4 ms·

Can someone explain why, in an interview context, someone with the technical ability to understand and assess and write and communicate a deep set of domain-spe

Can someone explain why, in an interview context, someone with the technical ability to understand and assess and write and communicate a deep set of domain-specific knowledge like this....might still be asked to do some in-person leetcode tests? How does on the fly recursive algo regurgitation sometimes mean more than being able to demonstrate such depth of knowledge?

lll-o-lll 3y ago
Because puzzle solving is an iq proxy and iq is correlated with job performance? But really, just do an iq test. Maybe because interviewers are bad at distinguishing gpt style BSing from actual knowledge and need a baseline test.
- popinman322 3y ago
  The correlation between IQ and job performance is typically weak[0] (weaker than the correlation between conscientiousness+agreeableness on job performance in some studies[1]) with a more modest correlation for "high complexity jobs". Interesting excerpt from [0]: > Finally, it seems that even the weak IQ-job performance correlations usually reported in the United States and Europe are not universal. For example, Byington and Felps (2010) found that IQ correlations with job performance are “substantially weaker” in other parts of the world, including China and the Middle East, where performances in school and work are more attributed to motivation and effort than cognitive ability. [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4557354/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4557354/ [1]: https://www.academia.edu/download/50754745/The_Interactive_Effects_of_Conscientious20161206-19649-j40qqy.pdf https://www.academia.edu/download/50754745/The_Interactive_E... Sorry about the PDF link to [1]. The APA link has a paywall otherwise I'd link there.
  - lll-o-lll 3y ago
    Sorry for not replying earlier, but I am really grateful for you providing those links. I had not known that the iq-job perf had been challenged and it means I need to adjust my priors when looking at candidates.
da39a3ee 3y ago
What are you referencing? Did someone make Martin Fowler do a leetcode-style interview? (I wouldn't be against that, just curious.)
- Solvency 3y ago
  Not Martin per se but there have been a few submitters in the past with thoroughly robust content who have also shared bad interview experiences.
  - irreducible 3y ago
    https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768
- djkivi 3y ago
  It seems Unmesh Joshi wrote this article on MartinFowler.com.
galkk 3y ago
Because world is full of bullshiters who know enough buzzwords and buzzsentences and interview time is too short. On lower levels leetcode style stuff gives more quantifiable signals per minute/session. Plus, do you really want to fully explain something like paxos or raft in interview context? My personal pet peeves are 1. “event sourcing” and derivatives. It really attracts people who love to talk but never built anything large using it 2. Adepts of uncle martin
- flaminHotSpeedo 3y ago
  If you can't differentiate buzzwords from signals you shouldn't be interviewing. Plus how do you expect to get good signals from a leetcode whiteboard interview for someone who spends most of their time designing systems and only writes code when it gets to the point where it's faster and less frustrating to pair program vs explaining what needs to get implemented? To clarify, I don't have a good answer: I still participate in leetcode style interviews (though system design is another component) - but although I sing the song and can't come up with anything better, I don't think it's the best way to go
- mrkeen 3y ago
  Raft is for event sourcing.
totetsu 3y ago
On that point, can anyone recommend any good reading, info sources about technical interviewing methods etc? I recently had an interview that was just being asked to remember linux commands like for a certification exam off the top of my head, and It made me wonder what the point was, and if there is better ways.
austin-cheney 3y ago
Or what about having a repository proving these very concepts with almost 2000 commits? In my experience things like publications, online code repositories, and facts are more than irrelevant but not much more because people don’t know how to independently evaluate these things. Worse, attempting to evaluate such only exposes the insecurity of people not qualified to be there in the first place. Far more important are numbers of NPM downloads and GitHub stars. Popularity is an external validation any idiot can understand. But popularity is also something that you can bullshit, so just play it safe treat everyone as a junior developer and leet code them out of consideration.
- jstx1 3y ago
  It's easy to fake projects and commits. And when they aren't faked, you can't have an expectation of every candidate having these because it's so much work. And if you decide to bypass some of your usual interview process because a candidate has a project, now you aren't assessing all candidates equally.
  - austin-cheney 3y ago
    All I see from your comment is that candidate evaluation requires too much effort, so you exchange one bias for another.
    - jstx1 3y ago
      It's a choice to treat all candidates equally. And intentionally excluding candidates is the whole point of designing an interview process, it's lazy to lift your arms up and declare that they're all biased.
    - yencabulator 3y ago
      I've interviewed people for roles as low-level C++/kernel programmers who did not know what hexadecimal was. Having a quick "What's 0x2A in decimal? Feel free to use paper & pen."[1] question can be a significant time-saver / direct people to more appropriate roles, if any. [1] Starting to do math with non-base-10 numbers was already a pass, regardless of the number you reach, you'd normally use a computer for that. But it really isn't too hard to do in your head directly, for anyone who's dealt with binary data.
jstx1 3y ago
It's not one or ther other; many interviews assess both because they're both meaningful signals about a candidate. If you're coming from the position that one is "understand and assess and write and communicate a deep set of domain-specific knowledge" and the other is "on the fly recursive algo regurgitation" then it will be hard to change your mind about any of this. --- You could have just as easily called system design interviews regurgitation and coding interviews "communicating deep domain-specific knowledge".

