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I think we have a thread about software interviews every week, with the same discussion topics. Isn't this a problem solved by technical certifications? I mean,

I think we have a thread about software interviews every week, with the same discussion topics. Isn't this a problem solved by technical certifications? I mean, if the Top 100 companies do the same tests over and over again, with a very similar mindset and process, why not delegate that to a third-party? Then you just hire people that have Certification X, which matches your lust of algorithmic puzzles or whatever. I'm fine with meaningless tests that don't prove anything, as long as I don't have to do them for every single interview. I would gladly study for a certification, because it means I get to do it once and then I can prove everything you want me to prove in order to get a job to change button positioning.

throw_me_2020 6y ago
That seems like something you could build. There's a handful of YC companies working on that. I don't think FANG companies are likely early adopters of that. They are all relatively conservative with hiring. Navigating the organization to find an internal champion who's incentives are aligned seems really tough. Internal established recruiting teams seem disincentivized to use a 3rd party certification. Using that might reduce the number/importance of the internal recruiting team.
- sjg007 6y ago
  The advantage is that it would reduce total recruitment cost and burden. I mean filtering on a CS degree and school should be enough but apparently it isn't. There are also non-traditional programmers. There's a finite set of reasonable problems so there will be some difficulty in hiding the answers when you have access to Google vs in person. Outside of that, the most important skill is gathering requirements, gathering requirements and gathering requirements. In the startup world this is called finding product market fit. System architecture design and computational thinking are also necessary but I don't think any software engineer can do those well without gathering requirements which is basically about identifying product market fit within your corporation.
btilly 6y ago
There are several problems with certifications. The first is that the certifying authority gets paid by the candidates. Therefore the trend over time inevitably is to make the certification easier and easier to get so that the candidates keep paying them. The second is that the field tends to move more rapidly than the certification. What does a certificate from 10 years ago about how well I know Python and JavaScript tell you about my current skills as a developer? Not a whole lot. There are reasonable certifications out there put out by companies for those who wish to work on their technology stack. (Open source, not so much.) The company has the resources and motivation to make sure that people who are certified for their technologies are going to be reasonably competent. But now the certification becomes a sales pitch. The company shows you how to use the latest version of all of their tooling with all of the optional side products. You go out into a real company and they are a couple of versions behind and didn't license all of those optional add-ons. You, the certified expert, are likely to become the person asking for everything to be upgraded and for a ton of new licenses for stuff that is only marginally useful. This isn't necessarily in the company's interests. True story. Many years ago I worked at a large FAANG. To limit how much time was wasted on bad candidates, they built a machine learning system to filter out bad resumes. In practice it was better than a recruiter at identifying promising resumes, but worse than a developer. But it limited how much recruiters had to bug developers with bad resumes. The machine learning system picked up all of the things that you'd expect. For example someone who thought it important to list Microsoft Word as a skill probably isn't a viable candidate for a senior software engineer. But the single strongest signal that it picked up was kind of interesting. At the time the MCSE (Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert) was one of the most popular certifications around. Anyone listing that was unlikely to be worth interviewing.

throw_me_2020 6y ago

That seems like something you could build. There's a handful of YC companies working on that. I don't think FANG companies are likely early adopters of that. They are all relatively conservative with hiring. Navigating the organization to find an internal champion who's incentives are aligned seems really tough. Internal established recruiting teams seem disincentivized to use a 3rd party certification. Using that might reduce the number/importance of the internal recruiting team.

sjg007 6y ago
The advantage is that it would reduce total recruitment cost and burden. I mean filtering on a CS degree and school should be enough but apparently it isn't. There are also non-traditional programmers. There's a finite set of reasonable problems so there will be some difficulty in hiding the answers when you have access to Google vs in person. Outside of that, the most important skill is gathering requirements, gathering requirements and gathering requirements. In the startup world this is called finding product market fit. System architecture design and computational thinking are also necessary but I don't think any software engineer can do those well without gathering requirements which is basically about identifying product market fit within your corporation.

btilly 6y ago

There are several problems with certifications. The first is that the certifying authority gets paid by the candidates. Therefore the trend over time inevitably is to make the certification easier and easier to get so that the candidates keep paying them. The second is that the field tends to move more rapidly than the certification. What does a certificate from 10 years ago about how well I know Python and JavaScript tell you about my current skills as a developer? Not a whole lot. There are reasonable certifications out there put out by companies for those who wish to work on their technology stack. (Open source, not so much.) The company has the resources and motivation to make sure that people who are certified for their technologies are going to be reasonably competent. But now the certification becomes a sales pitch. The company shows you how to use the latest version of all of their tooling with all of the optional side products. You go out into a real company and they are a couple of versions behind and didn't license all of those optional add-ons. You, the certified expert, are likely to become the person asking for everything to be upgraded and for a ton of new licenses for stuff that is only marginally useful. This isn't necessarily in the company's interests. True story. Many years ago I worked at a large FAANG. To limit how much time was wasted on bad candidates, they built a machine learning system to filter out bad resumes. In practice it was better than a recruiter at identifying promising resumes, but worse than a developer. But it limited how much recruiters had to bug developers with bad resumes. The machine learning system picked up all of the things that you'd expect. For example someone who thought it important to list Microsoft Word as a skill probably isn't a viable candidate for a senior software engineer. But the single strongest signal that it picked up was kind of interesting. At the time the MCSE (Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert) was one of the most popular certifications around. Anyone listing that was unlikely to be worth interviewing.