5 ms·

Interviewstreet - Hackers rejoice

34 points by rvivek 15y ago

mathattack 15y ago
Seems like an interesting website. Will there be issues of the questions and answers getting out? Or will that be obvious in a second round interview?
- rvivek 15y ago
  Yes, this acts as a pre-screener
  - mathattack 15y ago
    In that sense it's probably a better pre-screener than a headhunter who says, "I see they're requesting a C guru, and my Word search found the letter C on your resume..."
    - uzair88 15y ago
      Not only that, it seems like a lot more fun than going to an HR first-round interview!
icomment 15y ago
How is this different from what TopCoder.com has been doing since last 10 years?
tomh- 15y ago
I remember the last HN thread about Interview street they promised more 'real world' problems, instead they added more euler style algorithm quizes. I guess the companies have achieved good results basing hiring decisions on these algorithm quizes, maybe someone from interviewstreet can share some results?
- rvivek 15y ago
  Hi Tomh, we've received good results on this puzzles. But that said, we had a soft launch on the real world puzzles where we gave a few server instances and EC2 had to go down that day :| We're launching one soon - a real-world hack, given a server.
- DanielRibeiro 15y ago
  About all these quizzes for hiring, I really found Techcrunch's Why The New Guy Can’t Code[1] quite insightful (at least for startups) and filled with great links. Hiring Developers: You're Doing It Wrong[2] also delves a lot more into this paradigm, showing some hands on experience and show the evolution of their hiring process. This post got a lot of tracking and great comments on HN as well[3]. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/07/why-the-new-guy-cant-code/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/07/why-the-new-guy-cant-code/ [2] http://devinterviews.pen.io/ http://devinterviews.pen.io/ [3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2385424 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2385424
kkowalcz 15y ago
Isn't it similar to codility.com or codeeval.com?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - rvivek 15y ago
    Hi mtogo, Can you tell me what you don't like about interviewstreet? Happy to fix them.
- openmosix 15y ago
  Well...also: http://www.coderloop.com http://www.coderloop.com, http://www.gild.com/ http://www.gild.com/, http://uva.onlinejudge.org/ http://uva.onlinejudge.org/, http://www.spoj.pl/ http://www.spoj.pl/, http://www.codechef.com/ http://www.codechef.com/ :) Coderloop has also RealTime problems http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13GaYDoRwOg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13GaYDoRwOg
galactus 15y ago
ah, no love for lisp :(
- yuvipanda 15y ago
  We just added clojure support today. That counts as a lisp, right?
almost 15y ago
Hackers rejoice? Really? Should hackers "rejoice" at being asked to do silly puzzles for the privilege attending one of your wonderful interviews? Surely it's more like "companies with useless hiring processes rejoice"?
- rvivek 15y ago
  Hey almost, we're almost getting to put up real-world problems soon! We had a soft launch earlier this week and are working on the feedback. That said, we've got quite a lot of hackers who solve the challenges for fun :)
  - almost 15y ago
    Sorry for the negative comment. I think the headline just rubbed me up the wrong way :) I do think I would just be annoyed at being asked to use your site but I'm sure it's going to be useful for others. I do sometimes (quite often actually) do programming exercises for fun, but if you want me to do them not for fun you'd better at the very least be wasting your time as well as mine...
    - rvivek 15y ago
      Thanks @almost for the feedback. The thing is, the blog post isn't written by us (@interviewstreet), it was written by some person who bumped onto our site. Would be careful before posting such dramatic stuff. That said, we're bringing in real-world problems pretty soon. Do check it out :)
    - uzair88 15y ago
      Hi almost, Original blog post author here. Generally speaking, interview processes have undergone a fraction of the innovation that industry has seen. Hence, After learning about Interviewstreet and checking out all the amazing companies they've partnered with, I got a bit excited but I definitely didn't mean to offend :(
mtogo 15y ago
> Heck, I don’t even know how to code! And it shows. A lot, dare i say most, people who actually do code find solving puzzle after ridiculous puzzle for the mere hope of getting an interview very demeaning. There are a ton of sites that do this, like Codility. Interviewstreet is a poor implementation of an already bad concept.
- rvivek 15y ago
  Oops - it's on similar lines. But, could you let me know what you didn't like about us, so that we could work on it?
  - mtogo 15y ago
    Google login killed it for me. I didn't even try to look at more of your challenges. The snippets of challenges on your homepage are almost entirely math problems. Math is an incredibly important part of software dev, but there's more than just math to software and your problems don't reflect that. You overuse the word hacker. It's become a buzzword and you're perpetuating that problem. And finally, your site is built on a flawed concept. Even if you fixed all of these problems, you didn't fix the core problem-- your business does the opposite of it's job because truly great """hackers""" won't jump through these hoops just for the hope of getting an interview. This is just my opinion, of course. I sincerely wish you the best of luck with your business, but it definitely isn't for me.
