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Not at all surprised by this. I worked for a YC company. I've interviewed with over a dozen of them over the years. One thing that YC companies don't do very we

Not at all surprised by this. I worked for a YC company. I've interviewed with over a dozen of them over the years. One thing that YC companies don't do very well is interview/hire. All but one (the one I worked for) went down the typical broken path of 6+ hours of total interview time, including multiple live coding sessions with pedantic exercises (the one's we've all come to know well - algorithm regurgitation), the ominous "culture fit" calls, and over-emphasis on equity. I've found it surprising that YC doesn't better coach founders/companies on how to be more efficient and more innovative with their hiring processes.

switchupcb 4y ago
Michael Seibel recommends that all hires raise the average IQ score of the company. Yet they also recommend that startups be run by outliers? It doesn't work logically. Regardless, many programmers (technical founders) believe that LeetCode performance is correlated with IQ Score (since Google started using DS&A).
- tedmiston 4y ago
  It sounds comforting in theory but expensive in practice. That advice has long been old startup lore even before Michael was at YC. But wrt literal IQ (I recall the advice being "smarter" than the average person in the room, not IQ specifically), I think the intended meaning is more "cognitive ability" or i.e., ability to learn quickly. I think this is why most early stage startups can do well with mostly strong junior engineers and a lesser percentage of seniors to oversee the cloud engineering concerns like scale, architecture, infrastructure, security, etc.
- gedy 4y ago
  I'd rather a real IQ test vs leetcode cramming games and having junior coders being the gatekeepers anyways.
- avgDev 4y ago
  I score above average on IQ tests. Today, I would fail an algorithm interview. I have been building business apps. I can take an idea and make it a feature from 0 to database/api/web app. I made a decision to just suck it up next year and practice algorithms. I have no problem getting offers from average companies. However, all the big dogs want data structures and algorithms. It doesn't feel right for me, but oh well.
tedmiston 4y ago
There have been a few YC companies to reinvent / optimize / improve the tech hiring process, such as Triplebyte. In theory, they could be a better approach. In practice, my experience has been that many companies don't actively monitor and interests go unseen or trivially dismissed. I had companies like Dropbox mark my interest on Triplebyte as "no relevant experience" after viewing my profile for less than a minute and for which I've actually been doing and have 5+ years of relevant experience.
- eclipticplane 4y ago
  I view the Triplebytes of the world as negative signal on companies. They aren't willing to spend time coding with candidates? The core thing I'm being hired to do? If they don't have the time due to number of candidates (common reason), _they have a screening/sourcing problem_ not a _technical exercise problem_. For me, watching how someone solves a problem is just as important as the actual solution if I'm going to be working with them on a daily basis.
  - tedmiston 4y ago
    A lot of Triplebyte's value as a candidate is in being able to skip past screener type calls / the very earliest stages. I don't think it is at the point where they entirely replace technical interviews.
  - andrew_ 4y ago
    > watching how someone solves a problem is just as important as the actual solution I've seen this misnomer hundreds of times over the course of a 20 year career. It's a comfort-falacy. If someone interviews well they're going to give you a false sense of comfort and security in their ability. Interviewing well doesn't translate directly to working well. Interview processes in tech are overly hostile to the candidate - and I mean hostile in the sense that they apply unneeded pressure in condensed periods of time that don't reflect the majority of the work environment. Yes, we want people who can perform in crunch time, but that should not represent the bulk of work and if it does, there's another problem (I digress). Another point that people seem all too eager to ignore is that how someone problem solves now is not as important as their potential or ability to improve and learn. A candidate that is excellent in interviews may not have the capacity for learning beyond what they're being run through in the interview. I've personally seen this happen at least a dozen times. If one thinks a 30 minute coding exercise if giving them a good sense of a candidate's ability in both writing code and problem solving, they're part of the problem with hiring in tech.
solarmist 4y ago
Unsurprisingly since most of them are trying to figure it out as they go and don't realize how much of their time they should be devoting to this until much later.

switchupcb 4y ago

Michael Seibel recommends that all hires raise the average IQ score of the company. Yet they also recommend that startups be run by outliers? It doesn't work logically. Regardless, many programmers (technical founders) believe that LeetCode performance is correlated with IQ Score (since Google started using DS&A).

tedmiston 4y ago
It sounds comforting in theory but expensive in practice. That advice has long been old startup lore even before Michael was at YC. But wrt literal IQ (I recall the advice being "smarter" than the average person in the room, not IQ specifically), I think the intended meaning is more "cognitive ability" or i.e., ability to learn quickly. I think this is why most early stage startups can do well with mostly strong junior engineers and a lesser percentage of seniors to oversee the cloud engineering concerns like scale, architecture, infrastructure, security, etc.
gedy 4y ago
I'd rather a real IQ test vs leetcode cramming games and having junior coders being the gatekeepers anyways.
avgDev 4y ago
I score above average on IQ tests. Today, I would fail an algorithm interview. I have been building business apps. I can take an idea and make it a feature from 0 to database/api/web app. I made a decision to just suck it up next year and practice algorithms. I have no problem getting offers from average companies. However, all the big dogs want data structures and algorithms. It doesn't feel right for me, but oh well.

tedmiston 4y ago

There have been a few YC companies to reinvent / optimize / improve the tech hiring process, such as Triplebyte. In theory, they could be a better approach. In practice, my experience has been that many companies don't actively monitor and interests go unseen or trivially dismissed. I had companies like Dropbox mark my interest on Triplebyte as "no relevant experience" after viewing my profile for less than a minute and for which I've actually been doing and have 5+ years of relevant experience.

eclipticplane 4y ago
I view the Triplebytes of the world as negative signal on companies. They aren't willing to spend time coding with candidates? The core thing I'm being hired to do? If they don't have the time due to number of candidates (common reason), _they have a screening/sourcing problem_ not a _technical exercise problem_. For me, watching how someone solves a problem is just as important as the actual solution if I'm going to be working with them on a daily basis.
- tedmiston 4y ago
  A lot of Triplebyte's value as a candidate is in being able to skip past screener type calls / the very earliest stages. I don't think it is at the point where they entirely replace technical interviews.
- andrew_ 4y ago
  > watching how someone solves a problem is just as important as the actual solution I've seen this misnomer hundreds of times over the course of a 20 year career. It's a comfort-falacy. If someone interviews well they're going to give you a false sense of comfort and security in their ability. Interviewing well doesn't translate directly to working well. Interview processes in tech are overly hostile to the candidate - and I mean hostile in the sense that they apply unneeded pressure in condensed periods of time that don't reflect the majority of the work environment. Yes, we want people who can perform in crunch time, but that should not represent the bulk of work and if it does, there's another problem (I digress). Another point that people seem all too eager to ignore is that how someone problem solves now is not as important as their potential or ability to improve and learn. A candidate that is excellent in interviews may not have the capacity for learning beyond what they're being run through in the interview. I've personally seen this happen at least a dozen times. If one thinks a 30 minute coding exercise if giving them a good sense of a candidate's ability in both writing code and problem solving, they're part of the problem with hiring in tech.

solarmist 4y ago

Unsurprisingly since most of them are trying to figure it out as they go and don't realize how much of their time they should be devoting to this until much later.