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I wrote this a while back on a similar article complaining about technical interviews: Med school is difficult. An internship is difficult. A fellowship progra
by lloyd-christmas 9y ago
I wrote this a while back on a similar article complaining about technical interviews:
Med school is difficult. An internship is difficult. A fellowship program is difficult. Undergraduate degrees are a rubber stamp, CS included.
There are 20k oncologists across all fields of oncology within the US. That's also about the number of engineers Google employs. Most other industries we like to compare ourselves to are leagues above ours in individual merit. My father is an oncologist, and I'm reasonably confident he has some familiarity with every genitourinary oncologist in North America, Australia, and Europe. More importantly, he's on a first name basis with all of their educators. When he needs to hire a new doctor, he doesn't post an ad on health stack exchange. He makes an offer to a specific individual who he already knows.
One thing that we as an industry fail to understand is that we're not special. We desperately claw to it in these conversations. I'm willing to admit it: I'm easily replaceable. Very few of us have any name recognition that exists in other fields. I worked in finance for half a decade before moving to software. When I'd go to interview, people already knew who I was because of the basic human interaction I had as part of my job. When I walk into the door of my next interview, the only thing people know about me is what's on my resume/blog/stack overflow answers.
Personally, I find technical interviews to be a cheap and easy filter. You may not always get the best person from your pool of applicants, but you get someone that's better than most of them. The marginal benefit of one vs. the other is rarely meaningful.
- anthmcc 9y agoThis has nothing to do with the argument being made.
- lloyd-christmas 9y agoMy comment: > a similar article complaining about technical interviews From this article: "The interview will be 8 hours long and will include meeting our entire staff, as well as some practice problems to determine your problem-solving proficiency. Problems will be done on a whiteboard in front of our hospital directors and will include chemistry and biochemistry problems like identifying hybridization states and lipid synthesis." "When you click on this link you’ll be taken to a 30 minute test where you’ll read mock cases and identify different problems with them. After you take the test, we’ll let you know if you’ve been selected for a phone interview." Can you explain how those are unrelated arguments?
- imakecomments 9y ago>Most other industries we like to compare ourselves to are leagues above ours in individual merit. I don't think that rings true to those with PhD degrees doing academic research in CS.
- lloyd-christmas 9y agoDefinitely, but when is the last time you interviewed a PhD? If so, did you give them technical questions? The comparison is between practitioners, not academics. Beyond that, other industries DO use technical interviews. My entry-level interview in finance was extremely technical, but no subsequent interviews were technical. I just think the comparisons being drawn aren't realistic. I work in med-tech, specifically orthopedics. I recently interviewed for a side job to help build an application related to genomic research. The most technical question I received (related to programming) was "do you have experience in python", and the answer didn't even matter. Why? My boss worked with their lead engineer, and all their researchers know my father. The human element changes things dramatically, and that seems significantly less prevalent in programming.