Rant HN: I hate hackerrank • Hacker News Board

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#91

Post by erichurkman » Sat, Oct 08, 2016, 5:05 PM UTC

initram wrote: post #82

retreatguru wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to use and like hackerrank as a hiring tool but found the questions had nothing to do with what devs do every day - mainly solving business problems in elegant ways. I even contacted them and told them so but did not get much response. I treat interviews more like going out for coffee and often do just that. I like to understand what people are passionate about both in tech and personally.

Do you find that you can determine a person's technical skills from such a discussion? I've found that I'm not very good at determining such things from just talking. Often I talk with people who sound like they know what they're doing, only to find out later that they don't. As for coffee - do you ask your interviewees if they want that? I don't drink coffee and generally hate coffee shops because the only other opt…

To your latter point, any time we do technical exercises, we _always_ let the interviewee use their own IDE. Nowadays it's easy because most people have laptops, though we do offer to set one up if they do not have a laptop to bring.

Their choice of toolsets and setup can also be a really interesting discussion topic. More than once during an interview, someone has shown me something really cool that I adopted (new key binding, a new tool, a particular way someone had their terminals split-paned, etc).

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#92

Post by jandrewrogers » Sat, Oct 08, 2016, 5:07 PM UTC

It could be worse. My personal recruiting peeve is what I call the "Dunning-Kruger interview", where they ask algorithm questions they don't understand and don't even realize that fact. It is unfortunately common, and made doubly worse when it is plainly my area of expertise and the reason I was recruited in the first place.

More than once, I've been recruited by executives at Famous Tech Company to run major new initiatives involving vast volumes of spatially organized data, since my expertise in that area is well known, but there is a technical diligence step where I am grilled on spatial algorithms by a shockingly ignorant (e.g. doesn't understand R-trees) Principal Engineer or similar who actually believes no one can know more about the space than they do. (If that was the case, they wouldn't be trying to recruit me.) If an interviewer wants to test my expertise, they better be able to have a substantive discussion on the subject matter and understand the limits of their own expertise.

I view algorithm gotcha games as disrespectful of an experienced software engineer's expertise generally. I like to turn it into a substantial discussion about the algorithm class generally; if the interviewer is incapable of having a substantial unscripted discussion about said algorithms, it is a red flag and they have no business asking those kinds of questions. These days, I just walk away from an opportunity when this kind of nonsense happens.

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#93

Post by hyperliner » Sat, Oct 08, 2016, 5:09 PM UTC

catscratch wrote: post #55

maxaf wrote: post #22

I hire engineers for a living, and find intellectually dishonest any interview practice I wouldn't enjoy myself. Paper coding, whiteboard coding, brain teasers, and algorithmic beatdowns are out. Representative take-home work samples and conversational problem solving are in. My candidates are told throughout the process that what we're looking for is a demonstration of how technical collaboration might work if we we…

> soulless cookie cutter process that makes people feel like a commodity I agree most should steer clear from them, but the interview process is often an accurate representation of the level of the team: * If the interview involves a copied a set of questions off the internet, verbal or written, they don't have the skills on the team to have a dynamic discussion. * If the interview doesn't have enough standard questi…

"* If they expect you to know the circumference of the Earth (equatorial 24874 mi/40030 km, meridional 24860 mi/40008 km) and capital of Sumer in 2281 (Uruk), then they could be interested in someone that has a scientific mind, great memory, and likes trivia or is very into history."

===> ... or who has the skill of typing "google.com" on a browser

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#94

Post by guessmyname » Sat, Oct 08, 2016, 5:11 PM UTC

I have +6 years of work experience as a developer and for the last two months I have had +36 pre-selection interviews via HackerRank with a wide range of small to medium sized companies. I am not ashamed to say that I have failed every single one of them, but I have to recognize that I have learned more things during the last couple of weeks about algorithms, data structures and prioritization than in most of my career.

This week I was invited by an in-house recruiter from one of the "Big 4" to resolve two coding problems via HackerRank in 120 minutes, plus a third exercise asking about the time and space complexity of my solution. I am 99% sure that I will fail this pre-selection too, but I really do not care, the more I practice now the more opportunities I will have next time. I have talked with people who were hired by Google, Amazon, Booking.com after 8-12 months being unemployed, so — in my case — two months is certainly nothing, I can use the next six months to train myself and maybe next year one of these companies will extend an offer and then I will forget about all this hiring madness.

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#95

Post by markbnj » Sat, Oct 08, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

Organizations seek out formulaic ways of qualifying candidates because actually assessing an individual's talent and personality takes time and effort, and is a significant investment. The pressure to streamline the process grows as the company grows and hiring becomes a more frequent thing. It's one of the main reasons I like working for small companies. As a case in point I'll describe the process that led to my current position.

