3 ms·

> A few weeks ago I was contacted by a recruiter from a fairly high-profile San Francisco-based startup — if I was interested in joining their team. Sure! Great

by tomg 10y ago

> A few weeks ago I was contacted by a recruiter from a fairly high-profile San Francisco-based startup — if I was interested in joining their team. Sure! Great! Could you please solve this algorithmic puzzle within half an hour? I failed. Hiring decision made. End of story. I didn't realize how bad this Google/Facebook cargo-culting had gotten until looking for a new job the last few months (I'm approaching my 9th year in the industry). It's quite pervasive.

drjasonharrison 10y ago
It started a long time ago. See the 2004 book "How Would You Move Mount Fuji?: Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle -- How the World's Smartest Companies Select the Most Creative Thinkers" https://www.amazon.com/How-Would-Move-Mount-Fuji/dp/0316778494 https://www.amazon.com/How-Would-Move-Mount-Fuji/dp/03167784... which discusses the use of these types of puzzles and the expectation that they are good interview questions.
- hocuspocus 10y ago
  It's not new indeed, and there's been a shift from Microsoft's "How much would you charge to clean every window in Seattle?" type to Google's "Reverse a binary tree" kind of questions. I could be wrong but I believe the former wasn't as ubiquitous as whiteboard algorithmic questions have become.
jackmott 10y ago
Do we know that their approach isn't working? Like yes there are people who can be very productive programmers who can't do those puzzles. But maybe google isn't interested in those people. They have plenty of people who can do very good work already. Maybe the puzzles actually weed out the real geniuses, which is what they need? Or maybe it is totally failing at that, I have no idea. But I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.
- vonmoltke 10y ago
  The problem isn't Google per se. They have have a really deep hiring pipeline and could probably succeed in spite of severe deficiencies in the process. The problem is the numerous companies without Google's deep pipeline that have cargo-culted the process without understanding the context, then whine about not being able to hire anyone.
- Noseshine 10y ago
  I think we - and by that I mean "most programmers, on average" - have a pretty good idea how common or uncommon it is in real life programming in a variety of programming jobs to encounter an actual algorithmic problem. One that you are better off solving yourself instead of just googling or asking (yes, on horrible SO). The last sentence does not advocate copy&paste programming, I myself in particular actually have hardly any external dependencies because I try hard to avoid them, and when I do I actually do look through the source code, mostly because I need to adapt it to my needs. Even if I were to do something like machine learning I'm much better off just using something made by others, simply because developing the actual algorithms requires people completely immersed in just that and a big love of math (and the Ph.D. to go with it) much more so than programming.
throwaway_1015 10y ago
I once failed a Microsoft interview where the biggest strike against me was a question which was just simple algebra, and one that I later saw in some programming interview book and realized it was actually a fairly simple one. However, my brain froze at the time of the interview. Because I was furious. Because the interviewer kept asking me "Are you sure you have not seen this question before already?" and I kept saying I hadn't. So here is what she was actually conveying a) she does not trust the candidate b) actually having seen the problem before would have made the solution much easier (does it mean not having seen it before would make it that much harder?). Most interestingly, I later saw that the solution basically hinged around a specific insight, in other words it was a fairly binary outcome: you either figured out that little insight, or you didn't. It was not exactly a question which could have been progressively solved, and of course this brilliant interviewer was not moving on to another question either. I should have given the interviewer a piece of my mind, but unfortunately I was brought in for the round of interviews by referral from a friend.

by tomg 10y ago

drjasonharrison 10y ago

It started a long time ago. See the 2004 book "How Would You Move Mount Fuji?: Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle -- How the World's Smartest Companies Select the Most Creative Thinkers" https://www.amazon.com/How-Would-Move-Mount-Fuji/dp/0316778494 https://www.amazon.com/How-Would-Move-Mount-Fuji/dp/03167784... which discusses the use of these types of puzzles and the expectation that they are good interview questions.

hocuspocus 10y ago
It's not new indeed, and there's been a shift from Microsoft's "How much would you charge to clean every window in Seattle?" type to Google's "Reverse a binary tree" kind of questions. I could be wrong but I believe the former wasn't as ubiquitous as whiteboard algorithmic questions have become.

jackmott 10y ago

Do we know that their approach isn't working? Like yes there are people who can be very productive programmers who can't do those puzzles. But maybe google isn't interested in those people. They have plenty of people who can do very good work already. Maybe the puzzles actually weed out the real geniuses, which is what they need? Or maybe it is totally failing at that, I have no idea. But I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.

vonmoltke 10y ago
The problem isn't Google per se. They have have a really deep hiring pipeline and could probably succeed in spite of severe deficiencies in the process. The problem is the numerous companies without Google's deep pipeline that have cargo-culted the process without understanding the context, then whine about not being able to hire anyone.
Noseshine 10y ago
I think we - and by that I mean "most programmers, on average" - have a pretty good idea how common or uncommon it is in real life programming in a variety of programming jobs to encounter an actual algorithmic problem. One that you are better off solving yourself instead of just googling or asking (yes, on horrible SO). The last sentence does not advocate copy&paste programming, I myself in particular actually have hardly any external dependencies because I try hard to avoid them, and when I do I actually do look through the source code, mostly because I need to adapt it to my needs. Even if I were to do something like machine learning I'm much better off just using something made by others, simply because developing the actual algorithms requires people completely immersed in just that and a big love of math (and the Ph.D. to go with it) much more so than programming.

throwaway_1015 10y ago

I once failed a Microsoft interview where the biggest strike against me was a question which was just simple algebra, and one that I later saw in some programming interview book and realized it was actually a fairly simple one. However, my brain froze at the time of the interview. Because I was furious. Because the interviewer kept asking me "Are you sure you have not seen this question before already?" and I kept saying I hadn't. So here is what she was actually conveying a) she does not trust the candidate b) actually having seen the problem before would have made the solution much easier (does it mean not having seen it before would make it that much harder?). Most interestingly, I later saw that the solution basically hinged around a specific insight, in other words it was a fairly binary outcome: you either figured out that little insight, or you didn't. It was not exactly a question which could have been progressively solved, and of course this brilliant interviewer was not moving on to another question either. I should have given the interviewer a piece of my mind, but unfortunately I was brought in for the round of interviews by referral from a friend.