[HN Gopher] The rise of never-ending job interviews
___________________________________________________________________
The rise of never-ending job interviews
Author : hhs
Score : 873 points
Date : 2021-08-02 00:53 UTC (22 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| DrBazza wrote:
| I would have thought in 2021 companies would say "if it's a 'not
| sure', then it's a no", but I've worked at some places recently
| where "not sure" would get additional interviews. That's one
| problem.
|
| Another problem is in certain companies, senior management don't
| trust their own staff and want to be involved in the recruitment
| process.
|
| Yet another problem is poor CV vetting. You really can tell a lot
| about a candidate just from the CV. Even if (in the UK) an agency
| has mangled the CV into its own 'template' for companies.
|
| Demonstrating knowledge of algorithms is fine. Having to
| implement a red-black tree in an interview, or some arcane
| template corner of C++'s standard library from scratch, is _not_
| a good use of anyone 's time.
|
| If companies don't keep consistent interview processes, if they
| have two 'yes' candidates for one role, they can't fairly compare
| them and choose.
|
| My worst/most lengthy interview was for a certain bank, that
| famously expects employees to work 12-14 hr days, and weekends.
| Total interview time: 24 hours. The result boiled down to the
| MD/partner interviewing me _last_ , and having the yes/no
| decision.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Aaah the impossible captcha of hiring! Amazing. Some companies
| could use this to drive some nutters ever crazier.
| rfwhyte wrote:
| Think of it this way. Company A is hiring for role X. They get
| 100 candidates, interview 10, with each candidate going through a
| 5 interviews at an average of an hour each, assuming they hire 1
| candidate, that's 45 hours of people's lives that have now been
| utterly wasted.
|
| The problem is companies don't care about you and your time until
| you are their employee. They'll gladly waste hours and hours and
| hours of your time, because doing so costs them nothing.
|
| There's actually a super simple solution to this problem.
|
| Require interviews be paid. Doesn't have to be a lot, a simple
| honorarium scaled to the role's salary would suffice.
|
| If your time has a cost to companies, they'll stop wasting it and
| start optimizing to minimize the time hiring takes instead of
| optimizing for other factors and ignoring the negative
| externality of wasting peoples time.
| voidfunc wrote:
| People are getting less and less willing to deal with bullshit
| when they're in massive demand and there is a talent shortage in
| $x industry. And they're finding out they can move around easily
| now too in this remote-first world.
|
| Something is going to have to change - really a lot of things.
| One of them is going to be that companies need to learn to figure
| out how to hire people without putting them through a grind-fest.
| Figure out how to deal with bad hires after-the-fact, but don't
| let yourself get screwed not hiring good talent because you made
| the interview process a giant pain in the ass to catch the crap.
|
| Oh and compensation needs to go up to make some of these
| interview grinds worth it.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Nothing's going to change at FAANG until average, non-FAANG
| companies can compete on TC (never). I doubt things will change
| outside of FAANG - because most companies are merely emulating
| the FAANGs and hoping they emulate the success.
| vmception wrote:
| > until average, non-FAANG companies can compete on TC
| (never).
|
| And that's the rub. Not only do they struggle to value my
| skillset, they also can't compensate it accurately. And
| sadly, FAANGs don't even have the roles in a lot of niches.
|
| When you can make 3x what a FAANG would offer, annually, but
| the companies building in your same niche are too immature
| and pay 1/3rd of what FAANGs do, its tricky to want to
| tolerate any of it!
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow. If FAANG companies would offer you
| 1x, and non-FAANG companies in your area of specialty would
| offer you x/3, who's paying 3x?
| vmception wrote:
| Solo. Right now I can make 3x FAANG comp on a new idea
| annually without reaching out to my network or needing
| outside capital.
|
| Given how many ways there are to do that and much more, I
| would like the structure of someone else's idea to focus
| (aka being an employee). Doing things solo has overhead
| costs and liability risks, whereas employment has almost
| none but half to 3/4ths of your compensation is withheld
| the whole time. So there is a limit to what comp I'll
| accept, given the opportunity costs. Would be great if
| that comp was FAANG level.
| [deleted]
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| You know that it's pretty easy for senior engineers take
| make >$500k at FAANG atm, right?
|
| Can you share some things in the past that were easy
| money that netted you $1.5M in a year? I'm genuinely
| curious.
|
| I used to have a ton of ideas that I thought if I did
| everything right I could've maybe made $300-600k. But
| then you can just get that as a paycheck at FAANG.
|
| None of my ideas ever were easy and could realistically
| generate more than that. Plus there was always a risk
| they would generate $0.
| vmception wrote:
| Yes, I am talking about $500k annual vs making at least
| $1.5 million in a couple of months and doing something
| else
|
| Hm, worst case, people on HN debate an irrelevant
| understanding of what I say is possible
|
| Best case, they copy it en masse and dilute the
| opportunities faster
|
| No thanks
|
| I would take $500k doing the same stuff for a tech
| employer but nobody is offering that right now. Some
| contracting firms do, kind of, don't really want hourly
| though and also want the benefits. I want to focus on
| someone else's visions, get paid on days off, no risk.
| Also want a ton of equity I wouldn't go and purchase
| myself. Or private equity that I wouldn't have the
| opportunity of purchasing in addition to an attractive
| cash compensation. (These are all things I could do in
| just frontend/fullstack work.)
|
| Some smaller companies are going above the 125-150k
| range, to double that. But not quite and they're still
| few and far between.
| rantwasp wrote:
| ideas are cheap. execution matters.
| vmception wrote:
| which obviously applies more to the person asking about
| what I've done because their ideas and execution made
| them nothing. good luck ya'll.
|
| this is a thread about the conundrum of leveraging this
| experience without losing freedom or opportunity costs,
| not about being miffed that someone won't share how to
| make money, its like you all _want_ to be scammed into
| purchasing an some youtuber 's outdated amazon
| dropshipping masterclass.
| marto1 wrote:
| Consider we've had a labor shortage since BEFORE the pandemic.
| The gotcha here is companies have a shortage of people they can
| lowball into a sweatshop "startup" environment.
|
| Nothing changed regarding that one as far as I can see so
| interview processes getting longer isn't all that surprising.
| After all that's one surefire way to optimize for getting
| desperate people.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| IMO, for new grads and career changers in particular, it would
| make good sense for Google and other companies that have to
| interview vast quantities of candidates to develop and publish
| some rigorous MOOC sequences that candidates can complete on
| their own schedule to develop and demonstrate relevant
| competencies in a way the companies can trust more than they
| trust 3rd party degrees. Candidates who complete the MOOC
| sequences successfully could be fast-tracked into an expedited
| interview process. Plus they get a marketable, public credential
| out of it, rather than just going through a super long interview
| process with nothing to show the world / other companies for it
|
| Google is already kinda doing this with Grow With Google, so I am
| just thinking of an even more extensive and rigorous version of
| this
|
| And/or just ask people about their best Factorio factories and
| EXAPUNKS solutions :)
| neilwilson wrote:
| Once you realise that they are trying to leverage the 'sunk cost
| fallacy' to try and get cheaper staff, you tend to bin these
| earlier.
|
| This is nothing to do with removing risk from hiring processes.
| It's to filter for those who want to be in the fraternity so much
| they will do anything to get there - including being chronically
| underpaid and badly treated.
|
| There is still a shortage of good people. Let these companies
| have the less good people.
|
| Good employers know talent is in short supply.
| kebman wrote:
| Preferably one. Perhaps two if there are unanswered questions.
| You're really, really pushing it at three, however. Unless I'm
| compensated for the time I'm about to waste, I might not bother
| meeting up to a third interview.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| A big part of what prompted me to become a contractor. When I
| last did this, everything was at least 3 interviews, + sometimes
| even the recruiters wanted to meet with you first.
