5 ms·

> A question to everyone: What would a good application process look like? A complete overhaul of credentialing, so that when I have a degree in computer scien

> A question to everyone: What would a good application process look like? A complete overhaul of credentialing, so that when I have a degree in computer science from a top university and decades of industry experience, employers don't need to independently confirm that I know how to reverse a string or traverse a tree or define what XSS is. Also, make a time machine so we can make this change 30 years in the past, if you wouldn't mind.

ghiculescu 3y ago
The problem with credentialism is that lots of people with degrees from reputable universities can’t code. Similarly lots of people with significant industry experience… also can’t code.
- zo1 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - ghiculescu 3y ago
    That happens too but I think the underlying reasons are simpler. Everyone involved in hiring should read “The Case Against Education” by Caplan.
  - nemothekid 3y ago
    The FizzBuzz test came about for similar reasons in 2007 - long before government pressures for DEI quotas[1]. The problem is computer science university degrees aren't enterprise training academies. "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." Universities aren't incentivized to fix this because universities are research institutions - they don't make money from placing students in jobs, so trying to solve this is a dead end. [1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
    - thaumasiotes 3y ago
      > The FizzBuzz test came about for similar reasons in 2007 - long before government pressures for DEI quotas[1]. Government pressure for hiring quotas goes back to the 1970s.
      - nemothekid 3y ago
        It's moreso I don't believe there was a ton of government pressure being applied to startups with 15 people.
        thaumasiotes 3y ago
        That's also still true today.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  this has been solved -- with take home coding or whiteboarding. in the networking side of these we used to have a couple of Cisco 2960s with slightly borked configs and our interviewees had to log in and tell us what's wrong. 5 minute activity, but often took some folks 30 minutes.
  - ghiculescu 3y ago
    Yeah I think that’s what Starfighter did. And we are discussing how it failed, so…
- mprovost 3y ago
  What does "reputable" mean in this case when these universities are handing diplomas to graduates who can't code? Somehow we've gotten ourselves into the situation where we force someone with a CS degree from Stanford write some leetcode, even when the people on the hiring panel themselves have degrees from Stanford. Do they still not trust their own university? And yet, when scanning resumes, people often look for prestigious/"reputable" universities as a filter. Is the assumption that if they have a degree from Stanford and can reverse a string then that is a positive signal, but if they can't reverse a string that is somehow a personal failing and not a failure of the university to educate (and then evaluate) the candidate?
  - jfim 3y ago
    > What does "reputable" mean in this case when these universities are handing diplomas to graduates who can't code? Somehow we've gotten ourselves into the situation where we force someone with a CS degree from Stanford write some leetcode, even when the people on the hiring panel themselves have degrees from Stanford. Do they still not trust their own university? What's the alternative? Just give leetcode tests to people who didn't go to the same university as the hiring panel? The fact that we have the same tests for everyone no matter where they studied at is a good thing and prevents nepotism in hiring decisions.
    - michaelt 3y ago
      A professional organisation like the ACM which 'accredits' college courses, making sure that 3.5 GPA from MIT is equivalent to a 3.5 GPA from Podunk University.
      - throwaway2037 3y ago
        As someone who attended two different universities for my undergrad, the first was way harder than the second. Basically, I failed out of my first, and cruised through my second. I intentionally selected a much lower ranked university for my second attempt. I felt like I was buying a university degree at my second place. And, yes, both were ACM accredited. It means little. What I am noticing on all threads about HN hiring: Hiring knowledge workers is fundamentally a difficult, fuzzy process. Few want to admit it. And, there are some people are naturally much better at it because they can control themselves very well during an interview. People who are very strong at solving puzzles will nearly always outperform during interviews for hands-on roles. More than anything, interviewing feels like dating. Everyone hates it until you find what you are looking for... then it becomes: "Oh, it worked fine for me."
