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I’m a former interviewer for a FAANG competitor that had a successful IPO. I had to do over 1,000 interviews in 5 years. The VP of Eng told me I was “highly ac

I’m a former interviewer for a FAANG competitor that had a successful IPO. I had to do over 1,000 interviews in 5 years. The VP of Eng told me I was “highly accurate.” We used leetcode-like programming questions. I don’t think the FAANG-style coding puzzles have anything new to add to the conversation here. The reason big companies do that is because the questions are prompts are simple to write explain (hence interviewer has to do very very little), the answer space is generally well-defined (so it’s easy to grade, and easy for a Hiring Manager to check if the interviewer screws up), and they almost exclusively select for completion time (which is key in a high-pressure feature house company). Most of the discussion here seems to be interested in alternatives. Through my experience, I can’t agree enough with the article author who posts: Not a single person out of several thousand emails and messages came out in defense of the current state of interviewing processes - I’ll let this one stand on its own. The only people I’ve seen to defend the current process in public are ex-FAANG people who were actively monetizing their experience (e.g. Gayle Laakmann).

pvg 7y ago
Do you maybe have an extra zero typo in that number?
- throwawaytousan 7y ago
  fixed! yes it was 1,000 even, or about 200 per year. 10,000 resumes screened.
deanCommie 7y ago
> FAANG-style coding puzzles These are not "puzzles". That makes it seem like there is some trick or clever concept the candidate needs to grasp that show "lateral thinking". There isn't. These are (or supposed to be) fundamental problems of computer science that require good understanding of algorithms, data structures, code performance, and can be solved in <30 mins on a whiteboard. Yes, these exist, and there are plenty of them. A pretty common and well known one is "HEAD to TAIL" - where you have a dictionary of 4 letter words, and given an input of 2 words find a connecting path between them changing one letter at a time. This isn't a puzzle. It's a problem to solve and approach from different angles and allowing for a large number of solutions of different performance characteristics > Not a single person out of several thousand emails and messages came out in defense of the current state of interviewing processes - I’ll let this one stand on its own. Means absolutely nothing. Most of us are not interested in ruining the day of someone who is unhappy with the hiring process by revealing the truth that most likely it just means the person was not good enough. That seems cruel. I'm kind of going further here though because this is the second time this OP is coming up on the front page of hackernews
- itronitron 7y ago
  I sincerely hope the codebase of your employers is littered with 30-minute solutions to puzzles such as the one you describe.
  - deanCommie 7y ago
    see my edit for why it doesn't matter that these 30 minute algorithmic questions do not need to be directly applicable to day-to-day job tasks
    - choppaface 7y ago
      Perhaps you might consider putting that sort of effort into CSE outreach or preparing interview prep materials that are free to the public.
      - deanCommie 7y ago
        I do :) A lot of people at my company do, but you never hear about this stuff because nobody blogs about a career fair that came with some friendly helpful insights from senior engineers. Also nobody blogs about recruiters when they are super helpful and give a ton of relevant interview prep material (which ours do), partially because most candidates frankly ignore the material thinking it's not relevant.
- throwawaytousan 7y ago
  The questions are indeed puzzles; that's why Gayle Laakmann and others have made a living publishing books of the questions themselves. And the puzzles are distinctly different from the content in the majority of CSE curricula. What's more is problematic is that the construction and evaluation of the puzzles is highly subjective and nearly everywhere lacks rigor. Completion time is a key metric while quality of communication is most commonly either ignored or not assessed at all uniformly among interviews. (Aside: what's frustrating is that companies make candidates sign NDAs for on-sites; these prevent candidates for disclosing or _selling_ the information they might glean in the process, which very rarely happens. In actuality, it's the former interviewers who violate protections for "confidential info" and copyright when they go and monetize their experience post-job, or even on-the-job e.g. Rooftop Slushie). > Most of us are not interested in ruining the day of someone who is unhappy with the hiring process That's only true in so far as you, as an employee, are paid to achieve positive sentiment among candidates, no matter how shallow that sentiment may be. That's indeed cruel, and it's well-established that interviewers are widely unaware of the consequences of the current hiring process. That's why we get articles like those from the OP. A true interest in improving the hiring process includes: * Making prep materials and courses freely available (helps industry candidates) * Committing time to CSE outreach to better integrate company needs to CSE (helps new grads) * Finding questions that reflect real tasks on the job (helps the evaluation have a chance of being predictive) * Closing the information gap between hiring managers and candidates: disclosure (in aggregate) of hiring rates, salaries, etc. Playing along and doing hundreds of coding puzzle interviews is a waste of time for all involved.

