[HN Gopher] The technical interview practice gap
___________________________________________________________________
The technical interview practice gap
Author : leeny
Score : 77 points
Date : 2021-03-09 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.interviewing.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.interviewing.io)
| twp wrote:
| This is simultaneously so wrong and so right.
|
| So wrong because it equates passing the interview with being good
| at the job. These two things have almost nothing in common.
|
| So right because practicing jumping though artificial hoops is
| exactly what you need to do to succeed at a large corporate. This
| skill is orthogonal to contributing actual value.
| tomatohs wrote:
| A big reason we use leetcode style challenges is because they can
| be automatically scored, while take-homes take a lot more to
| review.
|
| I'm building a developer screens sharing app that, among other
| things, automates non-whiteboard interviews. Typically we can
| review a 60 minute take-home in 10 minutes, without cloning the
| repo. http://paircast.io
|
| If you're an engineering manager that wants to move away from the
| leetcode challenges, please get in touch with me. ian@haxor.sh
|
| Also see http://they.whiteboarded.me/
| novok wrote:
| The issue with take homes is they tend to be time unbounded for
| the interviewee, not the amount of time it take to review them
| AND there is still a whiteboard algo interview to do.
|
| When your doing whiteboard interviews the interviewer is there
| the entire time interacting with you, so it's taking up 1.5hrs
| of engineer time at least for every 1hr interacting with the
| interviewee. Reviewing a take home takes less time.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > A big reason we use leetcode style challenges is because they
| can be automatically scored, while take-homes take a lot more
| to review.
|
| Take-home problems are automatically scored as well. The
| company defines an API or interface to the code and creates a
| test suite to run against it.
|
| The benefit of take-home problems is that you have the option
| of reviewing the code in-depth if you need more perspective. If
| a candidate only passes 7/10 tests, I'll still dive into the
| code to see what went wrong. If it's an honest mistake, I
| ignore the failure and amend the instructions to make it more
| clear for the next candidate.
| dominotw wrote:
| > Typically we can review a 60 minute take-home in 10 minutes
|
| So a candidate a invests 60 minutes of their time and a multi
| million dollar company invests 10 minutes.
|
| We should all boycott these asymmetrical "take home" tests.
| swagonomixxx wrote:
| > A big reason we use leetcode style challenges is because they
| can be automatically scored, while take-homes take a lot more
| to review.
|
| Literally this. You can pretty much do all of the interviews
| required for FANG without talking to a human being, which from
| the FANG perspective, is absolutely GREAT, because it takes all
| of the existing social biases (e.g preferring a certain race,
| preferring a certain gender, etc.) out of the window and
| focuses ONLY on the algorithmic knowledge of the applicant.
|
| Of course, there might be some interview here and there about
| soft questions, but for the most part, they don't really give a
| shit about that, and it's unlikely that you'd be rejected based
| on that, unless you _really_ suck at bull-shitting
| success/failure stories (which I am - can't stand doing it).
|
| I think the last time I applied to Amazon (over a year ago at
| this point) I didn't even get phone screened. It was just a
| link to 2 graph algorithm problems that were the equivalent of
| a medium difficultly on Leetcode, and I was immediately graded.
| It's so fricking easy for FANG nowadays.
| anon_tor_12345 wrote:
| >A big reason we use leetcode style challenges is because they
| can be automatically scored
|
| but they're not? every screen i've been through has been on
| something that doesn't even compile the code (e.g. coderpad.io
| for FB or docs at G) and the interviewer then writes a summary
| afterwards (ala hiring packet at G) with ratings along some
| axes.
| 120bits wrote:
| I haven't cleared a single technical interview after applying to
| FAANG companies in last 5 years. I'm currently employed and I
| have been working for than 8 years. I'm good at what I do. I
| might not the greatest programmer but I can come up with a
| approach to solve a problem.
|
| My past experiences have been terrible, not a single person who
| interviewed me wanted to know what I worked on or what I have
| achieved or how I solved a given problem. Few introductory
| questions and jump into coding questions. Some of them are medium
| and few of them were hard. But at most I was able to find a way
| to solve(not completely code a solution).
|
| It seems lot easier when you are in college and are surround by
| students who are practicing coding interviews. You can talk,
| discuss and gain more experience. I don't know how I can do that,
| when I'm busy maintaining and coding for my current job. Its just
| so demotivating.
| arebop wrote:
| Practice definitely helps.
|
| There's a lot luck involved because there are so many
| candidates, most of whom cannot come up with an approach to
| solve a problem (let alone to solve it well enough to serve
| billions of users well). So even most candidates who are
| qualified can't convincingly demonstrate that given the time
| constraints and pressure etc.
|
| It is hard to get into FANG for college new grads, it is even
| harder if you're trying to break into the tech industry from
| outside without the schedule flexibility and focused community
| support of a top tier university. It is possible but you need a
| combination of high ability, strong drive, and luck.
|
| At my FANG, we've made some interviewing changes over the past
| 5 years such that these days you'd spend at least 20% of your
| day interviewing talking about what you worked on and achieved
| and how you solved problems, whereas in the past it would be
| entirely at your interviewer's discretion and typically only be
| a few minutes of unscored small talk.
|
| FANG is an interesting life experience and it pays well, but
| plenty of people find it is not all it is cracked up to be.
| Just as in every job, a lot depends on the particular people
| you work with and whether you enjoy the particular problems you
| are solving. So maybe also consider whether you really need to
| go FANG (right now) or whether you could be just as happy at a
| place that's willing to take a more individual approach on
| hiring. That place could even be a stepping stone to reach FANG
| later on if that's what you want to do later.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| The usual HackerNews advice here is something like _find a way
| to commit a few hours a week to LeetCode_.
| danjac wrote:
| It's like tech interviewing has become the modern equivalent
| of the old Chinese Imperial examination: keep your head down,
| don't rock the boat, study these arbitrary tests to rise in
| status. A far cry from the early days of HN when the culture
| was more "think different".
| nexus2045 wrote:
| The usual HN sentiment seems to be that take-home assignments
| are degrading, whiteboarding interviews are broken, which can
| be summarized as "I take a lot of pride in my craft, how dare
| you ask me undergrad trivia"; whereas the Blind sentiment is
| that all you need to do to get a 300K+ salary is to grind
| Leetcode and system design prep, which can be summarized as
| "I'll do anything to get money and that's the only thing that
| matters". I guess there's also cscareerquestions, which is
| more "I've applied to 500 jobs and heard back from none,
| help!".
| EVdotIO wrote:
| This entire industry is just awful, and the antithesis of
| anything resembling the compassionate virtues they claim to
| espouse. I'm done with programming, and maybe that's what is
| supposed to happen, but it has left a very bitter taste in my
| mouth. If you have serious chops, go for it. Otherwise, give
| it a wide berth.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| To continue the normal HackerNews go-around on this topic:
| there are plenty of companies that don't interview like
| this, at least outside of Silicon Valley.
| jrib wrote:
| > I'm done with programming
|
| Curious: what did you switch to?
| EVdotIO wrote:
| I DJ. Not something I would recommend as a career choice.
| Pay isn't as good and I don't have benefits, but the lack
| of dread is nice.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| Never thought of freelancing?
