7 ms·
The author says "whiteboard tests" are broken, but it seems like they're arguing that online coding assessments are broken, not in person interviews using an ac
by naet 2y ago
The author says "whiteboard tests" are broken, but it seems like they're arguing that online coding assessments are broken, not in person interviews using an actual whiteboard.
Doing an in person interview on a whiteboard sidesteps the AI issue. As someone who's done a large number of remote interviews, there are some clear signs that some candidates try to cheat online tech interviews. I wonder if the trend will fuel more of returns to the office, or at least a return to in-person interviewing for more companies.
- bsder 2y ago> or at least a return to in-person interviewing for more companies. This has been broken for a while now, and companies still haven't reset to deal with it. The incentives to the contrary are too large.
- unavoidable 2y agoThe disincentives are huge though. Hiring a bad employee is a very expensive problem and hard to get rid of.
- ipaddr 2y agoIsn't it as simple as going on pip for fangs, a short conversation for a founder of a startup and a few weeks notice pay?
- viraptor 2y agoThat comes after the decision that you can't fix the situation, which comes after you discovered that the hire was bad, which comes after a number of visible failures. That's a lot of wasted time/effort, even if the firing itself is simple.
- gopher_space 2y agoThe cost of hiring, firing, rehiring approximates the position’s yearly salary.
- jamesfinlayson 2y agoDepends on the country I think - in Australia at least it seems like you can sue for unfair dismissal if you're angry about being kicked out, so HR departments only seem to get rid of someone as a last resort.
- deprecative 2y agoIn my area they just tell you to leave. No warning. No severance. Midwest US.
- paxys 2y agoThe process is anything but simple at large companies. Even if the new hire is a complete fraud and can barely write code it'll still take an average manager 6-12 months to be able to show them the door. And it'll involve countless meetings and a mountain of paperwork, all taking away time from regular work. And then it'll take another 6 months to get a replacement and onboard them. That means your team has lost over a year of productivity over a single bad hire.
- Yoric 2y agoIn which country? In France, for instance, you have a (typically) 6 months long no questions asked window to fire a new hire, if they prove a bad employee. Presumably, if you haven't found out in 6 months, you wouldn't find out by changing the interviewing strategy.
- ipaddr 2y agoIs using AI cheating when it's part of the job now. Is not using AI signalling inexperience in the llm department.
- finnthehuman 2y agoYes, obviously. Cheating is subverting the testers intent and being dishonest about it. Not just what a lawyer can weasel word their way around.
- gopher_space 2y agoIt’s not dishonest, it’s just business. I’m under the exact same burden of truth as the company interviewing me; zilch.
- theamk 2y agoFair enough! In this case, it seems that policy "hard-fail any candidates who use cheat, using AI or otherwise" is working as expected. Interviews are supposed to be candidate's best showing. If that includes cheating, better fail them fast.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- IshKebab 2y agoIt's cheating if you don't say you're using it.
- hmottestad 2y agoAt some point I assume that it’ll be so normal that you’ll almost have to say when you’re not using it. I don’t need to say that I’m using a text editor, instead of hole punched cards. It’s also quite common to use an IDE instead of a text editor these days in coding interviews. When I was a student I remember teachers saying that they considered an IDE as cheating since they wanted to test our ability to remember syntax and to keep a mental picture of our code in our heads.
- scarface_74 2y agoIf your coding assessment can be done with AI and the code that the candidate is expected to write can’t be, doesn’t that by definition mean you are testing for the wrong thing during your coding interview?
- cute_boi 2y agoEvery people says these, but what is the best objective way to know the candidate is good for position? Leetcode is still the best option imo.
- scarface_74 2y agoGive them a real world simple use case where they have code and they have to fix real world code by making the unit test pass. Never in almost 30 years of coding have I had to invert a b-tree or do anything approaching what leetCode tests for. Well actually I did have to DS type code when writing low level cross platform C in the late 90s without a library. But how many people have to do that today? And how is leetCode testing the best way when all it tests for is someone’s ability to memorize patterns they don’t use in the real world?
- lesuorac 2y agoYeah its weird, because the whole point of having a system for hiring involving common questions, rubrics, etc is because at the end of the day you can either show that scoring well on the interview is correlated with higher end-of-year performance reviews or not show that and alter your interview system until it does. Like you guys can keep posting these articles that have 0 statistical rigor. It's not going to change a process that came about because it had statistical significance. Do remember, Google used to be known for asking questions like "How many piano tuners are in NYC". Those questions are gone not because somebody wrote a random article insulting them; they're going because somebody did actual math and showed they weren't effective.
- scarface_74 2y agoYes, because of Google’s rigorous hiring process they have had many successful products outside of selling ads against search… I’ve done my stint in BigTech, most developers are not doing anything ground breaking