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i used to recruit people without having them pass coding intervuew. Never again. It depends on the job of course, but for anything that involved writing lines o

by bsaul 8y ago

i used to recruit people without having them pass coding intervuew. Never again. It depends on the job of course, but for anything that involved writing lines of code, it's not even an option. The main problem being that a bad developer can cripple your codebase for a long time before you actually realize it. And some people are good at pretending to know what they're doing. i guess it's more of a matter on how your coding interview are conducted. I usually try to have the person design and code some features of a program solving a real life problem. And then we talk about it. This also let me see if the person is a good fit and is able to work in a team.

chillacy 8y ago
I always start interviews with soft questions (on work experience and general technical discussion, like talking technologies X vs Y, or architecture) before diving into the coding question and it still amazes me at how many people sound so competent initially and then struggle to iterate an array.
ng12 8y ago
> And some people are good at pretending to know what they're doing. This is a very important point. I know we on HN love to complain about tech interviews but it's still the single most meritocratic interview process I know of. In most fields it's incredibly easy to schmooze your way through. If I have to answer contrived Ruby questions every once in a while to avoid working with professional bullshitters, so be it.
ansible 8y ago
Yes. We do some coding problems in our interviews, but it isn't puzzle-oriented or even requiring much knowledge of a standard library. We're looking for basic stuff, like looking for a pattern in a list of items. Things were there will be multiple correct ways to implement it, and can choose an implementation language. One candidate we had... oh boy. The guy could talk. Excellent, excellent verbal communication skills. He really sounded like he knew what he was talking about. But completely balked when it came to putting bits in a file. Just wouldn't / couldn't, even when I tried to talk him through the process. My recommendation after the interview was a hard 'no', that we should under no circumstances hire this person. Management, apparently dazzled by the aforementioned communication skills, wanted to give this guy another interview, over my strong objections. The second interviewer came to the exact same conclusion. Maybe they'll listen to me next time.

by bsaul 8y ago

chillacy 8y ago

I always start interviews with soft questions (on work experience and general technical discussion, like talking technologies X vs Y, or architecture) before diving into the coding question and it still amazes me at how many people sound so competent initially and then struggle to iterate an array.

ng12 8y ago

> And some people are good at pretending to know what they're doing. This is a very important point. I know we on HN love to complain about tech interviews but it's still the single most meritocratic interview process I know of. In most fields it's incredibly easy to schmooze your way through. If I have to answer contrived Ruby questions every once in a while to avoid working with professional bullshitters, so be it.

ansible 8y ago

Yes. We do some coding problems in our interviews, but it isn't puzzle-oriented or even requiring much knowledge of a standard library. We're looking for basic stuff, like looking for a pattern in a list of items. Things were there will be multiple correct ways to implement it, and can choose an implementation language. One candidate we had... oh boy. The guy could talk. Excellent, excellent verbal communication skills. He really sounded like he knew what he was talking about. But completely balked when it came to putting bits in a file. Just wouldn't / couldn't, even when I tried to talk him through the process. My recommendation after the interview was a hard 'no', that we should under no circumstances hire this person. Management, apparently dazzled by the aforementioned communication skills, wanted to give this guy another interview, over my strong objections. The second interviewer came to the exact same conclusion. Maybe they'll listen to me next time.