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"We want to see how you think" is a hallmark of dysfunction. You cannot see how someone thinks from short interviews and coding puzzles. You just cannot. Anyone
by p4wnc6 11y ago
"We want to see how you think" is a hallmark of dysfunction. You cannot see how someone thinks from short interviews and coding puzzles. You just cannot. Anyone trying to is so far from doing things right that you want to run, don't walk, away from them.
The only way to really see how someone thinks is to just hire them, work with them for a while, and fire them if they can't do the job. You can either pay the costs of hiring and firing (like on-boarding, benefits, administration, severance) and get useful signal about their performance, or you can spend the same money by throwing it away on useless shit like HackerRank-style trivia tests. Per applicant, the HackerRank thing seems cheaper, but you typically have to spam it across many more applicants, endure losses due to great candidates who won't agree to your bullshit hiring process, and still end up firing people sometimes when they pass the trivia but (surprise) it didn't mean they would be good at the job. So overall, it's just as expensive.
You spend the money either way, might as well get useful signal out of it.
- ktRolster 10y agoThe only way to really see how someone thinks is to just hire them, work with them for a while, and fire them if they can't do the job. That's the worst idea ever
- p4wnc6 10y agoIt's what Netflix does, so your dismissal seems badly placed.
- ktRolster 10y agoIt looks like Netflix has a fairly lengthy interview process, including technical questions: https://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Netflix-Interview-Questions-E11891.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Netflix-Interview-Questi... They fire people quickly, sure, but they don't "just hire them" either.
- p4wnc6 10y agoOnly one or two of those interview descriptions mention anything like the bullshit tech trivia this thread is about. Most describe take-home problems, extended design conversations, and technical sessions that are more like extended conversations. You seem to infer that the phrase "just hire them" means you do absolutely zero interviewing, which was not my intention. When I said "just hire them" I meant "do some obvious stuff, like talk about their experience, ask a high-level question and expect a discussiony answer, not short, commoditized trivia, and if based on that stuff it seems reasonable, then just hire them and don't obsess over cramming more dumb trivia filters into the process." I took it for granted that everyone reading this would understand that basic interview (e.g. talk to someone, ask about their resume items, have a discussion) is always necessary. The "just hire them" part is meant to say that people should not get stuck up their own ass with trying to put together a ridiculous number of commodity filters up front before getting to that conversation stage, and that the conversation stage should function more like a rolling basis hire than like a process in which you tediously examine every candidate first, then go back and eliminate and re-interview, etc. I think the Netflix process fits what I'm saying very well.
- ktRolster 10y agoWhen I said "just hire them" I meant "do some obvious stuff, like talk about their experience, ask a high-level question and expect a discussiony answer, not short, commoditized trivia, and if based on that stuff it seems reasonable, then just hire them and don't obsess over cramming more dumb trivia filters into the process." There's a big difference between the words "just hire them" and what you meant by those words.
- p4wnc6 10y agoI disagree. It's pretty obvious that no one would mean to literally hire someone with zero screening of any kind. It's unreasonable to read "just hire them" to mean something that extreme.
- 10y ago