|
| Finding your own clients doesn't start looking as bad, and a
| discussion to see if you'll work together is much better than an
| interview.
| bississippi wrote:
| Are you a contractor or consultant? Because SW contractors are
| just quasi FTEs without health insurance and no termination
| notice periods
| niklasrde wrote:
| I've done two long ones - McKinsey Digital (~7 interviews over 3
| months) and Bloomberg (~5 interviews over 1 month).
|
| Whilst it was dragging, I do feel they were both adequate
| processes for me to learn about the companies and the role, and
| for them to get to know me and my fit for the team. I ended up
| learning quite a lot about myself, too, and got useful feedback
| out of the process.
|
| It also was during the pandemic where organisations where finding
| their feet with remote hiring; I reckon in a pre-pandemic
| session, they would've been compressed into sessions together.
|
| The scheduling, and comms about it weren't always amazing, but
| that's down to the recruiters rather than the hiring team, imho.
| Amin699 wrote:
| Trial and error is bad and costly for companies who are hiring,
| so they often compensate by making the recruitment process more
| and more forensic. This means conducting multiple interviews to
| gather valuable information to help them more clearly determine
| which candidate has the most potential. In the best-case
| scenario, this is a great investment for all involved: it ensures
| that the candidate won't struggle in the job, and that the
| company won't have to repeat the process all over again.
| pts_ wrote:
| Interviewees should demand payment by the hour at their going
| rate.
| bississippi wrote:
| > That's a question Mike Conley, 49, grappled with earlier this
| year. The software engineer, based in Indiana, US, had been
| seeking a new role after losing his job during the pandemic
|
| This is ageism. I hope he realized this after 10 6 rounds of
| interviews.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507732
| theyellowkid wrote:
| It seems to me that ageism actually has some value.
|
| People never got any smarter, but the nature and details of
| group activity have changed over time.
|
| After a career of delivering products for boutique
| manufacturing companies, I'd say that my ability to pass a
| modern interview suite is essentially nil. My last gig for a
| company with modern practices taught me that it's no fun in any
| case as design devolves into manufacturing (perhaps for good
| reason).
|
| Give me a young body, and I'd look into purposefully arcane
| careers with little remuneration. Blacksmithing perhaps.
| neilv wrote:
| Ageism absolutely is a problem in our field (I've seen/heard
| many people even openly boast of ageist hiring practices), but
| I don't know that ageism was the reason in that quoted case.
| vmception wrote:
| Not to invalidate ageism, there are many threads about younger
| people's interviewing experience that match this. The
| competition (other candidates) are doing _much_ more than that,
| and also studying and practicing leetcode much longer than I am
| willing to.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Well, one way that this works, is that older folks, that have
| gotten used to working in an environment of mutual respect,
| and have some modicum of self-respect, are less likely to put
| up with BS, as opposed to someone younger, who may have come
| from a ... less _professional_ climate.
|
| The idea is to drive out older, less-pliant potential
| employees, in favor of newer ones, who can be molded into a
| shape the corporation prefers.
|
| Have you ever seen a couple that has gotten married later in
| life? Many times, it may be a second (or more) time for one
| or both of them.
|
| They need to make _massive_ compromises. Both have gotten
| used to supporting themselves, and keeping their own counsel.
| They generally both have a lot of property, maybe grown kids,
| careers, etc. Usually, they don 't actually _need_ each
| other, for more than emotional support. They each do fine, on
| their own. It 's a relationship of equals.
|
| It can be a challenge to make it work, but when it does, it's
| _amazing_. I have known many couples like that.
|
| I understand why corporations don't want to put effort into
| working with older folks, but it can be well worth it.
|
| So many times, when I see these awful, Jurassic-scale
| disasters, made by companies that are staffed exclusively by
| younger folks, I say to myself "That was a really great idea,
| but they completely pooched the release. Why didn't anybody
| raise any red flags?"
|
| The answer is generally, that no one on staff had enough
| experience to understand the ramifications of many decisions,
| and often, they were afraid to countermand ideas put forth by
| their superiors.
|
| Couple that with 20-something CEOs, who are often fearfully
| insecure, and you have a recipe for disaster.
| kxrm wrote:
| Perhaps, but I can say that I am over 40 and I can tell when
| the enthusiasm for my candidacy dies after they see my face
| that it's not due to anything but ageism.
| vmception wrote:
| and I'm in an underrepresented group, we all have the
| ability to conform our experiences to the reason that
| matches what other people say will limit our opportunities.
| It is equally important to weigh each experience against
| the similar experiences. I've seen plenty of linkedin posts
| and blogs about people bragging about their quests to get
| competing offers in tech, some interviewed at 60 companies
| and did 100 interviews, when my tolerance is 12 companies
| and maybe 15 interviews. Some did 700 hours of leetcode,
| where my tolerance is maybe 5 hours. The dataisbeautiful
| and some employment subreddits have flow charts that show
| similar quests to get an offer, visualizing how much
| rejection and time is used inefficiently.
|
| Like I said, not to invalidate anything, these experiences
| are so common amongst the whole pool that it has to be
| weighed accordingly.
| atomlib wrote:
| What's stopping you from claiming you spent 700 hours on
| Leetcode?
|
| (Not everything people say online is true.)
| vmception wrote:
| Ok. Not the point.
|
| It wouldnt take me 700 hours to get familiar with all the
| abstract problems and concepts I'll encounter, but it
| would take me a very long time to, and longer to
| synthesize solutions that are above average, and
| regurgitating that on the spot for an interview in a
| quicker time than other candidates.
| cowanon22 wrote:
| I'm fine with having 6-8 interview - every
| graderjs wrote:
| I've had this experience too. Including with a 10-person YC
| backed company. I'm glad it's not just software engineers
| experiencing this. I suppose hiring is broken everywhere...
| spoonjim wrote:
| I think the third party screening companies will eventually win
| here. There will be an objective measure of skill at the job,
| plus some culture/fit interviews.
| zug_zug wrote:
| It does seem like the obvious efficient solution
| hypothetically. Right now we have proxies "Well he worked at
| FAANG so he's probably good enough for us" on the company side
| and glass-door (horribly subjective) on the individual side.
| But really no way for extremely-qualified individuals to say
| "show me all job offers within X miles that pay more than $y
| for position $z" (closest thing I'm aware of is indeed).
|
| That said, for whatever reason the startups that tried to be
| intermediaries (and also various recruiters) tend not do very
| well in my experience.
| eh9 wrote:
| I get so jealous of my mechanical/structural engineering friends
| who's interviews usually span one or two rounds, and they're
| never asked for anything resembling spec work.
|
| Hiring should never take more than a day or two of interviews.
| cowanon22 wrote:
| Every quality job I've had consisted of 6-8 different interviews.
| However, all of those jobs also send me a schedule and list of
| job titles of who I will be interviewing with, and conducted all
| of them on the same day. At this point I consider it a big red
| flag if a company excessively spreads them out.
| Ithildin wrote:
| This trend is absolutely ridiculous. I'm currently in "Round 3"
| and have FIVE interviews this week, four of which are technical.
| I already passed the technical in Round 2.
|
| As someone with 10+ years experience in the industry, I've about
| had it with these technicals. I'm just going to start refusing.
| I'm happy to have a long technical discussion on my work
| experience and to provide you with portfolio examples. Take your
| hacker rank problems and get out of here.
| theshadowknows wrote:
| I work at Big Ass Corporation, Inc. in the US (there's a very
| strong chance you use one or more of our services). Hiring is
| fucking awful. First of all it's nearly impossible to get
| approval for a req in the first place. I'm actively looking to
| leave just because of that...but that's a different rant than
| this one.
