3 ms·

> This entire post is why I quit the interview circuit as a person with ample prior relevant work experience. It is really bad. Removing yourself from it is pr

by coffee 6y ago

> This entire post is why I quit the interview circuit as a person with ample prior relevant work experience. It is really bad. Removing yourself from it is probably a very healthy choice. There's so much folklore, cult of personality, etc. behind all of this. Hiring is REALLY hard. So exec's order a ramp up of head count. It falls on to managers to start the process. They either don't want to do it (why would they want to?), or they don't know how to do it...they are not technical, or technical enough, they don't have "hiring" skills, etc... So the burden is typically dumped onto the rank & file "senior engineers" to do the dirty work. They don't know how to hire either. They don't like doing things in a "manual" way. Easy solution! Give them a coding test!

mistrial9 6y ago
> Easy solution! Give them a coding test! (this is tangentially related to the above fine comment :) I believe it went more like this.. The first time I saw this style of test, it was an engineering hiring group from Microsoft, testing for advanced math skills for some audio work in collaboration (?) with Apple. It was onsite at Apple (a long time ago). The first thing the interviewer said is "we want you to solve this problem right now" .. I said, I have a lot of code examples ready that are representative of my best work, and he was pushy and slightly nervous, and said "no we do not want to see that, this is the problem" .. I agreed, and I believe I did solve it awkwardly, but they refused to look at anything except the in-person test for that interview. It really surprised me, as at that time, I had never heard of this way of doing things. There was no whiteboard, it was a desk. Sometime later, I believe Google famously used this testing method, on people from The Five university programs, of course. Google probably spun it more like a grad school situation, but I do not know that. Later, every EXEC wanted to copy Google, or wanted to learn bullying like Microsoft. It is so obvious to me that this sort of test is partially a command-and-control exercise, giving the control role to the hiring group. Please recall there was/is a real tug-of-war between excellent engineers and companies at various points in the recent past.
- coffee 6y ago
  You pulled out one small statement and ran with it. The problem is it's out of context with the rest of what I said. Also, there is far more history than what you just outlined which falls into "folklore" and "cult of personality." You're statements alone have great truth to them, I'm just not clear how it differs from mine and why it's a rebuttal to them. Oh-well :-)
  - coffee 6y ago
    This reply makes far less sense now that mistrial9 edited/updated their original statement without attributing that fact :-\ It's been toned down for sure.
vmception 6y ago
Yeah, thats what I encountered. It wasn't healthy. It was competing against others that have much greater selective pressures to excel. You can see it on Blind how people from China and India talk about practicing and solving hundreds of leetcode questions to get better, and I'm just casually able to work anywhere at any time and won't be uprooted if I fail. It takes me 45 minutes to solve one problem, and if I don't really understand the concept then it takes me hours to brush up on that concept. I don't have time for that, and the "average good enough" scores in interviews are getting finer and finer. Finance is easier and pays more. Any of us here could take the test for a FINRA license in a single week. And then use our coding skills and capital to automate most of that.

by coffee 6y ago

mistrial9 6y ago

> Easy solution! Give them a coding test! (this is tangentially related to the above fine comment :) I believe it went more like this.. The first time I saw this style of test, it was an engineering hiring group from Microsoft, testing for advanced math skills for some audio work in collaboration (?) with Apple. It was onsite at Apple (a long time ago). The first thing the interviewer said is "we want you to solve this problem right now" .. I said, I have a lot of code examples ready that are representative of my best work, and he was pushy and slightly nervous, and said "no we do not want to see that, this is the problem" .. I agreed, and I believe I did solve it awkwardly, but they refused to look at anything except the in-person test for that interview. It really surprised me, as at that time, I had never heard of this way of doing things. There was no whiteboard, it was a desk. Sometime later, I believe Google famously used this testing method, on people from The Five university programs, of course. Google probably spun it more like a grad school situation, but I do not know that. Later, every EXEC wanted to copy Google, or wanted to learn bullying like Microsoft. It is so obvious to me that this sort of test is partially a command-and-control exercise, giving the control role to the hiring group. Please recall there was/is a real tug-of-war between excellent engineers and companies at various points in the recent past.

coffee 6y ago
You pulled out one small statement and ran with it. The problem is it's out of context with the rest of what I said. Also, there is far more history than what you just outlined which falls into "folklore" and "cult of personality." You're statements alone have great truth to them, I'm just not clear how it differs from mine and why it's a rebuttal to them. Oh-well :-)
- coffee 6y ago
  This reply makes far less sense now that mistrial9 edited/updated their original statement without attributing that fact :-\ It's been toned down for sure.

vmception 6y ago

Yeah, thats what I encountered. It wasn't healthy. It was competing against others that have much greater selective pressures to excel. You can see it on Blind how people from China and India talk about practicing and solving hundreds of leetcode questions to get better, and I'm just casually able to work anywhere at any time and won't be uprooted if I fail. It takes me 45 minutes to solve one problem, and if I don't really understand the concept then it takes me hours to brush up on that concept. I don't have time for that, and the "average good enough" scores in interviews are getting finer and finer. Finance is easier and pays more. Any of us here could take the test for a FINRA license in a single week. And then use our coding skills and capital to automate most of that.