9 ms·

>"Doing the work" meaning having to study to relearn a thing that I'll maybe use sparingly in my work means the interview process is broken, not anyone's motiva

>"Doing the work" meaning having to study to relearn a thing that I'll maybe use sparingly in my work means the interview process is broken, not anyone's motivation I used to think this too, but as a filter I think it's having the desired effect. From the outside looking in Life at a FAANG seems competitive in nature and they are optimizing for the people willing to push themselves that far to learn something. The added bonus is all new hires at least know the effects of space/time complexity and how to make space/time trade-offs deeply well. Given they operate at the scale they do, mistakes with those concerns are more likely to have a material impact. Requesting that you know it _now_ and now that you _used_to_ know back in the day seems reasonable. The upside from the candidates perspective, as ridiculous as leetcode study is, is one set of study applies across multiple companies, so candidates don't have to expend much energy on trying to optimize for how to study for a particular companies interview process. If that's the way in and you want in, that's just what you have to do. If you aren't prepared to do it, you won't be getting in. If you are prepared to do it, and you do, it seems achievable.

criddell 6y ago
I would think these companies that are built on measuring data would have some idea if the whiteboard interview works. Otherwise, why would they do it?
- indigochill 6y ago
  Q. Why does 90% of human society work the way it does? A. Because that's the way we've always done it. I can't speak for SV companies, but my experience of data is that it can just as easily rationalize preconceptions as be used to inform decision-making. Somebody has to interpret that data, after all.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    If our way of hiring doesn't work then how come we're so rich!?
function_seven 6y ago
My favorite version of this is the driving test you take in California before you get your license. One of the rules is that you automatically fail the test if you bump a curb with your wheels. That means, when pulling into a spot, you can't inch forward until your front wheels come to rest on the curb. Fail! At first glance it seems like a trivial thing to fail someone for. I know in normal driving, I use curbs like this all the time. On purpose, and with no hazard to myself or others. But the fact is, you're told this explicitly up front. "Don't do this, or you fail." Given that you're warned about it—and know this is the one thing you cannot do—if you still contact the curb, then you've demonstrated that you don't know where the boundaries of your vehicle are. (Or maybe that you're not so good at comprehending instructions?) It works as a simple filter. (EDIT: I checked with the DMV's test criteria[0], and I don't see this mentioned in there. There's an automatic fail for driving over a curb, but it's not clear if simply contacting it counts. Not sure if my examiner was a sliderule, or if the rules have changed since I first got my license.) [0, p. 24] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/uploads/2020/04/dl955.pdf https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/uploads/2020/04/dl955.pdf
- 737maxtw 6y ago
  A lot of that stuff depends on the proctor. When I took the driving test the first time in my state (not CA), he almost failed me because I failed every single left turn. Thankfully at the end he asked a question, and realized that I had done every turn incorrectly because nobody ever bothered to tell me that left turns always should go to the LEFT lane, not right.
  - StillBored 6y ago
    You and half the country. The rule is actually you match the lanes left to right. Aka if two lanes are turning left into a three lane road the second from the left goes into the middle. I suspect that people happened to have just zoned out during this part of the class, although a friend of mine recently said he was never taught that one is suppose to stay as far right as needed to allow people to pass on the left either. And its not just random drivers, the more esoteric parts of the law (driving on the shoulder in TX, free right turns, uturn laws, center turning lane, etc) aren't even understood by many traffic enforcement officers.
baron_harkonnen 6y ago
> The added bonus is all new hires at least know the effects of space/time complexity and how to make space/time trade-offs deeply well. Do they? In my experience this was true in the early days of white board interviews where the only people that even thought about this stuff were people deeply interested in algorithms and computation. But in the post-"Cracking the Coding interview" era (including the transition into the full leetcode era) people seem to be able to pass these interviews without really understanding anything in the same way college students can ace calculus while have literally zero intuition about derivatives. I don't mind whiteboard interviews, they're a fun game you can train for and the practice is interesting. But the big tragedy now is that I feel almost nobody understands algorithms anymore since everything has been reduced white board coding drills and everyone believes they have an understanding of something they don't. As a great example of this almost nobody today knows any heuristic optimization techniques (think the old ITA software puzzles), which used to be near and dear to anyone that cared about algorithms. But since you can't test for heuristics they same as you can established algorithmic solutions nobody studies them.