| BossingAround wrote:
| Oh I don't know that freelancing is the best choice when
| one wants "lack of dread"... :))
| BossingAround wrote:
| An honest question; do you need to work for FAANGs if this is
| the case? I think it's fairly accepted that you need X amount
| of hours per week to designate only to studying for your FAANG
| interview if you want to pass. This might be 10h a week for the
| next 3-6 months, or 15 for the next 10 months (or any other
| number of hours a week for any other number of months/weeks),
| as it wholly depends on you.
|
| You can either dedicate the time and practice, or decide you
| don't want to do it since your situation does not enable you to
| do so (e.g. due to kids, family, or simply lack of motivation).
|
| Of course, there are people who do not have to study. It seems
| you are not one of them. (Neither am I to be honest, this is
| just an observation, not an offensive remark). What else is
| there to do other than studying or not passing the interview in
| such a case?
| jeffbee wrote:
| This is pretty explicit in interview training at least at
| Google. Nobody cares how you solved some problem because inside
| the Google none of your experience applies. What are needed are
| people who can read and write code, who know algorithms and can
| discuss the complexity of them.
| scott_codie wrote:
| Predicting future productivity is hard and there is no magic set
| of questions that will predict it. It seems tech companies worry
| too much about the questions they ask rather than interpreting
| the answers that they were given. The solution seems to be to not
| worry about it too much and just hire (and fire) liberally.
| tharne wrote:
| These posts are getting tiresome. There's way too much focus on
| FAANGs and SV in general.
|
| Most of us work in hum-drum industries for companies no one's
| heard of, in towns no one's heard of, and have reasonable hours,
| good enough pay, and have never logged onto leetcode for anything
| other than to briefly see what all the fuss is about.
|
| I will guarantee that at least half the developers I work with
| have never logged onto leetcode and many have not even heard of
| it. They're too busy working, raising kids, and coaching little
| league to be wringing their hands about the latest nonsense in
| SV.
| Swizec wrote:
| As a lucratively employed Silicon Valley engineer, I've never
| seen leetcode. Not even sure what it looks like or how it
| works.
|
| And that's with being an immigrant from eastern-ish europe.
|
| But it sure is fun to flog on it as a meme. I doubt more than
| 30% of engineers working in SV startups ever actually used
| leetcode. And I certainly wouldn't hire anyone above absolute
| junior based on their leeting skillz.
| marcinzm wrote:
| I've never had a startup offer to pay close to what FAANG
| gives in terms of compensation. And no the equity worth as
| much as pre-COVID toilet paper doesn't count.
|
| edit: And I've never seen a startup offer enough equity to
| offset the average risk of that equity being worth nothing
| (and things like not being able to invest the money). It's
| fine to take a gamble, the payout can be nice, but in terms
| of average expected money after X years startups are light
| years away from FAANG in my experience.
| novok wrote:
| Have you worked at a publicly traded SV company that pays
| comparable to MSFT, Amazon, FB, Google or Apple with good
| stock growth? Nowadays there are startups that don't do algo
| interviews, so if you've been lucky, then you've never
| encountered that interview type.
|
| Leetcode is shorthand for algo interview prep, there are many
| alternatives to leetcode itself.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Leetcode is shorthand for algo interview prep
|
| Fair. And no, I haven't worked at a publicly traded company
| nor would I really want to. The optionality makes for good
| leverage in salary negotiation though.
|
| From what I can tell when interviewing engineers, most
| over-index on the algorithms. Sure we all ask an algorithms
| question, but it's more of a checkbox. It's the other 6
| interviews that tell us way _way_ more about the candidate.
|
| And yes, I could get more at Facebook, Google, or Apple,
| but then I'd have to work for FB, Goog, or App.
| novok wrote:
| I think you should try to interview at a few of those
| places, then you'll understand why everyone focuses on
| the algo parts. If you fail one interview type, it's very
| rare that you will get an offer, and it pisses you off
| that you failed one interview because it was some left
| field random algo question that you haven't encountered
| before.
|
| The rest of the interview types are fairly easy to
| prepare for, you almost do not have to, just do a few
| interview loops with your lower priority companies and
| your mostly good.
|
| I also would reconsider not working at a pubicly traded
| company. I used to work in a startup for years, and I
| regret not switching sooner. Dan luu summarizes my
| thoughts on it: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/
| bradlys wrote:
| No, he's only worked at Yup in SV AFAICT. Maybe he's making
| $400K+/yr there but I'm somewhat skeptical. It could be his
| perspective on what is lucrative is very different having
| come from eastern europe and maybe comparing to there
| rather than to FAANG TC or what a soon-to-IPO company TC
| would be. (e.g. Instacart)
|
| I've interviewed with 100+ companies in the bay. His
| experience is not representative of the industry at all,
| IMO... 90% of companies use leetcode here. Again, I need to
| emphasize, I've interviewed with way more companies than
| most people and most of my peers interview with dozens as
| well and they all have to grind leetcode.
| [deleted]
| boatsie wrote:
| I can understand your annoyance at the FAANG obsession, but
| when the total comp is literally 2-3 times that of the hum drum
| industries, doing roughly the same work, it makes sense that
| people would want to consider them.
| throwawayla wrote:
| Or you can use the diversity hiring to increase your
| probability
|
| [1]
| https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/25badfc6b6d1b33f...
| kappi wrote:
| Preparing for tech interview has become a cottage industry by
| itself. We sent people to Moon before people were subjected to
| these theoretical tests.
| tidepod12 wrote:
| A significant portion of developers (and especially developers
| on this website) have experience with, or desire experience
| with, these FAANGs and SV companies, and these posts are
| relevant to them. If you feel like you aren't the target
| audience, then you are welcome to ignore the post and click on
| something else. But it's a bit absurd to condescend others just
| because they have different experiences than you.
|
| And with that said, you too should care, because I guarantee
| it's only a matter of time before those "hum-drum industries"
| take a look at the way SV does things and says "hey, we should
| do that too". This is already happening in many places. Your
| company could be next. You should be interested, if only to
| learn to spot the warning signs and nip it in the bud when you
| can.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > I won't name any specific companies here, but tech giants (many
| with good intentions and with marching orders to boost their
| diversity numbers) often do a considerable amount of outreach and
| pre-interview engagement with candidates from underrepresented
| backgrounds. This outreach is usually an info session where one
| engineer speaks to a virtual room of candidates from
| underrepresented backgrounds. The engineer tells them what to
| expect in technical interviews, encourages them to learn how to
| articulate their thought process out loud while solving a
| problem, and recommends resources like Cracking the Coding
| Interview. Some companies even go so far as to offer their
| underrepresented candidates a mock interview or two. [...]
| Unfortunately, for candidates who are unfamiliar with the
| process, neither of these interventions is nearly enough.
|
| At some point how much hand-holding is enough?
|
| They pretty much told candidates where to get sample problems,
| gave a session showing what the interview is like, did one mock
| interview... Pretty much all what prospective applicants have to
| do is pair up and do a few more practice rounds.
|
| How is it the evil tech company's fault? They gave them the
| toolbox with all the tools in it and instruction on what to do.
| And the material to practice building whatever they said they
| will test them on.
| brandall10 wrote:
| I interviewed with Google last summer, and the recruiter
| personally did all of this (aside from a mock, but did mention
| interviewing.io) and included a pretty lengthy email with
| resources. I'm a white male.
