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Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

darrenkopp.com

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Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#81

Post by arcticbull »

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).

You can make double or triple that in total compensation at the staff or principal level in the Bay Area.

I'm not saying these jobs are easy, or easy to get, but yes, they exist, even in this market.

The reality is the biggest drop-off in recruiting is at the very top of the funnel. Your basic phone screen and first technical screen -- before you get to a full panel. Once there you have way more, qualified, applicants than roles. I'm not sure it really matters which person gets the job, and this is one way you can make a fairly arbitrary decision. It's nice because it's within your control to grind some leetcode lol. From the company's perspective it's fair and has limited negative selection risk, and doesn't lead to as many regrettable hires.

If you've got 100 great candidates and 1 role, does it really matter which great candidate gets the job, so long as the selection process is relatively fair and uniform? From the company's perspective, probably not.

Since there's no feasible way to select the local maxima, the second sort is consistency.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#82

Post by gnutrino »

surfingdino wrote: post #77

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.

Have you ever been hired by a company you refused to do the coding interview for?

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#83

Post by [deleted] »

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!

[deleted]

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#84

Post by mrkeen »

jf22 wrote: post #9
cranberryturkey wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nope. tech is so fast moving if you're not at least experimenting with your own code then you're not going to be a good fit. we tend to also hire engineers who have contributed to open source.

Most code is not written with the latest technologies or techniques though. Why would being up to date matter?

I think you just gave the answer and then the question.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#85

Post by mrkeen »

spicyusername wrote: post #44
lazide wrote: post #35

To bastardize a quote - ‘it’s a terrible system of government, but it’s the least terrible one we’ve been able to find’ Seriously, what are the alternatives?

Standardized licenses, per language / domain / etc, that expire and / or something analogous to professional engineering licensure in harder engineering disciplines. Take the leetcode tests once every 5 years or so. Mentor for a few years with an experienced, and already licensed, engineer and get their approval. Then the interviews can skip the drudgery and can be higher level and higher quality.

> Standardized licenses

The licence you value wouldn't be the licence I value.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#86

Post by mrkeen »

BerislavLopac wrote: post #59
spicyusername wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standardized licenses, per language / domain / etc, that expire and / or something analogous to professional engineering licensure in harder engineering disciplines. Take the leetcode tests once every 5 years or so. Mentor for a few years with an experienced, and already licensed, engineer and get their approval. Then the interviews can skip the drudgery and can be higher level and higher quality.

Standardised on what exactly? There are so many methodologies and/or tools, with endless possible combinations, each of which can reach the desired result in terms of functionality and even quality. And enforcing just one means no possibility of progress. In physical engineering, things are very much limited by physical laws, which don't change (and even if our understanding on them might, that happens rarely enough…

> the foundational principles can and do change many times in an average engineer's career.

I'd like to hear more.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#87

Post by mrkeen »

viraptor wrote: post #8
cranberryturkey wrote: post #2

[flagged]

You're missing out on lots of amazing people who treat programming as work and have other hobbies. Or people in temporarily different situations (like young kids). Or people with more important things happening in their life. You're effectively filtering for mostly people in their 20s. I mean, it's your choice, but your loss too.

> You're effectively filtering for mostly people in their 20s.

Or people who used to be in their 20s.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#88

Post by Paul-Craft »

fileeditview wrote: post #48
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.

Only in other countries than the US there are also these interviews and you make far from 400k :)

Even in the US, "$400k" is almost certainly an outlier and not the typical case. Ever notice how people making these claims never provide data about actual comp distributions? I've been an engineer for almost 10 years and never had an offer come close to $400k per year.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#89

Post by arcticbull »

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…

> There's really no substitute for interviewing based on candidate's experience.

That always happens in an interview loop too though.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#90

Post by arcticbull »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #79
citizen_friend wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> They'll all be able to code of course...

I promise you that's not the case, lol.

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