    - rvivek 15y ago
      Hi Mtogo, got it! We're in the process of launching real-world problems just like the reddit jobs page [http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/fjgit/reddit_is_doubling_the_size_of_its_programming/ http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/fjgit/reddit_is_doubli...] which is not only more than math problems, but more than algorithm challenges itself. We're adding twitter auth / Fb connect as well. Is there a particular reason, why you don't like Google auth?
  - anc2020 15y ago
    hi, feedback here: when I got to 100 lines and then clicked "Compile", I needed to select text to scroll down, your lightbox needs something like overflow:auto to bring up scrollbars. likewise, google account means a bounce for me even though I've got one, try to delay showing that was a bit disappointed with the end result - just shows two green boxes, when I really wanted to see the metrics page from your promo video (http://www.interviewstreet.com/recruit/ http://www.interviewstreet.com/recruit/) (that demo is also too well hidden imo). A little more in the program description would help, specifically IRL I'll know a rough target time and how this thing is likely to be used (eg. repeatedly, with mostly small numbers, etc.) Also, the UI is annoying, split into 3 vertical panes: Problem | Code editor | Compile Output Also randomise the test cases... int getNumberOfPrimes(int N) { return N == 100 ? 25 : 78498; }
diN0bot 15y ago
the nice thing about contributions to open source is that it fits into a larger picture: communication, tests, users.
- rvivek 15y ago
  we're building a profile which would have only hacker stuff associated with it [stackoverflow, github, topcoder, etc.] serving as a neat link to a hacker if he/she wants to apply
tks 15y ago
Clearly this type of service isn't going to be the only way developers get jobs, and yes it may be somewhat insulting to people further along their careers to make them do this, but for someone starting out who doesn't have a large portfolio of achievement, or (even more importantly) doesn't have the degrees or college backgrounds that have increasingly become the primary metric for determining who gets entry level software engineering jobs (despite the ample evidence that these metric have minimal to any correlation with programming ability or productivity) this seems like a potentially life changing type of service. Anything that takes steps towards rationalizing the hiring process in our industry should be rejoiced. And if there are other services trying to do similar work too all the better- it's a big problem. That said it would be great if you all did work on trying to push the meter more towards real world type of challenges as opposed to what do tend to be fairly contrived 'interview' style questions. The benefit of the platform you are building is that you can get people do work on larger scope problems that do a better job approximate the real day work of engineers. See as an example in this direction reddit's challenge to aspiring front end developers to build a reddit clone a couple months back: http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/11/reddit-programmer/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/11/reddit-programmer/?utm_sour... Congrats on the launch, good luck
anonymoushn 15y ago
I'd like to be able to use Lua, D, and some Lisp to solve these problems. It seems like supporting these languages is a bit of work with your current model, but if you move to a model like that of Google Code Jam or Facebook Hacker Cup, you instantly support every programming language. These contests procedurally generate input each time the problem is attempted and let the programmer solve it on his own computer within a period of a few minutes.
KateP 15y ago
For me codility rulez!
geuis 15y ago
I like the concept, but these questions are nearly pointless. Great, you get someone in college that loves algorithm puzzles who scores really well. So then what? Exactly what kinds of jobs are these companies presenting? Ops, frontend, backend, marketing, database, CTO, etc? None of that information is present here. This would be very useful if a company could post a set of questions relating to specific job roles. Companies using the service could view the effectiveness of problems being used by other companies and either adopt them for their own interviews, or use them as a metric as to the effectiveness of their questions. Perhaps I'm someone at my company who knows that I need to hire a frontend engineer, but I only have a cursory clue to the kinds of questions I should even be asking for that role. I could examine the most effective questions that other companies use and be able to pick and choose the ones that will best fit the frontend role I'm seeking to fill at my company. This service needs a LOT of polish and re-think before it becomes remotely useful to anyone.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

