6 ms·

> Interviews should be as close as possible to the work that the candidate would do if they join. Interviews should give information to both parties about what

by neilv 3y ago

> Interviews should be as close as possible to the work that the candidate would do if they join. Interviews should give information to both parties about what it would be like if the person joined. Simulating a typical work task, as this article describes, might give you some of that. Though important to remember that's far from all that's relevant to either party. A recently fashionable Leetcode hazing, on the other hand, is mostly "anti-pattern". It tells the company whether or not the individual has studied for that ritual specifically, and was willing to submit to it for the approval of this company (or is using this company as practice for the gameable ritual). And it tells the individual nothing except that the company thinks this is a good way to do interviews.

mooreds 3y ago
> Interviews should give information to both parties about what it would be like if the person joined. I have participated in interview processes where, at the last interview, the employer tries to talk the candidate out of taking the job. Discuss the problems, the warts, the intractable issues, and other things that are downsides of this job. Every organization has these. I love this, because the employee is going to find all of the issues out anyway, and it's better for both parties if they part before employment begins if the issues are too much.
- neilv 3y ago
  Interesting, and I could see that working well for some places. I do something related to this in the interview. Part of the interview is more like things you'd tell a colleague who was considering that: pretty accurate characterization of what you know of the work, your idea of pros, things that might or might not be cons for the person, etc. Basically, they show up the first day, and their interactions with me are just the same (plus a little extra excitement on my part that they joined, and now able to share proprietary details but without unpleasant surprises). Six months later, and I'm still just the same (plus extra familiarity and increased mutual trust). And hopefully they also are what they seemed to be in the interview. Though you can't necessarily be 100% candid about everything in an interview, like if you were doing an internal assessment a technology, product, vendor, or competitor. For example, there are personnel issues, company image, proprietary tech, etc. Also, you don't want to say something that ends up misleadingly quoted out of context on a jobs forum or word-of-mouth by someone with a different sense of professionalism or confidentiality, and you don't want to give ammo to a spy from a competitor. In practice, the line of what to say seems pretty intuitive to hit, and I haven't knowingly had a problem with it. Though, when working at one company doing exotic-sounding, high-value-sounding stuff, I did have a couple candidates grill me on the tech and/or on resources. On those I try to respond something like, "Some of that is very proprietary, and unfortunately can't be talked about much right now until someone joins the team. But I can tell you some of the public information from news articles and such is A, B, and C. There's a few marketecture diagrams on our Web site, and links to some published research papers that detail those aspects better than I could."
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
abathur 3y ago
> was willing to submit to it for the approval of this company I abstain, myself. I have too much real work that I'd like to push forward to be able justify spending weeks of free time on fake work.
- paulcole 3y ago
  Great! Isn’t that the point? That some people who really don’t want the job won’t invest a bit of their time and people who do really want the job will?
  - TheCleric 3y ago
    Sure. If what the company doing the hiring is explicitly trying to get employees who are willing to do that. However if they just want knowledgeable, quality employees, some will self select out of that process.
  - majormajor 3y ago
    Don't forget about the people who don't have to spend weeks or months focused just on interview prep to do well on the average leetcode question... That's who interviewers are looking for. Now, a case can be made that there aren't that many of those people and you might not need them anyway, but... if you can spend a few weeks to catch up that's not all bad compared to what high-end job offers in other professions demand of your resume. The more we keep the interview process something demonstrable vs status/prestige/name-check/references, the better.
    - paulcole 3y ago
      These jobs pay a lot of money. If you want one bad enough you’ll find the time to practice.
    - dinobones 3y ago
      If you want to receive top compensation, and work at the Meta/Roblox/AirBnBs etc, you will need to be able to solve 2 Leetcode medium questions in 45 minutes, correctly and optimally. I work for a big tech company where people smell their own farts and think they are geniuses even though they work on CRUD interfaces for admin portals for Cloud. The interview process is well known. I have seen wrong solutions made by these genius question writers in their own doc, or where they find out 4 weeks later that the time complexity of their own solution is not really what they thhink it is. Do you really think in a company with 50k+ software engineers, where many studied English (but like to conduct CS interviews like they’re CS researchers), that everyone will know and understand details like; how the expected linear time complexity of quickselect works? It’s a nightmare; it’s blind leading the blind. It’s been completely gamified at this point and the only way to win is to play the game, maybe 10 years ago you could’ve passed on your own merit of having a CS degree and knowing basic DS&A, but I promise you that is almost the case nowhere anymore.
adamgordonbell 3y ago
I feel like leetcode is a Goodhart's Law thing. When nobody was cramming for it, then at some places it was a good measure. Coding is more like weight lifting sometimes then running. There are some weights that some people just can't pick up. And so if the job involves lifting things that are usually light but occasionally heavy, then a squat becomes a good measure for candidate. But once everyone knows a big squat is the way in, they train squats, they show up in lift suits, they use amyl nitrates and the whole thing stops being a good measure. Because on the job you don't squat in a squat rack, but pick things up where they are found, in the conditions on the ground. Goodheart's law breaks things, because now you have a bunch of people optimized for a task that isn't exactly the job.
- mooreds 3y ago
  > Goodheart's law breaks things, because now you have a bunch of people optimized for a task that isn't exactly the job. Companies lose another way too. Folks who might be darn good at picking things up decide it isn't worth the focused training to get into companies that only seem to care about squatting, so they don't apply.
  - adamgordonbell 3y ago
    Yeah, I feel like any measure like this starts as a way to measure a proxy for IQ. But as it becomes a known thing, people train for it and it becomes a measure of conscientiousness (In the big five sense, aka diligent trainers rise to the top).
- reaperman 3y ago
  > they use amyl nitrates I think you meant ammonia. Poppers would cause an acute decrease in blood pressure which would be counterproductive during the lifting phase with a heavy weight.
yieldcrv 3y ago
making a react component in a 45 minute interview (something I recently did) is better than leetcode, but still a poor signal. on the job I'll never do a time trial where I'm being watched and gaslit about "just wanting to see how I think" as opposed to "do it perfectly from memory in this collaborative coding session faster than this guy escaping a dystopia in Asia, and trying not to be deported back" find a way to simulate that I will do it some time over the next two weeks because the product manager reduced everyone's story points in half for this sprint in the grooming session, and the fact that I even did that gets me praised because nobody else on the team finished their tasks
- azangru 3y ago
  > faster than this guy escaping a dystopia in Asia, and trying not to be deported back While that guy may have an advantage over you in motivation, you might have an advantage over him in communication.
  - gdsimoes 3y ago
    Also known as accent.
    - Our_Benefactors 3y ago
      And grammar, vocabulary, tone, etiquette… a lot more goes into communication than accent alone.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by neilv 3y ago

