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

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

#71

Post by stegosaurus » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 1:28 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #45

stegosaurus wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what BFS is. I just googled it. Oh, I know what it is now. If you haven't been exposed to it, it's just jargon. That's the point. You are testing for jargon rather than ability. It is the distinction between saying 'implement FizzBuzz' and going silent, and actually explaining what it is. As an interviewer it is easy to forget that whilst you may have asked a question 20 times, this may be the candidate'…

Trees and graphs are fundamental to computer science and there are only two ways to traverse them. I don't know what kids are doing these days, but I learned this because of my high-school curricula. In other words, it's OK if you don't have a formal education in computer science, but when you don't have it, you need to make up for it by learning on your own, because this is basic stuff that high-school kids are lear…

I think this makes sense if you consider an interview as extending a hand to a poor, down-trodden vagrant, rather than an exchange amongst equals.

The article might go over the top a bit with self-pity, but personally I just see it as suboptimal behaviour.

http://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/ - Dan Luu explains better than I can.

I think fundamentally the idea of paying developer X 40K and developer Y 80K (because developer Y has been twice as effective in the past) is broken, because it negates the impact of environment.

If you pay someone 150K GBP in London they can live next door to the office, have TaskRabbit like services perform all household tasks for them, and spend their time exercising and reading 24/7. They will kill it.

Pay them 30K, and regardless of pedigree, they're going to struggle.

Somewhere in there is a balance and I argue it's far less to do with certification and more the circumstances of life which as an employer you have huge discretion to influence.

Basically, it's about steelmanning. Why is someone bad? Is it that they're inherently genetically dysfunctional? Or is it that they haven't been coached well or have a difficult environment?

Given good faith, most of the developers I know have the ability to be amazing. I include myself in that (am I that good? dunno, impostor syndrome innit). But they are stifled by needless nonsense. Management, open office, low pay, commute, stress, basically. Kill the stress and you get your '10x engineer'. Keep the stress and your '10x engineer' turns into a chocolate mousse.

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

#72

Post by mkozlows » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 1:29 PM UTC

robbiemitchell wrote: post #40

sagichmal wrote: post #11

Hiring isn't broken, dude. You just don't interview well, and you seem antagonistic even to the idea that your cachet and skills, insofar as they exist, aren't useful to the market. That's a problem -- for you. Interviews exist because employers need a way to quantify and qualify your ability. Typical computer science problems are a (flawed, but concrete) way of doing that. No reasonable interviewer expects you to re…

What do you think about OP's comments that the algorithm questions were unrelated to the front-end positions?

Of course they're unrelated. The interviewer asking this doesn't expect you to write these algorithms all day, they want to know that you have the basic mental dexterity to figure things like this out. They are, ideally, abstracted problems of the complexity that you'd be expected to be able to solve on your own.

There are some positions where you don't have to care if people can really problem-solve; as long as they can tweak CSS until it works right-ish, or know the particular arcane implementation details of installing some WordPress module, they can do the job. But there are a lot more positions where you want someone who can solve the problems that need solving, pick up new technologies as needed, and just generally be a flexible and productive contributor in a way that doesn't relate to the fiddly details of one particular technology.

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

#73

Post by odonnellryan » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 1:29 PM UTC

mrbgty wrote: post #22

malbs wrote: post #14

Just went through this process from the POV of employer. The risk of choosing the wrong person is so great, that it's often better to not choose anyone. If there is any doubt what-so-ever, it's better to not make a a hire, it can be too damaging to a team, manager, company. I've tried so many different "coding interview" scenarios. But I found the best one was a real task that a real staff member would be expected to…

"The risk of choosing the wrong person is so great, that it's often better to not choose anyone" This risk can be great, but the team and company can be organized such that the risk is extremely reduced. A pairing schedule, for example, can be very effective.

So many things. The only times I can think that it'd be super damaging:

1) This person is talking directly to clients day one, solo

2) Their code is pushed without review...

3) They are making high-level (C-level, maybe a bit lower) decisions for your business

Otherwise, yeah... a bad employee can do some harm. But, it's that employee's fault, and the other employees will realize this.

