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The author exhibits huge confirmation bias in their example of an otherwise good applicant stumbling on a technical test. They assume without any doubt that thi

The author exhibits huge confirmation bias in their example of an otherwise good applicant stumbling on a technical test. They assume without any doubt that this means they narrowly avoided a mishire. Testing for simple algorithms knowledge biases for recently graduated people who have these in their active memory. Experienced people rarely encounter these details in practice and are more likely to have their heads full of deep knowledge no one in your organization knows about. If you screen these people out, it will be quite literally your loss. Technological fields are blue oceans where only junior people spend significant time near the safe harbors. Experienced people have sailed far away and seen lands you don't know about yet. People also have this inherent bias of treating everything they know well as some common knowledge everyone else knows as well, or at least should know. This bias of underestimating the vastness of the field is largely because of inexperience. People who haven't seen how deep it goes are liable to think that the basic university exercises are the important things.

jrjarrett 5y ago
Yes, exactly-this is what I wanted to get across in my comment down post.
marssaxman 5y ago
> Testing for simple algorithms knowledge biases for recently graduated people who have these in their active memory. I have never understood this argument. With 29 years of experience, I am about as far from being a "recently graduated person" as anyone could be - in fact, I never graduated at all! Not only did I drop out after three semesters, I never took so much as one computer science class. I have, according to your assumptions, never had algorithms knowledge in my active memory - and yet, these sorts of questions have never been an obstacle for me. How can this be? I think many people must mistakenly believe that interview questions are the same sort of questions one might find on a university test. They appear to believe that the interviewer expects them to regurgitate a correct answer, on the spot, from memory, and that their suitability for the job is rated based on the speed of recall. That would be absurd, of course. If anyone is actually interviewing people that way, they're doing a terrible job. I have never answered these questions that way - and, when I ask such questions in an interview, I never expect them to be answered that way. Rather, the point of an algorithms problem is that you have to think your way through it. I solve them in the same way I would solve any problem I encountered in my day-to-day programming work: by thinking about it, poking around at different approaches, roughing out a simplest-possible approach, then refining toward a more efficient process. If I am interviewing you, and I pose you an algorithms problem, I'm hoping you will not have memorized an answer. If you already know the answer, your skill at writing it out on the whiteboard tells me nothing. The whole point of asking you to think your way through an algorithms problem is that I want to see how you think. I don't even care whether you find your way through to a correct answer in the time allotted, so long as I can see that you know how to think about a problem, work your way toward a solution, and communicate about your process as you go. The common idea that experienced devs ought to struggle with algorithms questions dismays me. What are people doing that does not require them to maintain basic problem-solving skills? Or... perhaps... is this all a big misunderstanding...
- gcheong 5y ago
  That’s how it should work but it seems to have largely gravitated toward, not rewarding memorization exactly, but definitely pattern recognition gained from drilling on a wide arrangement of leetcode style problems, and as much as they say they want to understand your thought process your performance is heavily weighted towards whether or not you arrive at the optimal solution in the time given, not how well you might explain how you might get there even if your code is ultimately lacking due to time constraints.
- bradlys 5y ago
  How often do you interview and how often are you doing LC interviews? There’s no real time to “see how one thinks” when the expectation is to pump out two medium answers in <45 minutes. You’re basically just reading the question, going through a couple hoops, and then implementing/explaining the algorithm. There’s barely any time to “see how one thinks” in these modern interviews. Maybe you can show three problems you were asked recently and how long you had to solve them.
  - marssaxman 5y ago
    I have never encountered what I would consider to be a "leetcode interview"; that is the essence of my bafflement when people talk as though it is simply The Way Tech Interviews Are Done. Perhaps I have simply been lucky, but my luck has held for a very long time, and that makes me want a better explanation. When I hear people describe these "leetcode interviews", they often describe a process which sounds very much like being given a normal interview problem, except they assume, for reasons which have never been clear to me, that they must have a memorized answer at hand in order to succeed. From my non-college-trained perspective, this seems like the sort of misunderstanding one might easily make if one attempted to apply years of practice with school exams to a new environment. Perhaps I have encountered "leetcode interviews", and simply didn't experience them the same way? Or perhaps the "leetcode thing" genuinely is a different style of interview, which has grown up in a sector of the industry I don't care for. That might explain why it seems ubiquitous to some and nonexistent to others... How often do I interview - ? Well, whenever I might want a new job, I suppose. I'm not sure what you mean; you seem to be implying that people interview recreationally? Last time would have been three-odd years ago, and I certainly did not bother to write down the problems which would have been involved.
bcbrown 5y ago
> Technological fields are blue oceans where only junior people spend significant time near the safe harbors. Experienced people have sailed far away and seen lands you don't know about yet. I really like this analogy.

