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It seems pretty obvious to me that this kind of interviews are simply there to assess how much you want to work for a certain company. As in: would you be willi

• swiley 6y ago
  Really? I didn’t study at all for the interview for my current job (although I did put up with some very broken HR software for a few weeks while getting hired.)
• Clubber 6y ago
  The funny thing to me is that Google is known for this sort of thing, they also created a product that makes the need to memorize all this stuff obsolete. Here's the truth that nobody wants to believe: you will never know how good someone you've never seen perform will perform until they actually perform.
• closeparen 6y ago
  >for a certain company But the same skill is transferable across arbitrarily many companies. This is why many prefer interviews to take-home tests, so that they do not invest too much time in any particular company.
• marcinzm 6y ago
  You're missing the quality they're actually testing for: ability to study and dedicate yourself to a task. Or in other words work ethic. The algorithms don't matter but the fact that you can spend months learning them is an important skill. Intelligence is less important for success than work ethic which is why work ethic is tested for so much. Specifically, work ethic and ability to learn in a related domain as, for example, literature study skills may not transfer. >If there was a perfect correlation between pre and post entrance test performance there wouldn't be PIPs, performance based layoffs etc. Nothing is perfect, saying it's useless because it's not perfect is a silly argument.
  • scrozier 6y ago
    In my experience, certainly no interviewers think that they're screening for "ability to study and dedicate yourself to a task." In being on both sides of the table for more than thirty years, I have never heard an interviewer mention that.
    • marcinzm 6y ago
      Companies encourage you to study for the interview, providing you with links to books, guides and preparation material. They'll delay the interview to give you time to study more. So it seems pretty clear to me that corporate management sees it as a test of study skills even if interviewers don't. edit: I'm talking about large tech companies, not the startups blindly copying their policies with little thought or consideration.
      • m3kw9 6y ago
        Never seen that happening. Have interviewed with a few FANG companies. There are hundreds of things they can ask and is not reasonable to study for them all
        • marcinzm 6y ago
          I've had FAANG tell me to read Cracking the Coding Interview, sent me links to leetcode/hackerank, sent me PDFs with notes on what topics would be covered for domain specific interviews, linked me to their blog posts on architecture design, videos by their engineers on how to prepare, given me the literal behavioral questions I got asked, etc, etc. Facebook sent me well over a dozen links to guides for my interview and half of those had further links in them (including to a list of practice questions on hackerank). edit: It is also very reasonable to study having done it myself and talked to people who have gotten into these companies. At 15 minutes a pop you can do 100+ leetcode questions a week. Spend a few months and you'll have studied almost every reasonable question. Most of them are repetitive patterns but around 5% have tricks you need to memorize. That covers 2-3 out of your 5 interviews. Behavioral you need to memorize around 5 questions that they'll basically give you ahead of time. System design is harder but there's videos for the 10 topics that will cover 90% of the potential questions.
• me551ah 6y ago
  If not algorithms then what would you use to test a generic programmer? You would have to setup a custom panel based on each candidate. A person who has only worked for PHP would need a different panel from someone who has worked on C++ all his life. Algorithms is language and framework agnostic. It doesn't matter if you work in embedded or data science. It doesn't matter if you code in C or Python. The same question can be used to judge everyone. Companies that don't do the above usually advertise requirements for X technology with Y years of experience. A smart programmer without knowledge of X can learn it easily, but he won't even be called for an interview.
  • Apocryphon 6y ago
    Maybe they can figure out a less anxiety-inducing format for testing algorithmic knowledge instead of whiteboarding?
  • invalidOrTaken 6y ago
    Radical idea: don't test them. Train them.
  • m3kw9 6y ago
    If I was interviewing a python programmer, I would also know python. I would ask them about a project they’ve done in detail, see if they are bsing, gauge their ability and experience from that
  • Kaze404 6y ago
    Your argument is flawed in that it assumes knowing algorithms has any correlation to doing well on the job. It doesn't really matter that it's language agnostic if it doesn't test anything useful.