|
| Once a req is approved then it goes out to the team to disperse
| as well as hr. Some roles get handed off to the critical search
| team if the hiring manager pushes hard enough. But that doesn't
| really matter.
|
| We get flooded with candidates. Almost every one of them could
| probably do the job so we have to figure out who could do it best
| through the interview process. I personally never ask stupid
| gotcha puzzle questions because those annoy me as much as they do
| most folks here. I ask people to talk about their experience as
| it relates to the role. Usually this means I ask about how they
| solved a truly difficult problem at work, what made it difficult
| and how they were able to overcome it. Then I like to get into
| the technical stuff of what they implemented and why. Mostly I
| just like letting people who are proud of something they've done
| get a chance to talk about it.
|
| Anyway we're supposed to score people based on these arbitrary
| metrics like longevity (how long we think they will stay) and
| communication ability (this is very, very close to being
| racist...draw your own conclusions).
|
| I never score people. Managers ask me why and I say because I
| don't interview spreadsheets.
|
| Anyway I'm one of usually 4 interviews. I interview by myself and
| the rest are all panel interviews. And once you finish the last
| panel that's the last you hear from us unless you get an offer. I
| hate it.
| FinanceAnon wrote:
| It sounds like you do what you can. Unfortunately, people like
| you leave as they can't put up with it any longer and the
| company is just left with people who are happy with the status
| quo.
| autarch wrote:
| > communication ability (this is very, very close to being
| racist...draw your own conclusions)
|
| I'm trying to draw my own conclusion but I'm confused.
| Communication ability is very important for developers and
| other technical roles. We need to be able to talk to each other
| about our work, and in many organizations we also need to be
| able to work effectively with other non-technical staff.
|
| Of course, this doesn't mean that you have to speak or write
| the company's primary language in some particular way, as long
| as you can make yourself understood. Nor does it require that
| you speak that language as your first language.
|
| Is there something specific about _how_ Big Ass Corporation is
| evaluating communication ability that is racist?
| sandyarmstrong wrote:
| The way I read it is that "communication ability" is
| something people can use to justify racist hiring decisions.
| For example, labeling non-white speaking patterns as
| "unprofessional", or non-American accents as "poor
| communication skills".
|
| When in fact, these candidates _may_ have excellent
| communication skills, and in a blind interview situation the
| same interviewer might praise their writing abilities.
|
| But you don't really know, because the interviewer is rating
| communication skills in a scenario that can easily bring out
| a lot of hidden biases.
| autarch wrote:
| This makes sense.
|
| I think it's really important to spell out what
| "communication ability" means so that all the interviewers
| know what they're looking for. And more generally, it's
| very important that before you start the hiring process,
| you have a clearly defined set of criteria that everyone
| participating in the hiring process agrees on.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| If your application process starts with a human being--even
| better a technical human being--reaching out to me, followed by
| 2-3 interviews, followed by an offer, I am already on your side.
| If your application process starts with a HackerRank, followed by
| 2 phone interviews followed by on-site, followed by team
| matching, I will not be on your side. Oh and if there's random
| month long gaps in between stages, I will especially be
| uninterested.
|
| I've noticed though that as I've gotten more specialized to
| compilers and programming languages, my application experience
| has improved significantly. It's not a large sample size but the
| last few processes I've gone through have been fewer interviews
| that usually involve going over a project of mine or doing a
| problem that's related to compilers. It's really refreshing to
| have an interview where I actually learn something about my field
| of interest during it. I know that doesn't scale because we
| shouldn't expect compilers knowledge for junior compilers jobs
| but it's a very nice change of pace for me.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I don't think there is such a thing as a junior compiler job?
| trhway wrote:
| compilers are 101 of CS with coding a major part of compiler
| being just a course project. Honestly, one of the most
| straightforward and simple things in the industry. At one of
| my previous jobs several senior undergrads (beside fresh
| grads which were frequently hired) were hired full-time to
| work on a major compiler suite. A nearby company doing a
| lesser known kind of bit more narrow specialized compiler
| suite were hiring even more of senior undergrads and fresh
| grads.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Considering I've worked on a compiler as an intern and know
| plenty of people who have done the same, I politely disagree
| :D
| purplecats wrote:
| the quality of your experience will depend on the desperation
| of the candidate employer.
|
| more competition = worse time for you
| onion2k wrote:
| I applied to a company recently whose first interview was a
| tech test. I turned them down before I even spoke to a human. I
| don't want to work for any company that puts so little value on
| people.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Honestly, I understand the whole send the tech test first.
| Having wasted time on talking to people who clearly weren't
| able to do the job I would rather waste their time than
| mines. For me, it's when I talk to their developers and it's
| clear they know I know what I'm talking about and they then
| try to tech test me. At that point, no. I just impressed the
| hell out of some of the people you consider to be your best
| and you think I can't code? Nah.
|
| The tech test seems often like it's cargo cult. It's on
| Joel's list so everyone thinks it is a must do. Instead of
| realising that the entire point of the tech test was to make
| sure people could actually code. With some of the original
| tech tests being do FizzBuzz or do something really simple in
| a short amount of time. Not, build me a production ready toy
| project using techincal DDD aspects.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Having wasted time on talking to people who clearly weren
| 't able to do the job I would rather waste their time than
| mines._
|
| Of course. But consider how that attitude looks from the
| perspective of a candidate - you'd rather waste my time
| that yours is a really good reason for me to drop out of
| the interview process.
|
| This is essentially what's wrong with hiring right now.
| Companies don't want to have anyone "waste their time", so
| they have many levels of filtering to reject candidates as
| early as possible while doing as little work as possible to
| make hiring good for candidates. In other words, companies
| have largely forgotten that candidates are people, and
| wasting _anyone 's_ time is a pretty bad idea.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Well, being the candidate I would rather they did a tech
| test first than talk to me and then do a tech test.
| Actually, if someone technical has spoken to me and then
| they ask me to do a tech test. I'm very likely to say no
| because they've already got a feel for my abilities and
| that is the point of a tech test.
|
| I think sometimes people forget people working at these
| companies are people too and noone wants to have their
| time wasted. This isn't companies deciding these things.
| It's people. It's the person on the otherside that
| doesn't want their time wasted.
| onion2k wrote:
| To be honest, I think I'd agree with you if job adverts
| included all the information necessary. Doing a tech test
| for a job when you don't even know the salary range, or
| what the role consists of, or what the company really
| even does ... that's what annoys me. If companies wrote
| transparent, clear job adverts I'd be a lot happier with
| their interview processes.
| andrew_ wrote:
| Agree totally. I recently accepted a position where an officer
| reached out to me, followed by a really great discussion with
| them. A call with two engineers and a team call later, I was
| offered, and we were all confident it was a great fit. The
| interested was consistently maintained on all sides evenly and
| communication was fluid. Great experience.
| Dig1t wrote:
| I agree actually, I've had a similar experience except in the
| mobile engineering space.
|
| Currently I'm going through the interview process with a ton of
| companies (because my company is really dumb and is forcing
| everyone to move back to a certain bay area city post-covid),
| and I have been happily surprised to find that most of my
| interviews are very practical, project based, ones instead of
| straight whiteboarding leetcode problems. I've received several
| take-home projects that are followed up with a simple add-on
| interview to sit down and explain the choices made during the
| take-home. They have all been specifically focused on domain
| knowledge to the mobile platform that I'm interviewing for. Its
| really nice! I hope this trend continues.
|
| That said, I am still reviewing leetcode problems for the
| stupid faang interviews I have coming up as well.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Where do you find take home project interviews?
| kxrm wrote:
| I just went through this with a company. They sent me a
| generic packet with 3 projects to choose from. With a
| simple Google search I was able to find all of the answers
| to all 3 sample projects implemented in different
| languages.