- michaelt 3y ago
  The reform I'm proposing is that reputable universities should only issue CS degrees to people who can, in fact, code. That's why the time machine is so important - to get back any CS degrees issued to people who can't code. So I think you are actually agreeing with me?
  - vunderba 3y ago
    This sounds more like a PE Exam equivalent for software engineering which I honestly think should be put into place since most traditional engineering industries have this already.
    - __turbobrew__ 3y ago
      Yea, I think that is the alternative. A professional body which accredits its members. It is a system which is known to work for other disciplines.
enraged_camel 3y ago
I used to share your opinions, until I sat at the other end of the table and interviewed candidates. The problem is that people lie constantly about their credentials, experience and knowledge. They lie on their resumes, they make up fake references (sometimes going so far as to pay their friends to lie for them), they might even have someone create fake portfolio websites for them and showcase those as their own. There will never be a way to detect such deception without asking candidates basic questions as a way to at least "smoke test".
- wombatpm 3y ago
  A resume is not just a piece of paper. It’s a piece of paper with lies on it. And it can be the difference between not getting a job and not even coming close. -Dave Barry
- scarface_74 3y ago
  I’ve been interviewing people as either just another person in the loop or the person who could give the thumbs up about whether I wanted someone on my team and the manager just rubber stamped it for over 20 years - no coding just conversations. I’ve never regretted a single person I hired and they have always been able to do the simple CRUD work that most of the 2.7 million developers are doing. And before the gate keeping starts. I’ve been through the “Making Great Hiring Decisions” training and have conducted behavioral and system design interviews at AWS.
  - lmm 3y ago
    > I’ve been interviewing people as either just another person in the loop or the person who could give the thumbs up about whether I wanted someone on my team and the manager just rubber stamped it for over 20 years - no coding just conversations. Sounds like a good way to filter for the right class background. (Which, given how well that's correlated with intelligence, is probably as good a hiring method as any)
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      What do you mean by the right class background? If you think I’m a white guy who graduated from a prestigious school, I can guarantee you that’s a far from accurate assumption. Let’s just say when I walk through my neighborhood I’ve read comments about me in my own NextDoor group about someone “suspicious” and realized they were talking about me or my son…
scarface_74 3y ago
It still doesn’t tell me whether you kept up with what the market wants, you have the specific skills I care about or whether you have the behavioral traits I am hiring for.
quesera 3y ago
> a degree in computer science from a top university and decades of industry experience > know how to reverse a string or traverse a tree or define what XSS is. In my experience, it is absolutely not safe to assume a correlation between these two sets of traits.
VirusNewbie 3y ago
>A complete overhaul of credentialing, so that when I have a degree in computer science from a top university and decades of industry experience, employers don't need to independently confirm that I know how to reverse a string or traverse a tree or define what XSS is. But 'top universities' don't know how to teach CS. That's the point. Don't waste your time there. Maybe we should have a 'bar exam' type system, but the university system is a joke at this point, and there's no point trying to put lipstick on a pig.
VirusNewbie 3y ago
>A complete overhaul of credentialing, so that when I have a degree in computer science from a top university and decades of industry experience, employers don't need to independently confirm that I know how to reverse a string or traverse a tree or define what XSS is. But 'top universities' don't know how to teach CS. That's the point. Don't waste your time there. Maybe we should have a 'bar exam' type system, but the university system is a joke at this point, and there's no point trying to put lipstick on a pig.

