4 ms·

I can relate to the hiatus situation and "one dislike". I'm employed right now, for about 1 and half years, but there was a time that I tried to switch path fr

I can relate to the hiatus situation and "one dislike". I'm employed right now, for about 1 and half years, but there was a time that I tried to switch path from Web/Mobile developer to full backend developer, and in this attempt I got a job interview for a digital bank; I had everything checked out and expected to continue to step 2, even a friend of mine who works there thought I'd pass the process easily, but to our surprise, I didn't make it to the next step, and when I asked the interviewer for feedback they gave me a bullet list with just one bullet saying that I didn't "explore business logic much"! It didn't make any sense! I found it preposterous and insulting, to say the least. When I ask for feedback, I want to know what are you looking for and why I wasn't compatible with your position.

yuuho 4y ago
That's standard. Honest feedback can get them in legal trouble. Making up a BS reason is expected if somebody's personality was really off-putting. Nobody is ever going to give you honest feedback about that.
arp242 4y ago
It's more or less impossible to review non-trivial code without feedback from the author (i.e. have a conversation) outside of cases where it's just truly obviously awful. Often stuff just gets rejected for "I wouldn't have written it like this". Okay, fine; but that doesn't mean I can't write it like that. But if I don't know what you want... The reason people don't give concrete feedback is because there often just isn't a clear one beyond "I don't like it".
- Mizoguchi 4y ago
  Software Development and related careers are the only ones where grown up adults with years of experience in their fields are still treated like college students in the interview process. It doesn't matter if you wrote a library 15 years ago still being used today by hundreds of thousands of developers around the world some even working for the company interviewing you. Were you responsible for designing and building QA systems used by Boeing and NASA? That's cool, now please write a bubble sort algorithm on a whiteboard and then guess how many cars there are in the US (explain your thought process). Imagine how ridiculous and insulting it would be for a seasoned lawyer, a doctor or a CPA, to endure this nonsensical, pointless scrutiny when interviewing for a job. But somehow in tech this is not only common but accepted by job seekers as normal.
  - nytesky 4y ago
    I think you actually explain why these interviews are structured this way. Tech is pretty ageist and obsessed with youth, and in fact stodgy aerospace like Boeing and NASA are kind of held in contempt and derided for making peanuts. These interviews are a good way to filter (and even discourage) older applicants, since the cultural fit for the task IS someone recently in college.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    > Imagine how ridiculous and insulting it would be for a seasoned lawyer, a doctor or a CPA, to endure this nonsensical, pointless scrutiny when interviewing for a job. Good examples, because lawyers, doctors, and CPAs all have formal exams and licensures, and a board that certifies that you have the qualifications to do your job. So when a hospital interviews a doctor, they don't have to go over first year anatomy to understand whether the doctor knows where the appendix is. The process certifies a base standard of knowledge. Software engineers don't have this, and every time it's brought up in conversation, it gets poo-poo'ed. So, 1. Companies have no idea if you know how to even turn on a computer, and 2. Candidates have to start from scratch every time explaining what a linked list is. Wouldn't it be great, both from an employer's POV and from the candidate's POV, if you could show that you passed the exam and received your license from the Coding Board, therefore you have some very basic set of skills? Then, you could both skip the fizzbuzz part of the interview and interview about more domain-specific questions. It would cut the interview time by probably 50-75%. But for reasons, HN commenters hate this idea, it's imposing "gatekeeping" and infringing on their freedom to pick up a Raspberry Pi and call themselves an engineer. So..... we all have to live with these incredibly inefficient and capricious hiring processes.
    - jjav 4y ago
      > The process certifies a base standard of knowledge. It'd be great to have CS and software engineering board tests that can be taken once and then do away with all the interview nonsense like other professional fields.
    - 908B64B197 4y ago
      > Wouldn't it be great, both from an employer's POV and from the candidate's POV, if you could show that you passed the exam and received your license from the Coding Board, therefore you have some very basic set of skills? There are some certification authorities in the US, but as far as I'm aware, the top programs haven't even bothered with it (MIT, Stanford, CMU...). The main issue is that all CS degrees aren't created equal. Someone can graduate without much programming at certain schools (where the degree is way more math focused). That's completely fine in itself, it's ok to have an option to focus on theoretical math, but it's not necessarily what employers are looking for. Abroad, like in France and Switzerland, they seem to have some certification body that checks the course curricula and determines if it passes the bar to be called engineering. Perhaps not the best example as these two countries are smaller and, at least for France, way more centralized than the US. To be completely honest, I fast track interviews for new grads of certain institutions because I'm familiar with their programs and I know what they studied.

