3 ms·

I guess my hurdle with these kinds of things, whether they are "outsourced" to a third party or done in-house, is that they tend to still focus on the "trick",

I guess my hurdle with these kinds of things, whether they are "outsourced" to a third party or done in-house, is that they tend to still focus on the "trick", quiz or algorithms parts of engineering. It's a personal bias, as I've never been particularly strong with that area, but I can build products. So, for me, I find it hard to have these kinds of interviews. I really do enjoy "take home" interviews, but it seems that Byteboard is at least trying to key in on that in same way: "focusing on engineering skills that are actually used on the job, Byteboard allows candidates to confidently show off their role-related skills in an environment that is less performative and more similar to how they typically work as engineers. "

wgerard 7y ago
> is that they tend to still focus on the "trick", quiz or algorithms parts of engineering. FWIW, this was exactly what we were against at Headlight, as is Woven and (presumably) Byteboard as well. There are plenty of practical interview questions to ask candidates, but it requires a lot more thought and preparation than I think most companies want to do. The reason (imo) that quiz/trick/etc. type questions are popular is that there's a clear "right answer" most of the time. No nuance required. Introducing nuance requires humans to reason about things, and that takes up time (and thus money).
- jordanmorgan10 7y ago
  For sure, there is definitely a valid perspective for both approaches. To be fair, at the FAANG companies the computer science is probably more important than other places. The irony for me is that when I did encounter these questions, I already knew the answers from research (i.e. the egg drop question, how would build an M&M, etc).