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Would you want to work with someone who's just a warm body that claims to have experience in the field? Especially in such a high paying field where any random

Would you want to work with someone who's just a warm body that claims to have experience in the field? Especially in such a high paying field where any random is highly incentivized to just pretend they know how to make software even if they can't pass fizzbuzz? Clearly interviews are flawed. But I've worked with warm bodies hired through h1b-abuse programs and no matter how much they claim to know about something, a lot of them are just bullshiters. I would never want to work at a place where people with their level of skills could join the regular teams as peers. I see whiteboarding simply as a logical statistical filtering mechanism. Do they filter out people that are lazy or have difficult personalities? No. But at the difficulty level of places like Google they filter out people who are really bad at programming (which there are a lot of) every single time. They also happen to filter out people who are good at programming too, but enough pass the whiteboarding that the organization can hire to meet their needs, so they don't care that maybe applicant X didn't pass. High false negative rate, low false positive rate

jahaja 8y ago
Why would that warm-bodies scenario even happen? I think there's an assumption here that these tests actually provide a lower false positive rate than a solid experience check or whatever non-puzzle interviews do. After all, one stark difference to an audition for a ballet, is that you can't fake your ballet skills, however, memorizing CS stuff may actually be possible. Furthermore, the hard part to memorize are the things that would be asked in a good non-puzzle interview anyway. Clearly there's room for pragmatism for such as interns, newly graduated, relocations etc. Honestly, I think they're primarily filtering out based on themselves as the target image.
- opportune 8y ago
  From what I've heard from hiring managers, when you open a position and interview applicants without the use of headhunting, the majority of applicants are wildly under-qualified, even if they do have some relevant experience. Also, I see no reason not to combine both a background check and a technical interview. You have no way of knowing what someone's actual contributions to a previous software project are, even with a background check; maybe they were about as productive as an observer even if they understood the project at a high enough level to explain it.
  - jahaja 8y ago
    I agree that it would be hard to know an individuals specific contributions, but I can't see how a person can pass a good work-related interview if they're wildly under-qualified.

jahaja 8y ago

Why would that warm-bodies scenario even happen? I think there's an assumption here that these tests actually provide a lower false positive rate than a solid experience check or whatever non-puzzle interviews do. After all, one stark difference to an audition for a ballet, is that you can't fake your ballet skills, however, memorizing CS stuff may actually be possible. Furthermore, the hard part to memorize are the things that would be asked in a good non-puzzle interview anyway. Clearly there's room for pragmatism for such as interns, newly graduated, relocations etc. Honestly, I think they're primarily filtering out based on themselves as the target image.

opportune 8y ago
From what I've heard from hiring managers, when you open a position and interview applicants without the use of headhunting, the majority of applicants are wildly under-qualified, even if they do have some relevant experience. Also, I see no reason not to combine both a background check and a technical interview. You have no way of knowing what someone's actual contributions to a previous software project are, even with a background check; maybe they were about as productive as an observer even if they understood the project at a high enough level to explain it.
- jahaja 8y ago
  I agree that it would be hard to know an individuals specific contributions, but I can't see how a person can pass a good work-related interview if they're wildly under-qualified.