|
| This was after a 10 minute conversation with the company's
| recruiter. To top it off, nothing in the job listing said
| anything about software. Just Cloud and Devops management
| role.
|
| I am absolutely ok with take home or some presentation of
| my skills. However, I expect to know that I am being taken
| seriously as a candidate by that point. I don't want to
| waste my time on something with no investment from the
| company.
|
| As you can guess, I bowed out of the running explaining
| that I didn't think it was appropriate for me to give them
| so much of my time with no commitment from their end. I
| also told them I could tell their take home project took
| them less than 5 minutes to generate for me as it was
| everywhere on the internet. How can I trust a process where
| the answers to the interview are everywhere? How can they
| really know my skills as a candidate if I can just steal
| the answers off of GitHub? Worse, how can I know how I will
| stack up to someone who might be less scrupulous than I and
| steal those answers when I tried in earnest and actually
| burned an afternoon trying to solve their test?
| virgilp wrote:
| Is HackerRank so bad? If one does "whiteboard problems",
| HackerRank says, "boo, whiteboard interviews, just let me code
| and be able to search on Google, whiteboard is unrealistic!".
| Now if the company starts with a HackerRank test, that's also
| bad? I don't get it.
|
| Look, a lot of people have good-looking CVs and can't code
| shit. I don't know about you but my experience was that one
| really can't hire based on CV alone. Also, I've seen
| "architects" that are smart and fairly knowledgeable people
| that failed to code very very basic stuff (as in, merge 2
| sorted arrays).... I get it that at some companies you are
| expected to draw diagrams in Confluence as a main job, and
| might no longer have actual coding skills; but we want even the
| most senior people to actually code, and that doesn't seem
| unreasonable to me. So just because you're a very-senior FAANG
| employee doesn't automatically mean you'd be a good fit. I'm
| not saying they're bad employees, but maybe they just wouldn't
| be a good fit and wouldn't enjoy the job if they expect to just
| design stuff instead of actually implementing, too.
| arp242 wrote:
| The main problem with some of these things is that:
|
| 1) you're expected to spend 3 or 4 hours on some HackerRank
| test before you've even spoken to anyone. Some of these tests
| (outside HackerRank) can actually be projects that take a day
| or more to get right. The issue is that at this point I don't
| know if the attitude is "hey, this seems like it might be a
| good hire, let's check if he can actually code" or if it's
| "let's send anyone this test and discard anyone who doesn't
| pass". I suspect that in a lot of cases it's the latter. I'm
| not opposed to investing time, but it quickly becomes
| unmanageable if everyone just asks you to pass their several-
| hour tests just to be considered for application. There is
| very little time investment from the company, and it feels
| almost like a dDoS attack on my time.
|
| and 2), that a lot of these tests are asking you to solve
| some hard problem that you will rarely face in real life and
| where people have quite literally won Turing awards for
| finding solutions to them. Many previous discussions about
| this on HN in the past.
|
| I don't think it's even all that much more effective at
| actually weeding out bad programmers than a simple test. We
| used to ask people to write a CSV address book importer with
| some very basic requirements; nothing fancy, you could do it
| in 30 minutes. It worked well enough, and a lot of the
| results we got back were horrible.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| There is so much more information gained about a candidate by
| an engineer interviewing another engineer than by a "pass" or
| "fail" score from a robot.
| drclau wrote:
| You assume the interviewer is ideal: infinitely competent,
| infinitely great at judging other engineers' skills etc.
| This is practically never the case.
|
| I am not one for LC type of problems, but at the least I
| have to admit they have the potential of being more
| objective than everything else during the interview
| process. You get the specs, you write the code and it gets
| tested via multiple test cases. It does not matter if the
| interviewer agrees your solution will work or not, and the
| interviewer won't have to copy&paste your code, compile and
| run it (like someone else mentioned in this thread).
|
| On the other hand, what I particularly dislike about the LC
| problems is that many of them are essentially trick
| questions and brain teasers. Can't we just stick to
| problems that are relevant to an SWE?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| A lot of the issue with HackerRank is just how early it is in
| the process. I don't object to it. But there companies out
| there that just have every applicant do it indiscriminately.
| someelephant wrote:
| HaackerRank is now 3 hard problems in 1.5 hours. That's not
| testing anything other than a thousand hours memorizing
| leetcode.
| brailsafe wrote:
| HackerRank isn't inherently bad. It's actually pretty good.
| It's that receiving a 1-2 hour automated algo contest to
| every job application is bad.
|
| If I applied to 10 companies, and every single one of them
| asked me to come onsite for whiteboarding as the first step,
| that would also suck tremendously, but at least it would be
| limited in scope by the employer's time as well. As it
| stands, arbitrary companies can expect a large time
| investment without any of their staff ever having to speak to
| anyone.
|
| I'll take a calculated stab at Amazon's once every 6 months I
| guess, because if I pass (which I haven't) I can potentially
| earn a hell of a lot more than any other place. I get it,
| whatever. If every company is doing it (they are)? I might
| just leave the industry if I can't find a way to be
| specifically good at remembering the implementation details
| of every data structure and algorithm. Sucks to be someone
| with pointless skills I guess.
| itronitron wrote:
| If there are teams interviewing candidates that are surprised
| to find that some applicants can't write basic code, then
| there must also be candidates that are surprised by that as
| well.
|
| The longer a candidate has worked on very capable teams the
| more surprised they will be to have those problems presented
| in a job interview.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| I agree it's subjective. Some people may prefer HackerRanks
| because it lets them do the work on their own time without
| someone watching them. For me, HackerRank problems almost
| always have nothing to do with my work, require passing an
| arbitrary test suite, and provide the interviewer with no
| insight into my problem solving ability. Who would you rather
| hire, someone who reasoned through the solution on their own,
| then dropped a hidden test case, or someone who saw this
| question before and just rote wrote it from memory? Perhaps
| both, but HackerRank won't give the former a chance.
|
| Besides, if someone is duplicitous enough to have a good
| looking CV and no coding ability, what's stopping them from
| just cheating on the HackerRank?
| virgilp wrote:
| > almost always have nothing to do with my work
|
| TBH that's another argument I don't really get. Almost
| everyone agrees that basic CS knowledge trumps specific
| technology knowledge (I'd rather hire someone with strong
| CS fundamentals that didn't use Java before than someone
| who is a "Spring Boot expert" but lacks basic CS knowledge,
| even if I actually use Spring Boot right now).
|
| But then, why complain that you don't do that in your work?
| Surely you need to traverse data structures from time to
| time, yeah it won't be the exotic tree traversal that I'd
| ask you to write but that's exactly the point - to test
| that you can be put in a novel situation that can't be
| directly-pasted from StackOverflow and you're able to write
| a recursive function that takes _a little bit_ of skill).
|
| The hidden test case is opportunity for discussion during
| actual interview. And this answers your "what's stopping
| them" question, too - regardless of problem, I can tweak
| the input slightly so that your solution doesn't work - and
| more often than not, I don't even tweak the input, I just
| provide an additional testcase where your solution doesn't
| work. If you can quickly fix it ("oh, yeah, I forgot that
| URLs may have a fragment appended to it, let me quickly
| adjust my log-parsing condition") then it's awesome, it's
| exactly the signal I'm looking for, and we can go on to
| discuss system design and your relevant experience (but
| honestly, at that point my mind is likely ~80% made up,
| from CV + how you explain/modify your hackerrank solution).
| mitsuchen wrote:
| For everyone saying that it's risk mitigation, I recently asked
| about something similar[0] for a junior position, and the process
| still hasn't finished. For context, the company is a medium-size
| tech company with presence mostly in Europe and Asia.
