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The Technical Interview Rift

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Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#81

Post by kafkaesq »

x0x0 wrote: post #75
kafkaesq wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Discover" in the sense of "derive ab initio , truly never having seen an iterative root-finding method, or anything analogous to it" -- like Newton and Raphson both did, separately -- I highly doubt it. Re-derive your (or my) perhaps-more-than-a-bit-stale-by-this-point derivation, from way back when, under non-interview conditions? Yeah sure -- assuming we were actual math majors, or among the 10% or of CS majors wh…

oops -- when I said "figure out in the sense of discover? Sure" I was unclear, but I agree -- that request would be ludicrous. That said, I have full faith that Gauss would pass that interview. Probably Euler, Tao, Dantzig, and Turing too =P But it's not entirely unreasonable for optimization/OR/ML people. Mostly they have to remember how to construct the right function to find the zero of. Most applications of NR ju…

If these companies would just say, in their job descriptions, that that's the calibre of people they need to debug their glorified hotel booking website (or whatever), then that would make things much simpler for everyone:

"When we say we're looking for the next Norvig or Knuth for this role, we mean it -- and you'll be tested accordingly!"

Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#82

Post by x0x0 »

kafkaesq wrote: post #81
x0x0 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oops -- when I said "figure out in the sense of discover? Sure" I was unclear, but I agree -- that request would be ludicrous. That said, I have full faith that Gauss would pass that interview. Probably Euler, Tao, Dantzig, and Turing too =P But it's not entirely unreasonable for optimization/OR/ML people. Mostly they have to remember how to construct the right function to find the zero of. Most applications of NR ju…

If these companies would just say , in their job descriptions, that that's the calibre of people they need to debug their glorified hotel booking website (or whatever), then that would make things much simpler for everyone: "When we say we're looking for the next Norvig or Knuth for this role, we mean it -- and you'll be tested accordingly!"

How could you debug a crud app if you're not Knuth?

Makes no sense.

Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#83

Post by jghn »

lj3 wrote: post #79
jghn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of my coding output for my job ends up on a public github repo, which is the best of both worlds.

That would be nice. Are you a library or framework developer?

I work for a nonprofit. The downside is the pay isn't as great as it could be elsewhere. The upside is that the work is meaningful and I get to write OSS as part of my day job.

Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#84

Post by jakewins »

lj3 wrote: post #71
luhn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument I usually hear is that many people don't do well under pressure or with others looking on. So by doing coding tests or whiteboard tests or whatever, you're selecting for people who do well in high-pressure situations, rather than people who are talented coders. But I agree with you. I've interviewed many people who have an impressive resume and can talk the talk, yet can't even do Fizzbuzz.

> I've interviewed many people who have an impressive resume and can talk the talk, yet can't even do Fizzbuzz. And I've interviewed many people who can do fizzbuzz because they studied for it (CTCI) and wind up being terrible programmers. The end result? Technical interviews are, at best, a completely random hiring signal. You'd be better off flipping a coin. It's better to be lucky than good, so why not use luck as…

But, if you aren't hiring a developer specifically to implement fizzbuzz for you, why are you giving them that as a problem to solve?

Hiring someone to work on a Flask REST API? Make them add a REST endpoint to a little flask app. Hiring someone to do CSS? Make them style a form. Hiring someone to build a database? Make them safely write to disk.

This is far from random - it's been almost twenty years since Schmidt and Hunter showed that a work sample is one of the best predictors of future performance, 24%, vs 3% for unstructured interviewing.

http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...

Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#85

Post by jdmichal »

clifanatic wrote: post #72
jdmichal wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're argument is exactly what I call the difference between a "trade programmer" and a "computer scientist". You are describing the former, while all the Google-copycat interviews with algorithms and data structures are designed to hire the latter. As you said, trade programmers typically glue together existing components and frameworks. Sometimes, this is really all that's necessary, as you have proven with your b…

> You're argument * your "you're" expands to "you are" - substitute "you are" in the sentence above and you can see that it's incorrect.

I'm quite aware. Typo caused by my brain thinking about where it was going and not where it was.

Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#86

Post by hfsktr »

sqeaky wrote: post #63
mancerayder wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you start with github repositories for your candidates, aren't you filtering out people who do things other than work? Most of us work 40 to 60 hours a week, and sign paperwork that says that any code we write belongs to the company. But now we need to work Saturday and Sunday on open source projects so we're worthy of sharing a coffee with a hiring manager?

