. Anyone else want to fess up?

I've had a much better rate than that. What does "wish you hadn't hired" mean exactly. Did you completely misjudge them or did you have an idea of what you're getting and still hired them. To be way off on 50% of interviews feels like way too high failure rate.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#664

Post by YZF »

tgv wrote: post #488
YZF wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a different take on this. I ask a fairly simple coding question and have them write code. No fancy algorithms to memorize or competition style coding. I want to see if they can think in code. If they can translate something simple to written code. There's always a chance to have a conversation as well to probe different aspects of their understanding. A few of those by a few people and I think you get a pretty…

I used that approach too for a beginning frontend dev: see if they can get a solution to straight-forward problems, and ask them to explain it afterwards. They got all the time they needed, and a clean laptop with wifi. Two candidates came out well, two others didn't. That was a bit shocking, given the low bar. But it won't cut it for a senior. Such people should be able to answer a wide range of questions, including…

I agree. For more senior people I'd mix in systems, architecture, design trade-offs and such. I'd want to see they have actually delivered something in their career and dig into the details.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#665

Post by P_I_Staker »

willcipriano wrote: post #554
bobthepanda wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Codes on their spare time” is not part of the job description, but “codes at all” is. There are plenty of reasons not to code on spare time. If anything the people who are most likely to do that are often also the people who coding interviews are supposed to be privileging, fresh single college grads. I don’t know how people would square the statements “take-home assignments are unpaid labor and unfair to people wit…

If it would take the candidate "spending every waking moment of their lives coding" to have one or two small coding projects after a half decade plus in the field, that's a signal. If you went to college but never made anything, that's a signal. If you didn't go to college, and never made anything, just shut up and make something.

It's so clear that people on this site have no friends, family, or hobbies. I also don't think you realize how ableist your comment is.

Some people have more trouble completing tasks for reasons that have nothing to do with talent or intelligence.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#666

Post by P_I_Staker »

feoren wrote: post #267
spyspy wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coding tests are an awful place to test someone’s conversational skills. I don’t talk while I code. You don’t either. Honestly I can’t even remember the last time I talked to anyone about the code itself outside of a PR. People talk about architecture and database migrations and why their containers aren’t behaving locally. Nobody ever tests for that stuff.

> I don’t talk while I code. You don’t either. That's quite an assumption. You've never heard of pair programming? You've never asked for help on a bug in your code? You've never talked through alternate approaches to a piece of code with a coworker? You've never hashed out an interface or a method signature or some pseudocode while talking through the problem? You've never walked through a calculation with an SME? A…

Lots of people in tech have never heard of pair programming, because it's an absurd idea. This site isn't just silicon valley. This is a tiny fraction of the tech universe.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#667

Post by Maxmillian3 »

All the pre-interview questions and filtering has so little value. It is just a test to filter to see if people will put in a little bit extra effort for almost no reason. It's an extra step that makes it more difficult for someone to at least make it to an interview.

I've focused on removing that part of the process for the engineers I work with and help people make it to an actual interview. If you have the skills you should have a fair shot and not get drowned out by the hundreds of other applicants.

If anyone is looking for a startup opportunity, I have a platform that removes that whole problem and gets you to an interview directly.

Here is our server. https://discord.gg/WKj3uz6sZZ

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#668

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

mtnGoat wrote: post #572
mrweasel wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We recently interviewed a candidate, with 7 years of experience at a FAANG company, fail a really basic coding interview and we don't even make you write code. I have no idea what these people expect. We ask coding questions, we have basic programming skills as a requirement, what do they think will happen if they get the job? Do they expect to just magically learn the required skills or hope that nobody will notice…

Do you think working at a FANG would make you a better developer? I’m sorry but I think that’s a bad expectation, hire from a startup if you want great developers, their span of control and influence is much wider. Most of us at FANG are pigeon holed into a very narrow topic, have to work with really annoying, slow and complex internal build systems. And write very little actual code. Also, unless you have global sca…

> Do you think working at a FANG would make you a better developer?

Yes...? I mean look at the complexity of the products these companies build?

I would expect if you've contributed on say Chromium or some EC2 networking layer that you're quite competent...is that somehow unreasonable?

These companies tend to pay multiples of typical "enterprise" CRUD developers because the work is that much more complex.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#669

Post by benreesman »

jkingsbery wrote: post #175
benreesman wrote: post #19

The modern FAANG Frankenstein interview is a mess. It was so/so at Google 15-20 years ago, it was so/so when initially FB but most everyone cargo-culted it 10-15 years ago. It’s become “grind leetcode” which is clearly a failure mode. The trouble is it’s a hard problem, and it usually gives - some signal, so it’s sort of better than nothing? I guess? In cases where contract-to-hire make sense for both the company and…

I work at a FAANG (and obviously, I'm not a company spokesperson, just sharing my own experience). Those who are passionate about interviewing internally all seem to agree on not asking leetcode questions. I know leetcode questions get asked anyway, but there's pretty clear internal guidance and training for interviewers saying not to use them. At least part of the problem is that leetcode questions are easy to ask,…

During my ~7 years interviewing for a FAANG I basically always went off-script and asked something reasonable.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#670

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

speeder wrote: post #51
citizen_friend wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- licensing ensures only a minimum level of quality - people with licenses still do interviews, often just as grueling - licensed careers with high performers (lawyers, doctors, ib, etc) have other forms of filtering which are much more painful, like years of low pay internships Studying for a few weeks to solve fun puzzles to make 400k sounds like a deal to me.

What kind of job pay 400k? Even when I worked as C++ guru at BMW and was hired as very senior my before taxes compensation was 40k (year).

> C++ guru at BMW

This sounds interesting--what did you work on?

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