|
| I don't know these things well enough but it makes no sense to
| me. For starters, in the tech sector in my country the salary for
| fresh grads like me actually come mostly from the government.
| Moreover, these companies are all secretive about compensation,
| and they probably think they can get away with it by dangling
| their "reputation" in front of you like a carrot. In most cases
| the salary is about the same as a small startup because, again,
| they get the money from the government.
|
| People can argue about spending time and resources on training
| and what not but basically every job ad, from "top" companies to
| the web dev garage down the road, expects us to learn by
| ourselves anyway?
|
| It's frustrating for early career starters that most of my
| friends and I are going through. It's such a huge waste of
| everyone's time and people are just churning because of this
| crap. Please get rid of non-technical HR and interviewers.
|
| Sorry for the emotional rant. I would really like to know what
| risks (other than useless non-technical HR keeping their jobs)
| there are after candidates have past a certain threshold for
| quality, particularly for junior positions.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27881668
| yarky wrote:
| > I would really like to know what risks (other than useless
| non-technical HR keeping their jobs) there are after candidates
| have past a certain threshold for quality, particularly for
| junior positions.
|
| It's harder to deal with emotional kids than it is to deal with
| incompetent engineers. Maybe that's why those non-technical HRs
| might not be as useless as you think.
| mitsuchen wrote:
| You made the mistake to assume that we are idiotic enough to
| be emotional for job interviews.
|
| It's harder to deal with people who think they are competent
| and know it all than emotional kids.
| yarky wrote:
| > You made the mistake to assume that we are idiotic enough
| to be emotional for job interviews.
|
| And that's a risk that could potentially be spotted by a
| competent HR.
|
| > It's harder to deal with people who think they are
| competent and know it all than emotional kids.
|
| Maybe, but juniors are (unfortunately) seen as a commodity
| by the market. Commodities are about uniformity and
| adherence to some standard, rather than uniqueness.
| mitsuchen wrote:
| > And that's a risk that could potentially be spotted by
| a competent HR.
|
| It's a risk that could only be spotted be HR, don't know
| about the "competent" part. There would be no emotional-
| kid risks to speak of if it weren't for useless HR.
|
| > Maybe, but juniors are (unfortunately) seen as a
| commodity by the market. Commodities are about uniformity
| and adherence to some standard, rather than uniqueness.
|
| It's making even less sense now. If we are commodities
| and it's all about uniformity and standard, why do we see
| senior engineers complaining about this, too? It also
| makes no economic sense to spend so much time and effort
| on elaborate bullshit on "commodities". I don't mind
| being a commodity if the standards that you speak of
| exist, and I don't want to be unique. But guess what?
| It's the HR that wants us to be the unique commodities.
| arp242 wrote:
| The most difficult people I've worked with were not
| because of technical reasons, but due to reasons outside
| of that: inability to disagree constructively,
| unwillingness to compromise, or just general assholes.
| That kind of stuff.
|
| Someone without the required technical chops can be
| useless, which isn't good, but these people can be _worse
| than useless_ as they can derail and /or demoralize an
| entire team. I've seen it happen; it's not pretty.
|
| This isn't unique to younger people, but in my experience
| the risk is quite a bit _higher_ in younger people. I say
| this also as someone who, in hindsight, was quite
| difficult to work with when I was younger for various
| reasons. As I 've grown older, I've learned a thing or
| two and I think that now I'm actually a fairly nice
| person to work with (I hope so, anyway...)
|
| Everything else being equal, I'd rather take someone with
| a 9 (out of 10) on soft skills and a 6 or 7 on technical
| skills, than someone with a 3 or 4 on soft skills but a
| 10 on technical skills.
| yarky wrote:
| > Everything else being equal, I'd rather take someone
| with a 9 (out of 10) on soft skills and a 6 or 7 on
| technical skills, than someone with a 3 or 4 on soft
| skills but a 10 on technical skills.
|
| I agree, I've even had to reverse my own team's policy on
| this at work : I used to think the technical stuff was
| the most important and pushed my team towards hiring
| exclusively the technically smart people, but I have been
| proven wrong over and over again by those "smart"
| engineers I vouched for.
| arp242 wrote:
| "Smart" isn't just technical skills anyway. You can have
| all the technical chops in the world, but if you never
| listen to anyone else, insist on doing things the _One
| True Right Way(tm)_ , and are unable to admit that you're
| wrong, then _effectively_ you 're not actually all that
| smart, are you? "Smart" is really a combination of skill
| and attitude.
| jijji wrote:
| On all job responses you should spell out your minimum salary
| requirements before you agree to the interview, unless you are
| ok with wasting time on interviews only to get low balled on
| the salary side or it doesn't match your minimum requirements.
| mitsuchen wrote:
| Most of us don't have the privilege to negotiate, we are
| fresh grads. Who doesn't want to work for larger companies in
| the hope for a better career path? And don't forget about
| power asymmetry.
| pabs3 wrote:
| It would be nice if hiring processes were defined publicly up-
| front in the job advert.
| zschuessler wrote:
| I was semi-actively hunting for a role a year ago.
|
| The worst offender was a company I had five meetings with, 3 of
| which were identical code reviews for the same code test. None of
| the reviewers realized I already had the code review with their
| peers. None knew what the next step was.
|
| Most companies just didn't have an organized funnel for
| candidates.
|
| The one that did I quickly took the job offer at. Here's what
| they did right:
|
| 1. The recruiter prepped me for each interview as if they were a
| good friend looking out for me. They told me who I was talking
| with and what hobbies they had so I could relate to them.
|
| 2. I knew of each meeting and its format in advance. It's weird
| I'm calling this out as it seems simple, but here we are :-)
|
| 3. The code review was paid. And actually quite fun. The previous
| company code review was unpaid and 20 hours of 'implement a REST
| API'
|
| 4. The engineering team was actually trained on recruiting. Each
| one had read my resume and asked detailed questions about my
| hobbies, experiences, etc. Engineers elsewhere hadn't read my
| resume at all.
|
| 5. I always had quick feedback on technical meetings and didn't
| have more than three.
|
| The most important difference I noticed is that most companies
| were ambivalent seeing me fail.. a select few even seemed to
| crave that.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| The paid code review or paid technical is a big one for me. If
| a company is willing to actually value my time during the
| interview process then I'm going to be much more interested in
| them. Instead of just inventing steps and adding seemingly
| worthless technicals
| musingsole wrote:
| > select few even seemed to crave that
|
| I've seen the same thing. It makes no sense. I keep telling
| myself the incentives can't really be such that your hiring
| process be actively antagonistic...not if we want anything good
| right?
|
| But perhaps the market can stay irrational longer than I can go
| without income. Hold strong to the companies that bother to
| acknowledge you're a person.
| pts_ wrote:
| HR gets paid for it candidates should demand payment too at their
| current rates.
| firefoxd wrote:
| They can also drop you in the middle of the process. With just an
| email saying thank you.
|
| I had a long interaction at Amazon where the recruiter told me
| they are trying something new. Their goal is to keep the
| candidates mental health in mind and create a welcoming and open
| process.
|
| I spent 2 hours in the phone where she presented me with
| different process and what not. I even learned the name of her
| grand daughter, and her dog, and how she had to raise the grand
| kids when the mother was going through a phase, and how she had
| to paint her hair pink to keep up with the new generation. She
| gave me her personal cell, and we communicated everyday until my
| assessment test.
|
| I passed the coding challenge. But that cultural or psychological
| test? No idea. Anyway, never heard from her again despite
| emailing and texting.
| itronitron wrote:
| I bet the recruiter you spoke with wants everyone returning to
| the office.
| dexen wrote:
| Two months ago there was a news that raised some eye-brows, _"
| Amazon has a quota for the number of employees it would be happy
| to see leave (businessinsider.com)"_ [1]. Some of the comments
| were quite negative, reading it as a dehumanizing practice with
| no clear upsides. Re-upping my reply [2]:
|
| The article paints a needlessly bleak picture.