jrjarrett 5y ago

Yes, exactly-this is what I wanted to get across in my comment down post.

marssaxman 5y ago

> Testing for simple algorithms knowledge biases for recently graduated people who have these in their active memory. I have never understood this argument. With 29 years of experience, I am about as far from being a "recently graduated person" as anyone could be - in fact, I never graduated at all! Not only did I drop out after three semesters, I never took so much as one computer science class. I have, according to your assumptions, never had algorithms knowledge in my active memory - and yet, these sorts of questions have never been an obstacle for me. How can this be? I think many people must mistakenly believe that interview questions are the same sort of questions one might find on a university test. They appear to believe that the interviewer expects them to regurgitate a correct answer, on the spot, from memory, and that their suitability for the job is rated based on the speed of recall. That would be absurd, of course. If anyone is actually interviewing people that way, they're doing a terrible job. I have never answered these questions that way - and, when I ask such questions in an interview, I never expect them to be answered that way. Rather, the point of an algorithms problem is that you have to think your way through it. I solve them in the same way I would solve any problem I encountered in my day-to-day programming work: by thinking about it, poking around at different approaches, roughing out a simplest-possible approach, then refining toward a more efficient process. If I am interviewing you, and I pose you an algorithms problem, I'm hoping you will not have memorized an answer. If you already know the answer, your skill at writing it out on the whiteboard tells me nothing. The whole point of asking you to think your way through an algorithms problem is that I want to see how you think. I don't even care whether you find your way through to a correct answer in the time allotted, so long as I can see that you know how to think about a problem, work your way toward a solution, and communicate about your process as you go. The common idea that experienced devs ought to struggle with algorithms questions dismays me. What are people doing that does not require them to maintain basic problem-solving skills? Or... perhaps... is this all a big misunderstanding...

gcheong 5y ago
That’s how it should work but it seems to have largely gravitated toward, not rewarding memorization exactly, but definitely pattern recognition gained from drilling on a wide arrangement of leetcode style problems, and as much as they say they want to understand your thought process your performance is heavily weighted towards whether or not you arrive at the optimal solution in the time given, not how well you might explain how you might get there even if your code is ultimately lacking due to time constraints.
bradlys 5y ago
How often do you interview and how often are you doing LC interviews? There’s no real time to “see how one thinks” when the expectation is to pump out two medium answers in <45 minutes. You’re basically just reading the question, going through a couple hoops, and then implementing/explaining the algorithm. There’s barely any time to “see how one thinks” in these modern interviews. Maybe you can show three problems you were asked recently and how long you had to solve them.
- marssaxman 5y ago
  I have never encountered what I would consider to be a "leetcode interview"; that is the essence of my bafflement when people talk as though it is simply The Way Tech Interviews Are Done. Perhaps I have simply been lucky, but my luck has held for a very long time, and that makes me want a better explanation. When I hear people describe these "leetcode interviews", they often describe a process which sounds very much like being given a normal interview problem, except they assume, for reasons which have never been clear to me, that they must have a memorized answer at hand in order to succeed. From my non-college-trained perspective, this seems like the sort of misunderstanding one might easily make if one attempted to apply years of practice with school exams to a new environment. Perhaps I have encountered "leetcode interviews", and simply didn't experience them the same way? Or perhaps the "leetcode thing" genuinely is a different style of interview, which has grown up in a sector of the industry I don't care for. That might explain why it seems ubiquitous to some and nonexistent to others... How often do I interview - ? Well, whenever I might want a new job, I suppose. I'm not sure what you mean; you seem to be implying that people interview recreationally? Last time would have been three-odd years ago, and I certainly did not bother to write down the problems which would have been involved.

bcbrown 5y ago

> Technological fields are blue oceans where only junior people spend significant time near the safe harbors. Experienced people have sailed far away and seen lands you don't know about yet. I really like this analogy.