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The Technical Interview Rift

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Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#91

Post by Lich »

AvenueIngres wrote: post #5

Here is my take on hiring: an active Git repository with a decent amount of non-trivial code/projects generally gets applicants I have to evaluate to skip the whiteboard interview and instead grab lunch or coffee with me. We then discuss technology/software engineering. I find this approach to have yielded much more conclusive results, though it probably would not "scale" well. You can quickly tell whether someone is…

What do you consider to be non-trivial? Seems subjective. Exaggerating here, but obviously a git hub project that runs fusion reactor software is certainly non-trivial, but what about a small project that does/looks simple, but really takes a fair amount of effort to make it work? Like a triple AAA game is non-trivial compared to a breakout clone, but a breakout clone is still somewhat non-trivial (graphics, sound, "simulated" physics, GUI, gameplay logic etc.).

Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#92

Post by argonaut »

protomyth wrote: post #30
lisper wrote: post #14

I think Triplebyte has the right idea: essentially a take-home test conducted over a period of a couple of days. It allows a candidate to show off what they can do under realistic conditions, instead of allowing an interviewer to poke at what they can't do under highly unrealistic high-pressure conditions. A typical tech interview is more like a spelling bee than a realistic test of a candidate's abilities: if you ha…

"Not long ago I screwed up a tech interview because I couldn't remember/figure-out-on-the-spot the iteration condition for estimating square roots by the Newton-Raphson method, and I was not willing to cheat by looking it up on Wikipedia while I was on the phone. Their loss." Out of curiosity, what type of developer position were you interviewing for?

I could see this question being a valid question to ask for a research scientist role if the applicant has a PhD in CS/Mathematics/Operations Research and their research area is optimization or machine learning, or they claim to have taken coursework in convex optimization. Because you definitely have heard of Newton's method in those contexts.

Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#93

Post by sqeaky »

lj3 wrote: post #69
sqeaky wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wouldn't want to hire someone who didn't enjoy coding enough that they didn't have something on publicly visible repo. Why? Those people sound like terrible employees. Those are the people who come into work to punch the clock and get paid while saving their energy and creativity for their side projects, which is what they'd really rather be working on.

I worded my comment poorly, I had double negatives, or something.

I would prefer to hire people with publicly visible code.

Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#94

Post by sqeaky »

AvenueIngres wrote: post #74
sqeaky wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wouldn't want to hire someone who didn't enjoy coding enough that they didn't have something on publicly visible repo. There is lots of reason why competent developers would not actively participate to OSS or have public repos. I think you are holding applicant to an unreasonable standard that does not entails they are bad if not upheld. I have worked with some extremely talented people - far more than I ever coul…

I agree that it is possible to be great developer with no public code.

Unfortunately their competence is not directly important, my ability to assess their competence is. I have no reliable way to evaluate a person without public code. They could be the greatest or the worst coder without public visibility.

Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#95

Post by lj3 »

sqeaky wrote: post #93
lj3 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't want to hire someone who didn't enjoy coding enough that they didn't have something on publicly visible repo. Why? Those people sound like terrible employees. Those are the people who come into work to punch the clock and get paid while saving their energy and creativity for their side projects, which is what they'd really rather be working on.

I worded my comment poorly, I had double negatives, or something. I would prefer to hire people with publicly visible code.

Your comment was worded fine. My point is that most code written for most companies is not publicly accessible. Therefore, most code that is publicly accessible was created as a side project in their spare time.

I don't know about you, but after working an 8-10 hour day, anything I make in my off hours is a steaming pile of shit. Certainly nothing I'd be showing to potential employers. Do you know who can make jewels after 8-10 hours of work? People who punch the clock, do the bare minimum and save their creative energies for their side projects after they get home. That's not somebody I would hire.

Another scenario is the person really is just a coding machine and does so 12+ hours a day. Those people burn out, eventually.

Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#96

Post by sportanova »

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.

Unless you're actually building a database or something like Kafka it's way more useful to have someone that knows how to use a debugger and a profiler

Re: The Technical Interview Rift

#97

Post by mancerayder »

sqeaky wrote: post #94
AvenueIngres wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wouldn't want to hire someone who didn't enjoy coding enough that they didn't have something on publicly visible repo. There is lots of reason why competent developers would not actively participate to OSS or have public repos. I think you are holding applicant to an unreasonable standard that does not entails they are bad if not upheld. I have worked with some extremely talented people - far more than I ever coul…

I agree that it is possible to be great developer with no public code. Unfortunately their competence is not directly important, my ability to assess their competence is. I have no reliable way to evaluate a person without public code. They could be the greatest or the worst coder without public visibility.

You could ask them to e-mail you a code sample or complete an exercise.
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