It is the business's fault if they go a year under-staffed because "they are afraid."

The second is MUCH more damaging: shows your leadership is not bold, they are misguided, and they don't know what to do to correct course if something goes unplanned (sub-performing employee).

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

#74

Post by kinai » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 1:29 PM UTC

"I could feel my frustration rise as I am struggling to come up with a solution on a whiteboard....yep, I am definitely not going to pass this interview. I ran out of time before coming up with a working solution."

Instead of standing there with nothing its better to be straight up and just say "No idea mate" and then name reasons why that is but how you'd solve it in a normal situation. It is a lot about human psychology, showing them that they want/need you, not vice versa.

Sometimes all it takes is balls and a good amount of "I don't give a fuck" attitude.

I wouldn't let anyone treat me like Sahat got treated.

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

#75

Post by kuschku » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 1:30 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #18

jpatokal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not a test of whether you know it, it's a test of whether you can implement it. If the candidate doesn't know/recall what BFS is, it's trivial to demonstrate the basic idea on a whiteboard, and it's the candidate's job to convert the idea into code. (Which, at the end of day, is pretty much what the vast majority of coding is about.)

It's still not realistic. People don't code on whiteboards. You code (today) with all the resources of the internet at your fingertips, and if you need to invert a binary tree you will use a well-tested implementation from a standard library.

People often do code on Whiteboards – but not actual code, but diagrams, plans, etc.

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

#76

Post by kkapelon » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 1:32 PM UTC

jmaley wrote: post #21

TLDR: Doesn't know computer science fundamentals, doesn't get hired in a role that requires computer science fundamentals. Is this Hacker News or Script-Kiddie News?

Can you explain why a front-end position requires computer science fundamentals?

If you are a company and have to select between two front-end developers where one has a vast portfolio of production apps that you find impressive and the other knows BFS by heart (but has never shipped something to production), who would you choose?

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

#77

Post by odonnellryan » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 1:32 PM UTC

746F7475 wrote: post #37

Didn't care to read after first rant about hiring process. It just seems like you are not a fit for Google. People always try to find company which "culture" fits them, but it also works the other way around, even if you wish to work for Google, maybe just for the salary or other benefits, if you are poor fit for the company culture then you are a net loss.

I interviewed for Google. I didn't get the job, but they were 100% awesome people. Even followed up after asking if I had an complaints, or questions, or anything like that.

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

#78

Post by overcast » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 1:32 PM UTC

So there's really no hope for the self taught without formal algorithm training. I can start from an idea, build an entire site from the ground up, including hardware, OS, programming environments, mysql/oracle/rethinkdb/mongodb/arangodb + all their query languages, backend nodejs/php/python code, all custom frontend css/stylus/vuejs/js/responsive, domain / dns / hosts, email servers, deployment and administer the entire stack. But I guarantee I'd fail every single one of these tests.

I guess I'll go back to building my own projects, because none of this sounds enjoyable.

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

#79

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 1:33 PM UTC

sagichmal wrote: post #11

Hiring isn't broken, dude. You just don't interview well, and you seem antagonistic even to the idea that your cachet and skills, insofar as they exist, aren't useful to the market. That's a problem -- for you. Interviews exist because employers need a way to quantify and qualify your ability. Typical computer science problems are a (flawed, but concrete) way of doing that. No reasonable interviewer expects you to re…

[deleted]

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

#80

Post by 49531 » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 1:33 PM UTC

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.

As a self taught programmer things like binary search trees and linked lists are a foreign concepts (especially as a self taught frontend developer). When I am asked to solve a problem in a way I've never encountered before, people are pretty open to explaining how the problem works.

I don't get frustrated if a problem seems arbitrary or obscure because that's typically not the point. The point is, if you're going to join my team, how do you approach a difficult problem; do you get upset? do you clam up? I don't want someone like that on my team. I'd say most people would prefer a teammate who is resourceful rather than one who only wants to solve problems they're comfortable solving.