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I used to disbelieve hiring managers regularly encountered candidates who actually couldn't code, or whatever other basic technical thing was reported on their
by dsacco 9y ago
I used to disbelieve hiring managers regularly encountered candidates who actually couldn't code, or whatever other basic technical thing was reported on their resumes. Such a possibility - even the audacity of it on a conceptual level - simply seemed beyond the pale for me. I had interviewed before and not done well, and that I could absolutely understand. But I had no way of relating to the idea of someone entering an interview without the fundamental mental schema requisite for doing the job.
Then I started interviewing people for engineering and security engineering roles. That's when I realized that unless you put a lot of effort into curating your candidate pipeline, you interview engineers who literally (without exaggeration!) cannot complete anagram toy programming questions in their "favorite languages." That was a sobering moment for me.
I'm in agreement that a lot of tech hiring is suboptimal, selects for noisy heuristics and is even (sometimes) sadistic. But I've also met engineers - typically people who have not done interviewing or hiring much - who think that reports of fizzbuzz failures have been greatly exaggerated. They have not been exaggerated.
I haven't interviewed anyone in over a year, but back when I was doing it weekly I used to mentally sigh with relief when the candidate I was talking to could actually approach technical questions, even if they ultimately didn't give winning answers. It is a sad reality indeed; the bar is low enough that you have an edge by merely engaging with the problem and reasoning about it with technical competence in an interview.
- alexashka 9y agoLet me ask: what company do you work for and how much effort does it put into finding, attracting and most important! retaining! people who are any good? How much say do the people working on a team have, in who gets hired? I mean people who'll actually be working with the person day to day, not some manager. If the answer is 'we tell recruiting agencies we're hiring for vague role X, Y and Z', then why are you surprised? Is the work any interesting? No? Generic corporate codebase perhaps? And you're getting generic people applying? How strange :) ps. This is not directed at you in particular. I just find it strange when people don't do an inch beyond 'we pay money', and then expect a mile beyond 'i do just enough to get paid'
- Ntrails 9y agoAttracting more good people won't reduce the number of bad applicants (it will increase it). Retaining staff doesn't mean that you aren't hiring at .2 headcount per annum. Assuming that there's a basic process of CV review (by team members who would work with) followed by non technical phone interview. You will still have people who fail fizzbuzz. I'm not talking about small errors reading the problem - but the inability to even put a for loop in pseudo code onto the page. The fact that the test is required is somewhat silly - but it's hardly limited to dull corporate roles.
- alexashka 9y agoI can think of half a dozen ways to attract applicants in a way that'd significantly increase the quality of the applicants while at the same time significantly decreasing the number of the applicants. See, you are assuming a basic process of a job board and anyone applying for the position. I am saying you are so entrenched in mediocrity that you can't fathom there are much better ways. I will say this though - they all require a fundamental shift from 'fill seats with people for minimum amount of pay, to do uninteresting work, with least amount of complaining' to actually giving a shit about people you work with, yourself, and your life :)
- drdeadringer 9y ago> I can think of half a dozen ways to attract applicants in a way that'd significantly increase the quality of the applicants while at the same time significantly decreasing the number of the applicants. Like what?
- chrisbennet 9y agoHe would have but they were too large to fit in the margin...
- pklausler 9y agoOriginal comment poster here. I have conducted literally hundreds of technical interviews. To me, too, it was a jaw-dropping realization that some candidates can arrive who literally have no idea how to program a computer. I don't know how they get through school (with high GPAs, even), held their last job, or impressed their phone screener. I don't even want to speculate. The sad fact is that trivial, two-minute, easy-peasy exercises can and will expose some candidates as being unable to work through them, even with the most friendly and patient coaching. So I always ask at least one trivial question that can be solved in a minute or two with a couple of basic relations and a Boolean connective.
- silverpikezero 9y agoI experienced the exact same feelings as you. Until I started interviewing candidates in quantity, I had no clue how many candidates cannot complete FizzBuzz. The reported failure rates of this simple test are completely legitimate. In my own interviewing, it comes out at about 50/50. The 50% who do pass often make some significant conceptual mistake, for which I'm generally pretty forgiving since interviews can be a stressful experience. This question comes at the end of a hiring pipeline that does 2 phone screens before the on-site happens.
- pklausler 9y agoDo you actually use the real well-known FizzBuzz problem, or some other exercise that you think is comparably trivial?