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This story reminds me of how broken software engineer interviewing is. Imagine if a company decided to hire software engineers by giving them five 6-sided dice

This story reminds me of how broken software engineer interviewing is. Imagine if a company decided to hire software engineers by giving them five 6-sided dice. Then they have to come to the company building and roll each dice once every hour. And during that hour they have to dance and sing in front of someone while being recorded. If they roll all 6 on all 5 dice, their dancing and singing will be judged by the committee! And if the committee likes their performance they might get the job! The acceptance rate is 0.01%, the company is so elite. And this company is also complaining about a software engineer shortage. They wish they could find more good engineers! It's pretty obvious which company (or group of companies) I'm referring to. The interviewing process of these companies has done great harm to the software industry. And now they're trying to do further harm by using it as an excuse to get cheap foreign labor to reduce salaries.

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bvanslyke 12y ago
Palantir?
- selimthegrim 12y ago
  I believe he or she is talking about Google.
  - twright0 12y ago
    Google's acceptance rate is well above .01%, just using basic reasoning. Google employs tens of thousands of engineers, which means they would have had to reject hundreds of millions of candidates for the role of software engineer.
    - theatgrex 12y ago
      You're hired!
- koyote 12y ago
  Could you elaborate on why Palantir might fit the description?
pkaye 12y ago
I'm presuming you are talking about Google? Why can't they then just hire in their offshore offices then?
rifung 12y ago
Maybe I'm just dumb but it's not at all obvious which company you're talking about
Joky 12y ago
This is what poor programmer are saying usually :)
wyager 12y ago
I've interviewed at all/most of the companies you're probably referring to. None of my interviews were as you described. Sure, some of them were very abstract questions, but it's pretty obvious what the interviewers are getting at. In fact, I prefer this over "implement a red-black tree" or other excessively technical questions. Those kinds of interviews just test memorization and not skill or reasoning ability. A skilled programmer with good reasoning can learn any of those concrete mechanical concepts very quickly.
raverbashing 12y ago
Looks like the American Idol audition (I'm serious) However, rolling 6 on 5 dice is 1 to 7766 odds, and I suspect AI has a lower entrance bar for the committee

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bvanslyke 12y ago

Palantir?

selimthegrim 12y ago
I believe he or she is talking about Google.
- twright0 12y ago
  Google's acceptance rate is well above .01%, just using basic reasoning. Google employs tens of thousands of engineers, which means they would have had to reject hundreds of millions of candidates for the role of software engineer.
  - theatgrex 12y ago
    You're hired!
koyote 12y ago
Could you elaborate on why Palantir might fit the description?

pkaye 12y ago

I'm presuming you are talking about Google? Why can't they then just hire in their offshore offices then?

rifung 12y ago

Maybe I'm just dumb but it's not at all obvious which company you're talking about

Joky 12y ago

This is what poor programmer are saying usually :)

wyager 12y ago

I've interviewed at all/most of the companies you're probably referring to. None of my interviews were as you described. Sure, some of them were very abstract questions, but it's pretty obvious what the interviewers are getting at. In fact, I prefer this over "implement a red-black tree" or other excessively technical questions. Those kinds of interviews just test memorization and not skill or reasoning ability. A skilled programmer with good reasoning can learn any of those concrete mechanical concepts very quickly.

raverbashing 12y ago

Looks like the American Idol audition (I'm serious) However, rolling 6 on 5 dice is 1 to 7766 odds, and I suspect AI has a lower entrance bar for the committee