5 ms·

I don't get why companies waste time with this sort of interview that just turns into this stupid cat and mouse game. Even ignoring this sort of software, someo

I don't get why companies waste time with this sort of interview that just turns into this stupid cat and mouse game. Even ignoring this sort of software, someone cramming leet code exercises is the same thing in my view (they won't remember or use in their work 99% of that stuff). Just talk to the person, talk about the sorts of problems you expect them to solve. Can they understand the problem? Do they have ideas on how to solve it? Maybe give them a small take home exercise related to the work they'll be doing. Discuss it with them to see if they were the ones that actually wrote it. Sometimes you don't even need the take home exercise. If they have niche knowledge on the subject you care about they're probably good enough by default (since they are clearly invested and studious in that case). I only hired a few people in my career but every single one was a huge boon to the team, still around even after I quit as a manager. I didn't even give them a take home exercise. Didn't need to.

xandrius 2y ago
Same! This topic gets me soo irritated. If someone is supposed an expert in a field (hence them being an interviewer) how can an average joe fool them into thinking they know more than they actually do during a conversation? Even now with LLMs generating almost real time, there is always a slight delay and we all know that LLMs are far from perfect. It seems the tech community on one hand complains at how bad LLMs are for doing deep tech while at the same time fears them as they can make any candidate pass interviews. So which one is it? Also, the simplest trick even old-timers professor already know: 1) Prepare an open ended question about X 2) Ask it to ChatGPT, Claude, etc. 3) Take note of the titles, keywords used, etc. 4) Ask it to the candidate 5) Compare responses
- jochem9 2y ago
  Not all interviewers are experts. If you are building out your business you will be hiring roles that don't exist yet. Of course that brings different requirements for that first hire, but judging their skill level might prove very hard.
IshKebab 2y ago
I think it's worthwhile doing simple coding tests to check that the interviewee can actually code. It seems crazy but I've interviewed plenty of people that couldn't write a simple for loop. I agree asking difficult leetcode questions is less useful because it depends so much on whether people have practiced (or now whether they cheat with AI). Often these questions are so difficult there's no way you could come up with a solution in an interview situation if you hadn't already seen it. Getting rid of all coding interviews is stupid though. Other industries would kill to have such an easy to test skill! We shouldn't throw away such a nice thing just because some people take it too far.
- sirwhinesalot 2y ago
  There are people who can talk their way out of trouble for sure. That is why I suggested the take home exercise followed by a discussion. It's only when there's niche knowledge involved that I think it isn't necessary, because you won't be able to answer any hard questions properly without having actually worked on code for that niche at one point or another.
  - geraldwhen 2y ago
    Most applicants fake the take home problem or have someone else or ai do it for them. You have to watch someone produce a compiling for loop to prove they’ve ever built software before. Fraud is rampant.
    - sirwhinesalot 2y ago
      I've been lucky to never have to deal with that. Sucks for everyone that has. On the other hand, I personally cannot code properly while someone is conceptually "breathing down my neck". A for loop sure, but I'd probably fail at writing a hash table or whatever despite nearing 10 years of experience on many different projects, including compiler frontends and a simple garbage collector I wrote for the fun of it.
      - rvz 2y ago
tamimio 2y ago
Yep, it’s why I stopped looking for software development jobs long ago. It's this die-hard criterion that’s based on very isolated problem-solving issues rather than the big picture or the concept at least. This has resulted in the current outcome of software development nowadays, where you need a ‘wrangler’ (aka product manager) and all sorts of useless methodologies to deliver a product that’s literally identical to hundreds of products out there. It gets even worse than that, with hiring based on arbitrary values. One of the companies I worked for before had an engineering manager who chose one candidate over another simply because he had a repo with thousands of stars.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Zak 2y ago
  Creating and maintaining popular open source software seems like a reasonable criterion for deciding between two otherwise-similar candidates for a software development role.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
lordnacho 2y ago
I agree. My whole interview technique is just to have a long conversation with the person. My team was hiring recently. Guy comes on, says he's never used Rust, but has some thoughts on it. We talked about all the pros and cons of it, what the system requirements would be, and so on. He talks us through everything to do with the domain, just two seniors talking to each other at a high level. Very pleasant. We hire him, and a month later he's making idiomatic Rust. No need to put people through a ridiculous gauntlet.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  You got very lucky. Congrats! This industry is unfortunately full of very charming, polished, smooth talkers who would ace that interview and then 3 months later it would dawn on you that you made a big mistake. There is this growing breed of "LinkedIn thought leader" types who, during character creation, put all their skill points into Charisma. And they're really good at sounding technical, using the right buzzwords, overwhelming the interviewer with word-salad, subtly steering the conversation towards areas where they have crisp, prepared answers, and so on. They look great, speak eloquently, and have those ivy-leaguer mannerisms that allow them to breeze through these kinds of informal chit chat interviews. Doubly so if that kind of interview is conducted by an exec or someone less-technical. Beware!
  - lordnacho 2y ago
    > conducted by an exec or someone less-technical It only works if you are technical. Yes, your sales guy will not know a diamond from a fugazi. But as a senior tech guy, I don't think it's ever gone wrong. I've never hired a guy who I thought could code and it turns out he couldn't. You have to be willing to have the conversation with only a few scripted questions, just a few essentials. Everything else an open field. You let them sculpt it into a garden or dig their own grave, either way you give them a shovel.
tokioyoyo 2y ago
Every single big corpo knows about it. We just haven’t been able to come up with a better filter for the amount of candidates that are going through the interviews that isn’t extremely subjective. Small companies that I interviews with had a very simple process (2x talks with upper management, mostly technical talks, also a semi-coding related talk about systems). There are a lot of very well paying (maybe 15-20% less than FAANG) jobs out there, but they’re just that fancy looking.
- sirwhinesalot 2y ago
  I guess FAANGs in particular have rather messy recruitment due to the amount of applicants, but my experience is from a giant multinational, talking hundreds of thousands of employees globally here, not "small" by any stretch.

