3 ms·

What a strangely adversarial comment. In my experience, I can gather more information about a candidate's ability in just 15 minutes talking 1 on 1 with them ra

What a strangely adversarial comment. In my experience, I can gather more information about a candidate's ability in just 15 minutes talking 1 on 1 with them rather than hours of Leetcode busywork. Funneling candidates through an annoying, needlessly rigid, and blatantly time consuming process is not a good thing, and probably leads to perfectly qualified people being denied; a system that optimizes for 'signals' that should not exist in the first place.

chillacy 5y ago
To be fair the parent commenter's post doesn't claim that this process is even remotely efficient, only that it's reality and they find it easy to game. Also more meta-level commentary, I find the word "should" interesting, as in general I have found that comments on HN which contain this word reflect a level of frustration that X is X instead of Y, because "X should be Y". Someone else may come along and say "X should be Z", and all the meanwhile, X is X.
- danaris 5y ago
  The problem comes when a majority of us agree that X is not fit for purpose as it is, but we still get people saying "X is X, why are we talking about Y and Z?"
stadium 5y ago
I don't see anything adversarial, it is just someone describing how they play the interview game. There's a whole leetcode culture on sites like teamblind.com. A lot of people are happy to play the game. Not my cup of tea either, but to each their own.
barry-cotter 5y ago
Even if you're correct about your ability to sniff out talent you don't scale, and you can't be implemented by someone with eight hours of training, or replaced by automated testing, or a pencil and paper test. Legible processes that are known to work to within some tolerance are great for large organisations. If you can tell if someone's good within fifteen minutes of talking to them you should be able to get rich by setting up a software consulting company or startup with other people's false negative rejects. That's equivalent to being able to take mine tailings and spit out gold.
friedman23 5y ago
What does adversarial mean in this context? That I disagree with the original poster? > In my experience, I can gather more information about a candidate's ability in just 15 minutes talking 1 on 1 with them rather than hours of Leetcode busywork This is your perspective as someone doing hiring. My perspective is from someone being hired. I really don't think leetcode is that difficult all things considered so a system based on leetcode is just not that bad in my opinion. It's really not that difficult, there is a set of 15 or so algorithms that are all 40 or so lines long and you just need to memorize them to the point of instant recall. Now you can get hired almost anywhere.
koonsolo 5y ago
So in those 15 minutes, how do you know this person is able to write good code? How do you know they are not just riding on the success of their former colleagues, and bullshitting you with high level responses they heard their colleages talk about? How many people did you interview and hire? Just asking since I interview and hire a lot of people, and find it very hard to asses someones capabilities.
- usrbinbash 5y ago
  That question works both ways: In those few LC questions, how do I know the person can write good, maintainable, reliable software with a team of engineers and didn't just learn for the test? Yes, interviews are hard. Assessing a persons capabilities is a difficult job.
yongjik 5y ago
> In my experience, I can gather more information about a candidate's ability in just 15 minutes talking 1 on 1 with them rather than hours of Leetcode busywork. You think you can gather more information. I doubt that your decision is more accurate than leetcode interviews on average.
jasonpeacock 5y ago
I've done over 800 interviews, and I call bullshit on this. I've spent 30min talking to candidates about their projects, experience, tech they used, choices made, etc. and been super excited and positive about them. Then I ask them to find the intersection of two lists in better than O(n^2) and they completely fail to write functional code in their preferred language in the next 30 minutes. This isn't even "leetcode" level of challenge. If I'm hiring you to be a professional software engineer for 6 figures income to spend 8-10 hours a day designing, writing, and debugging code, you need to be able to write code. The disparity between the conversation and the coding performance can be significant, and both need to be evaluated. If there's a better way to evaluate if someone can write code, I'm open to try it. But take home tests, portfolios, pair-programming, "a day in the life", etc. all have their problems and disadvantage different groups.
jrs235 5y ago
Aren't these shitty interview processes just gates and proxies for commitment and a dark pattern per se? If someone is willing to do the work and endure the shitty process to get the job then they must be committed to get the job and will likely be committed to keep the job. That commitment can be exploited. It's like Nigerian Prince scams, those willing to jump through the hoops are more easily to convince and get jumping through future hoops. It's also likely they will rationalize that their job is great because they had to do all this shit to get it. The employer could think "if we can get their foot in the door and convince them to fully enter the room even though we make it difficult to fully open the door, they're less likely to leave and more likely to fight to stay in the room." It keeps uncommitted folks out, but doesn't necessarily filter for competent people, just committed people. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing.