|
| Still, the vast majority of applicants aren't going to pass.
| It's not like it's just some minor brushing up for most - it
| takes real work and dedication, for some that could do the job
| well over 100 hours... an infinite amount of time probably
| won't be enough for those who can't.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > it takes real work and dedication, for some well over 100
| hours.
|
| Or a serious algorithm and data structure class.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| For most people, not really. You don't study how to solve
| leetcode questions on a whiteboard during a typical DS &
| algo class. The more serious and advanced the class, the
| farther it'll be from interview questions really. And even
| if you prepared well at some point, how long can you be
| good at it without regular practice? The day job of a
| software developer rarely requires reaching for clever
| algorithms.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| No specific amount of "hand holding" is enough until the
| diversity numbers are up, as that is now the metric.
|
| This is not a specific judgement about diversity as a metric,
| but an observation of making any something a metric.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| I haven't participated in too many FAANG interviews and even
| with the recruiter handholding it's still super confusing if
| you're not familiar with the scene:
|
| What difficulty of questions will be asked? Easy? Hard? Do
| people actually want to "hear the thinking process" or do they
| just want an optimum answer regurgitated quickly? Do I need to
| practice "regular" interview questions also ("What's your
| greatest weakness?")?
|
| All of this with a life-changing, potential millionaire amount
| of money at stake, which isn't great for the nerves.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > What difficulty of questions will be asked? Easy? Hard? Do
| people actually want to "hear the thinking process" or do
| they just want an optimum answer regurgitated quickly? Do I
| need to practice "regular" interview questions also ("What's
| your greatest weakness?")?
|
| Isn't it what they talk about in the outreach session
| described above?
| treis wrote:
| Company that sells interview practice says interview practice is
| important... more at 11
| posharma wrote:
| I said this yesterday and will say it again. We discuss
| interviewing a lot here. Despite all the proposals things don't
| really change. FA(A)NG style interviews are just that -
| whiteboarding solutions to N algorithmic problems in M minutes
| (or minor variants of this). Either we accept this and move on
| with solid preparation or modify our priorities such that we're
| fine with not wanting the money and/or the quality of work
| (debatable) offered by these companies. At the end of the day,
| it's a choice and it's still in our hands.
| trap_chateau wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure I'm getting what you're conveying here.
| Are you just reminding everyone that change is slow to come,
| and to be pragmatic about these applications? (I agree with
| that.) Are you also claiming it's futile to attempt to change
| or push back against this interviewing process, at least
| through discussion about it?
|
| With enough push back, I do think it's possible that those in
| charge of hiring in the world might reconsider how valuable
| leetcode tests are to judging potential employees.
| posharma wrote:
| Change is slow to come and be pragmatic.
| Kranar wrote:
| These kinds of discussions are futile yes. It's been well
| over 10 years and the only change in this discussion is the
| introduction of racial and gender discrimination, whereas 10
| years ago the focus was on age discrimination.
|
| I'd be happy to hear alternative approaches to conducting a
| technical interview, but no one presents any. There are 100
| comments in this topic and hardly any discussion of what a
| good hiring process would look like.
| mLuby wrote:
| Forget for a minute who _won 't_ get through the "broken tech
| interviews" and instead consider the types of bad hires that
| _could_ get through these filters:
|
| - Take-home LeetCode: poor communication skills, bad at
| workflows, unpleasant personality, poor architecture, write-only,
| cheaters.
|
| - Live LeetCode: same as take-home LeetCode but at least they
| have communication skills and aren't cheating so you know they
| can write efficient functions.
|
| - Resume: all the issues with take-home LeetCode.
|
| - Culture fit/behavioral: all the issues of take-home LeetCode,
| but at least they're good at communication and have a good
| personality.
|
| - Take-home project: same as take-home Leetcode but instead of
| efficient functions you know they can at least architect and
| implement a small, standard application (if they didn't cheat).
|
| - Show me your side project: Same as take-home project, plus they
| might work extremely slowly, and might only be passionate about
| that one side project, but you know they have communication
| skills.
|
| - Architecture whiteboarding: can't actually code to implement
| the systems they're drawing, but you know they have communication
| skills.
|
| So it's no surprise that companies wanting to reduce the risk of
| a costly bad hire (a bad fit, not necessarily a bad _person_ )
| evaluate the candidate from different angles to check for red
| flags.
|
| I sympathize with the frustration of those who present false
| negatives and are filtered out despite actually being a good fit,
| for example working parents who can't spend a whole weekend
| polishing a take-home project.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| We pair the take home with a code review the candidate hosts
| with the SW team.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| It is very hard to parse your comment, a bit better formatting
| may help I guess?
| mLuby wrote:
| Better now? HN's need for extra newlines between bullets
| always gets me.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| with take-home there's also the fact that the great candidates
| will probably have an offer before they even get to start
| working on your take-home, unless you are Google/SpaceX or pays
| extremely well.
|
| Students sort companies they are interested in in descending
| order so your take-home will get done whenever they have some
| time available.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > with take-home there's also the fact that the great
| candidates will probably have an offer before they even get
| to start working on your take-home
|
| Are you seeing excessively demanding take-home projects? I've
| only ever seen take-home challenges in the 1-4 hour range.
|
| On the hiring side, I gave candidates a choice between our
| take-home problem or an on-site interview. Everyone gladly
| chose the take-home problem.
|
| I don't understand why so many people are loathe to spend a
| few hours in the comfort of their home working on a take-home
| challenge in their preferred dev environment, when the
| alternative is to take time off work to handle a mid-day
| interview with a live person.
|
| As much as HN hates take-home problems, I've received near
| universal approval from candidates on the hiring the side
| relative to having people do live, in-person tech interviews.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > I've only ever seen take-home challenges in the 1-4 hour
| range.
|
| For college hiring, that's on top of a busy schedule (and
| everyone interviews roughly at the same time). So the take-
| homes add up.
|
| And it's a long time commitment from the candidate but a
| potentially very short one from the employer (run some
| automatic grading/testing then ghost the candidate). Going
| to an on-site and meeting engineers shows more commitment
| on the employer's side (talking to the candidate is worth 2
| hours of an engineer's time).
|
| But if you have a good completion rate for your take-home,
| that's great.
| s17n wrote:
| I went to a bootcamp (one of the more reputable ones at the the
| at least - they didn't charge the attendees) and it was basically
| 75% interview prep, 20% working on a project designed for the job
| search (highest possible ratio of buzzwords/effort) and 5%
| everything else. If bootcamps aren't doing a good job of
| interview prep I doubt it's for a lack of trying.
| aphextron wrote:
| I'll preempt the usual discussion on these posts with this:
|
| Everything in life is a game. You can choose to learn the rules,
| and play to win it, or you can call foul and take what's given to
| you easily.
|
| Either one is valid. But don't act entitled to the gold medal if
| you choose to prioritize other things over practice.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| And in fairness to the FAANGs, it seems like we actually know
| the rules: review your fundamental CS algorithms and grind
| leetcode. Compare this to any other company who is looking for
| whatever the fuck culture fit means and how to get a job there
| is anybody's guess.
| bidirectional wrote:
| Yep. Quant finance has a very similar culture to FAANG
| companies when it comes to interviewing style. Yet practically
| every one in the field just realises that's how the game works,
| does some practice and gets on with it. No one _likes_ going
| through this process, but once you realise that well-paying,
| prestigious jobs just require you to take a roughly
| standardised, undergrad-level test, it almost feels like
| cheating.
