5 ms·

That's an interesting viewpoint, so I'd be interested if you could do a critique of the following claim[1]: > Hackerrank-style interviews suck and they aren't

That's an interesting viewpoint, so I'd be interested if you could do a critique of the following claim[1]: > Hackerrank-style interviews suck and they aren't representative (not even remotely) of real working conditions. But they are good at something: evaluating the tenacity and the drive of a candidate. You need to work hard to ace these interviews, and companies are looking for candidates who are persistent and able to work hard—even on things they don't choose to work on. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21123588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21123588

dilyevsky 7y ago
That may be true but will also effectively exclude strong experienced candidates with options. It worked well for Google in post-dotcom crash frenzy of early 2000s but may not work very well today ;)
- NeverFade 7y ago
  > That may be true but will also effectively exclude strong experienced candidates with options. What options will you have as an experienced candidate which are competitive with FAANG? I'm an experienced engineer, and my leading FAANG offers were over 50% higher than my top non-FAANG offer. In fact, my non-FAANG offers as an experienced engineer weren't much better than the offers junior candidates get. So unfortunately, it seems if you're an experienced candidate who wants to be appreciated and rewarded for your experience, FAANGs are basically your only option. Non-FAANGs will pay you maybe 30% more than a junior, and for that they'd expect you to lead a team and work twice as hard.
  - honkycat 7y ago
    Yep. You just nailed my latest hiring experience. I moved on triumphantly from my previous programming job where I built a company's product from Greenfield to million a month with awesome performance and features. Other start-ups in my area are offering me 5-10k more than I was making at my last job to do the same thing again. My counter offer from a large company was 50k higher for a laid back environment. Guess which opportunity I took. Hilarious to me. One lead engineer is worth three junior engineer at least. I see startups doing the same thing over and over again. Hiring Junior developers fresh out of boot camp who are completely worthless, and refusing to spend money on high quality candidates who are interested.
    - NeverFade 7y ago
      > One lead engineer is worth three junior engineer at least. Far more, I'd say. Fresh graduates and juniors are often held to almost no production bars at all. In many startups, you could be a junior for a year, accomplish very little, yet be in no danger of failing any performance metrics. Before I left the startup world behind, I observed that seniors were often held responsible to 95% of the production that was happening at their startup. You'd expect them to be paid x10-20 times as much as juniors, but instead it's typically no more than x1.3-1.4. So as a senior engineer with a track record of shipped projects, I get to work harder than all juniors, be held to x20 their performance metrics, and for that I get 30% better pay? No wonder every single senior engineer I know has a "FAANG or bust" attitude nowadays.
  - dilyevsky 7y ago
    There’s a number of companies (mostly public, ofc) in the bay that pay competitively. In fact google is known for lowballing unless you collect offers from fb etc
    - scarmig 7y ago
      My experience is that FB will offer a marginally better offer (30k or so more than G) for comparable levels, and those other public companies give a vaguely competitive offer that still falls short of G by about the same amount. Though I'd love to see actual data.
    - NeverFade 7y ago
      What companies in the Bay pay better than Google? Google is known for "low-balling" if you compare to Facebook. My Google offer was higher than both my Amazon and Microsoft offer by a significant margin, and these offers in turn were higher than almost any other offer I had in the Bay. The only companies that got anywhere near Google on pay were some very exceptional unicorns.
      - coachdarek 7y ago
        Google will definitely “lowball” you if you don’t have competing offers. However once you do have them, google is very quick to match them. This is just my anecdotal experience though.
        NeverFade 7y ago
        Not in my experience, nor that of my friends who got offers. My typical friend who got a Google offer, already had a bunch of other offers by the time their Google process finally completed. Then the Google offer came in and it was typically higher than most or all of these outstanding offers. Often substantially so. However, if you have an outlier offer that is based on some theoretical equity valuation ("an extra $1m in stock options based on our last fundraising round"), Google will not match it. Frankly, they don't need to when their initial offer is already higher than most other options, and far safer. Also from what I've seen, Google won't just match other offers, but they do have some specific companies whose offers they will match, like FB. FB is also one of the few companies that may offer you higher comp than Google.
michaelt 7y ago
> evaluating the tenacity [...] able to work hard—even on things they don't choose to work on. By that logic, surely every interview practice is justified? And the less related to the job, the better? I could ask a programmer to build a wooden boat, become a proficient opera singer, or complete four marathons in a year.
- blazespin 7y ago
  To be completely honest, it's actually an intriguing idea. I wonder, assuming some basic level of competency, if you gave a candidate some completely orthogonal task unrelated to the career and they excelled at it (assuming no cheating), would they be a better hire than another candidate? Maybe! Quite often success at work is determined by getting crap done that doesn't require the skills you trained for initially.
  - heavenlyblue 7y ago
    Let’s take it to another level: the candidate realises that if they kill a current employee with the skills exactly matching theirs, would you hire them (assuming you can’t prove they killed the employee but it’s blatantly obvious) or would you think that’s unacceptable?
    - petjuh 7y ago
      In Terry Pratchett's Assassins Guild they would hire them.
      - perl4ever 7y ago
        I remember a book by Jim Cramer in which he told a story about how he was offered a job "if you go in that office and fire that guy, right now". He did, and was.
  - wwweston 7y ago
    This would also imply that there's probably fruitful hiring ground in picking from anyone inside your organization (where you have the most direct knowledge) who does their job well, no matter what it is. I'm given to understand companies used to do this.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

dilyevsky 7y ago

That may be true but will also effectively exclude strong experienced candidates with options. It worked well for Google in post-dotcom crash frenzy of early 2000s but may not work very well today ;)

