7 ms·

We interviewed someone with this exact same attitude. He actually said "I've moved past doing these exercises in an interview" and refused to answer the questio

• tedmiston 10y ago
  It's not about being superior but questions like this at an upper level interview are a waste of everyone's time. Some startups insist on asking devs with 3, 5, 10 years of experience the same CS 101 interview questions as someone just out of college.
  • thedufer 10y ago
    And yet, there are devs with that much experience that can't program their way out of a cardboard box. What do you prefer to do with them?
    • tedmiston 10y ago
      I don't have a one-size-fits-all solution. The Peter principle is one thing to think about. Another is finding those developers roles that suit them better. Maybe that's some other aspect of the software pipeline like QA or testing or internal tools. Perhaps someone with more experience interviewing and hiring (or not hiring) in this category can provide a better suggestion.
      • thedufer 10y ago
        I mean, I wasn't _really_ looking for a suggestion. I interview them and tell them we're not interested. Which seems like the right thing to do in this situation. This idea of hiring everyone with experience and hoping you have a job for them doesn't seem terribly sustainable. > Another is finding those developers roles that suit them better. Maybe that's some other aspect of the software pipeline like QA or testing or internal tools. I'm used to QA and testing being done by developers. This results in a lot of high-quality automated tests, which are much cheaper than testing the same thing manually every few days. Internal tools is where I would want my best developers, I would think. Dragging down the productivity of the entire department by having bad internal tooling is pretty worst-case.
      • RandomOpinion 10y ago
        > Another is finding those developers roles that suit them better. Maybe that's some other aspect of the software pipeline like QA or testing ... As a QA professional, I regret greatly that HN's rules restrain me from giving your post the appropriately pithy response it deserves. QA is not your dumping ground for failed devs; we do not want them either. If they couldn't hack it as a SDE, they are certainly not going to be able to hack it as a SDET either.
        • tedmiston 10y ago
          Hi, I think perhaps you're reading into the non-exhaustive list of example alternatives to traditional developer roles more than intended. I don't see anything in my comment to suggest that "QA is dumping ground for failed devs", nor was that my intention. In fact, I wouldn't label anyone a "failed dev". Rather, the idea behind my post was to find a role that better fits that person's skill set and experience. My apologies if this was unclear.
    • tonystubblebine 10y ago
      RIGHT. This is exactly why these tests are given. In Deliberate Practice, these people are called experienced non-experts. Ten years of bad programming may make you experienced, but it doesn't make you good. I would question the big-picture awareness of any competent developer who refused this section of an interview. How senior can you really be if you don't recognize why this section of the interview is being given?
      • Anasufovic 10y ago
        Senior enough to know that there are better opportunities out there.
        • tonystubblebine 10y ago
          Better opportunities meaning they don't have a coding verification step for senior engineers and so some of your peers don't actually know how to code (permanently or just for awhile before they get outed and fired)? That sounds like a worse opportunity.
          • tedmiston 10y ago
            I have worked with good technical managers and know of good sales engineers that might not pass a coding verification test like this. I don't think it's right for every role. But that test doesn't directly correlate with the responsibilities of their job. I'm a big fan of contracted simple projects to test someone's skills beyond interview questions.
            • czinck 10y ago
              That's irrelevant. Obviously asking people who aren't expected to program to program in an interview is silly, we're talking about asking people who would be hired for a programming role to program.
              • tedmiston 10y ago
    • exBarrelSpoiler 10y ago
      Maybe try to figure out how and why there can be devs with experience yet no programming ability: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12826364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12826364 My theory is that the state of technology is that people are able to use APIs, libraries, and Stack Overflow code to muddle through most business requirements. And if that's true, perhaps the standards of an engineer have shifted? If those people actually did work at those companies for those many years, surely they did something of business value? Or maybe the questions being asked in technical interviews are no longer germane to the actual day to day experience of coding? I'm not saying you should necessarily hire those people, but perhaps all of those articles that go "Why can't our programmers program???" should stop pearl-clutching and actually try to figure out why that is.
