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The problem is that this has become the primary and sole measure by which we're judging candidates. This leads to a pathological condition at many large tech c

by lumost 5y ago

The problem is that this has become the primary and sole measure by which we're judging candidates. This leads to a pathological condition at many large tech companies where the outputs of an engineer do not matter for their career. Until you hit the Senior/Staff level, no one really gives a crap if you were editing yaml files, toiling on a legacy app, or building the highest scale app on the planet. It just matters that you can pass the standard tech interview. Now that people understand this, they are starting to optimize their careers at a company to simply do the minimum until they move externally for higher pay. You can bounce between reasonable tech companies doing literally nothing for higher and higher pay by simply switching once per year. I suspect that we'll see a steady increase in attention paid for deliverables and a dialing down of the leetcode arms race over the next 5 years. The signal to noise ratio of this interview type is falling.

riku_iki 5y ago
> Until you hit the Senior/Staff level, no one really gives a crap if you were editing yaml files, toiling on a legacy app, or building the highest scale app on the planet. It just matters that you can pass the standard tech interview. But big tech all have quarterly OKRs, performance plans and terminations for low performers, and managers/leads are interested to have strong contributors in team to deliver results, and let low performers to go..
- sedev 5y ago
  Please clarify as to whether you are speaking sarcastically or earnestly in this post.
- lumost 5y ago
  At big tech this takes time. In some companies a lot of time. It’s also typically done as a comparative process across engineers. If half the team is simply doing interview prep it’s unlikely management fires half the team.
- notacoward 5y ago
  > big tech all have quarterly OKRs, performance plans and terminations for low performers ...none of which information is shared with future employers. To do so is even considered a legally actionable violation of privacy in most cases.
SmellTheGlove 5y ago
This is correct. Once you have an industry built around prepping for a test, interview, whatever, the candidates that you end up hiring are those that optimized for the interview. At that point you better be damn sure that interview process is the very best predictor of success for the actual work you need done. Otherwise you end up with a whole lot of the wrong people, who as you put it, can collect a paycheck to get ready for the next round of interviews. I think what would work better is to get away from leetcode and do more internally developed design and coding exercises that are representations of the kind of things you’d see at that company. Yeah for FAANG type companies who are hiring thousands of engineers per year, maybe you need the leetcode style standardization in order to scale. But for everyone else that cargo culted these processes and doesn’t need to hire 5 engineers per day, it’d be great to step back and actually consider what you want to evaluate for.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- garcelledaly 5y ago
Apocryphon 5y ago
Reminds me of a comment: > Unless you've made it to your "endgame" company that you're happy to stay at for a while, I feel investing anything more than the bare minimum to get your assigned work done is worth less than just grinding leetcode and otherwise studying for interviews. Doing an actual good job, above and beyond, is not going to be worth much when you're looking for your next job. Thus we're now seeing the rise of Professional Interviewers or Professional Leetcoders. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25298748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25298748
jjav 5y ago
> The problem is that this has become the primary and sole measure by which we're judging candidates. This leads to a pathological condition at many large tech companies where the outputs of an engineer do not matter for their career. Very much this. With interviewing having become a second career in an unrelated field, people will choose whether to spend most of their energy in working the job or preparing for the next interview rounds in a year. I always interview people based on the actual job they've been doing (based on what they claim on the resume). I don't care how good you are at leetcode because that's not what the job will be about. I care how and what you've been doing in your current and past jobs. So we talk about that instead.

by lumost 5y ago

riku_iki 5y ago

> Until you hit the Senior/Staff level, no one really gives a crap if you were editing yaml files, toiling on a legacy app, or building the highest scale app on the planet. It just matters that you can pass the standard tech interview. But big tech all have quarterly OKRs, performance plans and terminations for low performers, and managers/leads are interested to have strong contributors in team to deliver results, and let low performers to go..

sedev 5y ago
Please clarify as to whether you are speaking sarcastically or earnestly in this post.
lumost 5y ago
At big tech this takes time. In some companies a lot of time. It’s also typically done as a comparative process across engineers. If half the team is simply doing interview prep it’s unlikely management fires half the team.
notacoward 5y ago
> big tech all have quarterly OKRs, performance plans and terminations for low performers ...none of which information is shared with future employers. To do so is even considered a legally actionable violation of privacy in most cases.

SmellTheGlove 5y ago

This is correct. Once you have an industry built around prepping for a test, interview, whatever, the candidates that you end up hiring are those that optimized for the interview. At that point you better be damn sure that interview process is the very best predictor of success for the actual work you need done. Otherwise you end up with a whole lot of the wrong people, who as you put it, can collect a paycheck to get ready for the next round of interviews. I think what would work better is to get away from leetcode and do more internally developed design and coding exercises that are representations of the kind of things you’d see at that company. Yeah for FAANG type companies who are hiring thousands of engineers per year, maybe you need the leetcode style standardization in order to scale. But for everyone else that cargo culted these processes and doesn’t need to hire 5 engineers per day, it’d be great to step back and actually consider what you want to evaluate for.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
garcelledaly 5y ago

Apocryphon 5y ago

Reminds me of a comment: > Unless you've made it to your "endgame" company that you're happy to stay at for a while, I feel investing anything more than the bare minimum to get your assigned work done is worth less than just grinding leetcode and otherwise studying for interviews. Doing an actual good job, above and beyond, is not going to be worth much when you're looking for your next job. Thus we're now seeing the rise of Professional Interviewers or Professional Leetcoders. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25298748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25298748

jjav 5y ago

> The problem is that this has become the primary and sole measure by which we're judging candidates. This leads to a pathological condition at many large tech companies where the outputs of an engineer do not matter for their career. Very much this. With interviewing having become a second career in an unrelated field, people will choose whether to spend most of their energy in working the job or preparing for the next interview rounds in a year. I always interview people based on the actual job they've been doing (based on what they claim on the resume). I don't care how good you are at leetcode because that's not what the job will be about. I care how and what you've been doing in your current and past jobs. So we talk about that instead.