7 ms·

How about: When searching for a new job, your previous years of experience, github repos, personal projects, consulting gigs and all other relevant information

How about: When searching for a new job, your previous years of experience, github repos, personal projects, consulting gigs and all other relevant information about your ability to produce quality software will not matter at all compared to your ability to do leetcode style programming challenges.

t0mbstone 8y ago
That depends on the company you are wanting to work at, though. I refuse to work at companies that give those kinds of bullshit puzzle interviews.
- maerF0x0 8y ago
  That's almost the entirety of the bay area.
  - aequitas 8y ago
    For me, moving to the bay area would be a bigger problem than these kinds of interviews anyway. All interviews I have done the lasts years didn't involve code challenges.
- dominotw 8y ago
  > I refuse to work at companies that give those kinds of bullshit puzzle interviews. Good luck finding a job then. All companies of all sizes and locations do this.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    Um, no, they don't. I know of at least one exception - the one I work at. And I'm part of the interviews for our team, so I know how they're done.
    - dominotw 8y ago
      Ah ok. I 've been interviewing bunch of places recently. All of them seem to have identical format. I remember there a site I saw here HN that listed companies without whiteboard interviews. Can't think of the name.
      - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        Oh, no, we do whiteboard interviews. But they aren't those kind of stupid puzzles. We just have candidates write a little code, and do a little design. The "write a little code" is not one of those leetcode questions - it's really a simple problem. We just want to watch them code, and to hear what they're thinking as they do it.
        ryall 8y ago
        This is the way to do it. How an applicant applies process to problem solving and communicates their ideas, is way more important than being able to regurgitate bubble-sort.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    I don't apply to many jobs (I've got a tolerable one and am picky about location and other things), but the one startup tech job I applied to didn't do puzzles, they did do a screenshared coding portion, but it wasn't a puzzle kind of thing.
- jackconnor 8y ago
  Isn't this all of them?
president 8y ago
"America lacks top notch engineers" - Says every large tech company. It didn't dawn on me until now that, "top notch engineers" really just means "people that are good at passing algorithm interviews". So many people I work with can code every algorithm on leetcode in a jiffy but can't write quality software that works.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  The "tech shortage" in a nutshell.
philwelch 8y ago
> previous years of experience, github repos, personal projects, consulting gigs and all other relevant information about your ability As far as evidence for a hiring decision goes, all of the things you listed are things that can either be easily faked, are hard to verify, or require implicitly trusting another organization. How am I supposed to spend the time reading all the code on your github account and forming a judgment of your ability based on that? Even if I do that, how can I be sure that you're the one who wrote that code? How do I know that your previous employers and clients weren't all bozos or that you didn't slack off and let your teammates do all the work? Even if I call your references, they'll probably just say, "yes, this guy definitely worked here, and by HR policy I'm not allowed to say more". Even if they do say more, how am I supposed to trust them? There's not nearly enough information there to make a hiring decision.
- joshwcomeau 8y ago
  > How am I supposed to spend the time reading all the code on your github account Easy - spend the 45 minutes that you had allotted for whiteboard challenges. > how can I be sure that you're the one who wrote that code? You can't be, if the Github account has a single repo with a single commit. But impressive OSS has a history of commits, maybe even a community working with the applicant. As a random example, do you really think it would be possible for someone to fake an account like this? https://github.com/pedronauck https://github.com/pedronauck Even if someone went through the trouble to clone someone else's repo, modify all the commit messages to re-attribute them, and modify the code and commit messages enough to make it not obvious plagiarism, do you really think they could bullshit their way through a quick conversation about the code? Spend 20 minutes digging into it, and then ask pertinent questions about decisions made in the architecture. It'll become clear if this person is the author. It's theoretically possible that someone could put in all the work to pull off a convincing fraud, but do you really think that's likely? > How do I know that your previous employers and clients weren't all bozos or that you didn't slack off and let your teammates do all the work? It's true that there is no perfect signal here, but the odds of this being true are not 50/50. It's not 100% accurate, but having references and employment history is better than nothing. --- To be clear, I don't think OSS inspection is perfect as a hiring tool - it biases towards folks with the privilege to spend their free time working on passion projects - and I'd object to it being the sole determining factor. But I think the signal is far stronger than it is from whiteboarding, where the false negative rate is super high (I doubt most competent programmers would accurately showcase their skill in this environment). There is no perfect hiring practice, but to immediately disregard anything that has even a negligible potential for fraud feels a bit silly to me.

