6 ms·

We all agree the tech interviews are broken. I suspect that the next trend in tech interviews will be worse in just a slightly different way. We got rid of the

We all agree the tech interviews are broken. I suspect that the next trend in tech interviews will be worse in just a slightly different way. We got rid of the "Why are manholes round?" questions, now we have live coding tests.

Apocryphon 10y ago
For an industry that's all about disrupting others, tech isn't very good at disrupting itself.
- flukus 10y ago
  It's brilliant at creating churn under the guise of disruption though.
polishTar 10y ago
Do we though? What if the current system is the least bad option out of a set of much worse alternatives?
- Apocryphon 10y ago
  Maybe we should try a few more options before deciding that we're in the best of all solutions.
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  Before oversupply of programmers simply talking to people for a few minutes was good enough to determine their competence.
  - lj3 10y ago
    I don't know why you're being downvoted. This is essentially what I suggest for an interview process and I'm not the only one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfyWvJdsDRI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfyWvJdsDRI
  - watwut 10y ago
    That favours people with high charizma and pleasant personality (not same as pleasant to work with) regardless of skills or work ethics. Compared to those, whiteboard or live coding is improvement.
    - jakebasile 10y ago
      Why have only one option that caters to those that can memorize algorithms? Have multiple types of interviews instead of forcing everyone to take the same type.
      - komali2 10y ago
        You can tailor the whiteboard problems to be something more than just memorizing algorithms. My company I'm at now whiteboarded with me bugs they found on my personal website.
      - hackinthebochs 10y ago
        Always this "memorizing algorithms" strawman. If you can't code basic list/tree/graph algorithms on the fly then there are serious holes in your programming ability. This has nothing to do with memorization.
        throwaway9475 10y ago
        How often do you waltz into work and write list/tree/graph algorithms on a daily basis?
        hackinthebochs 10y ago
        But its not about the list/tree/graph algorithms, its about having the mental flexibility to code the algorithms on the fly. If you can't do a depth-first search on a tree after being given the definition and time to think about it then you may lack the mental flexibility to do arbitrary algorithms in any domain. Intelligence is unspecific to domain, and so showing intelligence in one domain correlates with outcomes in other domains. The list/tree/graph algorithms are just a microcosm of programming skill in general. Also, my codebase does have an honest to god tree traversal, on the front end no less. This stuff shouldn't be seen as esoteric trivia.
  - flukus 10y ago
    When was this? It hasn't been the case for the decade plus before I entered the industry and it was recognized as a problem well before that.
- collyw 10y ago
  The best interview I have had in recent times, I took my laptop along with me and showed some code I had been working on. The interviewer asked me questions about it, and I explained why I did it that way. He asked me to add a it of functionality to it and I did it there and then. That's real work that I had been doing, so I was familiar with it, he got to see me code. No stress for me, and I am pretty sure he god a better idea of my ability to code than any of the other nonsense methods described.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
endymi0n 10y ago
Having gone through about a hundred interviews on the employer side and a dozen on the employee side myself, I think I can drill down the essence of the problem to: "Everything that can be standardized is a bad predictor of hiring success." In the end, I now have a continuously A/B-tested scheme that I'm pretty happy with, but still most of it is intuition. Which is very applicable to the job itself: Intuition is nothing but unconcious and highly multidimensional optimization across the vast range of hard/soft skills required for the job by means of pattern recognition and heuristics. Everything that has simple measures (automated coding tests, phone screens by nontechnical people,...) can be gamed and produce lots of false positives AND negatives (see the recent Google screening for the GWAN guy). In the end, I can read much more real-world success from a quick coding challenge that shows me an applicants' thinking, craft, naming, library choice and so on. I'd consider myself a top 5% interviewer by now, but I have no clue how to automate, scale or replicate this.
- anjc 10y ago
  > We got rid of the "Why are manholes round?" questions, now we have live coding tests. > In the end, I can read much more real-world success from a quick coding challenge The only determinant of on-the-job performance is an on-the-job trial. Quick coding tests can be gamed also.
  - hackinthebochs 10y ago
    >Quick coding tests can be gamed also. How (assuming its in person)?