34 points by rvivek 15y ago

Seems like an interesting website. Will there be issues of the questions and answers getting out? Or will that be obvious in a second round interview?

rvivek 15y ago
Yes, this acts as a pre-screener
- mathattack 15y ago
  In that sense it's probably a better pre-screener than a headhunter who says, "I see they're requesting a C guru, and my Word search found the letter C on your resume..."
  - uzair88 15y ago
    Not only that, it seems like a lot more fun than going to an HR first-round interview!

icomment 15y ago

How is this different from what TopCoder.com has been doing since last 10 years?

tomh- 15y ago

I remember the last HN thread about Interview street they promised more 'real world' problems, instead they added more euler style algorithm quizes. I guess the companies have achieved good results basing hiring decisions on these algorithm quizes, maybe someone from interviewstreet can share some results?

rvivek 15y ago
Hi Tomh, we've received good results on this puzzles. But that said, we had a soft launch on the real world puzzles where we gave a few server instances and EC2 had to go down that day :| We're launching one soon - a real-world hack, given a server.
DanielRibeiro 15y ago
About all these quizzes for hiring, I really found Techcrunch's Why The New Guy Can’t Code[1] quite insightful (at least for startups) and filled with great links. Hiring Developers: You're Doing It Wrong[2] also delves a lot more into this paradigm, showing some hands on experience and show the evolution of their hiring process. This post got a lot of tracking and great comments on HN as well[3]. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/07/why-the-new-guy-cant-code/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/07/why-the-new-guy-cant-code/ [2] http://devinterviews.pen.io/ http://devinterviews.pen.io/ [3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2385424 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2385424

kkowalcz 15y ago

Isn't it similar to codility.com or codeeval.com?

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- rvivek 15y ago
  Hi mtogo, Can you tell me what you don't like about interviewstreet? Happy to fix them.
openmosix 15y ago
Well...also: http://www.coderloop.com http://www.coderloop.com, http://www.gild.com/ http://www.gild.com/, http://uva.onlinejudge.org/ http://uva.onlinejudge.org/, http://www.spoj.pl/ http://www.spoj.pl/, http://www.codechef.com/ http://www.codechef.com/ :) Coderloop has also RealTime problems http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13GaYDoRwOg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13GaYDoRwOg

galactus 15y ago

ah, no love for lisp :(

yuvipanda 15y ago
We just added clojure support today. That counts as a lisp, right?

almost 15y ago

Hackers rejoice? Really? Should hackers "rejoice" at being asked to do silly puzzles for the privilege attending one of your wonderful interviews? Surely it's more like "companies with useless hiring processes rejoice"?

rvivek 15y ago
Hey almost, we're almost getting to put up real-world problems soon! We had a soft launch earlier this week and are working on the feedback. That said, we've got quite a lot of hackers who solve the challenges for fun :)
- almost 15y ago
  Sorry for the negative comment. I think the headline just rubbed me up the wrong way :) I do think I would just be annoyed at being asked to use your site but I'm sure it's going to be useful for others. I do sometimes (quite often actually) do programming exercises for fun, but if you want me to do them not for fun you'd better at the very least be wasting your time as well as mine...
  - rvivek 15y ago
    Thanks @almost for the feedback. The thing is, the blog post isn't written by us (@interviewstreet), it was written by some person who bumped onto our site. Would be careful before posting such dramatic stuff. That said, we're bringing in real-world problems pretty soon. Do check it out :)
  - uzair88 15y ago
    Hi almost, Original blog post author here. Generally speaking, interview processes have undergone a fraction of the innovation that industry has seen. Hence, After learning about Interviewstreet and checking out all the amazing companies they've partnered with, I got a bit excited but I definitely didn't mean to offend :(

mtogo 15y ago

> Heck, I don’t even know how to code! And it shows. A lot, dare i say most, people who actually do code find solving puzzle after ridiculous puzzle for the mere hope of getting an interview very demeaning. There are a ton of sites that do this, like Codility. Interviewstreet is a poor implementation of an already bad concept.

