3 ms·

I have ranted before about the cargo-cult style used in hiring processes across our industry. Most of the "write-code-on-whiteboard" and "how-many-golf-balls-a-

I have ranted before about the cargo-cult style used in hiring processes across our industry. Most of the "write-code-on-whiteboard" and "how-many-golf-balls-a-school-bus" style of bullshit has been handed down through folklore from old Microsoft interview techniques from the 80's. Now that I'm running a company, I've used the opportunity to define policies by basically banning those practices from our engineering recruitment process. Instead, we give a problem to the candidate (of the sort that we might be solving in day-to-day work ... not "create this data structure and be sure to use recursion horse-manure) and ask them to take the whole day or more if they want, in their own environment (home, cafe, wherever they find focus), as if this is a real problem they might be solving for work, and produce working code. Now I know this is not perfect, but I'm convinced this is way better than the traditional coding interview.

zak_mc_kracken 11y ago
> I've used the opportunity to define policies by basically banning those practices from our engineering recruitment process. Good for you but FYI, brain teasers have been banned in most companies in Silicon Valley for a solid decade. The fact that they are no indicator of the quality of an engineer candidate is a well known fact.
- PopeOfNope 11y ago
  > Good for you but FYI, brain teasers have been banned in most companies in Silicon Valley for a solid decade. I think you mean "specific, but highly visible companies" instead of "most companies." Having recently gone through a round of interviews, I can tell you the brain teaser is alive and well at quite a few hiring companies in SF and SV. I think people know they don't work, but hiring is difficult and most people are lazy, especially at companies where the interviewers would rather be coding.
- chetanahuja 11y ago
  Well not quite. I myself have been subjected to brain teasers and puzzlers in technical interviews well within this 10 year window. But yes, I do believe the industry is moving away from the puzzler type interviews slowly... especially after Google publicly disavowed them recently. http://www.businessinsider.com/google-hiring-practices-interviews-2014-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-hiring-practices-inter... I would also like to reiterate the cargo-culting part of my criticism and expand my rant a bit to point some fingers. One of the worst things that happened is the pernicious belief (mostly popularized by Jeff Atwood in his blog[1]) based on an non-peer-reviewed, and later retracted study[2] that implied that programming ability is a genetic trait, instead of just a skill and a craft like any other. The same blogger is also responsible for popularizing the idea that most candidates for engineering jobs are charlatans trying their best to fool you into hiring them. To be clear, I'm not implying that this one blogger is responsible for all the ills of the industry recruiting practices. But I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that the interview part of the process for engineering hires in the industry is far more adversarial than it needs to be and those with influential soapboxes who've brought us here have to accept some responsibility. The state today is, that far from the adversarial process being a necessary evil, it's actually a point of pride for certain companies (some of which I've worked for in the past). One can only hope that these attitudes change over time like those about the brain-teasers. [1] Here's Jeff's blog http://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-fr... published in 2006 [2] Here's the surprisingly detailed and personal retraction from the author of the original study... published last year. http://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/18/the-camel-doesnt-have-two-humps-programming-aptitude-test-canned-for-overzealous-conclusion/ http://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/18/the-camel-doesnt-have-... I've heard countless people in the industry repeat this belief of a programming gene to me over the last few years. They may all not remember where they originally heard this but those who do invariably point to Jeff's blog rather than the original study itself. I can only hope that Jeff uses his platform to beat the drum of this retraction as loudly as he did for the original mistaken study.
wrboyce 11y ago
> ask them to take the whole day or more if they want Are you paying candidates for this time? Unless I really wanted the job, I doubt I'd be doing full-day tasks as part of the interview process. When I was interviewing about 4 years ago for a company, their (third and) final round of technical tasks took around three hours and was invoiced afterwards.

zak_mc_kracken 11y ago

> I've used the opportunity to define policies by basically banning those practices from our engineering recruitment process. Good for you but FYI, brain teasers have been banned in most companies in Silicon Valley for a solid decade. The fact that they are no indicator of the quality of an engineer candidate is a well known fact.

PopeOfNope 11y ago
> Good for you but FYI, brain teasers have been banned in most companies in Silicon Valley for a solid decade. I think you mean "specific, but highly visible companies" instead of "most companies." Having recently gone through a round of interviews, I can tell you the brain teaser is alive and well at quite a few hiring companies in SF and SV. I think people know they don't work, but hiring is difficult and most people are lazy, especially at companies where the interviewers would rather be coding.
chetanahuja 11y ago
Well not quite. I myself have been subjected to brain teasers and puzzlers in technical interviews well within this 10 year window. But yes, I do believe the industry is moving away from the puzzler type interviews slowly... especially after Google publicly disavowed them recently. http://www.businessinsider.com/google-hiring-practices-interviews-2014-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-hiring-practices-inter... I would also like to reiterate the cargo-culting part of my criticism and expand my rant a bit to point some fingers. One of the worst things that happened is the pernicious belief (mostly popularized by Jeff Atwood in his blog[1]) based on an non-peer-reviewed, and later retracted study[2] that implied that programming ability is a genetic trait, instead of just a skill and a craft like any other. The same blogger is also responsible for popularizing the idea that most candidates for engineering jobs are charlatans trying their best to fool you into hiring them. To be clear, I'm not implying that this one blogger is responsible for all the ills of the industry recruiting practices. But I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that the interview part of the process for engineering hires in the industry is far more adversarial than it needs to be and those with influential soapboxes who've brought us here have to accept some responsibility. The state today is, that far from the adversarial process being a necessary evil, it's actually a point of pride for certain companies (some of which I've worked for in the past). One can only hope that these attitudes change over time like those about the brain-teasers. [1] Here's Jeff's blog http://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-fr... published in 2006 [2] Here's the surprisingly detailed and personal retraction from the author of the original study... published last year. http://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/18/the-camel-doesnt-have-two-humps-programming-aptitude-test-canned-for-overzealous-conclusion/ http://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/18/the-camel-doesnt-have-... I've heard countless people in the industry repeat this belief of a programming gene to me over the last few years. They may all not remember where they originally heard this but those who do invariably point to Jeff's blog rather than the original study itself. I can only hope that Jeff uses his platform to beat the drum of this retraction as loudly as he did for the original mistaken study.

wrboyce 11y ago

> ask them to take the whole day or more if they want Are you paying candidates for this time? Unless I really wanted the job, I doubt I'd be doing full-day tasks as part of the interview process. When I was interviewing about 4 years ago for a company, their (third and) final round of technical tasks took around three hours and was invoiced afterwards.