pvg 7y ago

Do you maybe have an extra zero typo in that number?

throwawaytousan 7y ago
fixed! yes it was 1,000 even, or about 200 per year. 10,000 resumes screened.

deanCommie 7y ago

> FAANG-style coding puzzles These are not "puzzles". That makes it seem like there is some trick or clever concept the candidate needs to grasp that show "lateral thinking". There isn't. These are (or supposed to be) fundamental problems of computer science that require good understanding of algorithms, data structures, code performance, and can be solved in <30 mins on a whiteboard. Yes, these exist, and there are plenty of them. A pretty common and well known one is "HEAD to TAIL" - where you have a dictionary of 4 letter words, and given an input of 2 words find a connecting path between them changing one letter at a time. This isn't a puzzle. It's a problem to solve and approach from different angles and allowing for a large number of solutions of different performance characteristics > Not a single person out of several thousand emails and messages came out in defense of the current state of interviewing processes - I’ll let this one stand on its own. Means absolutely nothing. Most of us are not interested in ruining the day of someone who is unhappy with the hiring process by revealing the truth that most likely it just means the person was not good enough. That seems cruel. I'm kind of going further here though because this is the second time this OP is coming up on the front page of hackernews

itronitron 7y ago
I sincerely hope the codebase of your employers is littered with 30-minute solutions to puzzles such as the one you describe.
- deanCommie 7y ago
  see my edit for why it doesn't matter that these 30 minute algorithmic questions do not need to be directly applicable to day-to-day job tasks
  - choppaface 7y ago
    Perhaps you might consider putting that sort of effort into CSE outreach or preparing interview prep materials that are free to the public.
    - deanCommie 7y ago
      I do :) A lot of people at my company do, but you never hear about this stuff because nobody blogs about a career fair that came with some friendly helpful insights from senior engineers. Also nobody blogs about recruiters when they are super helpful and give a ton of relevant interview prep material (which ours do), partially because most candidates frankly ignore the material thinking it's not relevant.
throwawaytousan 7y ago
The questions are indeed puzzles; that's why Gayle Laakmann and others have made a living publishing books of the questions themselves. And the puzzles are distinctly different from the content in the majority of CSE curricula. What's more is problematic is that the construction and evaluation of the puzzles is highly subjective and nearly everywhere lacks rigor. Completion time is a key metric while quality of communication is most commonly either ignored or not assessed at all uniformly among interviews. (Aside: what's frustrating is that companies make candidates sign NDAs for on-sites; these prevent candidates for disclosing or _selling_ the information they might glean in the process, which very rarely happens. In actuality, it's the former interviewers who violate protections for "confidential info" and copyright when they go and monetize their experience post-job, or even on-the-job e.g. Rooftop Slushie). > Most of us are not interested in ruining the day of someone who is unhappy with the hiring process That's only true in so far as you, as an employee, are paid to achieve positive sentiment among candidates, no matter how shallow that sentiment may be. That's indeed cruel, and it's well-established that interviewers are widely unaware of the consequences of the current hiring process. That's why we get articles like those from the OP. A true interest in improving the hiring process includes: * Making prep materials and courses freely available (helps industry candidates) * Committing time to CSE outreach to better integrate company needs to CSE (helps new grads) * Finding questions that reflect real tasks on the job (helps the evaluation have a chance of being predictive) * Closing the information gap between hiring managers and candidates: disclosure (in aggregate) of hiring rates, salaries, etc. Playing along and doing hundreds of coding puzzle interviews is a waste of time for all involved.