5 ms·

The hiring process is a response to the fact that employers cannot trust a single word candidates say about their experience. This isn't paranoia Here's the th

by gaius 9y ago

The hiring process is a response to the fact that employers cannot trust a single word candidates say about their experience. This isn't paranoia Here's the thing tho': my CV is honest and my track record is pretty good: some small companies and some name-brand, well respected in their industries, known for probing interviews, over about 20 years. There may be some bad actors in the global candidate pool. But seriously, asking me these questions is like tearing my CV up in front of me and calling me a liar to my face. I am not in the market right now and hope not to be for a good while, but I dream of being asked a stupid whiteboard question, solving it, then throwing the board eraser at the interviewer's head and walking out...

TheGRS 9y ago
I see on this board more than any other where people will agree that taking time to hire correctly is by and far more cost efficient than hiring quickly, but incorrectly. I've definitely gone through a lot of experiences now where someone looks like a rock star on paper, have a great cultural interview, and we don't give them a ton of technical exercises, only to find out that they can't hack it or, even worse, are dragging down the rest of the team. I really wanna trust people on this stuff, my instincts are to appeal to the greater good in people, but I've been burned enough to not trust it anymore.
eeZah7Ux 9y ago
Spot on. It's rude to ask very basic questions to anyone with seniority. Just skip them and ask interesting and difficult ones. If a company cannot be flexible and reasonable enough to skip basic questions it's a bit of a red flag.
- Jach 9y ago
  It's a bit rude but until senior-level-role-interviewing candidates can stop falling over on the basic questions why waste time with harder ones? The "candidate with an MS degree in CS and x years at SomeCo, can't do FizzBuzz" isn't a myth, it really happens to people giving interviews. I've been having to give some interviews lately (though unfortunately they have to be within 'process') and my basic question is to write some code (with a computer) that outputs the endpoints of a line segment which bisects a plane between two input control points. (I give all the equations needed and the code is done within an application already set up.) It's still managed to trip up some people with experience who seemingly don't have the concept of representing a line mathematically (BS or MS in Physics, how?). We also tested it on intern candidates under shorter time constraints and a couple internal people, they did much better, I think all but one actually got the basic line done within half an hour even if edge cases remained. If we're given longer time constraints the problem and application framework scales to more interesting subjects like generating n-point voronoi diagrams and their applications, but we haven't gotten there with anyone yet...
  - eeZah7Ux 9y ago
    > "candidate with an MS degree in CS and x years at SomeCo, can't do FizzBuzz" isn't a myth I've interviewed many candidates. It happens to find people that cannot code at all. Yet, one does not propose trivial coding challenges like FizzBuzz. Very little is gained from finding out that a senior developer can do FizzBuzz and then fails at any more complex coding. You simply go for more complex questions straight away.
Clubber 9y ago
It's so funny, people who support that garbage just aren't hearing it. This forum probably has some of the best developers in the world chatting, and these guys just refuse to change their ways, regardless of how many people tell them it's a bad idea.
eadmund 9y ago
The problem is that a lying liar will also have a resumé like yours. How can I — who have never met you, and have no-one I trust recommending you to me — differentiate between gaius the awesome developer and gaius-prime the lying liar? I've got to administer some sort of test to distinguish the two, and the likeliest sort seems to me to be one which attempts to discern whether one knows the sort of stuff gaius would know, and gaius-prime wouldn't.
- gaius 9y ago
  I can tell within 10 minutes if someone is genuine or not just by talking through real, representative scenarios. If the job really involved implementing red-black trees from scratch, then and only then bring it up!
- kraigie 9y ago
  Which makes asking for a resume, rather pointless. There would likely be a lot more acceptance of fizzbuzz take home tests and so on; if that was instead of writing up resumes (replace one time suck with another instead of adding a second one in). However that makes it hard to justify paying recruiters. Given how Da Vinchi had a resume its amazing we still use them. (His was better thoigh, it had his name and address, dates he worked for people and their names and address)
  - breischl 9y ago
    >Which makes asking for a resume, rather pointless. I wouldn't go that far. It still weeds out the honest-but-unqualified with minimal effort - it's basically a good early filter. This actually works for the candidate too - how much would it suck to 6 hours of interviews and then get told you don't have the right degree or some such?

