7 ms·

This is a good idea in theory, but the problem in practice is that for every Emily or Anthony, there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who

• leeny 9y ago
  That's why we're really proud of what we do at interviewing.io. All students have to go through a series of practice interviews, so by the time they talk to companies, we know they're great, and so far, most of the students we've presented have gotten offers, independently of their backgrounds. With our model, we free up companies from having to worry about exactly what you described because we incur the vetting.
  • 23443463453 9y ago
    Do you also provide a service to hire vetted engineering staff when the company may not have the technical baseline to properly interview?
  • rhizome 9y ago
    Do I understand correctly that on the candidate side the person can go through a sequence of interviews without the possibility of actually meeting a hiring company? Also that you only work with students?
    • jmcgough 9y ago
      The people using Interviewing.io are typically using it as a means of practicing interviews in a low-pressure setting. Their goal isn't to get offers from companies, but if it leads to that, I'm sure they don't mind. Also, they don't just work with students. I've used them, and I've worked professionally for several years.
    • leeny 9y ago
      We have 2 pools: a practice pool and then a pool where you get guaranteed interviews with employers. If you do well in practice, you can book real interviews with any number of top companies who've come to trust in the quality of our users. This goes for both senior engineers, and more recently, students.
      • deskamess 9y ago
        Do you have stats on how many of your customers are in their 30's and 40's? I would think that demographic would find practicing very useful since they have been out of touch with algorithms for a while.
        • leeny 9y ago
          Median interviewing.io user currently has 6 years of experience (we don't ask people their ages).
    • stale2002 9y ago
      Interviewing.io is mostly for interview practice. You pair with other people on the platform and interview each other. Of course, all "practice" interview companies make their money by referring their top users to companies and getting the referral fee.
  • jasode 9y ago
    > With our model, we free up companies from having to worry about exactly what you described because we incur the vetting. I looked at your webpage & FAQ for employers. (https://interviewing.io/employers https://interviewing.io/employers) Can you say how much your service costs?
    • leeny 9y ago
      Shoot me an email. aline@interviewing.io This is our first season doing university stuff, so pricing is flexible.
  • kamaal 9y ago
    >>All students have to go through a series of practice interviews Interviewing is supposed to be hiring people who work everyday, to do everyday jobs. If people have to practice to clear your interviews. You are either hiring the wrong people, or people who want to get in to only game the interview. In both the instances you are hiring the wrong people. Put in other words if even ordinary perfectly qualified candidates have to practice to clear a company's interview. The company is likely asking wrong questions.
• chk_ur_autism 9y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your argument here. If we cut through the clutter, you're essentially advocating that you hire people on an individual basis and shouldn't weight at all what school they come from. No?
  • Avshalom 9y ago
    No, they are advocating hiring from the big 5 and then saying that it's just a coincidence that all the employees they've hired on 'on [their] own merit' are from there.
    • unethical_ban 9y ago
      FYI OP posted alongside you in their own words. What I got from it is "No shit Harvard is better than UPhoenix South Campus" but if we came up with a good way to measure skills and learning capacity independent of rote programming quizzes/etc., hiring from a lower tier school would be less risky. I know someone who dropped out and is now making plenty of money at a software development gig. I also know CS grads who can't think about anything outside their little realm to save their lives. Point is: some schools legit don't filter well for learning capacity.
      • wolco 9y ago
        Harvard is no MIT. One generally goes to harvard because they are rich vs smart. You may be surprised by the quality of UPhoenix grads. One has to be motivated to be a UPhoenix grad while other things are more important at Harvard.
    • matthewrobertso 9y ago
      Where does GP advocate for this? As I read it, he is saying that there are some potential bad hires from lower tier schools that should be avoided. I don't think this involves 5 schools or GP's hiring history.
      • Avshalom 9y ago
• justherefortart 9y ago
  As someone that went to podunk state and was recruited by all kinds of companies (went to work at Arthur Andersen in the 90s for my first job because I wanted to learn which side I was more interested in, software/computers or finance/accounting). I found that hiring for potential and attitude goes much farther than hiring for skill in new/recent graduates. Having worked all over the United States and even the "mecca" of San Francisco, the quality seemingly is more tied to their experience than their "talent". When surrounded by other excellent workers/engineers and great processes, you can become great. When you work with and for mediocre, that tends to be what you know.