| dominotw wrote:
| Agreed 100%. FB has the right to conduct interviews however
| they see fit.
| jdlyga wrote:
| I get contacted by a ton of recruiters, as I'm sure most of you
| do. But do I have the time to practice for programming
| interviews? No.
| bidirectional wrote:
| Here's a serious question, does any job paying over 250k have an
| _easier_ hiring process than FAANG? The thought of going through
| an investment banking, white-shoe law firm or medical residency
| pipeline seems utterly terrifying compared to 'show up in jeans
| and take this algorithms test which has near-infinite practice
| material available'.
| zerkten wrote:
| The process is quite a lot easier for the hire and the outcomes
| are frequently better for employer. A key point is that it is a
| much more substantial process than it is in tech, and the
| qualitative aspects are understood/accepted/managed.
|
| Tech hires quickly and frequently for the short-term. The
| algorithms test approach is intended to condense what would be
| a much more expansive investigation into something
| straightforward (and supposedly quantifiable.) This discards a
| significant amount of information which is considered in other
| high-end jobs.
| jerf wrote:
| While I won't accuse any one person of this exact opinion, I do
| enjoy that the gestalt of HN appears to believe that for this
| upper-middle class job from which you'll have the power to
| easily destroy millions of dollars' worth of value if you screw
| up hard enough, you should not have to 1. solve problems in
| front of someone in an interview 2. bring your laptop to your
| interview 3. have to provide any evidence of your programming
| ability via open source samples or past work 4. have a take-
| home work problem 5. be hired to do the job on a trial basis
| for a period of time 6. put up with the fact that the
| interviewer has power if for no other reason than you are one
| of multiple candidates 7. essentially prove your ability to do
| the job in any manner whatsoever.
|
| I can understand the arguments for many of those, but... uh...
| _somehow_ you 're going to need to prove yourself. We can't
| just throw everyone who shows up into the position to see how
| they'd do... and the HN gestalt would presumably complain about
| how awful that is, too.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| >somehow you're going to need to prove yourself
|
| You could just, like, _ask_ me! Talk to me like a human
| being. You 'll quickly see I'm all the things I claim to be
| on my resume. /s
| grumple wrote:
| Do physicians have to perform surgery to demonstrate their
| knowledge when they change hospitals?
|
| Do executives have to demonstrate their knowledge of
| acquisitions or something similar?
|
| Also let's not act like this only applies to FAANG. Every dev
| job from internships and 50k entry level positions and up
| require the same testing. How many 70k/year jobs require
| testing every time you change positions outside of tech? Very
| few. Law, some medical fields, and a few other highly skilled
| fields do require licensing, but you only do that once per
| state at most.
|
| Tech is the only field I've ever seen where your experience
| doesn't matter and you have to prove your skills with every
| interview. In other industries, it's mostly about personality.
| Kranar wrote:
| >Do physicians have to perform surgery to demonstrate their
| knowledge when they change hospitals?
|
| Not sure how serious you're being but the answer is yes,
| surgeons seeking to change from hospital A to hospital B have
| interviews where a surgeon from hospital B will visit
| hospital A to supervise a surgery or other operation.
| Depending on how critical the position it may even be a
| partner from one hospital doing the supervision. In fact
| nowadays the supervision can be done remotely.
|
| Furthermore surgeons are required to maintain their
| accreditation by earning credits on a yearly basis through
| continuing education and/or training and they do so on their
| own time.
|
| These guys don't mess around and if you think surgeons get
| hired because of their wonderful personality then you sorely
| underestimate the medical profession (and overestimate their
| personality ;P ). It's incredibly competitive, demanding, and
| prestigious in almost every sense imaginable.
| josephg wrote:
| In other industries, it's mostly about credentials. The
| reason a surgeon doesn't have to prove themselves when they
| switch hospitals is because a medical degree means something.
| Getting a medical degree is brutal. The failure rate for
| exams is very high (60+% for specialist exams). The whole
| process is effective at weeding out anyone who won't be able
| to do the job.
|
| In comparison, software has no equivalent credentials.
| Universities, collages and bootcamps have no incentive to
| fail anyone. As a result plenty of weak students pass - only
| to discover that they're largely unemployable. This does a
| disservice to lots of people - companies can't trust degrees,
| and need expensive interviews. Good candidates have no way to
| reliably demonstrate their strengths. And weak students waste
| tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of their
| lives failing to learn to code.
|
| But the benefit of our system is that we allow programmers to
| be self taught. If you can't afford to go to collage, or you
| are from a poor country, or you just don't like school,
| that's no barrier. You can learn programming in your own time
| and still get a great job. There's lots of great programmers
| with the aptitude to become lawyers or doctors - but who
| would never be able to get the piece of paper they need to
| get those jobs. That's something we as an industry should be
| proud of.
| grumple wrote:
| I'd prefer credentials, honestly. Something like the bar
| for law (but with no specific academic requirements - a
| test anyone can take) would be useful. If whiteboarding
| works, that can be done once and become an accreditation.
| Repeating the process with every job application makes it
| harder to change jobs, because you either have to do
| serious prep before a slew of interviews or keep those
| interview-specific skills up. It also makes the minimum
| time to get a new position very high.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > I'd prefer credentials, honestly.
|
| Most well-credentialed people would.
|
| Most under-credentialed people are thankful for skills-
| based testing because it levels the playing field.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > Tech is the only field I've ever seen where your experience
| doesn't matter and you have to prove your skills with every
| interview. In other industries, it's mostly about
| personality.
|
| This sounds like a good thing to me (for tech). The interview
| process may suck, but at least everybody has to endure it.
| And then you're in a meritocracy. That's the theory, anyway.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Do physicians have to perform surgery to demonstrate their
| knowledge when they change hospitals?
|
| Most surgical procedures are mostly the same regardless of
| which hospital they're performed at. It's not like software
| engineering where the tasks and difficulty vary greatly from
| company to company.
|
| A surgeon's record at one hospital _is_ their interview for
| the next job. So yes, every surgery they perform is, in
| essence, contributing to their interview for any future jobs.
| the_only_law wrote:
| From what I've been told instead of an obnoxious interview
| process, they require expensive credentials and are siloed by
| the prestige of their schools.
|
| I sure don't think leetcode interviews are great, but I'll take
| it compared to that.
| ipaddr wrote:
| It is not as easy as passing a test. Rounds of interviews,
| hiring hiring committee approvals to follow.
|
| Plenty of easier process exist but they are not jobs you can
| apply for. A baseball special assistant hired by an owner can
| be hired after drinks.
|
| In terms of regular jobs a sales staff working on commission
| could be easier.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I've got two doctors in my family, and from how they describe
| it getting into med school is easier than FAANG. Once you're in
| you're practically guaranteed 250k after 7 years of training
| and 500k debt. Residency definitely sounds like a pain in the
| ass, but if you graduate from a reputable American med school
| it's very unlikely that you don't match. I guess it depends on
| how you define easy. Some may define it as amount of work
| required, I tend to think as chance of success.
| sfashset wrote:
| Getting into any US med school is definitely harder than
| getting into FAANG. [0]
|
| Part of it is things like the MCAT and organic chemistry are
| hard, part of it is there's a whole "hidden" component of med
| school applications related to volunteering, shadowing,
| research etc, that is opaque to most. This is part of the
| reason 50% of med school students already have a parent
| working in medicine.
|
| [0] https://www.aamc.org/system/files/2020-10/2020_FACTS_Tabl
| e_A...