mooreds 3y ago

> Interviews should give information to both parties about what it would be like if the person joined. I have participated in interview processes where, at the last interview, the employer tries to talk the candidate out of taking the job. Discuss the problems, the warts, the intractable issues, and other things that are downsides of this job. Every organization has these. I love this, because the employee is going to find all of the issues out anyway, and it's better for both parties if they part before employment begins if the issues are too much.

neilv 3y ago
Interesting, and I could see that working well for some places. I do something related to this in the interview. Part of the interview is more like things you'd tell a colleague who was considering that: pretty accurate characterization of what you know of the work, your idea of pros, things that might or might not be cons for the person, etc. Basically, they show up the first day, and their interactions with me are just the same (plus a little extra excitement on my part that they joined, and now able to share proprietary details but without unpleasant surprises). Six months later, and I'm still just the same (plus extra familiarity and increased mutual trust). And hopefully they also are what they seemed to be in the interview. Though you can't necessarily be 100% candid about everything in an interview, like if you were doing an internal assessment a technology, product, vendor, or competitor. For example, there are personnel issues, company image, proprietary tech, etc. Also, you don't want to say something that ends up misleadingly quoted out of context on a jobs forum or word-of-mouth by someone with a different sense of professionalism or confidentiality, and you don't want to give ammo to a spy from a competitor. In practice, the line of what to say seems pretty intuitive to hit, and I haven't knowingly had a problem with it. Though, when working at one company doing exotic-sounding, high-value-sounding stuff, I did have a couple candidates grill me on the tech and/or on resources. On those I try to respond something like, "Some of that is very proprietary, and unfortunately can't be talked about much right now until someone joins the team. But I can tell you some of the public information from news articles and such is A, B, and C. There's a few marketecture diagrams on our Web site, and links to some published research papers that detail those aspects better than I could."
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

abathur 3y ago

> was willing to submit to it for the approval of this company I abstain, myself. I have too much real work that I'd like to push forward to be able justify spending weeks of free time on fake work.

