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I always end up linking this piece in response to people like you, and here I am again. These folks have real data on lots of interviews, and have done some an

I always end up linking this piece in response to people like you, and here I am again. These folks have real data on lots of interviews, and have done some analysis on them: http://blog.interviewing.io/you-cant-fix-diversity-in-tech-without-fixing-the-technical-interview/ http://blog.interviewing.io/you-cant-fix-diversity-in-tech-w... The takeaway that's relevant to you is the section titled "Interview outcomes are kind of arbitrary". Specifically, things like: As you can see, roughly 25% of interviewees are consistent in their performance, but the rest are all over the place. And over a third of people with a high mean (>=3) technical performance bombed at least one interview. If you set up a typical tech-company interview process, and if you equate "didn't pass this" with "complete impostor and utterly incapable of coding in any capacity" (as most people with your approach do), well, congratulations. You're almost certainly rejecting a bunch of qualified people, simply because you're terrible at interviewing them and can't actually tell from your process whether or not they're qualified. The most generous thing I can say is that it's not entirely your fault. You adopted ideas and approaches from people who seemed authoritative but turned out to be the actual impostors in this situation. But now you have a choice: you can reject that, now you know the problems, or you can double down. I suggest not doubling down.

deskamess 9y ago
Agreeing with and expanding on the interview studies... In most cases, the job that one ends up doing has very little to do with what you were tested for in an interview. Languages usually have some sort of approved/well know implementation of common data structures and algorithms. When you are asked to do some BFS/DFS/binary tree work in 45min or less you are unlikely to do that for the job. Someone has already provided an implementation. I venture, you are most likely to see it bought up in your next interview (whenever that is). The question is how can you test for experience in writing code that is maintainable, readable, 'instrumentable' and contributes to a better system. How often does a candidate refer and defer to a decent third party library instead of feeling they need to (re)implement a well known data structure or algorithm? What have they done to help automate things so they can free themselves and their peers from minutae (aka how willing are they to put more work on machines?). What more do they think they can do. How well do they mentor or are ready to be mentored? Given a sample project, how would they go about running the technical side of things. If they focus on code, you should try to motivate them to expand to other areas (without telling them what they are). How cognizant are they of the ecosystem; or does their vision end at coding + unit test. Lots of intangibles that cannot be measured with a github profile or a white board interview but probably contribute more to picking out better candidates.
monocasa 9y ago
I'm amused at the idea that because I pass on senior devs who literally can't do FizzBuzz, that I must have a terrible interview process.
- sampleinajar 9y ago
  Sure. But, of course there is a difference between having a conversation about the overall trends of a practice versus a small subset of personal experiences. It's also important to define what you mean by "can't do FizzBuzz". Like they can't even do a basic loop or they don't get it perfect, in the exact way you think it should be? Because those are very different as well. I think it's fair to say that if you get a senior Dev in that can't even write out an if-else statement checking for 3 and 5 you have a problem.
  - monocasa 9y ago
    > It's also important to define what you mean by "can't do FizzBuzz". Like they can't even do a basic loop or they don't get it perfect, in the exact way you think it should be? Like literally can't do a basic loop. I'm not looking for 'my solution', I'm looking for any solution. > I think it's fair to say that if you get a senior Dev in that can't even write out an if-else statement checking for 3 and 5 you have a problem. And yet, I can tell you from experience that there's someone out there who (at least was on the team that) wrote firmware for the space shuttle that literally can't if-else with modulus despite having a great looking resume. And they are far from alone.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  FWIW my FizzBuzz solution involves no 'for' loops, and in fact involves no control-flow keywords at all.
  - monocasa 9y ago
    Haha, I'd love to see it if that's true. I love cool approaches to computation. FWIW as long as you can back it up with knowledge of what the relevant tradeoffs are (and don't scoff at a more KISS attitude for doing actual work), you're pretty much guaranteed to get a thumbs up from me if you give an answer off the beaten path.

deskamess 9y ago

Agreeing with and expanding on the interview studies... In most cases, the job that one ends up doing has very little to do with what you were tested for in an interview. Languages usually have some sort of approved/well know implementation of common data structures and algorithms. When you are asked to do some BFS/DFS/binary tree work in 45min or less you are unlikely to do that for the job. Someone has already provided an implementation. I venture, you are most likely to see it bought up in your next interview (whenever that is). The question is how can you test for experience in writing code that is maintainable, readable, 'instrumentable' and contributes to a better system. How often does a candidate refer and defer to a decent third party library instead of feeling they need to (re)implement a well known data structure or algorithm? What have they done to help automate things so they can free themselves and their peers from minutae (aka how willing are they to put more work on machines?). What more do they think they can do. How well do they mentor or are ready to be mentored? Given a sample project, how would they go about running the technical side of things. If they focus on code, you should try to motivate them to expand to other areas (without telling them what they are). How cognizant are they of the ecosystem; or does their vision end at coding + unit test. Lots of intangibles that cannot be measured with a github profile or a white board interview but probably contribute more to picking out better candidates.

monocasa 9y ago

I'm amused at the idea that because I pass on senior devs who literally can't do FizzBuzz, that I must have a terrible interview process.

sampleinajar 9y ago
Sure. But, of course there is a difference between having a conversation about the overall trends of a practice versus a small subset of personal experiences. It's also important to define what you mean by "can't do FizzBuzz". Like they can't even do a basic loop or they don't get it perfect, in the exact way you think it should be? Because those are very different as well. I think it's fair to say that if you get a senior Dev in that can't even write out an if-else statement checking for 3 and 5 you have a problem.
- monocasa 9y ago
  > It's also important to define what you mean by "can't do FizzBuzz". Like they can't even do a basic loop or they don't get it perfect, in the exact way you think it should be? Like literally can't do a basic loop. I'm not looking for 'my solution', I'm looking for any solution. > I think it's fair to say that if you get a senior Dev in that can't even write out an if-else statement checking for 3 and 5 you have a problem. And yet, I can tell you from experience that there's someone out there who (at least was on the team that) wrote firmware for the space shuttle that literally can't if-else with modulus despite having a great looking resume. And they are far from alone.
ubernostrum 9y ago
FWIW my FizzBuzz solution involves no 'for' loops, and in fact involves no control-flow keywords at all.
- monocasa 9y ago
  Haha, I'd love to see it if that's true. I love cool approaches to computation. FWIW as long as you can back it up with knowledge of what the relevant tradeoffs are (and don't scoff at a more KISS attitude for doing actual work), you're pretty much guaranteed to get a thumbs up from me if you give an answer off the beaten path.