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This is a great way to end up with a monoculture, with all of the fragility that’s associated with it. That might be a fun way to hire engineers 1-5 in a startu

This is a great way to end up with a monoculture, with all of the fragility that’s associated with it. That might be a fun way to hire engineers 1-5 in a startup but it will hold you back in the end. Many good engineers have no interest in games, and won’t present well in that arena. You’ll get lots of false negatives. “Fizzbuzz is all we have...” is a myopic take. Interviewing is hard but not as hard as the article makes out. There is a legitimate debate between take-home and on-site interview practices, but at the end of the day you want to see a work sample that is as realistic as possible from your candidate. Companies that are good at hiring understand this. Factorio has a tenuous (at best) correlation to the work you’re asked to do. It’s like doing puzzle questions because you “can see how they think about problems”, but interviewers are really just selecting for people that think like they do. (And for context I like Factorio.)

Rule35 6y ago
> but interviewers are really just selecting for people that think like they do. No. We don't care how you get it done, but that you try in a way that would be worth paying you for. My job isn't a calm safe place, it's the chaotic result of two departments and the proverbial rubber hitting the road in one spot. It's not intentionally bad, mean, hard, or long, and we weed out people who don't cooperate well, but every crazy thing you can imagine has happened. But even in previous, easier, positions people were still put on the spot by being assigned to work with customer support on some issue way up the stack from their normal job, which required to be on a call with 20+ outsiders, from CEOs to SREs, and representing us and our department properly. The people on HN who talk about giving people calm interviews to see their true selves don't get it, the performance under a small amount of stress is far more interesting. Do you get mean and snappy, get entitled, shut down, or what? If being asked, kindly, to solve a basic leetcode is too much then there's no way you'd be suitable for anything else we do.

Rule35 6y ago

> but interviewers are really just selecting for people that think like they do. No. We don't care how you get it done, but that you try in a way that would be worth paying you for. My job isn't a calm safe place, it's the chaotic result of two departments and the proverbial rubber hitting the road in one spot. It's not intentionally bad, mean, hard, or long, and we weed out people who don't cooperate well, but every crazy thing you can imagine has happened. But even in previous, easier, positions people were still put on the spot by being assigned to work with customer support on some issue way up the stack from their normal job, which required to be on a call with 20+ outsiders, from CEOs to SREs, and representing us and our department properly. The people on HN who talk about giving people calm interviews to see their true selves don't get it, the performance under a small amount of stress is far more interesting. Do you get mean and snappy, get entitled, shut down, or what? If being asked, kindly, to solve a basic leetcode is too much then there's no way you'd be suitable for anything else we do.