  • Philip-J-Fry 6y ago
    Programming in general is language and framework agnostic. Someone who can write an extensible and maintainable C++ application can most likely do the same in C#, Java, Rust etc. There's decades of best practices and knowledge around what makes good software and almost none of it is specific to a language. Most devs use a handful of algorithms in their entire career. And any algorithm they do use was probably adapted from pseudocode on Wikipedia. It really comes down to what do you want the developer to do? Are the things you're testing them on even relevant to the job? I'd argue what most companies are testing through their interview process is largely irrelevant. If it's a generic programmer, then it's perhaps a position where's there's a range of technologies, maybe a range of languages to pick up and a range of existing software to support. Well in that case you want someone who's quick to learn and eager to train themselves, not afraid to ask questions, not afraid to admit they don't understand something, etc. Whether they can write quicksort on a whiteboard is probably the stupidest thing you could interview them on. I think the best kind of interview isn't overly technical, but rather one that prods the interviewee to think about problems. Describe a fictional system, what would they suggest to make it scaleable? What would they suggest to improve performance? What would they suggest to reduce the time between writing the code and shipping it. Do they understand what a CI/CD system is? Are their first thoughts "rewrite everything!"? Do they think about iterating software development or are they the kind to dump 200 files on someone for code review?
• cosmodisk 6y ago
  For an average shop that pays average salary and doesn't offer anything interesting, the answer is no. For a company that pays way above average,has some decent perks and stock options,why not?
• StandardFuture 6y ago
  It seems pretty obvious to me that this is an arbitrary filtration process (no different than any other arbitrary filter) that strokes the ego and appears to be better than a random coin toss, but it really is not.
• benburleson 6y ago
  Amazon is the king of assessing how much you want to work for the company. The recruiter will place a huge emphasis on nailing their Leadership Principles, and coming up with stories from your work to demonstrate you embody the Principles. They will even tell you that specific interviewers have specific LPs they will probe on, but in the actual interview they ask very veiled questions and you're supposed to know that they're asking about an LP. You're expected to have a story all laid out in the format they expect; it felt very much like a show of how much you're willing to conform to the interview experience they expect, with no interest in actually getting to know you.
  • stbtrax 6y ago
    is there a centralized place with information like this but for other companies as well?
    • crmrc114 6y ago
      Glassdoor? Maybe, not sure if that is exactly what you are looking for..
      • blaser-waffle 6y ago
        I mean, yeah. They have a review(s) section for people who used to work there, and a section on interviews too. Dig up some fake creds on BugMeNot and poke around Glassdoor
    • fragmede 6y ago
      Not that I'm aware of, because it's a difficult problem. First off, reports need to be anonymous to prevent employer retaliation, but if they're anonymous, then how can the information be verified? Even if it's verified, without extensive input, it's impossible to say if the details of someone's experience is the norm for the company or just about that one part of the org. Then finally, happy people generally don't go out an write a huge essay on why things are fine. unhappy people will go on-and-on about every bad thing to anyone who listens. Thus, we're left with disorganized reports on various sites to glean culture. Eg HN comments on the story about Amazon suing Brian Hall. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23461326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23461326 For those looking to move within the job market, it would be worth it to talk to a tech recruiter for a few hours who's job it is, is to know company cultures. (Traditionally, if you, the new employee that they managed to get into a company with a bad fit, leaves before 90-days are up, they don't get paid.)
• harryh 6y ago
  would you be willing to study for months, go through mock interviews, read books, test your skills etc. to have a shot at working for us The vast majority of people who work at FAANG type companies do not do any of this.
  • fragmede 6y ago
    You'd be surprised. In an industry rife with impostor syndrome, and the perception that it takes intelligence to pass a FANG algorithm interview (it does, but hard work and discipline beats raw intelligence), there's a strong disincentive to admit that "hey, I studied really hard, for months in order to get this job" when there's an expectation that your coworkers and peers will look down on you after this comes to light. "Grinding leetcode" is a phrase for a reason!
    • lkjdsklf 6y ago
      You would think that if the interview process was filtering on anxiety levels it would lead these companies to be full of people with high confidence which would mean imposter syndrome would not be a widespread issue.
      • TimPC 6y ago
        Impostor syndrome is most present in elite environments though. It's a syndrome because someone is genuinely talented but surrounded by high talent for each person it's easy to identify an area where they are better than you. In some cases it's easy to feel like you're not the best at anything in your work social circle.
      • cowmoo728 6y ago
        Some people have high anxiety levels but still perform well under pressure. The anxiety gets sublimated into other behaviors, or bottled up until after the interview, or meditated away, etc. Even people that can handle high anxiety levels can still get impostor syndrome.
