Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

darrenkopp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 679 posts

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#71

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

citizen_friend wrote: post #49
gedy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for the devs, but "solves fun puzzles" is not a measure of quality either. The number of people who "aced the interview" but are borderline worthless for real product development is not trivial in my experience.

I still haven’t met the guy who is an algorithms genius who can’t program, but I can guarantee a license isn’t going to solve that problem.

But being able to program is table stakes to be an effective developer. There better be a lot more to the interview if you are hoping to find rounded developers with proven experience at the level you are hiring for.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#72

Post by Mashimo »

CraigRo wrote: post #7
cranberryturkey wrote: post #2

[flagged]

For those of us already putting in 10-14 hours per day at our day jobs, or who work in regulated industries, this is a nonstarter. My experience is that the people who are really good are kept pretty busy by their employer

> 10-14 hours per day

Oh heck nah.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#73

Post by benreesman »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #60
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…

Google did the "how many gas stations in the us" interviews for years before finally realizing that doing well on questions like this had no correlation to success on the job. Now, in reaction to that failure, everyone is doing the LeetCode thing instead, and presumably will eventually realize that this doesn't correlate either (especially irrelevant in this CoPilot era when ability to memorize and code up an algorit…

Haha I’m not sure I agree about how useful CoPilot is in practice (there are certain tasks where it shines but all of the LLMs print invalid code routinely).

With that said you made me laugh out loud because I have a friend who knew two people trying to LLM some minor contract and it just went on forever. I definitely think two LLMs talking to each other with two people copy pasting and not realizing it is worth like, a Rick and Morty episode or something.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#74

Post by flashgordon »

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).

Jobs in bay area with most tech companies with 5-10 years of experience at mid level gives you this. With zirp gone this may no longer be true but was the case 2 years ago

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#75

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

benreesman wrote: post #73
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google did the "how many gas stations in the us" interviews for years before finally realizing that doing well on questions like this had no correlation to success on the job. Now, in reaction to that failure, everyone is doing the LeetCode thing instead, and presumably will eventually realize that this doesn't correlate either (especially irrelevant in this CoPilot era when ability to memorize and code up an algorit…

Haha I’m not sure I agree about how useful CoPilot is in practice (there are certain tasks where it shines but all of the LLMs print invalid code routinely). With that said you made me laugh out loud because I have a friend who knew two people trying to LLM some minor contract and it just went on forever. I definitely think two LLMs talking to each other with two people copy pasting and not realizing it is worth like…

Yeah, I've even seen people in top ML jobs glowingly describe the main value of CoPilot as (just) smart autocomplete, but copying/regurgitation of algorithms ought to be something that even today's LLMs should be capable of.

Of course there's always Google search too if you are just looking for an algorithm, but LLMs help in the discovery process since you can describe what you need without knowing the name of it.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#76

Post by citizen_friend »

michaelt wrote: post #62
speeder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Perhaps they meant to say "studying for a few weeks to solve fun puzzles, after getting a CS degree from Stanford, moving to a city where a basic apartment costs $1 million, and getting 8-10 years FAANG experience, also like half that $400k is stock not cash" But no licensing!

None of these things are true of me actually. Skill based interview is an equalizer which overcomes status education. And fine divide the salary by 2 and it’s still better than most “licensed” careers

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#77

Post by surfingdino »

I have 30+ years of experience on my CV and I still am being asked to do coding interviews... I flatly refuse every time, because they have no connection to the actual job. The hiring process disregards experience and treats everyone in the same way. Ours is a stupid industry.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#78

Post by citizen_friend »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #71
citizen_friend wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still haven’t met the guy who is an algorithms genius who can’t program, but I can guarantee a license isn’t going to solve that problem.

But being able to program is table stakes to be an effective developer. There better be a lot more to the interview if you are hoping to find rounded developers with proven experience at the level you are hiring for.

For engineers at the mid to low level where leet code dominates the trait to select for is ability to program and be reasonable to work with.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#79

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

citizen_friend wrote: post #78
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But being able to program is table stakes to be an effective developer. There better be a lot more to the interview if you are hoping to find rounded developers with proven experience at the level you are hiring for.

For engineers at the mid to low level where leet code dominates the trait to select for is ability to program and be reasonable to work with.

At entry level fore sure, but not everyone is going to be equal after 5-10 years of experience. They'll all be able to code of course, but some will have gained valuable experience and moved on in capability and some won't, which of course is why you interview to be selective - to find those who can do more than just regurgitate LeetCode solutions.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#80

Post by triceratops »

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).

Jobs at software companies in the US. Other industries don't pay very much for technical talent.

$40k is extremely low for a senior role. Even in places like India or China.

Post reply on HN