rvivek 15y ago
Oops - it's on similar lines. But, could you let me know what you didn't like about us, so that we could work on it?
- mtogo 15y ago
  Google login killed it for me. I didn't even try to look at more of your challenges. The snippets of challenges on your homepage are almost entirely math problems. Math is an incredibly important part of software dev, but there's more than just math to software and your problems don't reflect that. You overuse the word hacker. It's become a buzzword and you're perpetuating that problem. And finally, your site is built on a flawed concept. Even if you fixed all of these problems, you didn't fix the core problem-- your business does the opposite of it's job because truly great """hackers""" won't jump through these hoops just for the hope of getting an interview. This is just my opinion, of course. I sincerely wish you the best of luck with your business, but it definitely isn't for me.
  - rvivek 15y ago
    Hi Mtogo, got it! We're in the process of launching real-world problems just like the reddit jobs page [http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/fjgit/reddit_is_doubling_the_size_of_its_programming/ http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/fjgit/reddit_is_doubli...] which is not only more than math problems, but more than algorithm challenges itself. We're adding twitter auth / Fb connect as well. Is there a particular reason, why you don't like Google auth?
- anc2020 15y ago
  hi, feedback here: when I got to 100 lines and then clicked "Compile", I needed to select text to scroll down, your lightbox needs something like overflow:auto to bring up scrollbars. likewise, google account means a bounce for me even though I've got one, try to delay showing that was a bit disappointed with the end result - just shows two green boxes, when I really wanted to see the metrics page from your promo video (http://www.interviewstreet.com/recruit/ http://www.interviewstreet.com/recruit/) (that demo is also too well hidden imo). A little more in the program description would help, specifically IRL I'll know a rough target time and how this thing is likely to be used (eg. repeatedly, with mostly small numbers, etc.) Also, the UI is annoying, split into 3 vertical panes: Problem | Code editor | Compile Output Also randomise the test cases... int getNumberOfPrimes(int N) { return N == 100 ? 25 : 78498; }

diN0bot 15y ago

the nice thing about contributions to open source is that it fits into a larger picture: communication, tests, users.

rvivek 15y ago
we're building a profile which would have only hacker stuff associated with it [stackoverflow, github, topcoder, etc.] serving as a neat link to a hacker if he/she wants to apply

tks 15y ago

Clearly this type of service isn't going to be the only way developers get jobs, and yes it may be somewhat insulting to people further along their careers to make them do this, but for someone starting out who doesn't have a large portfolio of achievement, or (even more importantly) doesn't have the degrees or college backgrounds that have increasingly become the primary metric for determining who gets entry level software engineering jobs (despite the ample evidence that these metric have minimal to any correlation with programming ability or productivity) this seems like a potentially life changing type of service. Anything that takes steps towards rationalizing the hiring process in our industry should be rejoiced. And if there are other services trying to do similar work too all the better- it's a big problem. That said it would be great if you all did work on trying to push the meter more towards real world type of challenges as opposed to what do tend to be fairly contrived 'interview' style questions. The benefit of the platform you are building is that you can get people do work on larger scope problems that do a better job approximate the real day work of engineers. See as an example in this direction reddit's challenge to aspiring front end developers to build a reddit clone a couple months back: http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/11/reddit-programmer/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/11/reddit-programmer/?utm_sour... Congrats on the launch, good luck

anonymoushn 15y ago

I'd like to be able to use Lua, D, and some Lisp to solve these problems. It seems like supporting these languages is a bit of work with your current model, but if you move to a model like that of Google Code Jam or Facebook Hacker Cup, you instantly support every programming language. These contests procedurally generate input each time the problem is attempted and let the programmer solve it on his own computer within a period of a few minutes.

KateP 15y ago

For me codility rulez!

geuis 15y ago

I like the concept, but these questions are nearly pointless. Great, you get someone in college that loves algorithm puzzles who scores really well. So then what? Exactly what kinds of jobs are these companies presenting? Ops, frontend, backend, marketing, database, CTO, etc? None of that information is present here. This would be very useful if a company could post a set of questions relating to specific job roles. Companies using the service could view the effectiveness of problems being used by other companies and either adopt them for their own interviews, or use them as a metric as to the effectiveness of their questions. Perhaps I'm someone at my company who knows that I need to hire a frontend engineer, but I only have a cursory clue to the kinds of questions I should even be asking for that role. I could examine the most effective questions that other companies use and be able to pick and choose the ones that will best fit the frontend role I'm seeking to fill at my company. This service needs a LOT of polish and re-think before it becomes remotely useful to anyone.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]