5 ms·

Generally, I'm more likely to hire someone with interesting hobbies than someone who has completed HackerRank tests. I don't find it compelling to see that a ca

Generally, I'm more likely to hire someone with interesting hobbies than someone who has completed HackerRank tests. I don't find it compelling to see that a candidate has accomplished standardized metrics; but I am swayed by non-computing hobbies. Synthesizers, painting, rock climbing, volunteering, and so on are indicators of a curious mind that's happy to apply itself.

free_rms 6y ago
But do they still have to pass a bunch of HackerRank-style interview questions? The best interview question in my life, a few years ago, was one where they gave me an open-ended question, a laptop, and the whole afternoon with occasional checkins to see how I handled it. The evaluation was completely subjective. That's hard to standardize at an industrial scale, I understand why FAANG can't do that, but smaller shops really should and stop denying themselves acquirable talent.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  I think it would be nice to have a pair coding exercise where you're given a snapshot of the company's code base from a year ago, and an actual, simple, historic ticket to work, and the interviewer kind of acts like it's your first week and you are getting to know the codebase.
- dleslie 6y ago
  We don't have any technical quiz as part of our interview process. We look at experience, education and creative outlets; then folks sink or swim upon being hired. So far we're batting fairly well. Folks don't generally lie about their experience.
  - free_rms 6y ago
    In my youth I wound up in charge of hiring at a low-end shop due to a funny set of circumstances and absolutely got burned by people straight up lying to me. If I were more experienced, I'd have been able to ask the right questions about their alleged experience and smell the BS.
    - dleslie 6y ago
      We tend to catch the liars when we talk to them about the particulars of their experience; it becomes quickly apparent that they are being dishonest when they cannot answer technical queries. I've used this process for about ten years now, and it hasn't really burned me yet.
xiphias2 6y ago
How many Petabytes of data are you working with? Maybe your company is too small for data structures and cutting every 0.1ms latency count. As an example at Google I needed director level exception to introduce 0.1ms latency to the ads server (which wasn't needed at the end, but the monetary damage for timeouts is real). Understanding basic data structures and how the computer works is important in these cases, even if you just need it once in 3 years.
- prh8 6y ago
  The rarity of this scenario is not remotely close to once every 3 years, and not everyone is interviewing to work on something so obscenely performance dependent. Probably >99% of developers will never encounter something like this in their career.
  - WOTERMEON 6y ago
    That's why >99% doesn't work@ fang
  - user5994461 6y ago
    It's an improbable scenario for most developers in the world but it's normal day to day work for quite a few developers working at large companies. There's no surprise that people are screening for the roles they are trying to fill.
    - prh8 6y ago
      Absolutely, but that screening is reasonable. The same screening at run of the mill companies isn't.
- dleslie 6y ago
  Ha, 0.1ms of latency is a heavy cost for what I do these days. I've spent most of the last two weeks clawing back 0.05ms from here and there. Algorithms absolutely matter, and that will be evident from work experience and education.
- 6y ago
primroot 6y ago
That sounds interesting. I would have a job by now if someone valued the fact that I like memorizing Ancient Greek poetry :) Instead I failed my last interview because I took longer than half an hour to implement JSON indented stringify in JS and did not use template literals and a switch statement. It was my first technical interview ever after 10 years of developing software. I did not expect how much being watched and trying to fulfill several unclear expectations would hinder my performance on a problem, which I would otherwise consider very easy.
koonsolo 6y ago
So how successful is this hiring strategy? Did you ever hire someone that didn't know how to program at all?

free_rms 6y ago

But do they still have to pass a bunch of HackerRank-style interview questions? The best interview question in my life, a few years ago, was one where they gave me an open-ended question, a laptop, and the whole afternoon with occasional checkins to see how I handled it. The evaluation was completely subjective. That's hard to standardize at an industrial scale, I understand why FAANG can't do that, but smaller shops really should and stop denying themselves acquirable talent.

nitrogen 6y ago
I think it would be nice to have a pair coding exercise where you're given a snapshot of the company's code base from a year ago, and an actual, simple, historic ticket to work, and the interviewer kind of acts like it's your first week and you are getting to know the codebase.
dleslie 6y ago
We don't have any technical quiz as part of our interview process. We look at experience, education and creative outlets; then folks sink or swim upon being hired. So far we're batting fairly well. Folks don't generally lie about their experience.
- free_rms 6y ago
  In my youth I wound up in charge of hiring at a low-end shop due to a funny set of circumstances and absolutely got burned by people straight up lying to me. If I were more experienced, I'd have been able to ask the right questions about their alleged experience and smell the BS.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    We tend to catch the liars when we talk to them about the particulars of their experience; it becomes quickly apparent that they are being dishonest when they cannot answer technical queries. I've used this process for about ten years now, and it hasn't really burned me yet.

xiphias2 6y ago

How many Petabytes of data are you working with? Maybe your company is too small for data structures and cutting every 0.1ms latency count. As an example at Google I needed director level exception to introduce 0.1ms latency to the ads server (which wasn't needed at the end, but the monetary damage for timeouts is real). Understanding basic data structures and how the computer works is important in these cases, even if you just need it once in 3 years.

prh8 6y ago
The rarity of this scenario is not remotely close to once every 3 years, and not everyone is interviewing to work on something so obscenely performance dependent. Probably >99% of developers will never encounter something like this in their career.
- WOTERMEON 6y ago
  That's why >99% doesn't work@ fang
- user5994461 6y ago
  It's an improbable scenario for most developers in the world but it's normal day to day work for quite a few developers working at large companies. There's no surprise that people are screening for the roles they are trying to fill.
  - prh8 6y ago
    Absolutely, but that screening is reasonable. The same screening at run of the mill companies isn't.
dleslie 6y ago
Ha, 0.1ms of latency is a heavy cost for what I do these days. I've spent most of the last two weeks clawing back 0.05ms from here and there. Algorithms absolutely matter, and that will be evident from work experience and education.
6y ago

primroot 6y ago

That sounds interesting. I would have a job by now if someone valued the fact that I like memorizing Ancient Greek poetry :) Instead I failed my last interview because I took longer than half an hour to implement JSON indented stringify in JS and did not use template literals and a switch statement. It was my first technical interview ever after 10 years of developing software. I did not expect how much being watched and trying to fulfill several unclear expectations would hinder my performance on a problem, which I would otherwise consider very easy.

koonsolo 6y ago

So how successful is this hiring strategy? Did you ever hire someone that didn't know how to program at all?