chillacy 5y ago

To be fair the parent commenter's post doesn't claim that this process is even remotely efficient, only that it's reality and they find it easy to game. Also more meta-level commentary, I find the word "should" interesting, as in general I have found that comments on HN which contain this word reflect a level of frustration that X is X instead of Y, because "X should be Y". Someone else may come along and say "X should be Z", and all the meanwhile, X is X.

danaris 5y ago
The problem comes when a majority of us agree that X is not fit for purpose as it is, but we still get people saying "X is X, why are we talking about Y and Z?"

stadium 5y ago

I don't see anything adversarial, it is just someone describing how they play the interview game. There's a whole leetcode culture on sites like teamblind.com. A lot of people are happy to play the game. Not my cup of tea either, but to each their own.

barry-cotter 5y ago

Even if you're correct about your ability to sniff out talent you don't scale, and you can't be implemented by someone with eight hours of training, or replaced by automated testing, or a pencil and paper test. Legible processes that are known to work to within some tolerance are great for large organisations. If you can tell if someone's good within fifteen minutes of talking to them you should be able to get rich by setting up a software consulting company or startup with other people's false negative rejects. That's equivalent to being able to take mine tailings and spit out gold.

friedman23 5y ago

What does adversarial mean in this context? That I disagree with the original poster? > In my experience, I can gather more information about a candidate's ability in just 15 minutes talking 1 on 1 with them rather than hours of Leetcode busywork This is your perspective as someone doing hiring. My perspective is from someone being hired. I really don't think leetcode is that difficult all things considered so a system based on leetcode is just not that bad in my opinion. It's really not that difficult, there is a set of 15 or so algorithms that are all 40 or so lines long and you just need to memorize them to the point of instant recall. Now you can get hired almost anywhere.

koonsolo 5y ago

So in those 15 minutes, how do you know this person is able to write good code? How do you know they are not just riding on the success of their former colleagues, and bullshitting you with high level responses they heard their colleages talk about? How many people did you interview and hire? Just asking since I interview and hire a lot of people, and find it very hard to asses someones capabilities.

usrbinbash 5y ago
That question works both ways: In those few LC questions, how do I know the person can write good, maintainable, reliable software with a team of engineers and didn't just learn for the test? Yes, interviews are hard. Assessing a persons capabilities is a difficult job.

yongjik 5y ago

> In my experience, I can gather more information about a candidate's ability in just 15 minutes talking 1 on 1 with them rather than hours of Leetcode busywork. You think you can gather more information. I doubt that your decision is more accurate than leetcode interviews on average.

jasonpeacock 5y ago

I've done over 800 interviews, and I call bullshit on this. I've spent 30min talking to candidates about their projects, experience, tech they used, choices made, etc. and been super excited and positive about them. Then I ask them to find the intersection of two lists in better than O(n^2) and they completely fail to write functional code in their preferred language in the next 30 minutes. This isn't even "leetcode" level of challenge. If I'm hiring you to be a professional software engineer for 6 figures income to spend 8-10 hours a day designing, writing, and debugging code, you need to be able to write code. The disparity between the conversation and the coding performance can be significant, and both need to be evaluated. If there's a better way to evaluate if someone can write code, I'm open to try it. But take home tests, portfolios, pair-programming, "a day in the life", etc. all have their problems and disadvantage different groups.

jrs235 5y ago

Aren't these shitty interview processes just gates and proxies for commitment and a dark pattern per se? If someone is willing to do the work and endure the shitty process to get the job then they must be committed to get the job and will likely be committed to keep the job. That commitment can be exploited. It's like Nigerian Prince scams, those willing to jump through the hoops are more easily to convince and get jumping through future hoops. It's also likely they will rationalize that their job is great because they had to do all this shit to get it. The employer could think "if we can get their foot in the door and convince them to fully enter the room even though we make it difficult to fully open the door, they're less likely to leave and more likely to fight to stay in the room." It keeps uncommitted folks out, but doesn't necessarily filter for competent people, just committed people. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing.