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Most arguments I've seen claiming the incompetence of senior engineers are circular. A: We need programming quizzes even for senior engineers, because many tur

by _qulr 6y ago

Most arguments I've seen claiming the incompetence of senior engineers are circular. A: We need programming quizzes even for senior engineers, because many turn out of be incompetent. B: How do you know they're incompetent? A: They failed our programming quizzes! The reality is that you're testing for stage fright, not programming skills. An audition is not a good criterion for choosing people who aren't stage performers. https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/07/tech-job-interviews-anxiety/ https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/07/tech-job-interviews-anxiety/

robocat 6y ago
Stage fright does not lead a senior level engineer to build a priority queue using XML. Assume good faith: let’s presume he knows some candidates get stage fright and has ways to help mitigate it. Or that despite stage fright, such tests are still a good signal (e.g. the signal is so strong the false negatives are a worthwhile cost, or stage fright might be highly correlated with poor performance, or stage performance could be highly correlated with talent!)
- _qulr 6y ago
  > Assume good faith That's an interesting defense of an interview process that specifically does not assume good faith of the candidates. > has ways to help mitigate it I'm not sure this understands the nature of true stage fright. There aren't any good ways to mitigate it.
  - robocat 6y ago
    “Assume good faith” is an hn guideline for comments, not interviews. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Re mitigation: already answered with previous “or” clause.
    - _qulr 6y ago
      But "has ways to help mitigate" stage fright has nothing to do with assuming good faith. You'd have to assume magical powers. It's like if someone has a fear of spiders, and you bring out spiders during an interview but claim "we have ways of mitigating this fear."
      - robocat 6y ago
        To me your thread feels like nitpicking. I think that the idea is to optimise for preventing false positives (bad hires), at the cost of a higher rate of false negatives (good hires incorrectly weeded out). Interviews are imperfect: candidates can fail for a vast range of reasons that are completely unfair. Also an applicant could train to avoid stage fright, just as they might train to learn algorithms if applying to Google. AFAIK many real actors have all the symptoms of stage fright, but they have learned to deal with it to be successful. Disclaimer: I am not an interviewer.
        _qulr 6y ago
        It's not nitpicking. I want to draw attention to the fact that the so-called "false negatives" that everyone claims are acceptable casualties of the system are not just random false negatives. Audition-style coding interviews systematically discriminate against people who tend to experience extreme nervousness during auditions but otherwise perform normally on the job. Note that this thread started with "Everyone loves to read and write about how developer interviewing is flawed, but no one wants to go out on a limb and make suggestions about how to improve it." Now you're saying applicants can train for this, applicants can train for that, but what happened to the original point about how to improve the process instead of making candidates take difficult steps to adapt to the flawed process?
        robocat 6y ago
        I know I am being oppositional, but your style of argument comes across to me as deep diving on points where you can be correct, or changing the subject. I am trying to argue against your original thesis which I will paraphrase as “a quiz detecting incompetence is actually detecting stage fright” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24758092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24758092 Anyone who thinks XML is a valid solution to a priority queue is incompetent (even if they were prompted by the recruiter as said in sibling comment). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24758234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24758234 Stage fright is real, and it is unavoidable in an interview i.e. even if coding quizzes were removed then the problem still exists, so arguing just against quizzes is silly IMHO. > everyone claims are acceptable casualties of the system I would say instead that casualties are unavoidable - interviews must be imperfect because time is limited (regardless of how much we may try to improve interviews.) > systematically discriminate against people who tend to experience extreme nervousness during auditions but otherwise perform normally on the job. Interviews are by definition systematically discriminatory: one is trying to select one person. The data is dirty, and if you make interviews more inclusive on one dimension you are discriminating against others on that dimension. They must be systematic as per anti-discrimination regulations, or else you will get sued to your cost. How to improve interviews to reduce false negatives is hard, but I think you are oversimplifying it down to “quizzes are bad”, which is at odds with many smart professionals who say they are good for detecting incompetent developers. You have not suggested any improvement that detects incompetence. > Note that this thread started with "Everyone loves to read and write about how developer interviewing is flawed, but no one wants to go out on a limb and make suggestions about how to improve it." I can also cherry pick a quote further up-thread: “To many people, the coding interviews is a chance to break the traditional mold and land a job that would have been out of reach otherwise.”
vsareto 6y ago
I don't think stage fright explains an XML document as a solution to a priority queue. I'm betting it was something like this though: https://www.chegg.com/homework-help/questions-and-answers/prioritizeassignments-deserializes-xml-document-containing-assignment-objects-adds-deseria-q37388139 https://www.chegg.com/homework-help/questions-and-answers/pr...
- robocat 6y ago
  You would lose your bet! See OP’s comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24758234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24758234
jjav 6y ago
> Most arguments I've seen claiming the incompetence of senior engineers are circular. Exactly! If someone has been implementing and delivering products for years/decades and they "fail" a whiteboard puzzle, which is more likely? A: The whiteboard puzzle doesn't actually measure anything correlated to delivering products. B: They can't actually develop anything, despite having repeatedly done so. I want to hire the people who can develop and deliver products, not the whiteboard puzzle specialists because I've never been at a company where solving whiteboard puzzles is something we do as part of the business.

by _qulr 6y ago

robocat 6y ago

Stage fright does not lead a senior level engineer to build a priority queue using XML. Assume good faith: let’s presume he knows some candidates get stage fright and has ways to help mitigate it. Or that despite stage fright, such tests are still a good signal (e.g. the signal is so strong the false negatives are a worthwhile cost, or stage fright might be highly correlated with poor performance, or stage performance could be highly correlated with talent!)