|
| The neutral reading of the practice is, "managers are able to
| take riskier hiring decisions, because they are given an allowed
| turnover rate".
|
| Which surprisingly enough is a solution to the ever-growing worry
| of false negatives in hiring - i.e., overlooking good candidates
| whos resume or interview did not shine strongly enough, or who
| perhaps are from a shunned, misunderstood culture, or who
| otherwise did not fit the generic hiring practice prevalent in
| the society. This solution allows an organization to make riskier
| hiring decisions at a well understood rate - hopefully catching
| the false negatives that did slip through competing
| organizations' hiring process.
|
| --
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27369910
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27370538
| dijit wrote:
| The issue is with setting a quota as "must" vs "acceptable"
|
| If you "must" find a way to pick fault with your employees
| because you can only give out 1 "exceeds expectations" and at
| least 1 "meets most" then you're likely creating a toxic
| environment from that.
|
| Similar to telling managers that they "probably should" thin
| the herd.
| karaterobot wrote:
| The last two jobs I applied for were like this. The first one had
| 8 interview rounds on 8 separate days. It was a remote company,
| and I was working in an office at the time, so I had to figure
| out 8 separate excuses for sneaking away from work for an hour to
| take video calls. It was ridiculous.
| gorpomon wrote:
| On my team, I inherited an interview process with 7 steps. It's a
| long one for sure, and it's not a process I can change. But as a
| hiring manager I mitigate issues brought up in this article by
| doing a few really easy things:
|
| 1. On my first chat with a candidate, I layout the entire
| interview process. I acknowledge that it is long and I
| preemptively thank them for going through the process and say
| that we value their time. I make sure our recruiters can
| reiterate the process as clearly as I can.
|
| 2. I let the candidate know that at any time if they want to pull
| out, that is a-ok, and that they are welcome to apply again in
| the future in good standing. I also tell them that during our
| coding assignment, we really mean it when we say it's ok to ask
| for more time, and that we don't judge them negatively.
|
| 3. I tell the candidate that if at any point we decide to
| decline, that I will send them a written letter of feedback so as
| to make the process worth their time. This isn't always easy, but
| it's always been appreciated. Sometimes it is hard to write these
| letters, how do you tell someone multiple interviewers didn't
| like them? I do it by pressing our interviewers to state clearly
| what didn't come across well, and then I relay those things to
| the candidate. Sometimes even still the letters probably aren't
| super satisfying to the declined candidates, but I do my best and
| hope everyone realizes that job hunting in general is rarely
| satisfying.
|
| Basically, transparency, honesty and specifically thanking them
| have gone a long way for me. I fully understand that an
| underfunded/understaffed startup might balk at the feedback part,
| especially when lawyers can get involved. But offering up items
| #1 and #2 to candidates should just be table stakes of your
| hiring process.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I liked that. I was a manager for 25 years. I think I did OK
| with my decisions (for the most part).
|
| One thing that I noticed at my company:
|
| When I first got hired (in 1990), it was made clear that I was
| a desired and valued employee. They were a very picky company,
| and might well have rejected me, but I felt respected and
| valued, from my first interview (I was flown out to the West
| Coast, and interviewed by two managers at a trade show).
|
| As the years have gone by, I noticed that our HR department
| started to have a very different posture. They _had_ to be the
| ones in charge. Applicants were _supplicants_. The company was
| doing them a favor, by considering them for this position.
|
| Also, the HR department started to project this attitude to
| current employees, to a visibly increasing degree, over the 27
| years that I was at that company. By the time I left, the HR
| posture was that employees were little more than serfs. There
| was no illusion that employment was a two-way relationship.
| They started to impose some really draconian policies on
| employees, with "termination of employment" as the only choice,
| if the new policy was not acceptable. No negotiations.
|
| I think that this is an attitude that has become a standard in
| HR, these days, and that part of the reason for this interview
| process, is to filter for people that won't talk back to HR,
| and are willing to abase themselves for the company.
| pnt12 wrote:
| I'd really appreciate a letter with feedback after a lengthy
| interviewing process, I think that's really valuable.
|
| However, I don't think I'd value it after more than 3
| interviews. Candidates are applying after work hours and
| there's a time / energy limit to how many processes they can
| take at a time. After a given point, you're wasting not hours
| but possibly months of their life.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I didn't really realise it until I was on the other end, but
| if you don't get any feedback you can totally ask for it and
| there's a decent chance you'll get some.
|
| But I agree, it's usually pretty obvious if you just weren't
| good enough, or you had a bad day, or they just didn't like
| you for some random reason.
| krab wrote:
| I like your approach and I think it really makes the process
| much better. However, this one thing stands out to me:
|
| > I acknowledge that it is long [...] and say that we value
| their time.
|
| I dislike this communication style. Maybe it's a cultural
| difference. I've heard several times from an American speaker
| that they "value my time/comfort/satisfaction". At the same
| time their act clearly showed that they valued something else
| much more.
|
| For me, your sentence would sound much more personal if you
| just omitted this last part and kept only the explanation.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Agreed. It's more like:
|
| > I acknowledge that it is long process, so we appreciate
| your patience.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Just a rejection letter is _something_ , and in a reasonable
| amount of time. Many times I would just hear nothing. No
| response at all. Just a simple 'no thank you' is better than
| what many get from most companies. It is amazing how many
| companies do not do this one thing. They just leave people
| hanging. I had one dude who thought to finally send a 'no'
| letter. It was 2 years later. That should have been closed out
| ages ago.
|
| Thank you for doing that sort of thing. It really helps.
| mildweed wrote:
| Maybe even lay out the interview process IN the job post?
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Any response is better than nothing and it is sad that is the
| line to be above. But I know I appreciate letters actually
| explaining why I was declined, if they are informative it can
| actually be helpful for me to improve.
|
| Especially if there is an assignment with the interviews I
| really think that feedback should be required. I spent about a
| week on an assignment like this with 3 interviews and just got
| back a "nope, sorry". And it wasn't even from anyone I had
| interviewed with, just the original recruiter.
| sdfjkl wrote:
| > Research shows that if interview processes drag on, good
| candidates lose interest - and go elsewhere
|
| I certainly would! More than one hour of interviewing is a sure
| sign of a diseased company that probably suffers from massive
| management overhead, internal conflict resulting in inability to
| make decisions or someone's complete paralysis out of fear of
| making wrong decisions.
|
| You'd have to be pretty desperate wanting to start work at such a
| place. If not, better to keep looking and not waste your time.
| tomrod wrote:
| > The National Business Research Institute study shows that a bad
| hire can have significant costs to an organization - between
| $25,000 and $300,000 5 . Asking a candidate to partake in four
| interviews may seem like overkill, but it seems trivial compared
| to the cost of a "bad hire." Organizations that hire the best
| data science talent ensure they spend the time to use the best
| hiring practices.[0]
|
| It's a risk mitigation strategy.
|
| [0] Data Science Playbook, Booz Allen Hamilton
| https://www.boozallen.com/s/insight/publication/data-science...
| vagrantJin wrote:
| No one is doubting the risk mitigation, which is why the
| process exists in first place. But the BS of wasting someones
| time also needs to be addressed. The reason most companies
| waste peoples time is because they are too busy with abstract
| concepts tangentally related to the actual job, and theoretical
| models by some "expert" of HR management. Software engineering
| has become a psuedo-religious exercise in computing witchcraft.
|
| If you want a backend engineer - book a few hours, even on a
| weekend, set up an IDE and get on a real world project. No
| bullshit. _Build a small API to these requirements, using these
| technologies but take care of edge cases and deploy that bad
| boy._
| csa wrote:
| Are you (or they) suggesting that the 4th interview
| meaningfully reduces the number of bad hires?
