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The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

jarednelsen.dev

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Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#811

Post by DenisM »

proximitysauce wrote: post #779
bitexploder wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this makes it overly difficult to fully vet candidates. Like I wrote before, we have had long discussions with our current team about our hiring system and the feedback is overwhelmingly positive. We try to take care in the whole process and honestly, if someone feels what we are asking is too much, they don’t have to complete the interview. We explain the steps up front before anyone commits any time or “soc…

If only people who agree to it make it through, then I'm not surprised the feedback is positive. What you're missing is all of the senior people who would never do this (which is a lot of them). I'll also add that it's not hard to vet candidates. I've hired dozens and dozens of great people and never ask for references. Interviewing is a skill all managers should develop and excel at.

What is your take on "bad hires"? bitexploder said those are very difficult to deal with, but I'm not sure it has to be. If someone lied significantly during the interview and it came up later that's pretty easy to fire that person later.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#812

Post by proximitysauce »

DenisM wrote: post #811
proximitysauce wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only people who agree to it make it through, then I'm not surprised the feedback is positive. What you're missing is all of the senior people who would never do this (which is a lot of them). I'll also add that it's not hard to vet candidates. I've hired dozens and dozens of great people and never ask for references. Interviewing is a skill all managers should develop and excel at.

What is your take on "bad hires"? bitexploder said those are very difficult to deal with, but I'm not sure it has to be. If someone lied significantly during the interview and it came up later that's pretty easy to fire that person later.

I find that I don't get very many "bad" hires. It's pretty easy to tell if someone is a good developer or not. In the rare case that someone bad slips through, it's easy enough to fire them. That's only happened to me a couple of times though. It's not something I'd optimize for.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#814

Post by VRay »

jrempel wrote: post #108
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…

In my experience, startup interviews are even less personal and more leetcode based than FAANG. aka solve leetcode hard in 40m on a whiteboard

I interviewed at some startups from the HackerNews "Who's Hiring?" threads, and I had positive experiences with them. There wasn't much Leetcode BS, it was mostly talking with human beings. (Unfortunately, it turned out I was overqualified and overconfident for the jobs I applied to.. I didn't know that was even a possibility, haha.)

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#815

Post by VRay »

whalabi wrote: post #718
Aeolun wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure if I should be horrified or not. Both by the fact this happens, and by the fact that you seem proud of it. Learning sort and cut takes literally takes all of 10 minutes, so if it makes you pass over an otherwise qualified candidate you have your priorities completely backwards.

So I think this is a perfect example of what happens in tech interviews. OP is using knowledge of a specific technology as a heuristic for "has experience in role x" But this always makes me wonder, couldn't you see that experience from a resume? If the candidate filled a data science role at somewhere reputable for 3 years, and you verify that they successfully filled that role, why rely on that heuristic? As you sa…

Don't worry, he responded with this very data-driven explanation:

> Generally speaking, people like this have never actually dealt with large data sets

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#816

Post by downerending »

Ardia wrote: post #806
crimsonalucard wrote: post #798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to be mean but the fact he made that up out of thin air is not only something that isn't backed with data but something that is intuitively not true. With the reputation and amount of comp google offers there is no reason why intelligent people or less intelligent people would just avoid google. You're assuming only less intelligent people want higher salaries while intelligent people don't which isn't tru…

Real Talk tho: Whats the range? Im ~low 90 percentile and I wonder if I bang my head against the LeetCode wall for a few months, then I too, can get $200K+ and free lunch 4 lyfe.

It's just one data point, but I'm well into the 99.9% level and I'm zero for three.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#817

Post by downerending »

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?

Since no one else got it, I'd start by allocating an infinite array to ingest the stream into.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#818

Post by Ardia »

downerending wrote: post #816
Ardia wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real Talk tho: Whats the range? Im ~low 90 percentile and I wonder if I bang my head against the LeetCode wall for a few months, then I too, can get $200K+ and free lunch 4 lyfe.

It's just one data point, but I'm well into the 99.9% level and I'm zero for three.

Well..at least you've tried thrice...I still got to go for 1.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#819

Post by scarmig »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #747
scarmig wrote: post #441

This will probably be lost in the pile of comments, and I'm sure some people will interpret it as humble bragging. But I genuinely do not get the angst and anger over the tech screen, from the perspective of an applicant. So I want to explain why I like them. My background: I've never taken any kind of CS or programming class in my life. Mediocre grades in college. My first exposure to programming was at age 24, as I…

What's LH?

Lean Hire

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#820

Post by BubRoss »

mattrp wrote: post #751
BubRoss wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, you said that, but why would they assume some random third person tracked down the dependency?

Good grief man... I’m saying they assumed the candidate phoned a friend for the answer and then fed it back as his own to save his application. I honestly have no idea what happened, no one does... but generally there are no do overs and that kind of sucks given he figured out why they weren’t able to run his code.

What are you basing that on? It seems like you made it up out of nowhere.
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