lll-o-lll 3y ago

Because puzzle solving is an iq proxy and iq is correlated with job performance? But really, just do an iq test. Maybe because interviewers are bad at distinguishing gpt style BSing from actual knowledge and need a baseline test.

popinman322 3y ago
The correlation between IQ and job performance is typically weak[0] (weaker than the correlation between conscientiousness+agreeableness on job performance in some studies[1]) with a more modest correlation for "high complexity jobs". Interesting excerpt from [0]: > Finally, it seems that even the weak IQ-job performance correlations usually reported in the United States and Europe are not universal. For example, Byington and Felps (2010) found that IQ correlations with job performance are “substantially weaker” in other parts of the world, including China and the Middle East, where performances in school and work are more attributed to motivation and effort than cognitive ability. [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4557354/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4557354/ [1]: https://www.academia.edu/download/50754745/The_Interactive_Effects_of_Conscientious20161206-19649-j40qqy.pdf https://www.academia.edu/download/50754745/The_Interactive_E... Sorry about the PDF link to [1]. The APA link has a paywall otherwise I'd link there.
- lll-o-lll 3y ago
  Sorry for not replying earlier, but I am really grateful for you providing those links. I had not known that the iq-job perf had been challenged and it means I need to adjust my priors when looking at candidates.

da39a3ee 3y ago

What are you referencing? Did someone make Martin Fowler do a leetcode-style interview? (I wouldn't be against that, just curious.)

Solvency 3y ago
Not Martin per se but there have been a few submitters in the past with thoroughly robust content who have also shared bad interview experiences.
- irreducible 3y ago
  https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768
djkivi 3y ago
It seems Unmesh Joshi wrote this article on MartinFowler.com.

galkk 3y ago

Because world is full of bullshiters who know enough buzzwords and buzzsentences and interview time is too short. On lower levels leetcode style stuff gives more quantifiable signals per minute/session. Plus, do you really want to fully explain something like paxos or raft in interview context? My personal pet peeves are 1. “event sourcing” and derivatives. It really attracts people who love to talk but never built anything large using it 2. Adepts of uncle martin

flaminHotSpeedo 3y ago
If you can't differentiate buzzwords from signals you shouldn't be interviewing. Plus how do you expect to get good signals from a leetcode whiteboard interview for someone who spends most of their time designing systems and only writes code when it gets to the point where it's faster and less frustrating to pair program vs explaining what needs to get implemented? To clarify, I don't have a good answer: I still participate in leetcode style interviews (though system design is another component) - but although I sing the song and can't come up with anything better, I don't think it's the best way to go
mrkeen 3y ago
Raft is for event sourcing.

totetsu 3y ago

On that point, can anyone recommend any good reading, info sources about technical interviewing methods etc? I recently had an interview that was just being asked to remember linux commands like for a certification exam off the top of my head, and It made me wonder what the point was, and if there is better ways.

austin-cheney 3y ago

Or what about having a repository proving these very concepts with almost 2000 commits? In my experience things like publications, online code repositories, and facts are more than irrelevant but not much more because people don’t know how to independently evaluate these things. Worse, attempting to evaluate such only exposes the insecurity of people not qualified to be there in the first place. Far more important are numbers of NPM downloads and GitHub stars. Popularity is an external validation any idiot can understand. But popularity is also something that you can bullshit, so just play it safe treat everyone as a junior developer and leet code them out of consideration.

jstx1 3y ago
It's easy to fake projects and commits. And when they aren't faked, you can't have an expectation of every candidate having these because it's so much work. And if you decide to bypass some of your usual interview process because a candidate has a project, now you aren't assessing all candidates equally.
- austin-cheney 3y ago
  All I see from your comment is that candidate evaluation requires too much effort, so you exchange one bias for another.
  - jstx1 3y ago
    It's a choice to treat all candidates equally. And intentionally excluding candidates is the whole point of designing an interview process, it's lazy to lift your arms up and declare that they're all biased.
  - yencabulator 3y ago
    I've interviewed people for roles as low-level C++/kernel programmers who did not know what hexadecimal was. Having a quick "What's 0x2A in decimal? Feel free to use paper & pen."[1] question can be a significant time-saver / direct people to more appropriate roles, if any. [1] Starting to do math with non-base-10 numbers was already a pass, regardless of the number you reach, you'd normally use a computer for that. But it really isn't too hard to do in your head directly, for anyone who's dealt with binary data.

jstx1 3y ago

It's not one or ther other; many interviews assess both because they're both meaningful signals about a candidate. If you're coming from the position that one is "understand and assess and write and communicate a deep set of domain-specific knowledge" and the other is "on the fly recursive algo regurgitation" then it will be hard to change your mind about any of this. --- You could have just as easily called system design interviews regurgitation and coding interviews "communicating deep domain-specific knowledge".