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I'm not sure what the table proves without FAANG
| statistics. I don't think 65% of students with a 3.8 are
| getting accepted at FAANG.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Some may define it as amount of work required, I tend to
| think as chance of success.
|
| I don't understand how anyone can think that 7 or more years
| of med school and grueling residency is somehow easier than
| studying Leetcode for a few weeks or months.
|
| Med school has a very different selection bias than FAANG
| interviews. No one seriously attempts to attend medical
| school unless they've committed to 7 years of grueling
| training. A FAANG interview, on the other hand, is barely a
| blip on the radar over the course of an engineering career. A
| lot of people apply to FAANG jobs just to try their chances
| at the application process. Not so for medical school.
| tidepod12 wrote:
| My experience with consulting jobs is that while the interviews
| themselves are still difficult, they do not require nearly as
| much of this "devote your life to studying and taking practice
| tests" that the tech industry is enamored with. Consulting
| interviews are almost all behavioral, and sometimes require a
| short case presentation, but even the case rarely requires days
| and days worth of preparation. Yes, there are some who do
| prepare endlessly (like "Cracking the Case Interview"), but I
| know _far_ fewer people who go that route and even those that
| do still spend only a fraction of the time on it compared to
| leetcoders.
|
| The mindset during consulting recruiting seems to be more of
| "we want to make sure you have a decent base level of knowledge
| and problem solving skills, but if you don't know how to
| code/make a PPT/whatever, that's fine, because we can teach you
| that stuff". Big tech recruiting seems to be the opposite: even
| when big tech companies claim "you don't need to know
| everything, because we'll teach you", they still require you to
| jump through these leetcode-style hoops to prove your skills.
|
| And this is echoed beyond the hiring process too, in my
| experience. Consulting companies hire smart people and want to
| keep them for a long time, so they invest a lot of money into
| training those people and attempting to keep attrition down.
| FAANG on the other hand seems to care less about attrition
| (sometimes even embracing it, eg Amazon) and wants to hire
| people that require minimal training, and thus wants people
| that have immediately demonstrable knowledge so they can be
| immediately productive.
| spaced-out wrote:
| >My experience with consulting jobs is that while the
| interviews themselves are still difficult, they do not
| require nearly as much of this "devote your life to studying
| and taking practice tests" that the tech industry is enamored
| with.
|
| What type of consulting are you talking about, and are these
| jobs really paying >$250k? What would someone have to do to
| get a shot at one of these jobs?
| novok wrote:
| From what I know from doctors, what FANG does is basically the
| equivalent of doing your board exams every time you want to
| change jobs. Which usually gets a reaction of dread & disgust
| when you couch it in those terms to doctors.
|
| Interviews are significantly easier as far as prep time goes
| for doctors & psychologists.
|
| BUT, you don't have to go through the entire med school &
| residency rigamarole as a software engineer either, so as far
| as total effort goes FANG is probably easier. I posit that
| software engineering is probably the most egalitarian method of
| socioeconomic mobility, because the only real barrier is time,
| a laptop, the internet and motivation, while all the other
| methods require an upper-middle class background and expensive
| schooling (law, medicine, finance) or just plain luck
| (business, celebrity art & sports)
|
| But being an interviewer in FANG, I've actually found it rare
| to find the self taught type in practice. But we do leave that
| door open unlike medicine.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| For what it's worth, I worked with a talented self-taught
| engineer. He stated he hit a ceiling and needed to get a
| degree and so he did through a remote learning program. In
| the event that this is common, it may explain why they're
| rare. The resumes of the ones that don't hit that ceiling
| probably don't make it to your desk.
| nosefrog wrote:
| I don't know if there's a ceiling for degree-less software
| engineers in the Bay Area. Speaking as someone who dropped
| out of college and is now a "senior" software engineer at
| Google, I've worked with a couple folks who are much more
| senior than I am without a degree.
|
| That said, it's much harder to get your foot in the door
| without a degree, even in the Bay Area. I had to go above-
| and-beyond to get my first job at a small startup (I
| created a program that used their API and was useful enough
| that I ended up continuing the work when they hired me).
| With my second job at Dropbox, the recruiter told me that
| they only reason they interviewed me was because I went to
| Recurse Center (which is a free programming retreat for
| programmers that also acts as a recruiting firm). Multiple
| companies have grilled me during interviews about why I
| dropped out, including Google.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > I posit that software engineering is probably the most
| egalitarian method of socioeconomic mobility, because the
| only real barrier is time, a laptop, the internet and
| motivation, while all the other methods require an upper-
| middle class background and expensive schooling (law,
| medicine, finance) or just plain luck (business, celebrity
| art & sports)
|
| As much as we all hate the tech interview process, it's a
| relatively level playing field as far as hiring goes. It's
| not perfect, of course, but we have to select on something.
|
| As engineers we have a level of free access to study tools
| and material that my friends in other professions envy.
|
| The alternative to skills testing is to rely more on
| credentials, references, and background. People who come from
| elite universities or lucked into prestigious jobs early in
| their career tend to prefer this type of interview process
| because it benefits them the most while excluding those who
| are trying to break into the industry.
|
| The benefit of skills-based testing, however imperfect, is
| that it opens the door for people who have skills but not the
| right background or credentials to skip through the ranks and
| get a foot in the door.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > From what I know from doctors, what FANG does is basically
| the equivalent of doing your board exams every time you want
| to change jobs. Which usually gets a reaction of dread &
| disgust when you couch it in those terms to doctors.
|
| If Software Engineers want to get rid of algorithmic
| interviews, all they have to do is come up with a
| professional exam and a strict licensing body... just like
| most professions carrying a tittle (MD, Lawyers...).
|
| But as long as "3 months js bootcamp grad" can advertise
| himself as a software engineer just as much as a guy from
| Stanford CS then we'll keep having these interviews.
| walshemj wrote:
| A new grad from Stanford is no more an Engineer that
| someone from a boot camp is.
| tidepod12 wrote:
| Yea, but I also think it's more complicated than that. I
| would think that if you already work for a FAANG or other
| well-respected tech company, that would de facto serve as
| your "professional certification" and help avoid these
| ridiculous interview processes. If you work at Google as a
| SWE, then you've already passed a pretty high bar to become
| a SWE and when you apply somewhere else, ideally they would
| see you can pass that bar and not ask you to leetcode your
| way over the bar again. But IME, that's not the case. I
| know some FAANGs that, even when doing an internal transfer
| within the company, _still_ require you to go through the
| full leetcode interview process.
|
| There seems to be some kind of inherent or cultural
| distrust amongst tech interviewing, where nobody trusts
| that anyone has tech skills unless they _personally_ verify
| it. I don 't think a professional exam/certification would
| solve this distrust.
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| Back in the day I remember stories about candidates who
| would get an offer from Amazon and then Google/MS would
| just automatically counter-offer without interviewing as
| it was assumed that if they passed the Amazon interview
| then it was good enough for Google/MS.
|
| Or maybe that was just an urban legend...