Apocryphon 10y ago

For an industry that's all about disrupting others, tech isn't very good at disrupting itself.

flukus 10y ago
It's brilliant at creating churn under the guise of disruption though.

polishTar 10y ago

Do we though? What if the current system is the least bad option out of a set of much worse alternatives?

Apocryphon 10y ago
Maybe we should try a few more options before deciding that we're in the best of all solutions.
zzzcpan 10y ago
Before oversupply of programmers simply talking to people for a few minutes was good enough to determine their competence.
- lj3 10y ago
  I don't know why you're being downvoted. This is essentially what I suggest for an interview process and I'm not the only one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfyWvJdsDRI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfyWvJdsDRI
- watwut 10y ago
  That favours people with high charizma and pleasant personality (not same as pleasant to work with) regardless of skills or work ethics. Compared to those, whiteboard or live coding is improvement.
  - jakebasile 10y ago
    Why have only one option that caters to those that can memorize algorithms? Have multiple types of interviews instead of forcing everyone to take the same type.
    - komali2 10y ago
      You can tailor the whiteboard problems to be something more than just memorizing algorithms. My company I'm at now whiteboarded with me bugs they found on my personal website.
    - hackinthebochs 10y ago
      Always this "memorizing algorithms" strawman. If you can't code basic list/tree/graph algorithms on the fly then there are serious holes in your programming ability. This has nothing to do with memorization.
      - throwaway9475 10y ago
        How often do you waltz into work and write list/tree/graph algorithms on a daily basis?
        hackinthebochs 10y ago
        But its not about the list/tree/graph algorithms, its about having the mental flexibility to code the algorithms on the fly. If you can't do a depth-first search on a tree after being given the definition and time to think about it then you may lack the mental flexibility to do arbitrary algorithms in any domain. Intelligence is unspecific to domain, and so showing intelligence in one domain correlates with outcomes in other domains. The list/tree/graph algorithms are just a microcosm of programming skill in general. Also, my codebase does have an honest to god tree traversal, on the front end no less. This stuff shouldn't be seen as esoteric trivia.
- flukus 10y ago
  When was this? It hasn't been the case for the decade plus before I entered the industry and it was recognized as a problem well before that.
collyw 10y ago
The best interview I have had in recent times, I took my laptop along with me and showed some code I had been working on. The interviewer asked me questions about it, and I explained why I did it that way. He asked me to add a it of functionality to it and I did it there and then. That's real work that I had been doing, so I was familiar with it, he got to see me code. No stress for me, and I am pretty sure he god a better idea of my ability to code than any of the other nonsense methods described.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

endymi0n 10y ago

Having gone through about a hundred interviews on the employer side and a dozen on the employee side myself, I think I can drill down the essence of the problem to: "Everything that can be standardized is a bad predictor of hiring success." In the end, I now have a continuously A/B-tested scheme that I'm pretty happy with, but still most of it is intuition. Which is very applicable to the job itself: Intuition is nothing but unconcious and highly multidimensional optimization across the vast range of hard/soft skills required for the job by means of pattern recognition and heuristics. Everything that has simple measures (automated coding tests, phone screens by nontechnical people,...) can be gamed and produce lots of false positives AND negatives (see the recent Google screening for the GWAN guy). In the end, I can read much more real-world success from a quick coding challenge that shows me an applicants' thinking, craft, naming, library choice and so on. I'd consider myself a top 5% interviewer by now, but I have no clue how to automate, scale or replicate this.

anjc 10y ago
> We got rid of the "Why are manholes round?" questions, now we have live coding tests. > In the end, I can read much more real-world success from a quick coding challenge The only determinant of on-the-job performance is an on-the-job trial. Quick coding tests can be gamed also.
- hackinthebochs 10y ago
  >Quick coding tests can be gamed also. How (assuming its in person)?