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The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

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Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#91

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

Apocryphon wrote: post #7
caiobegotti wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HR folks do not care, it's not their metric to bother about.

But the average HR rep doesn't determine the technical questions! The culpability falls squarely on the engineers who devise these tests.

Is that true? I suppose the truly average HR rep can’t be, but I’ve never been given the freedom as an engineer to not ask a silly algorithm question. At most I get to decide which one I think is least silly. Maybe there are engineers somewhere who think the questions are great and high signal, but I’ve never met any.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#92

Post by ticmasta »

paxys wrote: post #60
closed wrote: post #35

Something that strikes me in reading articles like this, is the distopian part often seems to be thinking about this: p(job_capable | not_interview_capable) That is, it's crazy that an interview could miss so many people qualified for the job. However, I wonder if oftentimes companies are aiming for.. p(job_capable | interview_capable) If p(job_capable | interview_capable) is high, and p(interview_capable) is pretty…

A simple way of saying this - companies are optimizing for filtering out bad candidates, at the expense of sometimes filtering out good candidates. Because the cost of hiring the wrong person is a LOT higher than missing out on the right one.

... and then they can complain about the dearth of software developers...

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#93

Post by andreilys »

paxys wrote: post #60
closed wrote: post #35

Something that strikes me in reading articles like this, is the distopian part often seems to be thinking about this: p(job_capable | not_interview_capable) That is, it's crazy that an interview could miss so many people qualified for the job. However, I wonder if oftentimes companies are aiming for.. p(job_capable | interview_capable) If p(job_capable | interview_capable) is high, and p(interview_capable) is pretty…

A simple way of saying this - companies are optimizing for filtering out bad candidates, at the expense of sometimes filtering out good candidates. Because the cost of hiring the wrong person is a LOT higher than missing out on the right one.

Bingo. If you have hundreds or thousand of applicants, you need some sort of standardized system.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#94

Post by mattmanser »

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…

A column orientated file? What format? Excel? CSV? What is cut, sort or head? Are you only accepting Linux candidates then, a tiny percentage of users?

This sort of utter nonsense question, heavily loaded to your "standard" experience, which is anything but, is even worse than the questions cited in the article.

All you're doing is filtering for people who are in your tribe, who followed the same path as you and think like you, use the same tools as you and the same OS as you.

Pretend all you want, but you're filtering not by "experience" but by trying to find people in your tribe, which is naturally heavily weighted.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#95

Post by thedance »

Koshkin wrote: post #46

I have just realized that I have no idea how interviewing is done in other areas - for instance, mechanical engineering.

GREAT question. For one thing you’re not getting any job in mechanical engineering without a degree and an EIT, so that narrows the possibilities. Companies recruit at universities and this is the main pipeline into the industry. Connections are very important, so doing internships in summers during university gets your foot in the door. After you practice for ten years you get your PE and set up your practice either within a large company or independently. It is very likely that an ME can do their entire career without ever being subjected to the trick questions of some kid with six months of industry experience, like we pretend is normal for software developers.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#96

Post by _4ziu »

mullingitover wrote: post #32

I honestly don't know why anyone gives FAANG recruiters the time of day anymore. I have yet to meet anyone who feels good about the prospect of working for them, anyone who works there who's super proud of their mission, and the competitors who are looking to hire at that level of talent pay roughly similar wages from what I've seen. My advice for this poor kid is to look around at startups and do more networking. FA…

I don't know what kind of selective bargaining power you guys have, but i would kill just to get my foot in the door of a FAANG.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#97

Post by minimaxir »

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…

As someone who has had bad data science interviews before getting my current data science job, the process is highly variable. I've had interviews where the interviewer is looking for a specific right answer, with the answer being a binary you-know-it-or-you-don't thing that can't be talked through or worked out in a dialogue with the interviewer.

An example was a whiteboard problem requiring the BETWEEN syntax for SQL window functions, which is very uncommon. After I asked for a hint, the interviewer replied "You don't know the BETWEEN syntax for window functions? Everyone knows that."

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#98

Post by ticmasta »

Apocryphon wrote: post #7
caiobegotti wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HR folks do not care, it's not their metric to bother about.

But the average HR rep doesn't determine the technical questions! The culpability falls squarely on the engineers who devise these tests.

Well our Dev test was developed by the Senior VP and then tested on our developers; only 1 who aced it. Don't blame me and other workin' stiffs for that...

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#99

Post by gonehome »

ticmasta wrote: post #63
RangerScience wrote: post #18

I've been doing initial phone screens (small companies) this week (two just today, actually), and with all of them when the recruiter (internal or external) gets to the "we'd like to send you a coding challenge" I interject with: "Let's do a code exchange. I'll point you at some of my GH projects, and you send me some of your code". So far they've accepted ("I'll forward it to the hiring manager"), and it's far too s…

I interviewed with a start-up mid-acquisition by Indeed and they paid me for my take-home project. Quality move but the rest of their behaviour was utterly reprehensible. I was mad/upset at the time but I'm now grateful. Also, I had the time available to spend ~8-10 hours on a take-home project (paid or otherwise); most of the time the best candidates already have jobs and will rightfully tell you to pound sand.

I did a tedious take home assignment while employed for a different famous company - it was clear they hadn't updated the instructions (broken links, outdated documentation, changed behavior).

They gave this to me with a 72hr turn around requirement on a Monday morning (which I found a little thoughtless) I got a basic implementation working with reasonable code quality (not just hacked together) which took a few hours and then got turned down with no details.

In general this is worse than a regular phone screen when the instructions are bad and it's not really clear what they're looking for.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#100

Post by LordFast »

proximitysauce wrote: post #3

In addition to all of the very dystopian examples given in this post, there are other non-technical, super-dystopian things that have been popping up as "trends" in the tech industry. Ever heard of top-grading? It's the most oppressive interview technique of all time. A series of grueling multi-person interviews. A retrospective of all work experiences since high school . You also have to get multiple prior employers…

My experience as both a 50+ hiring manager and as a candidate tells me that we are collectively living in an illusion of whacked up expectations.

Yes, it's super hard to hire good people, but most of the time it's because "good enough" isn't good enough anymore, and while we may think our company is a 9 and we deserve 9s, we are probably more of a 4 based on what people are actually working on.

Yes, interviews suck, but that's because we all want to get paid the big bucks so we can afford the prohibitively expensive COL and actually do better economically than our middle-class parents. My background and resume legitimately qualifies me as a 9 on the high end, but really I'm probably just a 4.

Cascading causal relationships thus expand both upwards into the capital markets and downwards into your grocery stores.

If we can all take a chill pill employers+employees and stop 49er'ing around so hard, then I think most everyone can be happily employed.

I don't see us getting there on our own though, since that next door neighbor ain't gonna stop and I'm sure as hell not getting left behind /s.

I hope we can find a bit more maturity in our industry, but I'm not holding my breath.

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