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _I would think that if you already work for a FAANG
| or other well-respected tech company, that would de facto
| serve as your "professional certification" and help avoid
| these ridiculous interview processes_"
|
| Nope, not at all. Despite their rigorous hiring process,
| even the FAANGs have bad hires, burn outs, or people who
| simply can't keep up with the pace. Some FAANGs require
| an interview loop even for internal transfers to guard
| against a bad hire.
| cynoclast wrote:
| >If Software Engineers want to get rid of algorithmic
| interviews, all they have to do is come up with a
| professional exam and a strict licensing body... just like
| most professions carrying a tittle (MD, Lawyers...).
|
| By the time the exam is designed - not complete, designed -
| it will be obsolete. By the time the exam is completed,
| there will be 3 new languages invented.
|
| This would be like changing what animal you have to study
| as a doctor every six months for the test.
| brandall10 wrote:
| Fwiw, Triplebyte has a fast track program which allows
| candidates to do a 2 hour proctored pairing session.
| Companies can use that as a way to filter and take over at
| least part of their hiring process - it's a one and done
| thing for a candidate dealing with any companies through
| the platform. We're currently experimenting with it.
|
| It would be nice to have something like this completely
| divorced from a recruiting engine though.
| jonas21 wrote:
| > _But as long as "3 months js bootcamp grad" can advertise
| himself as a software engineer just as much as a guy from
| Stanford CS then we'll keep having these interviews._
|
| The fact that a bootcamp grad can compete for the same
| software engineering jobs as a Stanford CS grad is one of
| the very best parts of the hiring process in our industry.
| Are you proposing that we start using credentials as
| gatekeeping?
| vsareto wrote:
| We need a compromise where proven, experienced engineers
| can stop having to go through everyone's homebrewed
| technical interview and new candidates still have a shot
| if they don't have that credential yet. It should be up
| to companies to decide if they want to use those
| credentials, and I suspect companies would switch if it
| maintained a good reputation because why bother with a
| job that requires a technical interview?
| pydry wrote:
| I prefer homebrewed technical interviews. They can be
| customized to the needs of the company hiring and can
| reflect day to day work better.
|
| Treating engineering as an undifferentiated commodity
| measured by leetcode performance is partly why this
| charade exists.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| I agree it's great.
|
| But it has this side effect that you need to test every
| candidates.
|
| > Are you proposing that we start using credentials as
| gatekeeping?
|
| No. As a fast-track sure. So you don't have to start
| every interview with a FizzBuzz [0].
|
| [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-
| program/
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| The filter is usually a 15 minute test, while later you
| have multiple-hour interviews, sometimes even whole day
| in the office just doing interviews. So you're not even
| getting that much, unless you somehow fear failing the
| first test, while being confident in the multi-hour
| interview skills?
| wjmao88 wrote:
| Ironically, that article was written in a era where there
| weren't really boot camps, only CS Grads from actual
| universities, and in that article it specifically calls
| out many CS grads cannot code.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| > The fact that a bootcamp grad can compete for the same
| software engineering jobs as a Stanford CS grad is one of
| the very best parts of the hiring process in our
| industry. Are you proposing that we start using
| credentials as gatekeeping?
|
| But we already do use credentials as gatekeeping. There's
| a lot of talk about bootcamps and whatnot, but how many
| of these people actually get passed the resume screen
| when compared to a Stanford CS grad? FAANGs famously
| recruit from same 20 universities, and then complain
| about "lowering the bar" if they branch out anywhere
| else.
|
| We _could_ stop gatekeeping, but it still happens.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > But we already do use credentials as gatekeeping.
| There's a lot of talk about bootcamps and whatnot, but
| how many of these people actually get passed the resume
| screen when compared to a Stanford CS grad?
|
| At some point there's a signal to noise ratio issue here
| as well.
| endisneigh wrote:
| When you consider the risk involved, no.
| draw_down wrote:
| Exactly. I don't like going through these interviews, nobody
| does, but there does seem a lack of perspective in how this
| issue gets discussed.
|
| You can really leave a lot of money on the table with this
| attitude of "oh well, I dodged a bullet, if the interview was
| hard then the job is probably bad and the whole company too."
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| "I cannot afford to waste my time making money." - Louis
| Agassiz
|
| I'm not quite there, but if I leave money on the table to
| avoid a place that treats people in an abusive way, I'm okay
| with that. I don't need the extra money that badly - it's too
| expensive.
| draw_down wrote:
| "A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
|
| What it comes down to in my opinion is that these jobs are
| ultimately not really that different, except for how they
| pay. (Put another way, the main difference between jobs
| I've had in my career is how much they paid. The other
| stuff was basically the same; pay radically different.)
|
| And if we're at the point of working tech jobs then guess
| what, Mr Agassiz, we're already wasting our time. The way
| we waste _less_ of our time is by making our money and
| getting the hell out. So we can waste our time however we
| like.
|
| But if you like, you can instead console yourself with, wow
| my boss is such a nice guy or whatever
| josephg wrote:
| I'm confused - are you saying you find the programming
| interview process abusive? In what way is it abusive?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| "We expect you to study for months, on your own time,
| unpaid, so that our interviewing process can throw
| questions at you that are unrelated to the actual job
| we're hiring you for. Because we can, and because we do
| it that way, and because we don't care about how it comes
| down on you." Yes, I find that abusive.
| majormajor wrote:
| Frankly, I'd rather everyone _not_ study, and just hire
| the people who don 't need months of refresher studying
| to do figure out some short coding problems...
| josephg wrote:
| I have a dangerous thought sometimes that universities,
| collages and bootcamps should have a much higher failure
| rate. Some people, despite working incredibly hard, find
| programming impossibly difficult to learn. I've had
| plenty of students like this - where no matter how much
| effort they put in to studying, programming just never
| seems to click.
|
| It breaks my heart a little to say this but the earlier
| they pick a different career path, the better their lives
| will be.
| josephg wrote:
| There's a trope in kids cartoons, where everyday objects
| becoming scary looming nightmare things at night time. We
| can play that game with anything! Cars: "a 2 ton metal
| box we hurl through space in a life ending daily slalom".
| Careers: "underhanded slavery - don't work and you don't
| eat. We make you choose your poison so you're complicit
| in crafting the chains around your ankles". Children:
| "Biologically enforced obligations which destroy the best
| years of your life...". The fact that we can tell scary
| stories doesn't make the stories true.
|
| With interviews - my claim is this: A well designed
| interview has a high statistical correlation between
| passing the interview and being useful on the job. Eg
| when I was interviewing we gave candidates some buggy
| code (with failing tests) and asked them to find and fix
| the problems. The ability to debug unfamiliar code in a
| job interview is correlated with the ability to do the
| same thing at work.
|
| If you can't read code, I don't want to employ you.
| Please practice and reapply, or find work elsewhere. This
| is a reasonable position - and probably the only
| reasonable position for an employer to hold.
|
| There's lots of skills other than debugging: coding,
| profiling, algorithmic analysis, CS fundamentals,
| architecture, communicating with coworkers, etc. A
| mediocre interview assesses 1 of these skills. A good
| interview assesses 5+.
|
| Are there bad interviews out there? Yes, lots. But
| interviews themselves - even badly designed ones - aren't
| abusive. (Unless you think a rejection is abuse).