xandrius 2y ago

Same! This topic gets me soo irritated. If someone is supposed an expert in a field (hence them being an interviewer) how can an average joe fool them into thinking they know more than they actually do during a conversation? Even now with LLMs generating almost real time, there is always a slight delay and we all know that LLMs are far from perfect. It seems the tech community on one hand complains at how bad LLMs are for doing deep tech while at the same time fears them as they can make any candidate pass interviews. So which one is it? Also, the simplest trick even old-timers professor already know: 1) Prepare an open ended question about X 2) Ask it to ChatGPT, Claude, etc. 3) Take note of the titles, keywords used, etc. 4) Ask it to the candidate 5) Compare responses

jochem9 2y ago
Not all interviewers are experts. If you are building out your business you will be hiring roles that don't exist yet. Of course that brings different requirements for that first hire, but judging their skill level might prove very hard.

IshKebab 2y ago

I think it's worthwhile doing simple coding tests to check that the interviewee can actually code. It seems crazy but I've interviewed plenty of people that couldn't write a simple for loop. I agree asking difficult leetcode questions is less useful because it depends so much on whether people have practiced (or now whether they cheat with AI). Often these questions are so difficult there's no way you could come up with a solution in an interview situation if you hadn't already seen it. Getting rid of all coding interviews is stupid though. Other industries would kill to have such an easy to test skill! We shouldn't throw away such a nice thing just because some people take it too far.

sirwhinesalot 2y ago
There are people who can talk their way out of trouble for sure. That is why I suggested the take home exercise followed by a discussion. It's only when there's niche knowledge involved that I think it isn't necessary, because you won't be able to answer any hard questions properly without having actually worked on code for that niche at one point or another.
- geraldwhen 2y ago
  Most applicants fake the take home problem or have someone else or ai do it for them. You have to watch someone produce a compiling for loop to prove they’ve ever built software before. Fraud is rampant.
  - sirwhinesalot 2y ago
    I've been lucky to never have to deal with that. Sucks for everyone that has. On the other hand, I personally cannot code properly while someone is conceptually "breathing down my neck". A for loop sure, but I'd probably fail at writing a hash table or whatever despite nearing 10 years of experience on many different projects, including compiler frontends and a simple garbage collector I wrote for the fun of it.
    - rvz 2y ago

tamimio 2y ago

Yep, it’s why I stopped looking for software development jobs long ago. It's this die-hard criterion that’s based on very isolated problem-solving issues rather than the big picture or the concept at least. This has resulted in the current outcome of software development nowadays, where you need a ‘wrangler’ (aka product manager) and all sorts of useless methodologies to deliver a product that’s literally identical to hundreds of products out there. It gets even worse than that, with hiring based on arbitrary values. One of the companies I worked for before had an engineering manager who chose one candidate over another simply because he had a repo with thousands of stars.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Zak 2y ago
Creating and maintaining popular open source software seems like a reasonable criterion for deciding between two otherwise-similar candidates for a software development role.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

lordnacho 2y ago

I agree. My whole interview technique is just to have a long conversation with the person. My team was hiring recently. Guy comes on, says he's never used Rust, but has some thoughts on it. We talked about all the pros and cons of it, what the system requirements would be, and so on. He talks us through everything to do with the domain, just two seniors talking to each other at a high level. Very pleasant. We hire him, and a month later he's making idiomatic Rust. No need to put people through a ridiculous gauntlet.

ryandrake 2y ago
You got very lucky. Congrats! This industry is unfortunately full of very charming, polished, smooth talkers who would ace that interview and then 3 months later it would dawn on you that you made a big mistake. There is this growing breed of "LinkedIn thought leader" types who, during character creation, put all their skill points into Charisma. And they're really good at sounding technical, using the right buzzwords, overwhelming the interviewer with word-salad, subtly steering the conversation towards areas where they have crisp, prepared answers, and so on. They look great, speak eloquently, and have those ivy-leaguer mannerisms that allow them to breeze through these kinds of informal chit chat interviews. Doubly so if that kind of interview is conducted by an exec or someone less-technical. Beware!
- lordnacho 2y ago
  > conducted by an exec or someone less-technical It only works if you are technical. Yes, your sales guy will not know a diamond from a fugazi. But as a senior tech guy, I don't think it's ever gone wrong. I've never hired a guy who I thought could code and it turns out he couldn't. You have to be willing to have the conversation with only a few scripted questions, just a few essentials. Everything else an open field. You let them sculpt it into a garden or dig their own grave, either way you give them a shovel.

tokioyoyo 2y ago

Every single big corpo knows about it. We just haven’t been able to come up with a better filter for the amount of candidates that are going through the interviews that isn’t extremely subjective. Small companies that I interviews with had a very simple process (2x talks with upper management, mostly technical talks, also a semi-coding related talk about systems). There are a lot of very well paying (maybe 15-20% less than FAANG) jobs out there, but they’re just that fancy looking.

sirwhinesalot 2y ago
I guess FAANGs in particular have rather messy recruitment due to the amount of applicants, but my experience is from a giant multinational, talking hundreds of thousands of employees globally here, not "small" by any stretch.