• fleitz 9y ago
  As one of those kids to never went to school, I'm going to agree with you. Most people can't program, however, better schools are only slightly better in outputting people who can. I find fizzbuzz and other coding challenges much more effective in hiring. It's hard to do but showing actual code from your codebase with an actual real bug is a much better indicator of whether someone will be successful than anything else.
  • PeterisP 9y ago
    Although educating people can be done in any decent school (or no school at all) better schools do a better job of filtering people, i.e. the key tasks of ensuring that (a) that the less capable people don't get a degree from you, either because they're pushed to drop out or you filter them out during the application process, and (b) that the top cohort of capable people actually apply to your school (in many schools, their degree is an uncertain but strong indicator that you weren't good enough to get into a better school).
• jerf 9y ago
  "there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent." I find myself wondering at your definition of "2nd tier school". If you mean community colleges or something, I'd understand. But there's plenty of "tier 1 schools" for learning computer science outside of the "same five schools" in question. I don't see a list of the five schools in question from a quick skim, but is the University of Michigan "second tier"? University of Waterloo? Any of dozens or possibly hundreds of Division I schools with high quality programs? Let's be honest... running a fairly good undergraduate computer science program is not rocket science. It's not that hard. For all the sound and fury of the industry, it has visibly not shifted all that much in curriculum in the 20 years since I took it. I know, I look over the intern's shoulders sometimes when they do homework here and I could almost hand them my own homework solutions from 1998 as a cheat sheet. [1] The very elitism the article is deploring is on full display when people seem to assume it's these top five schools, then a country full of drooling morons. That is not in fact how it works. It's not even close to how it works. It is offensively wrong. [1]: This is mostly a good thing, not a complaint. The curriculum should be stable. Bits of it need to be updated here and there, but the whole is solid. AI really needs an update, though; it was long in the tooth when I took it in 1999 or so and it hasn't gotten much better at the local schools. The whole "search the solution space" is certainly a bare minimum to understand the field but almost everything has gone in a very different direction since then.
  • kafkaesq 9y ago
    I find myself wondering at your definition of "2nd tier school". Any school lower on the perceived status hierarchy than the school they went to, most likely.
    • eradicatethots 9y ago
      All this talk of tiered schools is gross
      • kafkaesq 9y ago
• tdb7893 9y ago
  I've worked with great engineers and most of them have degrees from state schools. I've found the biggest difference between the large tech companies and other places from having talked to people is that the big places have a lot more money to blow on stuff.
• kafkaesq 9y ago
  The problem in practice is that for every Emily or Anthony, there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent. So your implication is that the ratio of "competent" : "completely incompetent" for students coming from these schools is roughly... 2:100? I know you can't possibly mean that. But your language clearly implies that ratio. The only question is why you're making such a bizarre implication. I often find that those who are so keen on “hiring broadly” have never worked in a company that hires primarily from Podunk State Was the original article suggesting that your company hire "primarily" from Podunk State? Or simply that you probably don't want to hire near-exclusively from the Top 5? The key is not to focus on the schools (rather than to focus extra on state schools. Instead, develop methods for identifying talent based on its own merits, regardless of where it is or what university it went to. Which is exactly what the original article was advocating - a "completely blind, skills-first approach". In particular, it was definitely not arguing that one should "focus extra" on state schools.
  • throwawayjava 9y ago
    > So your implication is that the ratio of "competent" : "completely incompetent" for students coming from these schools is roughly... 2:100? the parent can be correct with a ratio closer to 1:10 or 1:20, assuming the top schools churn out many more students than 2nd/3rd tier schools. Which is certainly the case depending on how to define 2nd/3rd tier. For ex parent's observation is probably spot on if you're comparing MIT/CMU/Stanford/Berkeley to an arbitrarily chosen regional state campus. But is more absurd if you're comparing those places to Michigan/Wisconsin/North Carolina/Washington/... > Which is exactly what the original article was advocating To be clear, the original article is a long-form advertisement for a product. What the article is advocating is giving interviewing.io money :)
    • kafkaesq 9y ago
      For ex parent's observation is probably spot on if you're comparing MIT/CMU/Stanford/Berkeley to an arbitrarily chosen regional state campus. I'll readily concur that students from top-tier schools are on average better than students from Podunk schools. But (based on a wide sampling of data points) I don't see anything like a 1:100 ratio of "better", by any metric.