yuuho 4y ago

That's standard. Honest feedback can get them in legal trouble. Making up a BS reason is expected if somebody's personality was really off-putting. Nobody is ever going to give you honest feedback about that.

arp242 4y ago

It's more or less impossible to review non-trivial code without feedback from the author (i.e. have a conversation) outside of cases where it's just truly obviously awful. Often stuff just gets rejected for "I wouldn't have written it like this". Okay, fine; but that doesn't mean I can't write it like that. But if I don't know what you want... The reason people don't give concrete feedback is because there often just isn't a clear one beyond "I don't like it".

Mizoguchi 4y ago
Software Development and related careers are the only ones where grown up adults with years of experience in their fields are still treated like college students in the interview process. It doesn't matter if you wrote a library 15 years ago still being used today by hundreds of thousands of developers around the world some even working for the company interviewing you. Were you responsible for designing and building QA systems used by Boeing and NASA? That's cool, now please write a bubble sort algorithm on a whiteboard and then guess how many cars there are in the US (explain your thought process). Imagine how ridiculous and insulting it would be for a seasoned lawyer, a doctor or a CPA, to endure this nonsensical, pointless scrutiny when interviewing for a job. But somehow in tech this is not only common but accepted by job seekers as normal.
- nytesky 4y ago
  I think you actually explain why these interviews are structured this way. Tech is pretty ageist and obsessed with youth, and in fact stodgy aerospace like Boeing and NASA are kind of held in contempt and derided for making peanuts. These interviews are a good way to filter (and even discourage) older applicants, since the cultural fit for the task IS someone recently in college.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  > Imagine how ridiculous and insulting it would be for a seasoned lawyer, a doctor or a CPA, to endure this nonsensical, pointless scrutiny when interviewing for a job. Good examples, because lawyers, doctors, and CPAs all have formal exams and licensures, and a board that certifies that you have the qualifications to do your job. So when a hospital interviews a doctor, they don't have to go over first year anatomy to understand whether the doctor knows where the appendix is. The process certifies a base standard of knowledge. Software engineers don't have this, and every time it's brought up in conversation, it gets poo-poo'ed. So, 1. Companies have no idea if you know how to even turn on a computer, and 2. Candidates have to start from scratch every time explaining what a linked list is. Wouldn't it be great, both from an employer's POV and from the candidate's POV, if you could show that you passed the exam and received your license from the Coding Board, therefore you have some very basic set of skills? Then, you could both skip the fizzbuzz part of the interview and interview about more domain-specific questions. It would cut the interview time by probably 50-75%. But for reasons, HN commenters hate this idea, it's imposing "gatekeeping" and infringing on their freedom to pick up a Raspberry Pi and call themselves an engineer. So..... we all have to live with these incredibly inefficient and capricious hiring processes.
  - jjav 4y ago
    > The process certifies a base standard of knowledge. It'd be great to have CS and software engineering board tests that can be taken once and then do away with all the interview nonsense like other professional fields.
  - 908B64B197 4y ago
    > Wouldn't it be great, both from an employer's POV and from the candidate's POV, if you could show that you passed the exam and received your license from the Coding Board, therefore you have some very basic set of skills? There are some certification authorities in the US, but as far as I'm aware, the top programs haven't even bothered with it (MIT, Stanford, CMU...). The main issue is that all CS degrees aren't created equal. Someone can graduate without much programming at certain schools (where the degree is way more math focused). That's completely fine in itself, it's ok to have an option to focus on theoretical math, but it's not necessarily what employers are looking for. Abroad, like in France and Switzerland, they seem to have some certification body that checks the course curricula and determines if it passes the bar to be called engineering. Perhaps not the best example as these two countries are smaller and, at least for France, way more centralized than the US. To be completely honest, I fast track interviews for new grads of certain institutions because I'm familiar with their programs and I know what they studied.