      • meshko 10y ago
        I've interviewed probably dozens of people who couldn't code, but never worked with one. I've had plenty of bad coworkers, but all of them could write code to a degree where they would pass basic coding interview. I assume there is just a large population of people who can't do anything at all, and they just migrate from one company to another, coasting there w/o doing anything for a couple of years, because firing is hard. I keep remembering this story i heard from a co-worker. He worked at a giant laptop repair shop. There was a guy there who didn't know how to fix anything. He stayed for a year or so, and then finally was let go. They found dozens of spare parts in his drawers -- he would just order random parts from the warehouse to imitate work, and leave them in his desk. This is part of the unspoken dues that corporations pay to the society, creating this hidden safety net for people who are just not good at what they do, or perhaps just can't do anything. It is both good and terrible. I am glad that this safety net exists, but it is really disparaging to these people. I wish society had a better way of helping them.
    • throw_away_777 10y ago
      Is this true, or is it true that there are devs with a lot of experience who can't program during an interview? An interview is an artificial environment.
    • tluyben2 10y ago
      But those are easily recognized: looking at their github, past jobs, portfolio and calling a few references? I would not invite seniors who do not have a clear past and if they do I do not require the kind of interview discussed here. Also most seniors are referrals anyway... Still do not see the point of these weird interviews I read about here, also not for juniors.
    • sidlls 10y ago
      I prefer to not conflate "computer science" with "software development." The majority of the problems with tech interviews in the Valley stem from an overabundance of CS grads who mistakenly believe that their academic trivia quiz questions have much value for developing software people use. Very few programming jobs actually require the more mathy end of CS. If you want an analogy with physical science and engineering, the the algorithms-and-data-stuctures interview is like giving a candidate for a satellite engineering job an interview laden with mid to upper level undergrad physics questions. It's just nonsense.
      • sangnoir 10y ago
        > Very few programming jobs actually require the more mathy end of CS I disagree. I'm a lowly web dev who is not in Silicon Valley, but I do know the practical benefits of applying the right data structures and algorithms, even though I don't apply this knowledge every single day. Yes, nested for loops and a hash table will "solve" almost any problem and you can push the release out the door, but how much will that sloppiness cost the employer/customer in hardware and the maintainer and users in time?
        • sidlls 10y ago
          > how much will that sloppiness cost the employer/customer in hardware and the maintainer and users in time? Next to nothing in almost every case. In fact that hash table is probably overkill most of the time. Unless you're dealing with keys that have a costly comparison, a large number of key value pairs, or a large number of lookups (for some context-specific value of "large") the most naive and "inelegant" of solutions you could imagine, an unsorted array of key value pairs, is sufficient most of the time. So in fact what you call a "sloppy" solution is probably, and quite by accident, far more powerful an algorithm than the problem truly calls for. Understanding complexity analysis is useful when the domain has performance demands or constraints that make it necessary. "Lowly" web dev is almost never one of those domains.
        • JamesBarney 10y ago
          Maybe it's just a case of "if you've never seen a hammer you wouldn't recognize a nail" but what problems have you solved with exotic data structures?
    • closeparen 10y ago
      How do you know? Because they failed your whiteboard test? That doesn't necessarily tell you anything about what they can do with a real workstation and realistic deadlines, unless you've empirically evaluated its effectiveness (including hiring some people who failed it).
      • thedufer 10y ago
        This isn't very scientific, but I feel pretty confident about not hiring the people I described. Frankly, I have no interest in working with someone who can't come up with the syntax to define a function in the language of their choice. This is a real thing I have seen from people with significant experience on their resume. There are candidates who are more on the line, and those I'm less confident about rejecting. But we can't just hire the hundreds of applicants per position we see, and I haven't come across a filtering strategy that isn't obviously worse than what we do now (which, to be clear, is the candidate's choice between whiteboarding and coding in an editor).
  • happy-go-lucky 10y ago
    Then, how do you know they can indeed answer questions like that?