paulcole 3y ago
Great! Isn’t that the point? That some people who really don’t want the job won’t invest a bit of their time and people who do really want the job will?
- TheCleric 3y ago
  Sure. If what the company doing the hiring is explicitly trying to get employees who are willing to do that. However if they just want knowledgeable, quality employees, some will self select out of that process.
- majormajor 3y ago
  Don't forget about the people who don't have to spend weeks or months focused just on interview prep to do well on the average leetcode question... That's who interviewers are looking for. Now, a case can be made that there aren't that many of those people and you might not need them anyway, but... if you can spend a few weeks to catch up that's not all bad compared to what high-end job offers in other professions demand of your resume. The more we keep the interview process something demonstrable vs status/prestige/name-check/references, the better.
  - paulcole 3y ago
    These jobs pay a lot of money. If you want one bad enough you’ll find the time to practice.
  - dinobones 3y ago
    If you want to receive top compensation, and work at the Meta/Roblox/AirBnBs etc, you will need to be able to solve 2 Leetcode medium questions in 45 minutes, correctly and optimally. I work for a big tech company where people smell their own farts and think they are geniuses even though they work on CRUD interfaces for admin portals for Cloud. The interview process is well known. I have seen wrong solutions made by these genius question writers in their own doc, or where they find out 4 weeks later that the time complexity of their own solution is not really what they thhink it is. Do you really think in a company with 50k+ software engineers, where many studied English (but like to conduct CS interviews like they’re CS researchers), that everyone will know and understand details like; how the expected linear time complexity of quickselect works? It’s a nightmare; it’s blind leading the blind. It’s been completely gamified at this point and the only way to win is to play the game, maybe 10 years ago you could’ve passed on your own merit of having a CS degree and knowing basic DS&A, but I promise you that is almost the case nowhere anymore.

adamgordonbell 3y ago

I feel like leetcode is a Goodhart's Law thing. When nobody was cramming for it, then at some places it was a good measure. Coding is more like weight lifting sometimes then running. There are some weights that some people just can't pick up. And so if the job involves lifting things that are usually light but occasionally heavy, then a squat becomes a good measure for candidate. But once everyone knows a big squat is the way in, they train squats, they show up in lift suits, they use amyl nitrates and the whole thing stops being a good measure. Because on the job you don't squat in a squat rack, but pick things up where they are found, in the conditions on the ground. Goodheart's law breaks things, because now you have a bunch of people optimized for a task that isn't exactly the job.

mooreds 3y ago
> Goodheart's law breaks things, because now you have a bunch of people optimized for a task that isn't exactly the job. Companies lose another way too. Folks who might be darn good at picking things up decide it isn't worth the focused training to get into companies that only seem to care about squatting, so they don't apply.
- adamgordonbell 3y ago
  Yeah, I feel like any measure like this starts as a way to measure a proxy for IQ. But as it becomes a known thing, people train for it and it becomes a measure of conscientiousness (In the big five sense, aka diligent trainers rise to the top).
reaperman 3y ago
> they use amyl nitrates I think you meant ammonia. Poppers would cause an acute decrease in blood pressure which would be counterproductive during the lifting phase with a heavy weight.

yieldcrv 3y ago

making a react component in a 45 minute interview (something I recently did) is better than leetcode, but still a poor signal. on the job I'll never do a time trial where I'm being watched and gaslit about "just wanting to see how I think" as opposed to "do it perfectly from memory in this collaborative coding session faster than this guy escaping a dystopia in Asia, and trying not to be deported back" find a way to simulate that I will do it some time over the next two weeks because the product manager reduced everyone's story points in half for this sprint in the grooming session, and the fact that I even did that gets me praised because nobody else on the team finished their tasks

azangru 3y ago
> faster than this guy escaping a dystopia in Asia, and trying not to be deported back While that guy may have an advantage over you in motivation, you might have an advantage over him in communication.
- gdsimoes 3y ago
  Also known as accent.
  - Our_Benefactors 3y ago
    And grammar, vocabulary, tone, etiquette… a lot more goes into communication than accent alone.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]