      • Arcsech 6y ago
• jameslk 6y ago
  > It seems pretty obvious to me that this kind of interviews are simply there to assess how much you want to work for a certain company. As in: would you be willing to study for months, go through mock interviews, read books, test your skills etc. to have a shot at working for us Or in other words it tests how much free time you have to spend on unpaid activity, which can be a good proxy for ageism. No kids or mortgage? Then you're a perfect candidate to spend countless unpaid hours studying for months, going through mock interviews, reading books, testing your skills etc. to have a shot at working for us. This works well for tech companies because many don't care about your experience with languages and frameworks of yore. More so whether you can put in 80 hour work weeks.
• SwiftyBug 6y ago
  I've been told to reject a candidate because "he didn't seem that excited to work here"
  • rootusrootus 6y ago
    As someone who loathes any kind of drama and deliberately stuffs down my own emotional reactions as a result, this would screw me every time. My natural response is to avoid getting outwardly excited.
    • lucasmullens 6y ago
      Excitement for the company can be shown outside of emotional reactions, like writing a very company-specific cover letter, or writing a thank you email after the interview.
  • tornato7 6y ago
    I have rejected candidates for that. When you're hiring for a startup it's absolutely vital to have people who believe in the mission and the product and not just doing the bare minimum for a paycheck. If that's all you want, go work for the government, or Facebook.
    • merlinsbrain 6y ago
      Hard disagree. I’d encourage you to reflect on your startup’s culture and figure out what distinguishes a good engineer from a good engineer who can convince you about their passion. Usually, it’s when startups want employees to work longer hours than the value the they’re calculating on receiving from the equity+pay that’s being offered.
    • jarjoura 6y ago
      Facebook has the same vital requirement that you believe in its mission. You wouldn't make it past the screening stage if you didn't care about that.
      • 6y ago
• lbrito 6y ago
  I had this one interview some time ago where instead of having the HR person talk about what the company does and prod me to see if I was curious/interested in what it is they do, the opposite was expected to happen. That obviously didn't go well. After the usual "tell me about yourself" stuff, the HR rep asked me what I knew about the company and was noticeably disappointed when I said I had only accessed the homepage and Glassdoor reviews. She swiftly ended the call after that, leaving me with "homework" to go through (go through more of their web page/web presence, meditate about their mission) after which I would be qualified to resume the screening call. Later I re-read their Glassdoor reviews and they had other people had had basically the same experience. Strangest interview I ever had.
  • soared 6y ago
    From your perspective why wouldn’t you spent 15 minutes learning about the companies and it’s products?
    • lbrito 6y ago
      I did, they wanted more. 15 minutes gets you a general outline of what they do, a superficial notion of culture etc. I had that, but they wanted more in-depth knowledge of their products and culture.
      • henrikschroder 6y ago
        > but they wanted more in-depth knowledge of their products and culture. Well, you dodged a narcissistic bullet, that's for sure. Maybe I'm too old and jaded, but I can't stand corporate bullshit. I don't give a shit about mission statements or your product portfolio. Who has time for that shit?
  • ativzzz 6y ago
    Yea I remember in college when I was applying for my first jobs I would read through their mission statements so I knew what words to prioritize saying in the interviews. It's all part of the game.
• jorblumesea 6y ago
  It's both. Either you're brilliant and can implement Kahn/KMP/Rabin Karp from memory or just by thinking about the problem, or you've practiced a ton and dedicated lots of work to the grind. For large companies like FB or Goog, if they lose a few people to false negatives, it's fine because there are hundreds more lining up. Either way, from the large company perspective, the system works. Most notably, it's really efficient. The issue is when small company A starts asking you to implement Tarjan's or something. That's where this interview process seems particularly damaging.
  • mikelevins 6y ago
    Ironically, according Google's former head of HR, Laszlo Bock, their system of technical interviews with brainteasers not only was not efficient, it didn't perform any better than random chance. He said that they conducted a pretty large study of the correlation between interview performance and job performance and found no correlation whatsoever. They would have done just as well picking names out of a hat. As a result, he pushed them to move more in the direction of "behavioral interviewing," asking people, for example, to describe difficult problems and how they had worked to solve them. That way you at least learn a little something about how the candidate thinks and about their style of communicating with a potential colleague about technical problems. If I recall correctly, the only formal process that has been shown to actually predict job performance well is standardized testing of job-relevant skills. Maybe companies should spend more effort on identifying the more important job-relevant skills and work with testing professionals to come up with appropriate tests? Then they could save interviews for finding out which of the top performers seem like they're going to be pleasant to work with.