• cerrelio 10y ago
  He probably would have been a good employee. He doesn't put up with bullshit. If you've been doing development (especially at larger companies) for years, you understand that coding is the least important part. That's the part you focus on after you deflect all the stupid bullshit from managers/product managers/ops. Senior members of the team should be able to influence others to get behind them and make good use of time. Coding is incidental.
• deleted 10y ago
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• shados 10y ago
  You're basically asking someone with a PhD in math to do a long division by hand. It's irrelevant and honestly, they may not even remember how. While I still answer stupid whiteboard questions (though I'm not happy about it), I'll flat out refuse long winded ones or interviews where it's all they do. It's nice to weed out who cheated in their finals in CS, but it's pointless in testing if a Principal Engineer really is there. At upper levels, there's no one size fit all. You look at the person's resume and you tailor something around it. You won't have nearly enough applicant at that level for it to be a burden, and it's exactly how director/VP/exec positions are filled. For mid range and low Sr positions, sure, do whatever.
  • sangnoir 10y ago
    > You're basically asking someone with a PhD in math to do a long division by hand More like someone with an online PhD in Math that isn't easy to verify. What it boils down to is "I worked at these companies in this role. Believe me". I think people get mixed up with management and technical tracks: Lot's of "senior devs" have coasted for years playing office politics and lost touch with actual development, I suspect those are the ones who get offended and would rather talk about the more abstract/higher level topics which may or may not be relevant to their expected duties, if they are being hired as as senior developer.
    • dilemma 10y ago
      > More like someone with an online PhD in Math that isn't easy to verify. What it boils down to is "I worked at these companies in this role. Believe me". All human relations including work place relations are impossible without trust. Asking the equivalent of "what is 2 + 2?" is a sign of distrust and a good reason to decline the job.
    • murukesh_s 10y ago
      They can still pass the interview that doesn't mean what's written in the resume is true. You got to trust them or find other ways to find out if the resume is honest. I have seen developers who are good at answering interview questions because they trained for that specifically.
• MrQuincle 10y ago
  Not to do the questions is impolite, but personally I'll politely decline for the position afterwards. A company where I would like to work should have interviews that are creative and fun, preferably challenging rather than boring.
• ubernostrum 10y ago
  Last year a large well-known company contacted me, unsolicited, and said they were interested in hiring a Django committer (which I am), and asking me to apply to work for them. Then they put me in the "prove you can write basic code" phone screen bucket, and I walked away. If they're going to waste my time and the screener's time on something they already know -- given why they're reaching out to me -- then I'm going to reasonably conclude they're not a company worth working for. Would you then label me as unable to code and "looking for an escape"? Or is it possible there's just more to the story than you happen to know? Because that is not the only example I have of this kind of thing.
  • pavel_lishin 10y ago
    That sounds like a serious miscommunication between the person who originally reached out to you, and the person doing the interviewing. I've interviewed several candidates, and sometimes there's been a time crunch, and I didn't do more than read their resume and do a quick google search to make sure they haven't recently escaped from a federal penitentiary or something. Perhaps your interviewers didn't know your prior qualifications, or that you were meant to have been fast-tracked past the "has a pulse" section of the interview?
    • happy-go-lucky 10y ago
      That is one possibility.
    • ubernostrum 10y ago
      It's likely that a serious mistake by the candidate leads the company to end the interview process. Why then should I, as the candidate, not apply the same standard to them?
• dilemma 10y ago
  How would you feel if as my first question when interviewing you was "What is 2 + 2?"
  • enraged_camel 10y ago
    That's fine, but are you looking for the answer, or the formal mathematical proof that 2 + 2 = 4? How would a mathematician feel if you asked them to write the proof for it? They would probably feel insulted too. In this day and age there is no need to prove that 2 + 2 = 4 (because it has already been proven), just like there is no need to implement a binary search tree (because the vast majority of tools already have). If your job will involve developing such tools, fine, but that's not the vast majority of dev jobs.
• __derek__ 10y ago
  If someone refuses to answer an interview question, I would expect them to follow through and leave.
• happy-go-lucky 10y ago
  This happens when people are no longer enthusiastic about their line of work.