hnlmorg 6y ago
> I used to think this too, but as a filter I think it's having the desired effect. Is it though? I'm a hiring manager and don't ask such questions and yet have had no problem hiring really talented engineers. The reason I don't ask those questions is because I know that cranking up the interview pressure and asking arbitrary, revisable, common interview questions doesn't actually prove anything aside how good the candidate is at being interviewed.
- csmiller 6y ago
  I think they are saying not that it’s a filter for talent, but for people willing to “put in the work” to pass that type of interview, which sounds about right. I feel the same way about some colleges.
  - nullsense 6y ago
    This is more what I meant.
nitwit005 6y ago
You have to be careful about your assumptions. Being willing to put in the work could be a bad sign. If you already have a bunch of job offers, you aren't going to spend weeks studying to get one more job offer, unless the place might offer dramatically better benefits. And, it may be some people don't need to be any extra studying work. There are people who do programming competitions for fun, and there was prior discussion of Google saying those people did worse on the job: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9324209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9324209
- notacoward 6y ago
  > If employees aren't motivated enough to organize and close the power gap "If X aren't motivated enough..." usually ends up being a really horrible take for most values of X. I'm not so sure it's different for X=employees, specially when the type of interview we're talking about is more burdensome to older folks, folks with certain personality types or anxiety issues, arguably most women, etc. Why should the burden be theirs alone, while employers get a complete pass on setting up whatever arbitrary hurdles they want?
LordFast 6y ago
Defining a filter in order to filter people out is fine, but we should be honest about the fact that it has very little to do with learning, and more to do with the willingness to deal with crap and jump through hoops. More amenable employees are easier to manage, nothing wrong with that. All exams can be crammed, and having crammed into plenty of gated opportunities in life before, I believe you're mistaken if you believe that it produces more knowledgeable workers as a result. At the end of the day, it's a market like any other. If there is someone who is more willing to do X for Y reward than you are, then they will get that something instead of you. And if you find that there is a shortage of people willing to play ball, you can always work towards bringing in more people who are willing to play ball. Agree with your last sentence. If you want something, you have to go get it. If employees aren't motivated enough to organize and close the power gap, then employers will continue to be motivated enough to push for and work towards their own goals.
oscargrouch 6y ago
I think that is reasonable that a company do some tests on folks that don't have much baggage to show for, because in this case they are doing a wild guess and must count a little bit on luck. But the parent was on his 30-something when he did the interview, and i bet he had a lot in his curriculum to show for, so in this case the company dont have to guess anymore. I think it says a little bit that the HR is failing somehow. Failing to adapt to different kinds of human beings. By the way, there are a lot of psychology into this. Sometimes the right kind of people to do some sort of task is the one that are avoiding the whiteboard tests. In the end it will lead to an unbalanced company with people very similar and optimized for a couple of areas, but lacking in others.
- ende 6y ago
  This is something that has always perplexed me. These interviews may make sense for an entry level candidate with no ink on their resume beyond a GPA, but then any amount of actual work history just gets completely discarded. Experience needs to count for something.
notacoward 6y ago
> they are optimizing for the people willing to push themselves that far to learn something They are optimizing for people in one of two groups. One is people freshly out of college who still have that stuff at the top of their mind. The other is people who have the free time/energy to bring it back to the top of their mind instead of needing a few extra minutes to go back that far in their memories. Pick your privilege, in other words. > all new hires at least know the effects of space/time complexity and how to make space/time trade-offs deeply well In my experience, this advantage fades within their first evaluation cycle. And what they certainly don't seem to learn is when to do these kinds of evaluations. Oh, the number of times that I saw one of my coworkers hyper-optimize some part of a system where both N and K were too tiny to matter, then just cargo-cult a crappy higher-level algorithm where such analysis really would have moved the needle. BTW, since I know someone will launch a "sour grapes" personal attack (and get a free pass for doing so because I'm on someone's target list) if I don't address it, I passed such interviews at 52 with zero preparation and zero trouble. So no, I don't take it personally. I just recognize this approach's flaws. It's why I refused to do interviews at that company, taking a hit for that every half until I left. Some of us stick to what's right instead of rationalizing what's wrong.