ghiculescu 3y ago

The problem with credentialism is that lots of people with degrees from reputable universities can’t code. Similarly lots of people with significant industry experience… also can’t code.

zo1 3y ago
[flagged]
- ghiculescu 3y ago
  That happens too but I think the underlying reasons are simpler. Everyone involved in hiring should read “The Case Against Education” by Caplan.
- nemothekid 3y ago
  The FizzBuzz test came about for similar reasons in 2007 - long before government pressures for DEI quotas[1]. The problem is computer science university degrees aren't enterprise training academies. "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." Universities aren't incentivized to fix this because universities are research institutions - they don't make money from placing students in jobs, so trying to solve this is a dead end. [1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > The FizzBuzz test came about for similar reasons in 2007 - long before government pressures for DEI quotas[1]. Government pressure for hiring quotas goes back to the 1970s.
    - nemothekid 3y ago
      It's moreso I don't believe there was a ton of government pressure being applied to startups with 15 people.
      - thaumasiotes 3y ago
        That's also still true today.
red-iron-pine 3y ago
this has been solved -- with take home coding or whiteboarding. in the networking side of these we used to have a couple of Cisco 2960s with slightly borked configs and our interviewees had to log in and tell us what's wrong. 5 minute activity, but often took some folks 30 minutes.
- ghiculescu 3y ago
  Yeah I think that’s what Starfighter did. And we are discussing how it failed, so…
mprovost 3y ago
What does "reputable" mean in this case when these universities are handing diplomas to graduates who can't code? Somehow we've gotten ourselves into the situation where we force someone with a CS degree from Stanford write some leetcode, even when the people on the hiring panel themselves have degrees from Stanford. Do they still not trust their own university? And yet, when scanning resumes, people often look for prestigious/"reputable" universities as a filter. Is the assumption that if they have a degree from Stanford and can reverse a string then that is a positive signal, but if they can't reverse a string that is somehow a personal failing and not a failure of the university to educate (and then evaluate) the candidate?
- jfim 3y ago
  > What does "reputable" mean in this case when these universities are handing diplomas to graduates who can't code? Somehow we've gotten ourselves into the situation where we force someone with a CS degree from Stanford write some leetcode, even when the people on the hiring panel themselves have degrees from Stanford. Do they still not trust their own university? What's the alternative? Just give leetcode tests to people who didn't go to the same university as the hiring panel? The fact that we have the same tests for everyone no matter where they studied at is a good thing and prevents nepotism in hiring decisions.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    A professional organisation like the ACM which 'accredits' college courses, making sure that 3.5 GPA from MIT is equivalent to a 3.5 GPA from Podunk University.
    - throwaway2037 3y ago
      As someone who attended two different universities for my undergrad, the first was way harder than the second. Basically, I failed out of my first, and cruised through my second. I intentionally selected a much lower ranked university for my second attempt. I felt like I was buying a university degree at my second place. And, yes, both were ACM accredited. It means little. What I am noticing on all threads about HN hiring: Hiring knowledge workers is fundamentally a difficult, fuzzy process. Few want to admit it. And, there are some people are naturally much better at it because they can control themselves very well during an interview. People who are very strong at solving puzzles will nearly always outperform during interviews for hands-on roles. More than anything, interviewing feels like dating. Everyone hates it until you find what you are looking for... then it becomes: "Oh, it worked fine for me."
michaelt 3y ago
The reform I'm proposing is that reputable universities should only issue CS degrees to people who can, in fact, code. That's why the time machine is so important - to get back any CS degrees issued to people who can't code. So I think you are actually agreeing with me?
- vunderba 3y ago
  This sounds more like a PE Exam equivalent for software engineering which I honestly think should be put into place since most traditional engineering industries have this already.
  - __turbobrew__ 3y ago
    Yea, I think that is the alternative. A professional body which accredits its members. It is a system which is known to work for other disciplines.

enraged_camel 3y ago

I used to share your opinions, until I sat at the other end of the table and interviewed candidates. The problem is that people lie constantly about their credentials, experience and knowledge. They lie on their resumes, they make up fake references (sometimes going so far as to pay their friends to lie for them), they might even have someone create fake portfolio websites for them and showcase those as their own. There will never be a way to detect such deception without asking candidates basic questions as a way to at least "smoke test".

wombatpm 3y ago
A resume is not just a piece of paper. It’s a piece of paper with lies on it. And it can be the difference between not getting a job and not even coming close. -Dave Barry
scarface_74 3y ago
I’ve been interviewing people as either just another person in the loop or the person who could give the thumbs up about whether I wanted someone on my team and the manager just rubber stamped it for over 20 years - no coding just conversations. I’ve never regretted a single person I hired and they have always been able to do the simple CRUD work that most of the 2.7 million developers are doing. And before the gate keeping starts. I’ve been through the “Making Great Hiring Decisions” training and have conducted behavioral and system design interviews at AWS.
- lmm 3y ago
  > I’ve been interviewing people as either just another person in the loop or the person who could give the thumbs up about whether I wanted someone on my team and the manager just rubber stamped it for over 20 years - no coding just conversations. Sounds like a good way to filter for the right class background. (Which, given how well that's correlated with intelligence, is probably as good a hiring method as any)
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    What do you mean by the right class background? If you think I’m a white guy who graduated from a prestigious school, I can guarantee you that’s a far from accurate assumption. Let’s just say when I walk through my neighborhood I’ve read comments about me in my own NextDoor group about someone “suspicious” and realized they were talking about me or my son…

scarface_74 3y ago

It still doesn’t tell me whether you kept up with what the market wants, you have the specific skills I care about or whether you have the behavioral traits I am hiring for.

quesera 3y ago

> a degree in computer science from a top university and decades of industry experience > know how to reverse a string or traverse a tree or define what XSS is. In my experience, it is absolutely not safe to assume a correlation between these two sets of traits.

VirusNewbie 3y ago

>A complete overhaul of credentialing, so that when I have a degree in computer science from a top university and decades of industry experience, employers don't need to independently confirm that I know how to reverse a string or traverse a tree or define what XSS is. But 'top universities' don't know how to teach CS. That's the point. Don't waste your time there. Maybe we should have a 'bar exam' type system, but the university system is a joke at this point, and there's no point trying to put lipstick on a pig.

VirusNewbie 3y ago