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Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

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Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#781

Post by mxcrossb »

thephyber wrote: post #413
lrem wrote: post #377

People bomb, including good people. That is sadly part of the system. Once I had this candidate. Damn, I know my questions are deceptively simple on purpose, but he literally couldn't do anything. Not even a trivial brute force. Not even any related simple knowledge questions. Couldn't tell an average from a median. The only good thing I could write in the feedback was "seems to know some basic syntax". It was quite…

> People bomb, including good people. That is sadly part of the system. It seems like there's probably some value in a "MoneyBall" company that identifies a way to interview without most of the anxiety. Perhaps hiring a few people with remarkably high EQ who customize the interview setting who review the inteviewees' work and watch them program over a few days in their own computer and IDE. I know I've interviewed pe…

The whole reason we’re in this mess is every company is trying to play moneyball. They’re all convinced that by creating a unique interview process they’ll find better talent than other companies and this make more money. The end result is more and more obtuse hiring practice which have zero practical value.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#782

Post by Haunted_Cabbage »

koheripbal wrote: post #416
lrem wrote: post #377

People bomb, including good people. That is sadly part of the system. Once I had this candidate. Damn, I know my questions are deceptively simple on purpose, but he literally couldn't do anything. Not even a trivial brute force. Not even any related simple knowledge questions. Couldn't tell an average from a median. The only good thing I could write in the feedback was "seems to know some basic syntax". It was quite…

One trend I've noticed that is markedly different from when I started programming in 1998, is how dependent we've become to program via Google/StackExchange searches. I'm not sure I know how to write anything from scratch anymore, because I just search/read/alter/test. The breadth of what I work on is 100x wider than it used to be, and so I've become absolutely dependent on quickly reading docs, copying code found on…

Most of my job depends on analyzing the runtime complexity and memory complexity. It's my passion. I don't memorize any language, but boy do I understand the small complexities and seemingly trivial interactions that have profound implications. When I interview, I ask them about what they enjoy about programming and how they approach problems that they're stuck on.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#783

Post by alexh »

Coding interviews are not about coding skills, they are about communication skills.

I thought I had discovered a clever hack when I was interviewing. You ask enough closed questions about the problem that the interviewer tells you the answer. Then you repeat the answer back to them, as code or aloud, and you pass.

Now that I am interviewing, I am desperate to find anybody who will ask me enough questions to have me reveal the answer, and then repeat it back to me.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#784

Post by blisterpeanuts »

stormbrew wrote: post #774
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just you :) A much more realistic way to test people is to tell them to bring their laptop, point to a problem on the whiteboard and say "here, solve it, and use whatever resources you need." I'm somewhat like you; I do a wide variety of tasks every day and simply can't keep all the different rules and syntaxes in my head. I'm terrible at tests anyway and would probably bomb a FAANG interview badly because o…

As the replies to this are getting at, it's really important that if you do this you don't require the candidate to use their own laptop. You need to provide a laptop or like, a mac mini or something you know you can plug in and has baseline requirements for working on the problem you're giving them. And you need to make sure that the problem isn't complex enough that they can't do it in the allotted time if they str…

Hm, maybe. I was thinking, work in an environment you're familiar with, since that's a more realistic measure.

For example, I'm an Emacs kind of guy, so if they hand me a Windows laptop, do I limp along with Notepad? or some IDE that happens to be installed? Generally, as soon as I've settled in at a new job, I've customized my work environment with something as close to Linux and Emacs as possible -- if Windows, I'll install Cygwin if allowed, and/or Emacs and GNU utilities.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#785

Post by tchaffee »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #115

I conducted a couple hundred interviews for my first FAANG employer, and I was constantly amazed at the percentage of candidates with years of Microsoft or Facebook experience on the resumes who apparently did not know how to program. I always thought, 'huh, guess I know why they quit after 3 years, amazing that they all lasted this long." Then I interviewed for another company and utterly bombed. It became suddenly…

The best advice I ever got about interviews is to figure out ways to prove yourself wrong about what you think about the candidate. Although it's good advice for a candidate who seems too perfect, this advice really shines when someone is bombing.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#786

Post by zymhan »

itronitron wrote: post #630
timClicks wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this. Hiring the wrong person can be ridiculously expensive, especially if they linger on in a role for years corroding the culture.

obligatory request for citation

This isn't StackExchange.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#787

Post by lewisjoe »

roldie wrote: post #258
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #115

I conducted a couple hundred interviews for my first FAANG employer, and I was constantly amazed at the percentage of candidates with years of Microsoft or Facebook experience on the resumes who apparently did not know how to program. I always thought, 'huh, guess I know why they quit after 3 years, amazing that they all lasted this long." Then I interviewed for another company and utterly bombed. It became suddenly…

The same is true for design/ux jobs interviews. Well, at least for me. I got laid off a couple of months ago, and have been interviewing pretty steadily since then. I have yet to receive an offer. I already know where my strengths and weaknesses are. I'm fine with 1 on 1s and all that, but when it comes to the technical part of the interview process like a take-home design project or a live design challenge, I usuall…

This. Adding up, front-end engineering has an identity crisis now. A friend of mine is a web dev who started back in the days when Javascript was for form validation.

When JS frameworks and SPAs took over the web, he adapted himself. But being a UI engineer he cares about the craft's visual aspects, than the technicalities of JS.

Although he has a proven record of his works, he is now dealing with interview questions like "what are the problems with closures" and "when you do use function.apply()" and "immutability".

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#788

Post by cmonnow »

tchaffee wrote: post #785
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #115

I conducted a couple hundred interviews for my first FAANG employer, and I was constantly amazed at the percentage of candidates with years of Microsoft or Facebook experience on the resumes who apparently did not know how to program. I always thought, 'huh, guess I know why they quit after 3 years, amazing that they all lasted this long." Then I interviewed for another company and utterly bombed. It became suddenly…

The best advice I ever got about interviews is to figure out ways to prove yourself wrong about what you think about the candidate. Although it's good advice for a candidate who seems too perfect, this advice really shines when someone is bombing.

That advice seems like unnecessary mental gymnastics.

Just take an unseen technical problem, solve it for the very first time in front of a colleague, then double your time as the expected time for candidates in an interview.

When you're under time-pressure, you actually spend more time thinking about how much time you have left, rather than thinking about how to solve the problem.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#789

Post by hyeomans »

alexh wrote: post #783

Coding interviews are not about coding skills, they are about communication skills. I thought I had discovered a clever hack when I was interviewing. You ask enough closed questions about the problem that the interviewer tells you the answer. Then you repeat the answer back to them, as code or aloud, and you pass. Now that I am interviewing, I am desperate to find anybody who will ask me enough questions to have me r…

Like the “guess who?” game?

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#790

Post by pmiller2 »

mattkrause wrote: post #605
bumby wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, there's a famous study showing those doing the judging "can't think when hungry" either. (Or, at least can't think unbiasedly).[1] [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889

That study turned out to be quite flawed, because the cases were ordered [1]. In particular, cases were grouped by prison and within each prison, prisoners without an attorney went last. As the well-known saying goes, "the man who represents himself has a fool for a client": the pro se prisoners fare far worse than those with a lawyer. Judges tried to complete an entire prison before taking a meal break, and therefor…

Well, then. There's the solution. From now on, I'm bringing my attorney to all my on-site interviews. :P
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