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In my experience, the category of comp. sci. grads that these riddle based interviews select are often very smart, but have difficulty in developing novel solut

by jtdev 7y ago

In my experience, the category of comp. sci. grads that these riddle based interviews select are often very smart, but have difficulty in developing novel solutions to real world problems. Not sure why the industry still relies on these methods so heavily...

trophycase 7y ago
Some of the smartest and most creative people I ever met were when I worked at Google. The problem has far more to do with perverse promoting incentives, poor management, and corporate inertia than some "hiring process"
- gxer 7y ago
  > The problem has far more to do with perverse promoting incentives As a Googler, I agree. The promo system is fucked up here, and everyone is micro-optimizing for promos. Nobody gives a fuck for developing long-term, stable and scalable solutions. People just want to fling shit on the wall, and if it doesn't stick fling some more. Sooner or later something will stick and they'll be basking in the glow of L_{N+1}, before starting the process all over again. Google is very top-heavy now, with 1000s of people sitting at levels 7+ doing absolutely nothing (since you don't get demoted for lack of production).
  - pm90 7y ago
    Hah, sounds a lot like Big Blue. Boat loads of seniors who do “design” but can’t code anymore. They set the “agenda” and the grunts are supposed to just follow that advice. Stay there long enough and you begin to think you have no agency, nothing that you think matters since nobody is listening anyways. The difference I think maybe that Seniors at google may actually be super smart, just not engaged.
    - pishpash 7y ago
      If you're smart and do nothing, what difference does it make?
      - pm90 7y ago
        Excellent point. It doesn't really. I wonder if, looking at these examples, BigCo's are actually doing Tech a disservice by promoting the fuck out of high performers until they reach such a senior level that they don't need to do anything no more. I guess my concern is that these folks could have been accelerating the pace of tech even more, but are basically sitting out committees, managing others, and in general not making the kind of ground breaking progress they would have made otherwise. Kind of reminds me of Feynman's view of the Princeton Institute of Advanced Study; he viewed the institution as the place where good people went and stagnated.
  - johan_larson 7y ago
    I wonder why some of those very senior engineers don't leave. Anyone who got to Senior Staff or Principal at Google has some very impressive accomplishments to their name. Transitioning to a CTO role in a smaller company wouldn't be difficult. Why settle for stasis?

by jtdev 7y ago

trophycase 7y ago

Some of the smartest and most creative people I ever met were when I worked at Google. The problem has far more to do with perverse promoting incentives, poor management, and corporate inertia than some "hiring process"

gxer 7y ago
> The problem has far more to do with perverse promoting incentives As a Googler, I agree. The promo system is fucked up here, and everyone is micro-optimizing for promos. Nobody gives a fuck for developing long-term, stable and scalable solutions. People just want to fling shit on the wall, and if it doesn't stick fling some more. Sooner or later something will stick and they'll be basking in the glow of L_{N+1}, before starting the process all over again. Google is very top-heavy now, with 1000s of people sitting at levels 7+ doing absolutely nothing (since you don't get demoted for lack of production).
- pm90 7y ago
  Hah, sounds a lot like Big Blue. Boat loads of seniors who do “design” but can’t code anymore. They set the “agenda” and the grunts are supposed to just follow that advice. Stay there long enough and you begin to think you have no agency, nothing that you think matters since nobody is listening anyways. The difference I think maybe that Seniors at google may actually be super smart, just not engaged.
  - pishpash 7y ago
    If you're smart and do nothing, what difference does it make?
    - pm90 7y ago
      Excellent point. It doesn't really. I wonder if, looking at these examples, BigCo's are actually doing Tech a disservice by promoting the fuck out of high performers until they reach such a senior level that they don't need to do anything no more. I guess my concern is that these folks could have been accelerating the pace of tech even more, but are basically sitting out committees, managing others, and in general not making the kind of ground breaking progress they would have made otherwise. Kind of reminds me of Feynman's view of the Princeton Institute of Advanced Study; he viewed the institution as the place where good people went and stagnated.
- johan_larson 7y ago
  I wonder why some of those very senior engineers don't leave. Anyone who got to Senior Staff or Principal at Google has some very impressive accomplishments to their name. Transitioning to a CTO role in a smaller company wouldn't be difficult. Why settle for stasis?