|
| I'm guessing not.
|
| It's poorly designed and/or poorly implemented hiring
| strategies that lead to bad hires, mostly through a lot of
| noise being collected during the interview process.
|
| This is a very solvable problem.
|
| Edit: I will add that this is an ad for Booz hiring, so of
| course they want more process.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| 6 interviews _increase_ the chances of a bad hire (or at
| least decreases the chances of a great one). It restricts
| your hiring pool to those who are willing to be abused by the
| company. That 's not the top-tier talent.
| [deleted]
| ojbyrne wrote:
| That's quite the range. It suggests a strategy: worry less
| about hiring false positives (with all the concomitant issues
| not hiring anyone brings) and worry more about reducing the
| cost of those false positives.
| a3n wrote:
| I've never been interesting enough to have gone through that many
| interviews.
|
| I suspect that these companies have structural problems that
| inhibit their decision making. Possibly also personal problems.
|
| I also suspect that if they can't say yes after a third interview
| then the candidate is non-judgmentally not a good fit, by
| demonstration. Both parties should consider that.
| jesusthatsgreat wrote:
| Technical interviews are high pressure situations that don't just
| check someone's technical proficiency but rather their ability to
| cope with pressure, communicate effectively while under that
| pressure and their willingness / unwillingness to ask for help or
| recognise their own weaknesses as soon as they realise they can't
| do something.
|
| All are essential, day-to-day situations any developer will find
| themselves in. It's difficult to replicate that in anything other
| than a technical interview.
|
| Having said that, tech employers don't hold the same power they
| once did. Decent developers with people skills know they can
| always find work or just make work for themselves if need be.
| We're entering an era where these guys will set their own hours
| and pay and the employer will be the interviewee.
| devnull3 wrote:
| We only hire the best ... just like everybody else!
|
| - Unknown
|
| (I read this sometime back on HN and it stuck with me)
| gregmclaughlin wrote:
| I was paid $300 to complete a take-home project for the final
| interview round at the company I currently work at. Give
| candidates a 1-2 day take-home project and pay them for their
| time.
|
| Outcome: You learn how they work, while showing that you value
| their time.
| nothing_special wrote:
| We are a mid/small-sized company (~3K) which is hungry for
| "freshers" (those just out of college). We are out competed by
| the big sharks who pick the best of the students and we have to
| search among the remaining. Our hiring pipeline involves a
| written test (coding - mix of Multiple choice and coding - in
| favour of only MC nowadays and analytical skills) provided to us
| by a third party. The test isn't really great (fixed small set of
| questions which doesnt change, some arcane C coding questions
| (the likes of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28034019),
| etc.). So we have 2 rounds of TA (technical assessment) and 1 HR
| round at the end. This is resulting in a lot of filtering and we
| get a success ratio of about 4-5 per 1K students.
|
| Management does not like this and blames the assessment team for
| having "high standards" and feels that we are wasting previous
| time (of assessors) and not getting desired results. The
| assessment team feels that the written tests are not a good
| indicator of coding skill and that most applicants fail in the
| basics of coding (logic, for loops, pointers etc.). Management
| has given a new target to reduce the time to hire and increase
| our hit rate.
|
| The solution will mostly consist of removing HR round (no value
| add, can be assessed in TA), reducing or eliminating TA (!) and
| relying solely on the written test. Given the written test
| quality (though it has mininal configurability in terms of the
| split between MC and coding questions) this seems likely to get
| in a lot of "false positives".
|
| My questions - is it really feasible to use only a online
| automated assessment (not specifically the one we are using) to
| get a right coding assessment done for freshers? is there a
| "good" (efficient and effective) "standardized"
| framework/solution for fresher assessment which one can follow
| which you have used? (Note: we are a software company providing
| solutions and consulting in domains like automotive, networks,
| devices, embedded, etc.)
| stacker8888 wrote:
| Thanks God it isn't just me!
|
| When I lost my job during the pandemic, I had multiple jobs I was
| interviewing for, each took maybe a month to get through all of
| the interviews. Do they really expect unemployed people to suffer
| through a month of interviews? Some people actually need a job
| fairly urgently!
|
| And these companies I was interviewing with, they all had a fake
| air of superiority, like they were the next Google. This
| interview culture needs to change back to how it was.
| Rapzid wrote:
| I interviewed with four companies back in May for staff engineer
| roles(or staff equiv). Based on that experience and my current
| employers process a somewhat baseline expectation can be:
|
| * Phone screen with recruiter that reached out to you
|
| * Screen with the hiring manager
|
| * Behavioral interview with multiple peeps
|
| * Code pairing session with multiple peeps
|
| * System design session with multiple peeps
|
| So AT LEAST 5 hours time commitment just on interviews. Add time
| to research the company, its employees, and etc. Maybe the code
| pairing is instead an at-home test of some sort. This could
| potentially add hours(or in the case of Teleport like 20+ hours).
| Just engaging with a handful of companies was a huge amount of
| extra work and stress on top of existing responsibilities.
|
| I pulled out of three voluntarily and declined an offer from the
| last for various reasons, opting to stick out till my RSU cliff
| in October. For the next round of engagements I may start toying
| with filtering out companies based on their hiring process as
| well and giving push back on it to see what happens.
| uglygoblin wrote:
| I had the same experience earlier in the year and ended up
| bailing out/declining offers because the process was giving me
| bad feelings about the work cultures at said companies.
|
| I did actually tell one that the schedule of phone interviews
| (2) and video call rounds (4) was too much commitment without
| more details about the role and salary range. They responded
| with "if that's too much commitment the position is too".
|
| Dodged that bullshit!
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| Isn't it fun when they make you feel like _you 're_ at fault?
| Nice try, assholes.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Most likely a 20 hour interview is required to be paid,
| especially if it isn't just a test and similar to the work
| you'd be doing.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Meanwhile you can go down the street and make 70% as much money
| with less hassle. Companies with grueling interview processes are
| inadvertently weeding out people who value their time, which
| seems like a good kind of employee to have.
| planet-and-halo wrote:
| Yep. This interview process is pretty much why I'm out of the
| market. Could I increase my comp? Probably. But the hours of my
| life are slipping by, and those never come back. I used to
| enjoy the hours I spent learning to code. Absolutely loved it.
| Doing this Leetcode crap just to jump through hoops is a
| miserable waste of life, though.
| blodkorv wrote:
| Am i the only one who thinks modern dating has the same sort of
| problem?
| badbetty wrote:
| Fuck these pretentious companies, almost everyone with average
| intelligence can work in the role and just pick things up rather
| than making you run through a maze just for an entry level
| position.
| xyst wrote:
| Interviewing these days is not a technical challenge. It's a
| fraternity/sorority rushing week.
|
| Technically I was qualified and able to answer their questions.
| But ultimately was turned down after 6 rounds of interviewing. I
| think I was heavily dinged because I wasn't entirely familiar
| with their product in the wild, and was never given any hint as
| to what product I would be working on.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| I'm surprised good programmers have the time/patience for 6
| interviews. I think 3, maybe 4 is my max. If you can't figure
| out my skills in that amount of time, your process is broken.
|
| I also disagree that interviewing is not a technical challenge.
| For most programmers it is. There are very few who can breeze
| through FAANG-level technical interviews.
| knuthsat wrote:
| For me, if the 2nd interview is not me talking to someone
| from their company that I might work with and if I cannot ask
| questions about the problems they solved, their approach to
| programming or building teams (depending on their role), I
| just say to the recruiter that I'm not interested.
|
| The only reason why I'd come somewhere is if I like the
| engineers or if I'm in need of money. If I need the money, I
| won't ask a thing.
| bb88 wrote:
| 2 total interviews. Maybe 3 if they have questions. But if
| they have questions, they should have figured it out between
| the first and second interview.
| MarkSweep wrote:
| At one startup I did a couple rounds of phone interviews and a
| full day of in person interviews. Lastly I got to chatting with
| the co-founder. I can't remember the precise question I asked
| about how they were building out the team, but I clearly
| remember the answer. They made the interview process longer and
| more involved in an effort to narrow the field of candidates.
|
| I understand the reasoning: if you think you have a special
| mission and want people dedicated to that mission, filter by
| dedication. But I'm not really sure there is a way for any one
| candidate to consume as much time interviewing for a role as
| that company could consume out of a pool of candidates. And
| that includes my smart-ass idea of trying to interview at
| Pinterest and stopping in the middle of the interview saying
| "please sign up to see the rest of this whiteboard solution".