by gaius 9y ago

TheGRS 9y ago

I see on this board more than any other where people will agree that taking time to hire correctly is by and far more cost efficient than hiring quickly, but incorrectly. I've definitely gone through a lot of experiences now where someone looks like a rock star on paper, have a great cultural interview, and we don't give them a ton of technical exercises, only to find out that they can't hack it or, even worse, are dragging down the rest of the team. I really wanna trust people on this stuff, my instincts are to appeal to the greater good in people, but I've been burned enough to not trust it anymore.

eeZah7Ux 9y ago

Spot on. It's rude to ask very basic questions to anyone with seniority. Just skip them and ask interesting and difficult ones. If a company cannot be flexible and reasonable enough to skip basic questions it's a bit of a red flag.

Jach 9y ago
It's a bit rude but until senior-level-role-interviewing candidates can stop falling over on the basic questions why waste time with harder ones? The "candidate with an MS degree in CS and x years at SomeCo, can't do FizzBuzz" isn't a myth, it really happens to people giving interviews. I've been having to give some interviews lately (though unfortunately they have to be within 'process') and my basic question is to write some code (with a computer) that outputs the endpoints of a line segment which bisects a plane between two input control points. (I give all the equations needed and the code is done within an application already set up.) It's still managed to trip up some people with experience who seemingly don't have the concept of representing a line mathematically (BS or MS in Physics, how?). We also tested it on intern candidates under shorter time constraints and a couple internal people, they did much better, I think all but one actually got the basic line done within half an hour even if edge cases remained. If we're given longer time constraints the problem and application framework scales to more interesting subjects like generating n-point voronoi diagrams and their applications, but we haven't gotten there with anyone yet...
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  > "candidate with an MS degree in CS and x years at SomeCo, can't do FizzBuzz" isn't a myth I've interviewed many candidates. It happens to find people that cannot code at all. Yet, one does not propose trivial coding challenges like FizzBuzz. Very little is gained from finding out that a senior developer can do FizzBuzz and then fails at any more complex coding. You simply go for more complex questions straight away.

Clubber 9y ago

It's so funny, people who support that garbage just aren't hearing it. This forum probably has some of the best developers in the world chatting, and these guys just refuse to change their ways, regardless of how many people tell them it's a bad idea.

eadmund 9y ago

The problem is that a lying liar will also have a resumé like yours. How can I — who have never met you, and have no-one I trust recommending you to me — differentiate between gaius the awesome developer and gaius-prime the lying liar? I've got to administer some sort of test to distinguish the two, and the likeliest sort seems to me to be one which attempts to discern whether one knows the sort of stuff gaius would know, and gaius-prime wouldn't.

gaius 9y ago
I can tell within 10 minutes if someone is genuine or not just by talking through real, representative scenarios. If the job really involved implementing red-black trees from scratch, then and only then bring it up!
kraigie 9y ago
Which makes asking for a resume, rather pointless. There would likely be a lot more acceptance of fizzbuzz take home tests and so on; if that was instead of writing up resumes (replace one time suck with another instead of adding a second one in). However that makes it hard to justify paying recruiters. Given how Da Vinchi had a resume its amazing we still use them. (His was better thoigh, it had his name and address, dates he worked for people and their names and address)
- breischl 9y ago
  >Which makes asking for a resume, rather pointless. I wouldn't go that far. It still weeds out the honest-but-unqualified with minimal effort - it's basically a good early filter. This actually works for the candidate too - how much would it suck to 6 hours of interviews and then get told you don't have the right degree or some such?