After the application and a brief phone call I was given a take-home project with a one week deadline. The project was directly related to what the company does, and was interesting and fun to do. I submitted a pull request in four days. The pr was reviewed by their engineering team and they all voted to move me forward. The next step was a work along day for which I was paid. These are typically done in person but for various reasons on both sides we did it remotely. The entire engineering team participated in a dedicated slack channel as we walked through my homework project, suggested and implemented changes, joked and in general had a good time. At the end of the day I said my goodbyes and an hour later the recruiter called to tell me they were preparing an offer.

The advantages of this process should be readily apparent. By the time my first day arrived we already knew we'd get along, approached work in compatible ways, etc. The costs of the process should also be readily apparent, and it would probably be really hard for a larger company to do things this way.

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#96

Post by twic » Sat, Oct 08, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #13

Went through this a couple times lately. No pain. And the battery of automated tests helpfully written for you saves a lot of time. If the companies you interview with choose problems you don't find relevant, it may be their fault, not HackerRank's. Or even not a fault: they have to screen out a number of applicants who are good at boasting but can't actually code. You obviously can. It can be a bit boring, bit it ge…

Using something like HackerRank as a screen to check that candidates can actually code seems like a good idea to me. But that means setting problems which depend on that, and not specialist knowledge.

For example, an old employer of mine used something like "write a function which, given two strings representing durations down to a hundredth of a second in the format HH:MM:SS.SS, prints the difference between them, in the same format". To do that, you need to do some basic parsing, some simple maths, and some formatting. You don't need clever algorithms.

On the other hand, a problem which requires a "trickily smart O(N) DP solution" requires specialist knowledge, and is not simply a test of whether someone can code. If a company actually needs people who are good at particular algorithms, then this may still be a useful test. But barely any do.

A more ambiguous case is a test i did recently which asked for a function which printed all primes smaller than N. As it happens, i know a couple of (simple!) algorithms for finding primes, so i just coded one. But i know people - including some brilliant colleagues - who haven't studied maths beyond secondary school, and so won't know those algorithms. They might work one out, given time, but that's time they don't have to spend coding.

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#97

Post by IndianAstronaut » Sat, Oct 08, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

d23 wrote: post #24

Recruiting and hiring are garbage right now in the industry. Part of the problem is easy to recognize -- idiots designing interviews. This is where the puzzle crap comes from, as well as theoretical stuff that's far removed from the day to day of what a person will be doing. The other problem is that the people who could be designing better interviews aren't stepping up. There are plenty of intelligent people who are…

Another thing missing from interviews is being able to find various talents in engineers for the diversity of the engineers out there. Are they good at finding corner cases, are they creative with product design, are they good communicators with a non technical audience.

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#98

Post by twic » Sat, Oct 08, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

orsenthil wrote: post #5

> Are we now at a point where an engineer should at all times be intimately familiar with competitive programming and codegolf techniques? Yes, we are. Accepting that trend seems to be better than ignoring it. There is one not-so-bad way to look at these programming challenges. In silicon valley, we live in a condition wherein the company could fail at any time. As a developer, most often, we have to learn something…

This makes no sense at all. The skills needed to diligently revise algorithms from a book are completely different to the skills needed to keep a startup afloat.

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#99

Post by dmoy » Sat, Oct 08, 2016, 5:17 PM UTC

erichurkman wrote: post #91

initram wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find that you can determine a person's technical skills from such a discussion? I've found that I'm not very good at determining such things from just talking. Often I talk with people who sound like they know what they're doing, only to find out later that they don't. As for coffee - do you ask your interviewees if they want that? I don't drink coffee and generally hate coffee shops because the only other opt…

To your latter point, any time we do technical exercises, we _always_ let the interviewee use their own IDE. Nowadays it's easy because most people have laptops, though we do offer to set one up if they do not have a laptop to bring. Their choice of toolsets and setup can also be a really interesting discussion topic. More than once during an interview, someone has shown me something really cool that I adopted (new k…

What if the candidate doesn't have a machine of their own (company owned)?

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#100

Post by walshemj » Sat, Oct 08, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

twic wrote: post #96

nine_k wrote: post #13

Went through this a couple times lately. No pain. And the battery of automated tests helpfully written for you saves a lot of time. If the companies you interview with choose problems you don't find relevant, it may be their fault, not HackerRank's. Or even not a fault: they have to screen out a number of applicants who are good at boasting but can't actually code. You obviously can. It can be a bit boring, bit it ge…

Using something like HackerRank as a screen to check that candidates can actually code seems like a good idea to me. But that means setting problems which depend on that, and not specialist knowledge. For example, an old employer of mine used something like "write a function which, given two strings representing durations down to a hundredth of a second in the format HH:MM:SS.SS, prints the difference between them, i…

"Hackerank" is just the "chitty" culture taking over unfortunately its designed for those who only went into the biz for primarily financial and /or family/cultural pressure