t0mbstone 8y ago

That depends on the company you are wanting to work at, though. I refuse to work at companies that give those kinds of bullshit puzzle interviews.

maerF0x0 8y ago
That's almost the entirety of the bay area.
- aequitas 8y ago
  For me, moving to the bay area would be a bigger problem than these kinds of interviews anyway. All interviews I have done the lasts years didn't involve code challenges.
dominotw 8y ago
> I refuse to work at companies that give those kinds of bullshit puzzle interviews. Good luck finding a job then. All companies of all sizes and locations do this.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Um, no, they don't. I know of at least one exception - the one I work at. And I'm part of the interviews for our team, so I know how they're done.
  - dominotw 8y ago
    Ah ok. I 've been interviewing bunch of places recently. All of them seem to have identical format. I remember there a site I saw here HN that listed companies without whiteboard interviews. Can't think of the name.
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      Oh, no, we do whiteboard interviews. But they aren't those kind of stupid puzzles. We just have candidates write a little code, and do a little design. The "write a little code" is not one of those leetcode questions - it's really a simple problem. We just want to watch them code, and to hear what they're thinking as they do it.
      - ryall 8y ago
        This is the way to do it. How an applicant applies process to problem solving and communicates their ideas, is way more important than being able to regurgitate bubble-sort.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  I don't apply to many jobs (I've got a tolerable one and am picky about location and other things), but the one startup tech job I applied to didn't do puzzles, they did do a screenshared coding portion, but it wasn't a puzzle kind of thing.
jackconnor 8y ago
Isn't this all of them?

president 8y ago

"America lacks top notch engineers" - Says every large tech company. It didn't dawn on me until now that, "top notch engineers" really just means "people that are good at passing algorithm interviews". So many people I work with can code every algorithm on leetcode in a jiffy but can't write quality software that works.

mixmastamyk 8y ago
The "tech shortage" in a nutshell.

philwelch 8y ago

> previous years of experience, github repos, personal projects, consulting gigs and all other relevant information about your ability As far as evidence for a hiring decision goes, all of the things you listed are things that can either be easily faked, are hard to verify, or require implicitly trusting another organization. How am I supposed to spend the time reading all the code on your github account and forming a judgment of your ability based on that? Even if I do that, how can I be sure that you're the one who wrote that code? How do I know that your previous employers and clients weren't all bozos or that you didn't slack off and let your teammates do all the work? Even if I call your references, they'll probably just say, "yes, this guy definitely worked here, and by HR policy I'm not allowed to say more". Even if they do say more, how am I supposed to trust them? There's not nearly enough information there to make a hiring decision.

joshwcomeau 8y ago
> How am I supposed to spend the time reading all the code on your github account Easy - spend the 45 minutes that you had allotted for whiteboard challenges. > how can I be sure that you're the one who wrote that code? You can't be, if the Github account has a single repo with a single commit. But impressive OSS has a history of commits, maybe even a community working with the applicant. As a random example, do you really think it would be possible for someone to fake an account like this? https://github.com/pedronauck https://github.com/pedronauck Even if someone went through the trouble to clone someone else's repo, modify all the commit messages to re-attribute them, and modify the code and commit messages enough to make it not obvious plagiarism, do you really think they could bullshit their way through a quick conversation about the code? Spend 20 minutes digging into it, and then ask pertinent questions about decisions made in the architecture. It'll become clear if this person is the author. It's theoretically possible that someone could put in all the work to pull off a convincing fraud, but do you really think that's likely? > How do I know that your previous employers and clients weren't all bozos or that you didn't slack off and let your teammates do all the work? It's true that there is no perfect signal here, but the odds of this being true are not 50/50. It's not 100% accurate, but having references and employment history is better than nothing. --- To be clear, I don't think OSS inspection is perfect as a hiring tool - it biases towards folks with the privilege to spend their free time working on passion projects - and I'd object to it being the sole determining factor. But I think the signal is far stronger than it is from whiteboarding, where the false negative rate is super high (I doubt most competent programmers would accurately showcase their skill in this environment). There is no perfect hiring practice, but to immediately disregard anything that has even a negligible potential for fraud feels a bit silly to me.