16 ms·

there are plenty of software companies that have pretty easy interview processes. once you get that far, you basically just have to avoid talking your way out o

there are plenty of software companies that have pretty easy interview processes. once you get that far, you basically just have to avoid talking your way out of the job. but they don't pay way above the median engineer salary either. the big n tech companies have the same problem as harvard, more or less. way more qualified people apply than they have headcount for, so how can they pick efficiently? I don't enjoy leetcode interviews, but for these extremely competitive positions, I can't think of a reasonable alternative I'd prefer. you know in advance what topics you'll be tested on, and the interview prep applies to several different companies you might be interested in. I'd much rather do that than prepare a bunch of "tell me about a time when..." answers for each company's supposed values. > In what other industries are the bars so high? pretty much anything where you can start at $200k with a bachelor's degree? honestly what other jobs like that have a lower bar?

cehrlich 5y ago
Sometimes I wonder about the how much better leetcode interviews are at picking the best candidate than a random number generator would be (obviously after doing all the other interview stuff other than the leetcode)
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  This is a great question, more generally what is the expected improvement in the quality of hire conditional on some selection method. The famous Hunter & Schmidt meta-analysis suggests that only work-sample tests and IQ tests work well enough to use, but it's an old set of studies so hard to know if it still applies.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    But isn't this a work sample test?
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      Sortof. From my vague remembrance of this study, the closer the work sample was to the actual work the better it predicted job performance. So debugging or implementing some small stuff against a real application would perform better than leetcode. TBH, I think the original point of algorithms was to act as disguised intelligence test, which are tricky to use in US hiring.
      - emodendroket 5y ago
        Well, the problem is that you can't actually have a "realistic" work problem in the space of an interview. Given that constraint I think it's a reasonable approximation.
        disgruntledphd2 5y ago
        If programmers spent their time implementing sorting problems, I would agree ;)
        emodendroket 5y ago
        Have you ever actually been asked to implement a sorting algorithm or balance a tree from memory? I've done a lot of whiteboard interviews, including at some of the Big Ns, and I can't say I ever experienced this, despite those exercises being used as a kind of metonym for whiteboarding.
        disgruntledphd2 5y ago
        It was mostly a joke, I'm a DS so I get arbitrary take homes rather than leetcode. The more general point is that the algorithmic approaches from leetcode problems have not a lot of relation to what most programmers do all day, and as such, are less useful as a work-sample test. Doing a take-home where you fix some bugs would probably work better (i.e. more correlated with outcomes) than leetcode interviews.
  - mavelikara 5y ago
    I can't find a link to the original 1998 paper, but the authors have an updated paper here: https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/645/session%204/Schmidt%20&%20Oh%20validity%20and%20util%20100%20yrs%20of%20research%20Wk%20PPR%202016.pdf https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/645/session%204/Schmidt%20&%20... In the updated paper, work sample tests do not come up as important as they were in the original paper: It appears that almost all of the validity of work sample tests is captured by GMA measures, because the incremental validity is essentially zero. But work sample tests are a great mechanism when GMA cannot be used for legal or other reasons. The paper concludes with: The research evidence summarized in this article shows that different methods and combinations of methods have very different validities for predicting future job performance. Some, such as person-job fit, person- organization fit, and amount of education, have low validity. Others, such as graphology, have essentially no validity; they are equivalent to hiring randomly. Still others, such as GMA tests and integrity tests, have high validity. Of the combinations of predictors examined, two stand out as being both practical to use for most hiring and as having high composite validity: the combination of a GMA test and an integrity test (composite validity of .78); and the combination of a GMA test and a structured interview (composite validity of .76).
emodendroket 5y ago
I'd go further and say I actually do like them. It is a kind of programming where instead of the humdrum realities of your daily work you can focus on pure ideas to solve abstract problems, which is fun to me. Besides that, as a self taught developer, they've given me the chance to prove myself on a level playing field and to measure my progress over time.
adwww 5y ago
> way more qualified people apply than they have headcount for, so how can they pick efficiently? This holds for blind applications. But Facebook reached out to me a few years ago which I was pretty excited about, but then I was dumped into their standard applicant pool, and I really didn't have time right then for an 8 week hiring process with 7 or so leetcode interviews.

cehrlich 5y ago

Sometimes I wonder about the how much better leetcode interviews are at picking the best candidate than a random number generator would be (obviously after doing all the other interview stuff other than the leetcode)

disgruntledphd2 5y ago
This is a great question, more generally what is the expected improvement in the quality of hire conditional on some selection method. The famous Hunter & Schmidt meta-analysis suggests that only work-sample tests and IQ tests work well enough to use, but it's an old set of studies so hard to know if it still applies.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  But isn't this a work sample test?
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    Sortof. From my vague remembrance of this study, the closer the work sample was to the actual work the better it predicted job performance. So debugging or implementing some small stuff against a real application would perform better than leetcode. TBH, I think the original point of algorithms was to act as disguised intelligence test, which are tricky to use in US hiring.
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      Well, the problem is that you can't actually have a "realistic" work problem in the space of an interview. Given that constraint I think it's a reasonable approximation.
      - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
        If programmers spent their time implementing sorting problems, I would agree ;)
        emodendroket 5y ago
        Have you ever actually been asked to implement a sorting algorithm or balance a tree from memory? I've done a lot of whiteboard interviews, including at some of the Big Ns, and I can't say I ever experienced this, despite those exercises being used as a kind of metonym for whiteboarding.
        disgruntledphd2 5y ago
        It was mostly a joke, I'm a DS so I get arbitrary take homes rather than leetcode. The more general point is that the algorithmic approaches from leetcode problems have not a lot of relation to what most programmers do all day, and as such, are less useful as a work-sample test. Doing a take-home where you fix some bugs would probably work better (i.e. more correlated with outcomes) than leetcode interviews.
- mavelikara 5y ago
  I can't find a link to the original 1998 paper, but the authors have an updated paper here: https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/645/session%204/Schmidt%20&%20Oh%20validity%20and%20util%20100%20yrs%20of%20research%20Wk%20PPR%202016.pdf https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/645/session%204/Schmidt%20&%20... In the updated paper, work sample tests do not come up as important as they were in the original paper: It appears that almost all of the validity of work sample tests is captured by GMA measures, because the incremental validity is essentially zero. But work sample tests are a great mechanism when GMA cannot be used for legal or other reasons. The paper concludes with: The research evidence summarized in this article shows that different methods and combinations of methods have very different validities for predicting future job performance. Some, such as person-job fit, person- organization fit, and amount of education, have low validity. Others, such as graphology, have essentially no validity; they are equivalent to hiring randomly. Still others, such as GMA tests and integrity tests, have high validity. Of the combinations of predictors examined, two stand out as being both practical to use for most hiring and as having high composite validity: the combination of a GMA test and an integrity test (composite validity of .78); and the combination of a GMA test and a structured interview (composite validity of .76).

emodendroket 5y ago

I'd go further and say I actually do like them. It is a kind of programming where instead of the humdrum realities of your daily work you can focus on pure ideas to solve abstract problems, which is fun to me. Besides that, as a self taught developer, they've given me the chance to prove myself on a level playing field and to measure my progress over time.

adwww 5y ago

> way more qualified people apply than they have headcount for, so how can they pick efficiently? This holds for blind applications. But Facebook reached out to me a few years ago which I was pretty excited about, but then I was dumped into their standard applicant pool, and I really didn't have time right then for an 8 week hiring process with 7 or so leetcode interviews.