The dystopian world of software engineering interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#71

Post by glofish » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:02 AM UTC

thedance wrote: post #61

glofish wrote: post #45

In my personal experience, having interviewed dozens of candidates (data science), I believe that asking "easy" and "simple" questions is the most effective way to probe the problem-solving skills of a candidate. Fun and interesting solutions to easy questions are hallmarks of great individuals. The question would go like this: Suppose I have a column-oriented file and I want to print out a column in a reverse-sorted…

How do you sort an infinite stream?

the post was getting too long to put in all the details, but basically, what I was getting at, imagine the data comes in batches and you have to retain the N largest seen so far

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#72

Post by cryptozeus » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:03 AM UTC

“When I was asked to write an image filtration algorithm I spent the first 15 minutes just to understand the question. I ran out of time. ”

I have been through few of these, I just assume that there are people out there who can understand and code up the question asked within 15 min. Those are the people this company is looking for. Not you and me.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#73

Post by J5892 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:03 AM UTC

thedance wrote: post #61

glofish wrote: post #45

In my personal experience, having interviewed dozens of candidates (data science), I believe that asking "easy" and "simple" questions is the most effective way to probe the problem-solving skills of a candidate. Fun and interesting solutions to easy questions are hallmarks of great individuals. The question would go like this: Suppose I have a column-oriented file and I want to print out a column in a reverse-sorted…

How do you sort an infinite stream?

O(∞)

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#74

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:03 AM UTC

thedance wrote: post #61

glofish wrote: post #45

In my personal experience, having interviewed dozens of candidates (data science), I believe that asking "easy" and "simple" questions is the most effective way to probe the problem-solving skills of a candidate. Fun and interesting solutions to easy questions are hallmarks of great individuals. The question would go like this: Suppose I have a column-oriented file and I want to print out a column in a reverse-sorted…

How do you sort an infinite stream?

[deleted]

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#75

Post by vqc » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:03 AM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #42

mullingitover wrote: post #32

I honestly don't know why anyone gives FAANG recruiters the time of day anymore. I have yet to meet anyone who feels good about the prospect of working for them, anyone who works there who's super proud of their mission, and the competitors who are looking to hire at that level of talent pay roughly similar wages from what I've seen. My advice for this poor kid is to look around at startups and do more networking. FA…

A couple of reasons: - Comp: Total comp for a new hire with 3+ yrs dev experience is probably 300k -> 400k at a FAANG on average (with possibility to be higher). If you want to live and raise a family in your own house in the bay area (2.5 Million for a reasonable house), this matters. - Access: Few places have the kind of scale and resources of these companies, that can make them fun places to work. You also get to…

What kind of house is a reasonable house for $2.5M?

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#76

Post by lsiebert » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:04 AM UTC

jorblumesea wrote: post #15

Everyone knows it's broken, but interview cycle still continues to bring in talent, even if there are false negatives. People still brave the grueling gauntlet. People still show up for interviews. Smart people still get hired. The system works, just in a terribly shitty way. To HR, the engineer hiring process is voodoo magic and we best not touch it.

A small agile company could hire undervalued people who don't do well in traditional interviews and clean up, if they didn't cargo cult programming interviews.

See these make a bit of sense for huge companies that have to filter millions of potential candidates. They don't make sense for your ten person bootstrapped company that wants to hire a junior full stack dev.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#77

Post by Apocryphon » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:04 AM UTC

berdon wrote: post #49

caiobegotti wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are N other separations I could think of besides the ones you pointed out: - someone who gets anxious and blanks out given hardcore requirements these kind of interviews have, smart people can also go bad at tests - someone who's having a tough day and would fare better taking the challenge home with quiet relaxing time like they would expect to have at work if they need to code complex algorithms - no interest…

False negatives waste far less time (dollars) than false positives. It’s unfair but worth it to not force a team to have to work with an unqualified candidate for a year or maybe more.

The problem with an unyielding, fairly uniform obsession with interview problems unrelated to actual day-to-day development is that you're institutionalizing Goodhart's Law. Eventually the interviews will encourage false positives as candidates grind on CTCI and LeetCode and pass interviews without actually being able to excel at actual work responsibilities.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#78

Post by Quekid5 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:04 AM 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…

I agree on small orgs, but... recommending startups is a bit iffy, IMO. DGMW, startups can be great, but if you're just a good programmer wanting a stable job, then that startup job is not the job for you.

However, you could be a huge contributor and positive influence in a small org... and it's possible to gain a lot of life satisfaction that way[0]. Plus, your employer actually knows you and understands the value you bring, etc. etc.

Yes, you probably will not earn as much as you could by indirectly peddling ads, tracking users, or whatever, but personal fulfillment matters... at least it does to me... and I hire people who feel the same way.

[0] It sounds weird, but studies have shown that giving people agency (as they must be in a small org), setting their own goals, etc. has a positive influence on their well-being and productivity.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#79

Post by throwlaplace » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:04 AM UTC

thedance wrote: post #61

glofish wrote: post #45

In my personal experience, having interviewed dozens of candidates (data science), I believe that asking "easy" and "simple" questions is the most effective way to probe the problem-solving skills of a candidate. Fun and interesting solutions to easy questions are hallmarks of great individuals. The question would go like this: Suppose I have a column-oriented file and I want to print out a column in a reverse-sorted…

How do you sort an infinite stream?

by using an N element max/min heap and evicting the max/min when a new element comes in that's less than the max/greater than the min (note this is also a leetcode problem https://leetcode.com/problems/k-closest-points-to-origin/)

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#80

Post by lemmsjid » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:04 AM UTC

parsimo2010 wrote: post #33

Comedian Daniel Tosh had a bit about people that claimed to be smart, it's just that they were just bad at taking tests. He said, "oh, so you struggle with the part where we find out what you actually know?" I hear a lot of complaints about the "typical" software engineering hiring process, and it usually comes from the people that don't do well within the current system. Could the process be improved? Almost certain…

Tosh's joke ignores that people can struggle with recall and on-the-spot test taking stress, while performing quite well at whatever the test is assessing. When studies have been done on interviewing, nothing has shown that inducing stress is ever helpful, unless the interview is for a job that requires on-the-spot stress, such as interviewing to become a police officer.

To me, here is the actual problem that I see cropping up. FAANG companies have enough volume of applications per position that they can afford to have a system that will strongly prefer false negatives over false positives, so they are willing to err on the side of, "We'll just hire people who can pass our realtime CS-grad battery and sadly say goodbye to equally good candidates who cannot." Ok, FAANG companies can do that as long as they are eyes-open about the situation. Where things screw up is that companies that are not FAANG companies do not understand that, and end up aping the FAANG interview techniques when they do not have the same applicant volume. This starves them of talent, and also leads to good applicants getting rejected by non-FAANG companies.