4 ms·

Resumes are not as dangerous as technical tests. 90% of top companies have terrible technical tests which select mediocre candidates and pass up on excellent ca

Resumes are not as dangerous as technical tests. 90% of top companies have terrible technical tests which select mediocre candidates and pass up on excellent candidates. Technical tests with time limits are the worst; this is in part because if the candidate doing the test is more skilled than the engineers who designed the test, the candidate might take longer than anticipated to complete the task because they've thought to do some additional sub-tasks which the people who designed the test did not anticipate and which they would not appreciate or understand. For example, extra logic related to error handling and security will take more time to implement but are critical in evaluating a developer's skill level. It's happened to me multiple times that I did a test but could not complete it within the allocated time. Then explaining to the engineers why it took longer to complete just doesn't register because they don't seem to understand how important this error handling logic is or why it's important to reset the state of the system between each test case. I usually don't insist much because if they are like this during the interview process, I can be sure that they will be even worse if I start working there. It's sad because many of these jobs are highly paid and would provide credibility on the resume - At least until the industry figures out that the financial success of a company is usually not correlated with tech talent; certainly not the kinds of companies which solve every problem by throwing 100 engineers at it... That's just brute force; it doesn't require much skill. Another issue with technical tests is that some developers with a background at a famous SV company will expect you to do things a certain, very specific way (based on how the famous company did it) and not realize (due to lack of other industry experience) that there are multiple valid ways to achieve the same (or better) results for the specific use case which is being discussed. They are overfitted to their past role at the famous company.

shagie 4y ago
> ... 90% of top companies have terrible technical tests which select mediocre candidates and pass up on excellent candidates. This is one of the confusing parts of interviews. They are not necessarily designed to select the best candidate, but rather the least risky candidate. It is quite possible to have a technically excellent candidate who would be a very risky hire and the interview process is set up to avoid hiring that candidate.
- cryptica 4y ago
  This sounds like kicking the can down the road because the quality of technical tests seems to keep getting worse each year. All these supposedly low-risk hires have caused the quality of engineering to decline over the years which caused a decline in the hiring process which creates a vicious cycle. The risk actually builds up in the long run. It's not surprising why security is becoming such a big issue for big companies nowadays. If you always hire below your current level of talent (I.e. the apparent 'safe zone'), overall talent will keep declining. Unfortunately, developers in many companies feel uncomfortable hiring people who might be more skilled than them because they don't want to risk being displaced from their current position or introduce more competition for future promotions. I've seen it happen from the other side where I gave my approval for a candidate who was very good but they were rejected in favor of a different candidate who was below average. It was obvious that the second one was not as good but I suspect that my colleagues may have felt threatened by the first one.

shagie 4y ago

> ... 90% of top companies have terrible technical tests which select mediocre candidates and pass up on excellent candidates. This is one of the confusing parts of interviews. They are not necessarily designed to select the best candidate, but rather the least risky candidate. It is quite possible to have a technically excellent candidate who would be a very risky hire and the interview process is set up to avoid hiring that candidate.

cryptica 4y ago
This sounds like kicking the can down the road because the quality of technical tests seems to keep getting worse each year. All these supposedly low-risk hires have caused the quality of engineering to decline over the years which caused a decline in the hiring process which creates a vicious cycle. The risk actually builds up in the long run. It's not surprising why security is becoming such a big issue for big companies nowadays. If you always hire below your current level of talent (I.e. the apparent 'safe zone'), overall talent will keep declining. Unfortunately, developers in many companies feel uncomfortable hiring people who might be more skilled than them because they don't want to risk being displaced from their current position or introduce more competition for future promotions. I've seen it happen from the other side where I gave my approval for a candidate who was very good but they were rejected in favor of a different candidate who was below average. It was obvious that the second one was not as good but I suspect that my colleagues may have felt threatened by the first one.