|
| I get that some people put themselves through leetcode
| practice hell to get a job because they're unemployable
| otherwise. I have sympathy for this but I don't think
| this is the fault of the interview process. I suspect any
| decent assessment process would have the same result -
| where some people need to improve before they can get
| hired.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > With interviews - my claim is this: A well designed
| interview has a high statistical correlation between
| passing the interview and being useful on the job. Eg
| when I was interviewing we gave candidates some buggy
| code (with failing tests) and asked them to find and fix
| the problems. The ability to debug unfamiliar code in a
| job interview is correlated with the ability to do the
| same thing at work.
|
| > If you can't read code, I don't want to employ you.
| Please practice and reapply, or find work elsewhere. This
| is a reasonable position - and probably the only
| reasonable position for an employer to hold.
|
| > There's lots of skills other than debugging: coding,
| profiling, algorithmic analysis, CS fundamentals,
| architecture, communicating with coworkers, etc. A
| mediocre interview assesses 1 of these skills. A good
| interview assesses 5+.
|
| I agree with every bit of that. I'd be happy to interview
| at your place, if I were looking. My objection isn't even
| just to interviews that ask you random stuff that doesn't
| correlate with being useful on the job. My objection is
| to interviews that ask you random stuff that doesn't
| correlate with being useful on the job _and that requires
| months of your time to prepare for_. I think that 's
| abusive.
|
| I don't prepare for interviews. I just don't. My
| preparation is the 35 years of my career. Either that
| made me into someone you want, or it didn't. Sure, I'll
| take on your buggy code and failing tests, in an
| unfamiliar code base. No problem. But if an interviewer
| throw a bunch of leetcode questions at me, I'll fail (by
| the interviewer's standards). And I don't care. I'll go
| work for someone else.
| josephg wrote:
| > I don't prepare for interviews. ... I'll fail (by the
| interviewer's standards). And I don't care. I'll go work
| for someone else.
|
| Great. The natural result of a poorly designed job
| interview should be missing out on good candidates.
| Thankyou for giving those companies an incentive to
| improve their processes - by missing out on you.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| From what I have seen outside of tech a lot of these 250k+ jobs
| go by track record, references and being able to talk well. You
| definitely don't have to study and practice for weeks or
| months.
| jeffbee wrote:
| People who are on the IB side of IB, who are making way more
| than 250k/year, were just born into the right social set and
| got hired by their dad's pals from Yale. Easier, much easier,
| but requires more luck.
| BossingAround wrote:
| What does IB stand for? Probably not internet banking? :)
| arafa wrote:
| Probably investment banking.
| bwestergard wrote:
| My partner is a lawyer and I am a software developer. We've
| both been in these fields for about a decade.
|
| The key difference between our professional experiences is that
| the legal profession is self-regulating, whereas software
| devs/qa/pms are totally socially atomized.
|
| Lawyers have their own organizations, which give them some
| independence from their clients. Society accepts that this is
| desirable for the maintenance of the legal order.
|
| Software occupations should move in this direction, for the
| good of practitioners (wages, working conditions, fairness in
| promotions and hiring) and the wider society (complement to
| government regulation around security, privacy, fairness in
| hiring and promotion).
|
| The bar association defines the examination that lawyers must
| pass to practice. Employer/client interviews focus more on
| "culture fit" and familiarity with specific practice areas than
| on certifying basic competence. The bar also administers
| "continuing education" to ensure that a lawyer who passed the
| bar decades ago isn't totally out of the loop on recent
| developments.
|
| I would love to see the software sector move toward this kind
| of self-regulation through unionization. We have the power, we
| just need to coordinate.
|
| Instead of a high-stakes and all-too-often arbitrary interview
| every single time you want to change jobs, you could prove your
| basic competence to practice through an exam, and elect to
| fulfill your continuing education requirements however makes
| sense for you, within a framework decided upon by workers
| themselves.
|
| Such a system would not be perfect. No set of examinations is
| ever going to perfectly capture ever-shifting real world
| requirements, for example. But we can hardly do worse that the
| sector is doing now.
|
| We have to stop letting recruiters (i.e. middlemen) and
| employers (i.e. counter-parties in the employment relation)
| dictate terms to software workers arbitrarily. The wider
| society should support tech worker organization in unions
| because these organizations would provide a check on executive
| and investor power. Without such checks and balances, we can
| only expect more of the same short-term thinking and ethical
| corner cutting.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| The problem with this approach is that it creates serious
| barriers to entry.
|
| I'm an immigrant who finished a pure-math PhD and went into
| software engineering afterwards by building up a portfolio
| and leetcoding in my spare time. With your system there is no
| chance I could have done that. Passing all of the exams would
| not have been possible without a strictly CS education, and I
| couldn't have studied for the exams after my PhD finished
| because my visa status at the time was tied to being actively
| employed.
|
| So many people nowadays are becoming productive software
| engineers from slightly unconventional backgrounds (pure
| math, physics, boot camps) and this would stop immediately if
| CS certification became part of the job requirements.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Depending on how it's implemented, it could actually work
| to the benefit of non-degree holders. A certification
| reflecting your ability to leetcode and a review of your
| portfolio, could put you in the same place as graduates of
| elite CS degree programs.
| bwestergard wrote:
| I did not mean to imply that a CS degree would be necessary
| for all work in software. I would oppose such a system as
| obviously irrational and serving only a subset of
| incumbents. With your background, you would if anything
| have found it much easier to enter the field, as you would
| have known exactly what to study for and, once certified,
| had more bargaining power with specific employers.
|
| Barriers to entry exist today, and will always exist in
| some form. The question is who gets to define them. I am
| arguing that the workers themselves should have more of a
| say than they do at present.
|
| One union certification could literally be passing some
| randomly selected leetcode problems. Ideally, there would
| be a variety of certifications to reflect the variety of
| niches in software (someone doing TLA+ for embedded
| applications shouldn't need to know anything about web app
| architecture, necessarily).
|
| The difference is that you wouldn't have to do it for every
| new employer, and workers would have more say in defining
| the body of knowledge considered relevant.
|
| I don't think anyone would advocate for university
| credentials to be a hard requirement. I personally have no
| relevant university credentials except some math courses
| from a community college.
|
| That said, I think it would be fine for someone to submit a
| transcript from a CS degree to be certified for basic
| algorithms knowledge in lieu of sitting an exam on that
| topic.
| sfashset wrote:
| I have a lot of troubling squaring your statement
|
| > Instead of a high-stakes and all-too-often arbitrary
| interview every single time you want to change jobs, you
| could prove your basic competence to practice through an
| exam, and elect to fulfill your continuing education
| requirements however makes sense for you, within a framework
| decided upon by workers themselves.
|
| with how the barriers to medicine/law actually work. A single
| Amazon interview is not particularly high-stakes - if you
| bomb it you have a dozen+ companies that can offer similiar
| comp, and you can always re-interview after a year.
|
| If you bomb the LSAT, or the MCAT, or STEP 1, you will
| effectively be branded for life. All your future applications
| to school/residency will include this information. How is
| emulating that going to get us closer to your stated goals?
| SavageBeast wrote:
| When there is a cottage industry focused on training people to
| pass your interview then you have a problem.
