4 ms·

Yeah, I've interviewed people like this 15 years ago. Degrees and experience mean nothing in this field. The best predictor I found was personal passion project

Yeah, I've interviewed people like this 15 years ago. Degrees and experience mean nothing in this field. The best predictor I found was personal passion projects. Let them get as nerdy as possible, then you will see pretty quickly where their skills are at and what their limits are. And you will immediately filter out people who just studied CS because they heard you can make good money.

gedy 5mo ago
I agree, however there are so many interviewers who will still treat that as some softball criteria and insist that unless you "prepare" for an interview by memorizing leetcode you are 100% a faker and liar.
- jadar 5mo ago
  Maybe they themselves are fakers and liars / deeply insecure. I got bumped out of an interview rather rudely once because I blanked and couldn’t answer a trivia question about arrays.
wookmaster 5mo ago
Completely agree with this, leetcode has become such a business now of memorization for interviews it’s useless to know if someone memorized a solution or not.
- virgilp 5mo ago
  you can absolutely know. they do suspiciously well. you just give harder problems until they can't solve it. how they react/approach a problem that they can't immediately solve _is_ the interview - not the "how many things they solved correctly" part. That said - I seldom need people to be hardcore algorithm solvers What I typically did was a variation of fizzbuzz (can the candidate code very basic logic?) and then finding a bug or minor requirements extension in their online screening test/"homework" and asking them to solve that on the spot (did they write the code themselves/can they modify it). It's typically enough, there's diminishing returns to test more in-depth the programming skills - the rest you can discuss domain knowledge, general experience, working style etc.
jhbadger 5mo ago
Maybe. There are certainly people in all fields who are book smart and did well in classes but are useless at actually practicing their field (not to mention people who cheated in school and got away with it and aren't even that), and it is worth filtering them out. But I think it is weird that CS expects good workers to have these passion projects. Do we expect civil engineers to build bridges in their back yard on the weekends? Can't someone just be good at their job and have other interests outside it?
- ganzsz 5mo ago
  I can passionately tell about professional projects.
- sigmoid10 5mo ago
  I imagine this is simply not such a problem in other fields. Or do civil engineering schools produce that many clueless graduates? I know other engineering fields don't pay bad, but software is another realm.

gedy 5mo ago

I agree, however there are so many interviewers who will still treat that as some softball criteria and insist that unless you "prepare" for an interview by memorizing leetcode you are 100% a faker and liar.

jadar 5mo ago
Maybe they themselves are fakers and liars / deeply insecure. I got bumped out of an interview rather rudely once because I blanked and couldn’t answer a trivia question about arrays.

wookmaster 5mo ago

Completely agree with this, leetcode has become such a business now of memorization for interviews it’s useless to know if someone memorized a solution or not.

virgilp 5mo ago
you can absolutely know. they do suspiciously well. you just give harder problems until they can't solve it. how they react/approach a problem that they can't immediately solve _is_ the interview - not the "how many things they solved correctly" part. That said - I seldom need people to be hardcore algorithm solvers What I typically did was a variation of fizzbuzz (can the candidate code very basic logic?) and then finding a bug or minor requirements extension in their online screening test/"homework" and asking them to solve that on the spot (did they write the code themselves/can they modify it). It's typically enough, there's diminishing returns to test more in-depth the programming skills - the rest you can discuss domain knowledge, general experience, working style etc.

jhbadger 5mo ago

Maybe. There are certainly people in all fields who are book smart and did well in classes but are useless at actually practicing their field (not to mention people who cheated in school and got away with it and aren't even that), and it is worth filtering them out. But I think it is weird that CS expects good workers to have these passion projects. Do we expect civil engineers to build bridges in their back yard on the weekends? Can't someone just be good at their job and have other interests outside it?

ganzsz 5mo ago
I can passionately tell about professional projects.
sigmoid10 5mo ago
I imagine this is simply not such a problem in other fields. Or do civil engineering schools produce that many clueless graduates? I know other engineering fields don't pay bad, but software is another realm.