criddell 6y ago

I would think these companies that are built on measuring data would have some idea if the whiteboard interview works. Otherwise, why would they do it?

indigochill 6y ago
Q. Why does 90% of human society work the way it does? A. Because that's the way we've always done it. I can't speak for SV companies, but my experience of data is that it can just as easily rationalize preconceptions as be used to inform decision-making. Somebody has to interpret that data, after all.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  If our way of hiring doesn't work then how come we're so rich!?

function_seven 6y ago

My favorite version of this is the driving test you take in California before you get your license. One of the rules is that you automatically fail the test if you bump a curb with your wheels. That means, when pulling into a spot, you can't inch forward until your front wheels come to rest on the curb. Fail! At first glance it seems like a trivial thing to fail someone for. I know in normal driving, I use curbs like this all the time. On purpose, and with no hazard to myself or others. But the fact is, you're told this explicitly up front. "Don't do this, or you fail." Given that you're warned about it—and know this is the one thing you cannot do—if you still contact the curb, then you've demonstrated that you don't know where the boundaries of your vehicle are. (Or maybe that you're not so good at comprehending instructions?) It works as a simple filter. (EDIT: I checked with the DMV's test criteria[0], and I don't see this mentioned in there. There's an automatic fail for driving over a curb, but it's not clear if simply contacting it counts. Not sure if my examiner was a sliderule, or if the rules have changed since I first got my license.) [0, p. 24] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/uploads/2020/04/dl955.pdf https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/uploads/2020/04/dl955.pdf

737maxtw 6y ago
A lot of that stuff depends on the proctor. When I took the driving test the first time in my state (not CA), he almost failed me because I failed every single left turn. Thankfully at the end he asked a question, and realized that I had done every turn incorrectly because nobody ever bothered to tell me that left turns always should go to the LEFT lane, not right.
- StillBored 6y ago
  You and half the country. The rule is actually you match the lanes left to right. Aka if two lanes are turning left into a three lane road the second from the left goes into the middle. I suspect that people happened to have just zoned out during this part of the class, although a friend of mine recently said he was never taught that one is suppose to stay as far right as needed to allow people to pass on the left either. And its not just random drivers, the more esoteric parts of the law (driving on the shoulder in TX, free right turns, uturn laws, center turning lane, etc) aren't even understood by many traffic enforcement officers.

baron_harkonnen 6y ago

> The added bonus is all new hires at least know the effects of space/time complexity and how to make space/time trade-offs deeply well. Do they? In my experience this was true in the early days of white board interviews where the only people that even thought about this stuff were people deeply interested in algorithms and computation. But in the post-"Cracking the Coding interview" era (including the transition into the full leetcode era) people seem to be able to pass these interviews without really understanding anything in the same way college students can ace calculus while have literally zero intuition about derivatives. I don't mind whiteboard interviews, they're a fun game you can train for and the practice is interesting. But the big tragedy now is that I feel almost nobody understands algorithms anymore since everything has been reduced white board coding drills and everyone believes they have an understanding of something they don't. As a great example of this almost nobody today knows any heuristic optimization techniques (think the old ITA software puzzles), which used to be near and dear to anyone that cared about algorithms. But since you can't test for heuristics they same as you can established algorithmic solutions nobody studies them.