|
| I think Allen Iverson said it well:
|
| "We're talking about practice, man. [laughter from the media
| crowd] We're talking about practice. We're talking about
| practice. We ain't talking about the game. [more laughter] We're
| talking about practice, man."
|
| Fun fact:
|
| I had a recruiter reach out about interviewing at a non-FAANG
| company that is private. Being private there are no RSUs on offer
| but instead some kind of Company Funny Bucks doled out based on
| "performance" etc. Whatever, all well and good so far.
| Competitive salary but TC wont be anywhere in the same solar
| system as some of the FAANG total comps Im aware of for a
| position of similar level.
|
| Then the kicker comes - I get an email about "interview
| preparation" and I kid you not it was every bit as intensive as
| AMZN. Do they really expect me to put up with this hazing for the
| same money I can go make without it? For Company Funny Bucks
| (told to expect 10-15% of my salary at best with a whole lot of
| qualifying "if's" in there indicating this was mostly fiction).
| Needless to say I performed a quick analysis of the value of my
| time and opted to politely pass on the interview.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > When there is a cottage industry focused on training people
| to pass your interview then you have a problem.
|
| Doctors have board exams. Lawyers have bar exams. Financial
| professionals have their own set of exams. Electrical and
| mechanical engineers have professional engineer exams.
|
| The difference is that they're standardized, so the prep
| industry caters to passing those exams more so than passing the
| interviews.
|
| Software engineering is far from standardized because the
| subject matter is far too varied, so instead companies handle
| their own type of exams customized to their needs.
|
| There is also a cottage industry around interview prep for
| lawyers, doctors, and other professions. It's just not well
| known because it's extremely expensive relative to spending a
| couple hundred bucks (if that) on Leetcode. It often takes the
| form of expensive 1:1 coaching that starts in the hundreds of
| dollars and can easily enter five figures. Students from
| wealthy families frequently have private coaches for this.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I wonder what percentage of people at their current job would
| pass if they had to re-interview without preparation.
|
| In general, companies with more money than they know what to do
| with can offer increasingly larger wages to make people jump
| through arbitrary hoops. I know people get frustrated with this,
| but it's really the rational thing to do.
|
| When you consider the expected value, siphoning up 10 to 25% of
| your employers time to practice leetcode at work will benefit you
| more than doing most things at work.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I can say with certainty that I would pass the interview if I
| had to do it again without prep.
|
| Mostly because when I was interviewed the company liked me
| enough to skip half the process, including their code challenge
| stuff.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Is this supposed to be a joke on how you're confident because
| you skipped half the process?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I'm joking that because I skipped half the process (which I
| can't take any credit for, it was an accidental mixup on
| their end not because I am that impressive) it was a very
| easy interview.
|
| Didn't have to do a code test or defend my code or anything
| like that.
| gkoberger wrote:
| This blog post is selling an agenda (as is what i'm about to say
| :) ), and that agenda is that you should pay Interviewing.io to
| help you get through interviews.
|
| I think the bigger problem is that technical interviews are
| broken. I ask everyone to bring their own project to work on,
| since I hate the traditional tech interview process so much. And
| it goes incredibly well.
|
| It could be adding a feature to a side project, starting
| something new, or contributing to open source. (Or, we have some
| stock ideas if people need inspiration.) Rather than asking them
| to solve a problem they had never heard of before or use a
| codebase they're not familiar with, I get so much more out of
| watching them work in their own environment.
|
| I can ask them questions about why they're doing something, and
| they tend to have much more detailed answers because they've been
| thinking about it for weeks. They're solving a problem they care
| about in a codebase they know, which mimics how working with them
| will be a few months in.
|
| We could all just buy into this notion that tech interviews suck
| but we have to deal with them. And then, like SAT Prep classes,
| there's a whole industry around how to pass them. Or, we can
| spend more time talking about how there's definitely a better
| way.
| josephg wrote:
| I know this is controversial around here, but I think technical
| interviews are a fine tool when done well. I interviewed for
| triplebyte for a year (interviewing about 400 candidates). The
| triplebyte interview has a series of different parts assessing
| different skills (live coding, knowledge, debugging, etc).
| There's plenty of room for candidates to be weak in some
| sections of the test but still pass with flying colours.
|
| We had a hypothesis internally that some parts of the interview
| were redundant. The interview was certainly tweaked over time,
| but the data science team found otherwise. All scores are
| positively correlated. And removing any major part of our
| interview would have made the interview worse. Given all my
| experience with it, I believe the triplebyte interview to be a
| fair assessment of candidates, and respectful to everyone
| involved. (Though I'd be very interested to know how much 5+
| practice interviews would move the needle on scores, as this
| article claims.)
|
| The hardest part of my job was nervous candidates. Stress is
| designed to help us survive running away from a lion. When we
| get stressed, we shut down our ability for creative thought and
| our memory gets weaker - which is literally the opposite of
| what you want in a job interview. Most of my energy as an
| interviewer went into helping candidates stay calm throughout
| the process, and I wasn't always successful.
|
| I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with
| whiteboard interviews. You're right - we could probably
| rearrange the professional world to avoid all stressful
| assessments but I tend to agree with this article. Just do a
| bunch of them and you'll get used to them. Being interviewed is
| just talking for an hour or two with someone smart about
| something you care about. Usually you get to talk to someone
| you would have no access to in your daily life. If you can get
| past your terror of being judged, they can be a lot of fun.
| gkoberger wrote:
| Well, it's easier to say when you're doing the one
| interviewing, right? I think you'd have a different opinion
| if you were on the other side of the table for those 400
| interviews.
| josephg wrote:
| After 400 interviews? I highly doubt it. The discomfort you
| feel in an interview isn't part of the interview. It's
| something _you're_ generating and bringing into the room
| with you.
|
| Anxiety before a job interview (or exam) is your body
| believing that if you do badly, you might die. It doesn't
| take 400 job interviews to notice you don't actually die.
| The article suggests it takes about 5 practices. I also
| liked what they said about the collage experience. Seeing a
| lot of my fellow students succeed and fail job interviews
| seemingly randomly probably helped more than I think. It
| made failing an interview feel like just a normal
| uncomfortable thing.
| gkoberger wrote:
| Sure, at 400 interviews, you'd get decent. But that's my
| point! Do you want to hire people who are good at the
| job, or do you want people who are good at interviewing?
| high_derivative wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about this. I despise white board and leet
| code. I hate it when we (at a FAANG) cannot hire some otherwise
| excellent candidate.
|
| One interesting thing though is that from a market perspective,
| it still ends up making sense for our org (ML research lab).
| There are simply so many applicants, that we can afford to pass
| on anyone. All the candidates hired tend to still be excellent on
| all other fronts AND they can do these quizzes. And it does
| result in some hires not being the most credentialed ones with
| the longest CVs but the ones who outperformed during the
| interview for whatever reasons.
|
| So..I can see it makes sense for the most prestigious orgs, but I
| still hate it, and I especially do not see why startups who are
| struggling to hire feel the need to copy this when they clearly
| do not have the same options.
|
| Another thing that really irritates me when people in hiring
| committees actually pretend passing them means something about
| candidates' innate skill. Like, I get it, these are the rules we
| made up, but do we have to pretend they are that meaningful?
| aduitsis wrote:
| This. If you're paying good, practically everyone will come to
| interview for you, so your supply is inexhaustible. So you can
| afford false negatives.
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