NeverFade 7y ago
> That may be true but will also effectively exclude strong experienced candidates with options. What options will you have as an experienced candidate which are competitive with FAANG? I'm an experienced engineer, and my leading FAANG offers were over 50% higher than my top non-FAANG offer. In fact, my non-FAANG offers as an experienced engineer weren't much better than the offers junior candidates get. So unfortunately, it seems if you're an experienced candidate who wants to be appreciated and rewarded for your experience, FAANGs are basically your only option. Non-FAANGs will pay you maybe 30% more than a junior, and for that they'd expect you to lead a team and work twice as hard.
- honkycat 7y ago
  Yep. You just nailed my latest hiring experience. I moved on triumphantly from my previous programming job where I built a company's product from Greenfield to million a month with awesome performance and features. Other start-ups in my area are offering me 5-10k more than I was making at my last job to do the same thing again. My counter offer from a large company was 50k higher for a laid back environment. Guess which opportunity I took. Hilarious to me. One lead engineer is worth three junior engineer at least. I see startups doing the same thing over and over again. Hiring Junior developers fresh out of boot camp who are completely worthless, and refusing to spend money on high quality candidates who are interested.
  - NeverFade 7y ago
    > One lead engineer is worth three junior engineer at least. Far more, I'd say. Fresh graduates and juniors are often held to almost no production bars at all. In many startups, you could be a junior for a year, accomplish very little, yet be in no danger of failing any performance metrics. Before I left the startup world behind, I observed that seniors were often held responsible to 95% of the production that was happening at their startup. You'd expect them to be paid x10-20 times as much as juniors, but instead it's typically no more than x1.3-1.4. So as a senior engineer with a track record of shipped projects, I get to work harder than all juniors, be held to x20 their performance metrics, and for that I get 30% better pay? No wonder every single senior engineer I know has a "FAANG or bust" attitude nowadays.
- dilyevsky 7y ago
  There’s a number of companies (mostly public, ofc) in the bay that pay competitively. In fact google is known for lowballing unless you collect offers from fb etc
  - scarmig 7y ago
    My experience is that FB will offer a marginally better offer (30k or so more than G) for comparable levels, and those other public companies give a vaguely competitive offer that still falls short of G by about the same amount. Though I'd love to see actual data.
  - NeverFade 7y ago
    What companies in the Bay pay better than Google? Google is known for "low-balling" if you compare to Facebook. My Google offer was higher than both my Amazon and Microsoft offer by a significant margin, and these offers in turn were higher than almost any other offer I had in the Bay. The only companies that got anywhere near Google on pay were some very exceptional unicorns.
    - coachdarek 7y ago
      Google will definitely “lowball” you if you don’t have competing offers. However once you do have them, google is very quick to match them. This is just my anecdotal experience though.
      - NeverFade 7y ago
        Not in my experience, nor that of my friends who got offers. My typical friend who got a Google offer, already had a bunch of other offers by the time their Google process finally completed. Then the Google offer came in and it was typically higher than most or all of these outstanding offers. Often substantially so. However, if you have an outlier offer that is based on some theoretical equity valuation ("an extra $1m in stock options based on our last fundraising round"), Google will not match it. Frankly, they don't need to when their initial offer is already higher than most other options, and far safer. Also from what I've seen, Google won't just match other offers, but they do have some specific companies whose offers they will match, like FB. FB is also one of the few companies that may offer you higher comp than Google.

michaelt 7y ago

> evaluating the tenacity [...] able to work hard—even on things they don't choose to work on. By that logic, surely every interview practice is justified? And the less related to the job, the better? I could ask a programmer to build a wooden boat, become a proficient opera singer, or complete four marathons in a year.

blazespin 7y ago
To be completely honest, it's actually an intriguing idea. I wonder, assuming some basic level of competency, if you gave a candidate some completely orthogonal task unrelated to the career and they excelled at it (assuming no cheating), would they be a better hire than another candidate? Maybe! Quite often success at work is determined by getting crap done that doesn't require the skills you trained for initially.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  Let’s take it to another level: the candidate realises that if they kill a current employee with the skills exactly matching theirs, would you hire them (assuming you can’t prove they killed the employee but it’s blatantly obvious) or would you think that’s unacceptable?
  - petjuh 7y ago
    In Terry Pratchett's Assassins Guild they would hire them.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      I remember a book by Jim Cramer in which he told a story about how he was offered a job "if you go in that office and fire that guy, right now". He did, and was.
- wwweston 7y ago
  This would also imply that there's probably fruitful hiring ground in picking from anyone inside your organization (where you have the most direct knowledge) who does their job well, no matter what it is. I'm given to understand companies used to do this.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]