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I think the fact that it does not seem "absurd" or "obviously wrong" is the revelation. It should, but it doesn't. It's clever writing. Imagine a world where en

I think the fact that it does not seem "absurd" or "obviously wrong" is the revelation. It should, but it doesn't. It's clever writing. Imagine a world where engineering interviews were sane and then writing this article in that world, it would be "absurd" and "obviously wrong" and clearly satire. In our world, the real world.. it's not so clear.

ALittleLight 6y ago
Why should it seem absurd or obviously wrong? It seems like the author wants a certain kind of programmer and wants to minimize false positives. If you want the top 1% (according to your own measurements about what "top" means) then it only makes sense that you'd have an interview process that more than 99% of applicants couldn't pass. "More than" because you're also making cuts to avoid false positives which will reject some good candidates. In my view this strikes people as unfair because it excludes most people. It probably excludes them. I think I'd struggle with the tic tac toe problem and would probably need 30-60 minutes on it (hope to try this afternoon to see). It feels bad to see people say the bar is something you can't reach, and that makes people upset at the author. The author is an elitist and people don't like that. Furthermore, the bar is arbitrary. No good programmer needs to implement a tictactoe counting program rapidly so it feels dumb to judge on that. This is like saying though that IQ tests are meaningless because I seldom need to guess which shape comes next in a sequence. However, just like predicting a sequence tells us something about the quality of your cognition (probably) quickly writing an arbitrary program tells us that you have some level of coding, thinking, intelligence, etc. You may have that level of talent and fail the test, but you can't lack that level of talent and pass the test. At least, that's the theory in this essay. It seems mostly correct to me, barring an otherwise incompetent person who just coincidentally practices lots of tic tac toe problems. Given that hiring a bad person is a lot costlier than failing to hire a good one, it seems logical that some people would need to structure hiring like this. I don't think this is a good bar for FAANG companies. They need too many people. I don't think this is a good bar for companies where software is mundane not core competency stuff, you don't need high speed hackers. I'd doubt this is a good strategy for underfunded startups, you probably can't afford extensive interview processes with high bars or to hire the folks who would pass them. This seems like it might be a good pattern for a well funded software startup that needs to move fast.
- stefanmichael 6y ago
  > Why should it seem absurd or obviously wrong? Because you could replace the entire thing with a 2 hour IQ test. > but you can't lack that level of talent and pass the test. Another reason that this should seem absurd and obviously wrong. It's trivially simple to pass the test without the "level of talent" being targeted. It is just a matter of repetition. There are entire websites dedicated to beating this well known hiring step. Anyone can learn recursion and caching and work a bunch of leetcode / hackerrank problems and get a job at a place who implements these interview practices. Whether it takes you 2 weeks to prep or 6 months to prep is not revealed to the interviewer.
  - username90 6y ago
    If anyone could pass these tests via hard work then we would have millions of Indian and Chinese people able to pass them, but we don't. Instead the ratio of people who can pass them from there is roughly the same as everywhere else.
    - jackblemming 6y ago
      https://www.theregister.com/2013/03/22/vietnam_kids_google_interview_pass/ https://www.theregister.com/2013/03/22/vietnam_kids_google_i...
      - ALittleLight 6y ago
        Neat! It's either awesome that half of Vietnamese high school students could pass a Google interview, and a strong endorsement and credit to their system, or it's not so. Either way, I don't see how this is an argument against the programming test model of interview.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    An IQ test wouldn't tell you about programming ability though or clarity of writing. I don't think an IQ test would be an inherently bad idea, but if this test is similar and tests programming and communication, it just seems better and therefore like it couldn't be replaced by an IQ test.

ALittleLight 6y ago

Why should it seem absurd or obviously wrong? It seems like the author wants a certain kind of programmer and wants to minimize false positives. If you want the top 1% (according to your own measurements about what "top" means) then it only makes sense that you'd have an interview process that more than 99% of applicants couldn't pass. "More than" because you're also making cuts to avoid false positives which will reject some good candidates. In my view this strikes people as unfair because it excludes most people. It probably excludes them. I think I'd struggle with the tic tac toe problem and would probably need 30-60 minutes on it (hope to try this afternoon to see). It feels bad to see people say the bar is something you can't reach, and that makes people upset at the author. The author is an elitist and people don't like that. Furthermore, the bar is arbitrary. No good programmer needs to implement a tictactoe counting program rapidly so it feels dumb to judge on that. This is like saying though that IQ tests are meaningless because I seldom need to guess which shape comes next in a sequence. However, just like predicting a sequence tells us something about the quality of your cognition (probably) quickly writing an arbitrary program tells us that you have some level of coding, thinking, intelligence, etc. You may have that level of talent and fail the test, but you can't lack that level of talent and pass the test. At least, that's the theory in this essay. It seems mostly correct to me, barring an otherwise incompetent person who just coincidentally practices lots of tic tac toe problems. Given that hiring a bad person is a lot costlier than failing to hire a good one, it seems logical that some people would need to structure hiring like this. I don't think this is a good bar for FAANG companies. They need too many people. I don't think this is a good bar for companies where software is mundane not core competency stuff, you don't need high speed hackers. I'd doubt this is a good strategy for underfunded startups, you probably can't afford extensive interview processes with high bars or to hire the folks who would pass them. This seems like it might be a good pattern for a well funded software startup that needs to move fast.

stefanmichael 6y ago
> Why should it seem absurd or obviously wrong? Because you could replace the entire thing with a 2 hour IQ test. > but you can't lack that level of talent and pass the test. Another reason that this should seem absurd and obviously wrong. It's trivially simple to pass the test without the "level of talent" being targeted. It is just a matter of repetition. There are entire websites dedicated to beating this well known hiring step. Anyone can learn recursion and caching and work a bunch of leetcode / hackerrank problems and get a job at a place who implements these interview practices. Whether it takes you 2 weeks to prep or 6 months to prep is not revealed to the interviewer.
- username90 6y ago
  If anyone could pass these tests via hard work then we would have millions of Indian and Chinese people able to pass them, but we don't. Instead the ratio of people who can pass them from there is roughly the same as everywhere else.
  - jackblemming 6y ago
    https://www.theregister.com/2013/03/22/vietnam_kids_google_interview_pass/ https://www.theregister.com/2013/03/22/vietnam_kids_google_i...
    - ALittleLight 6y ago
      Neat! It's either awesome that half of Vietnamese high school students could pass a Google interview, and a strong endorsement and credit to their system, or it's not so. Either way, I don't see how this is an argument against the programming test model of interview.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  An IQ test wouldn't tell you about programming ability though or clarity of writing. I don't think an IQ test would be an inherently bad idea, but if this test is similar and tests programming and communication, it just seems better and therefore like it couldn't be replaced by an IQ test.