3 ms·

I wonder if the merit of these exercises is from reading the candidate's reaction to meaningless and trivial tasks. If they take it with a smile, or better yet

I wonder if the merit of these exercises is from reading the candidate's reaction to meaningless and trivial tasks. If they take it with a smile, or better yet if they spent part of their free time studying it in detail, they will make a terrific cog in the machine...

govg 7y ago
To be honest, as a part of hiring procedure, it has its merits. In an ideal world, you want to ask the candidates a problem that is well defined, and applies the tools that they might have learned in their past. This is why algorithmic problems are common - a large pool of candidates have recently finished school, they have a lot of fundamental knowledge from their experience there (and nothing else), and asking these is a way to evaluate [ how well is this problem approached ] with [ tools they should have at their disposal]. It's more about can you understand what you have learnt and use it to solve a novel thing, and less about can you balance a binary tree given 100 integer inputs. It's largely devolved in a cat and mouse game now, with candidates spending a large part of their time poring over CLRS or on Leetcode, and companies asking increasingly difficult (and serving no purpose but testing how much time was spent on practising) whiteboard questions.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  Where this falls down is when you're hiring someone who has 10 or 15 years of experience and has forgotten more about day-to-day product development than the freshers have learned about algorithms. So you're asking that guy questions that the freshers have fresh in their minds because it's all they know, and it's totally unsurprising that he fails because he hasn't ever used that knowledge in a work setting. You do need to tailor your interviews to the person's experience level. If you're hiring for experience, ask that person about process and about team forming and about mentoring and leadership. You don't have to be able to write a perfect algorithm as a senior, only to help your juniors over the hurdles keeping them from doing it themselves.
cr0sh 7y ago
Part of it might also be a way around age discrimination, as those relatively fresh from school (and thus, younger - and likely will take a lower salary) likely are able to pass them faster than older potential hires.
- lultimouomo 7y ago
  That doesn't make much sense to me. If they don't want to hire older people to save money, can't they just offer lower salaries and let older people self-select themselves out of the job?
LanceH 7y ago
I suspect that the pre-employment drug screens are to test who washes their hands.

govg 7y ago

To be honest, as a part of hiring procedure, it has its merits. In an ideal world, you want to ask the candidates a problem that is well defined, and applies the tools that they might have learned in their past. This is why algorithmic problems are common - a large pool of candidates have recently finished school, they have a lot of fundamental knowledge from their experience there (and nothing else), and asking these is a way to evaluate [ how well is this problem approached ] with [ tools they should have at their disposal]. It's more about can you understand what you have learnt and use it to solve a novel thing, and less about can you balance a binary tree given 100 integer inputs. It's largely devolved in a cat and mouse game now, with candidates spending a large part of their time poring over CLRS or on Leetcode, and companies asking increasingly difficult (and serving no purpose but testing how much time was spent on practising) whiteboard questions.

jschwartzi 7y ago
Where this falls down is when you're hiring someone who has 10 or 15 years of experience and has forgotten more about day-to-day product development than the freshers have learned about algorithms. So you're asking that guy questions that the freshers have fresh in their minds because it's all they know, and it's totally unsurprising that he fails because he hasn't ever used that knowledge in a work setting. You do need to tailor your interviews to the person's experience level. If you're hiring for experience, ask that person about process and about team forming and about mentoring and leadership. You don't have to be able to write a perfect algorithm as a senior, only to help your juniors over the hurdles keeping them from doing it themselves.

cr0sh 7y ago

Part of it might also be a way around age discrimination, as those relatively fresh from school (and thus, younger - and likely will take a lower salary) likely are able to pass them faster than older potential hires.

lultimouomo 7y ago
That doesn't make much sense to me. If they don't want to hire older people to save money, can't they just offer lower salaries and let older people self-select themselves out of the job?

LanceH 7y ago

I suspect that the pre-employment drug screens are to test who washes their hands.