_qulr 6y ago
> Assume good faith That's an interesting defense of an interview process that specifically does not assume good faith of the candidates. > has ways to help mitigate it I'm not sure this understands the nature of true stage fright. There aren't any good ways to mitigate it.
- robocat 6y ago
  “Assume good faith” is an hn guideline for comments, not interviews. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Re mitigation: already answered with previous “or” clause.
  - _qulr 6y ago
    But "has ways to help mitigate" stage fright has nothing to do with assuming good faith. You'd have to assume magical powers. It's like if someone has a fear of spiders, and you bring out spiders during an interview but claim "we have ways of mitigating this fear."
    - robocat 6y ago
      To me your thread feels like nitpicking. I think that the idea is to optimise for preventing false positives (bad hires), at the cost of a higher rate of false negatives (good hires incorrectly weeded out). Interviews are imperfect: candidates can fail for a vast range of reasons that are completely unfair. Also an applicant could train to avoid stage fright, just as they might train to learn algorithms if applying to Google. AFAIK many real actors have all the symptoms of stage fright, but they have learned to deal with it to be successful. Disclaimer: I am not an interviewer.
      - _qulr 6y ago
        It's not nitpicking. I want to draw attention to the fact that the so-called "false negatives" that everyone claims are acceptable casualties of the system are not just random false negatives. Audition-style coding interviews systematically discriminate against people who tend to experience extreme nervousness during auditions but otherwise perform normally on the job. Note that this thread started with "Everyone loves to read and write about how developer interviewing is flawed, but no one wants to go out on a limb and make suggestions about how to improve it." Now you're saying applicants can train for this, applicants can train for that, but what happened to the original point about how to improve the process instead of making candidates take difficult steps to adapt to the flawed process?
        robocat 6y ago
        I know I am being oppositional, but your style of argument comes across to me as deep diving on points where you can be correct, or changing the subject. I am trying to argue against your original thesis which I will paraphrase as “a quiz detecting incompetence is actually detecting stage fright” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24758092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24758092 Anyone who thinks XML is a valid solution to a priority queue is incompetent (even if they were prompted by the recruiter as said in sibling comment). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24758234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24758234 Stage fright is real, and it is unavoidable in an interview i.e. even if coding quizzes were removed then the problem still exists, so arguing just against quizzes is silly IMHO. > everyone claims are acceptable casualties of the system I would say instead that casualties are unavoidable - interviews must be imperfect because time is limited (regardless of how much we may try to improve interviews.) > systematically discriminate against people who tend to experience extreme nervousness during auditions but otherwise perform normally on the job. Interviews are by definition systematically discriminatory: one is trying to select one person. The data is dirty, and if you make interviews more inclusive on one dimension you are discriminating against others on that dimension. They must be systematic as per anti-discrimination regulations, or else you will get sued to your cost. How to improve interviews to reduce false negatives is hard, but I think you are oversimplifying it down to “quizzes are bad”, which is at odds with many smart professionals who say they are good for detecting incompetent developers. You have not suggested any improvement that detects incompetence. > Note that this thread started with "Everyone loves to read and write about how developer interviewing is flawed, but no one wants to go out on a limb and make suggestions about how to improve it." I can also cherry pick a quote further up-thread: “To many people, the coding interviews is a chance to break the traditional mold and land a job that would have been out of reach otherwise.”

vsareto 6y ago

I don't think stage fright explains an XML document as a solution to a priority queue. I'm betting it was something like this though: https://www.chegg.com/homework-help/questions-and-answers/prioritizeassignments-deserializes-xml-document-containing-assignment-objects-adds-deseria-q37388139 https://www.chegg.com/homework-help/questions-and-answers/pr...

robocat 6y ago
You would lose your bet! See OP’s comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24758234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24758234

jjav 6y ago

> Most arguments I've seen claiming the incompetence of senior engineers are circular. Exactly! If someone has been implementing and delivering products for years/decades and they "fail" a whiteboard puzzle, which is more likely? A: The whiteboard puzzle doesn't actually measure anything correlated to delivering products. B: They can't actually develop anything, despite having repeatedly done so. I want to hire the people who can develop and deliver products, not the whiteboard puzzle specialists because I've never been at a company where solving whiteboard puzzles is something we do as part of the business.