> says that any code we write belongs to the company. I have turned down several jobs when they tried to hit me with that clause. I have negotiated a better clause that gave them the work I made for them, which just happens to line up with state law here > But now we need to work Saturday and Sunday on open source projects so we're worthy of sharing a coffee with a hiring manager? I wouldn't want to hire someone who…

I don't mind coding but I hate the other tasks that come with it (hardware, networking things, loads of setup). When it's part of my job sure but if I am programming instead of doing something else. I have not thought of a project that I can get so motivated about that I am willing to give up the little time I get to myself to work for free (obviously I am not going to strike it rich with my cheesy side project).

Also 99.9% of the tasks I wish to do are solved so it's not like I'm going to make my life easier by solving the task. For the few that I find that I want I understand they require extraordinary resources/programming skill that I just don't possess.

Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#87

Post by sssilver »

This is what I don't understand. During technical interviews, why don't we just give the potential employee a laptop and ask them to solve the problem as they would during a regular work day? Why can't they search Stack Overflow, and perhaps reach out to a friend or even a random person on IRC for advice? Isn't this how the real life works? They may not know anything about min heaps, but perhaps a 15 minute research will help them solve the problem better than anyone who actually memorized Cracking the Software Interview by heart? Isn't it better to measure discipline and ability to learn and solve problems instead of measuring existing knowledge?

Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#88

Post by lj3 »

jakewins wrote: post #84
lj3 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've interviewed many people who have an impressive resume and can talk the talk, yet can't even do Fizzbuzz. And I've interviewed many people who can do fizzbuzz because they studied for it (CTCI) and wind up being terrible programmers. The end result? Technical interviews are, at best, a completely random hiring signal. You'd be better off flipping a coin. It's better to be lucky than good, so why not use luck as…

But, if you aren't hiring a developer specifically to implement fizzbuzz for you, why are you giving them that as a problem to solve? Hiring someone to work on a Flask REST API? Make them add a REST endpoint to a little flask app. Hiring someone to do CSS? Make them style a form. Hiring someone to build a database? Make them safely write to disk. This is far from random - it's been almost twenty years since Schmidt a…

I couldn't agree more. The problem with most work sample tests is the length and the format. Most are too long and they have you start with nothing. Adding a rest endpoint to a little flask app is perfect.

It's a shame nobody actually does this kind of work sample test. And thanks for that study. It'll make for some nice ammunition. :)

Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#89

Post by [deleted] »

jdmichal wrote: post #31
blantonl wrote: post #6

I view technical interviews that require algorithm solving and coding on a whiteboard as ridiculous. Primarily, because I am deathly afraid of them. And here is why. I own and operate two online businesses in the Radio Communications space that are the de-facto standards for our industry. I've coded both of them from the ground up in PHP/MySQL and manage all the day to day administration of these sites. Our infrastru…

You're argument is exactly what I call the difference between a "trade programmer" and a "computer scientist". You are describing the former, while all the Google-copycat interviews with algorithms and data structures are designed to hire the latter. As you said, trade programmers typically glue together existing components and frameworks. Sometimes, this is really all that's necessary, as you have proven with your b…

[deleted]

Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#90

Post by jdmichal »

jghn wrote: post #76
jdmichal wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're argument is exactly what I call the difference between a "trade programmer" and a "computer scientist". You are describing the former, while all the Google-copycat interviews with algorithms and data structures are designed to hire the latter. As you said, trade programmers typically glue together existing components and frameworks. Sometimes, this is really all that's necessary, as you have proven with your b…

I think your percentages are too low. IMO it's more like 95-97% of businesses are 99-100% served by what you describe as a trade programmer. The problem is that it seems that 90+% of shops think they're 0% served by trade programmers.

Sure; 87.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot anyway. [0] It will also vary greatly depending on your business scale. Google needs computer scientists; at their scale any efficiency slip is very costly. For the local small business looking to turn their Excel spreadsheet sitting on a shared network drive into a CRUD app, a trade programmer or two is probably entirely sufficient.

[0] Yes, you heard me right! 91.4% of all statistics are made up at the very moment!

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