hnlmorg 6y ago

> I used to think this too, but as a filter I think it's having the desired effect. Is it though? I'm a hiring manager and don't ask such questions and yet have had no problem hiring really talented engineers. The reason I don't ask those questions is because I know that cranking up the interview pressure and asking arbitrary, revisable, common interview questions doesn't actually prove anything aside how good the candidate is at being interviewed.

csmiller 6y ago
I think they are saying not that it’s a filter for talent, but for people willing to “put in the work” to pass that type of interview, which sounds about right. I feel the same way about some colleges.
- nullsense 6y ago
  This is more what I meant.

nitwit005 6y ago

You have to be careful about your assumptions. Being willing to put in the work could be a bad sign. If you already have a bunch of job offers, you aren't going to spend weeks studying to get one more job offer, unless the place might offer dramatically better benefits. And, it may be some people don't need to be any extra studying work. There are people who do programming competitions for fun, and there was prior discussion of Google saying those people did worse on the job: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9324209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9324209

notacoward 6y ago
> If employees aren't motivated enough to organize and close the power gap "If X aren't motivated enough..." usually ends up being a really horrible take for most values of X. I'm not so sure it's different for X=employees, specially when the type of interview we're talking about is more burdensome to older folks, folks with certain personality types or anxiety issues, arguably most women, etc. Why should the burden be theirs alone, while employers get a complete pass on setting up whatever arbitrary hurdles they want?

LordFast 6y ago

Defining a filter in order to filter people out is fine, but we should be honest about the fact that it has very little to do with learning, and more to do with the willingness to deal with crap and jump through hoops. More amenable employees are easier to manage, nothing wrong with that. All exams can be crammed, and having crammed into plenty of gated opportunities in life before, I believe you're mistaken if you believe that it produces more knowledgeable workers as a result. At the end of the day, it's a market like any other. If there is someone who is more willing to do X for Y reward than you are, then they will get that something instead of you. And if you find that there is a shortage of people willing to play ball, you can always work towards bringing in more people who are willing to play ball. Agree with your last sentence. If you want something, you have to go get it. If employees aren't motivated enough to organize and close the power gap, then employers will continue to be motivated enough to push for and work towards their own goals.

oscargrouch 6y ago

I think that is reasonable that a company do some tests on folks that don't have much baggage to show for, because in this case they are doing a wild guess and must count a little bit on luck. But the parent was on his 30-something when he did the interview, and i bet he had a lot in his curriculum to show for, so in this case the company dont have to guess anymore. I think it says a little bit that the HR is failing somehow. Failing to adapt to different kinds of human beings. By the way, there are a lot of psychology into this. Sometimes the right kind of people to do some sort of task is the one that are avoiding the whiteboard tests. In the end it will lead to an unbalanced company with people very similar and optimized for a couple of areas, but lacking in others.

ende 6y ago
This is something that has always perplexed me. These interviews may make sense for an entry level candidate with no ink on their resume beyond a GPA, but then any amount of actual work history just gets completely discarded. Experience needs to count for something.

notacoward 6y ago

> they are optimizing for the people willing to push themselves that far to learn something They are optimizing for people in one of two groups. One is people freshly out of college who still have that stuff at the top of their mind. The other is people who have the free time/energy to bring it back to the top of their mind instead of needing a few extra minutes to go back that far in their memories. Pick your privilege, in other words. > all new hires at least know the effects of space/time complexity and how to make space/time trade-offs deeply well In my experience, this advantage fades within their first evaluation cycle. And what they certainly don't seem to learn is when to do these kinds of evaluations. Oh, the number of times that I saw one of my coworkers hyper-optimize some part of a system where both N and K were too tiny to matter, then just cargo-cult a crappy higher-level algorithm where such analysis really would have moved the needle. BTW, since I know someone will launch a "sour grapes" personal attack (and get a free pass for doing so because I'm on someone's target list) if I don't address it, I passed such interviews at 52 with zero preparation and zero trouble. So no, I don't take it personally. I just recognize this approach's flaws. It's why I refused to do interviews at that company, taking a hit for that every half until I left. Some of us stick to what's right instead of rationalizing what's wrong.