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I've pointed out, before, that one advantage I have, is a _huge_
| portfolio (check my SO story[0]).
|
| It's tens of thousands of lines of code, in multiple shipping
| product form. All you need to do is clone a repo, hit "Archive,"
| and you have a built and App Store-ready app. Some of these apps
| are still on the App Store (most have been deprecated, over the
| years). I have full source for shipping apps (over 20), going
| back to 2012. I've been writing Swift -every single day-, since
| the day it was announced, in 2014, and have released quite a few
| apps, written entirely in native Swift. I'm working on a big one,
| right now.
|
| Here's an example of a repo for a currently shipping free app
| that is available as an iOS/iPadOS app, a Mac app, a Watch app,
| and a TV app. It's a Bluetooth BLE explorer app (yes, you can
| sniff Bluetooth on an Apple Watch)[1], [2], [3], [4]. It uses
| this cross-platform Swift BLE SPM module[5].
|
| All of the repos also include things like graphic asset originals
| (usually Adobe Illustrator). I'm a passably good designer. At one
| time, I considered becoming a professional artist.
|
| All of my work is localizable and accessible. A number of my apps
| have been localized in multiple languages. These days, I also
| tend to do things like support Dark Mode.
|
| I have a ton of SPM modules, tested, documented, tagged and
| available for immediate integration. I use most of them in my own
| work.
|
| I have full source for a couple of server systems, that are in
| heavy use, today (I use them in my own work, and one is a
| worldwide standard, in use by thousands, daily).
|
| I have dozens of blog posts, articles, tutorials, explorations
| and other online writings[6]. I go into great detail, how I
| design, test, architect, and think. Most of this stuff is
| extremely detailed, and comes with supporting playgrounds. I'm a
| fairly good writer. There's a lot there, but it's quite readable.
|
| I have given instruction on technical stuff for years. The most
| recent one was a Zoom class on intro to Core Bluetooth, using
| Swift[7]. It was received well.
|
| I don't know if I have a single fork. I'm the original author of
| all of it. Since I have over a decade of commit history, across
| multiple public repository systems, that's easy to prove. I also
| tend to have fairly informative (and frequent) checkins. It's
| simple to see how I work. My GH Activity Graph is solid green[8].
|
| My technical ability is not a matter for debate, it's easy to see
| what I bring to the table (including limitations). I'm satisfied
| that there's lots of stuff I can do. I won't bother trying to
| claim abilities that I don't have.
|
| Any interview should be only determining whether or not I'd get
| along, and whether or not I would be a good "personality fit."
| Since I spent decades at my jobs, including at one of the most
| famous brands on Earth, that should also be easy to figure out. I
| could definitely see that some companies would not want me, but
| that should be simple to determine. I'm a completely open book.
| My LinkedIn profile is full of testimonials, by former managers,
| coworkers, employees, and open-source project partners.
|
| It's been my experience that all this has been _completely_
| ignored, in favor of ridiculous 50-line binary tree tests.
|
| In one interview, I sent the recruiter links to several public
| repos of code for shipped applications, that pretty much exactly
| fit the requirements of the job they contacted me for. This was
| ignored. Instead, I was passed to an obviously bored tester, who
| gave me a binary tree test in a language not used by the open
| position, and I was dinged for not using a formulaic approach,
| unique to that language (which, did I mention?, was _not_ the one
| used for the posted job). The repos that I had sent, were in the
| language that was specified in the opening.
|
| After a few of these broken, insulting, awkward, hazing rituals,
| I simply gave up looking. It's plain that no one wants me, and I
| won't go where I'm not wanted. I'm fine, doing my own thing.
|
| [0] https://stackoverflow.com/story/chrismarshall (SO Story)
|
| [1] https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/BlueVanClef (App
| Source)
|
| [2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blue-van-clef-for-
| mobile/id151... (iOS/iPadOS App - Includes Watch App)
|
| [3] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blue-van-clef-for-
| tv/id1529181... (TV App)
|
| [4] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blue-van-
| clef/id1529005127?mt=... (Mac App)
|
| [5] https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_BlueThoth (BLE SPM
| Module)
|
| [6] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/ (Writing)
|
| [7] https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY/ITCB-master (Core
| Bluetooth Course)
|
| [8] https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY#github-stuff (GH ID)
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The LinkedIn post on which this story is based:
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mike-t-conley_jobhunt2021-lea...
|
| (Not previously discussed on HN best I can tell.)
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| >According to a survey from global staffing firm Robert Half, 62%
| of US professionals say they lose interest in a job if they don't
| hear back from the employer within two weeks - or 10 business
| days - after the initial interview. That number jumps to 77% if
| there is no status update within three weeks.
|
| Ha, that's familiar. I'm not in the US but, during my last job
| hunt, I'd already accepted a job offer before some of the
| companies I'd applied to replied to me. Companies that are paying
| recruiters to bombard my inbox or paying staff bonuses to refer
| me.
|
| Hiring is a very human, very broken process. There's little
| incentive for an individual to do it well short term but fatal
| repercussions if the group do it badly long term.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| If you go to an interview, you can probably suss out which are
| stringing you along and which want to hire quickly. Ask if they
| need a candidate immediately or are taking their time. Ask if
| your qualifications are exactly what they're looking for, and if
| you feel like a cultural fit for them. Ask if they have the
| budget and headcount to hire you immediately. Ask which teams the
| people interviewing you are on, to find out if they are all in
| different teams/departments or the same. Ask if each interviewer
| even knows who the the previous interviewer is in the company
| ("Frank who?"). Ask if they know exactly what they want you to
| work on. Follow up periodically to see if they are responding to
| you in a timely manner.
|
| It's common for there to be some uncertainty with one or two of
| these things, but if there's a _lot_ of uncertainty, you are
| being strung along. Best case they are waiting you out trying to
| find a better candidate, worst case they don 't even have the
| budget for you and are playing politics within their company
| using you as leverage.
|
| Interview multiple places in parallel, and don't cancel any
| interviews until you've got a signed piece of paper. But of
| course, prioritize the ones that aren't jerking your chain.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Ya, seems like decent advice.
| ajna91 wrote:
| good advice
| lormayna wrote:
| Before pandemic, I was contacted by a recruiter for a position in
| a growing security startup for a role in technical pre sales. It
| start with a call with the recruiter, then a call with the VP
| that sent me an exercise to make in a short time (4 days). I had
| a full time job, so I worked hard during the weekend and in the
| night to finish the task and I was not able to finish everything
| (just last step was missing). Then I presented everything to VP
| and he gave me more time to finish and last step and schedule
| another meeting to discuss everything. After this time I was
| contacted by recruiter, that told me that I was in the very short
| list of two candidates. He then arrange an interview with the VP
| of HR and the VP of sales. After those two interview they
| completely disappeared and ghosting me. I had other job
| opportunities, then I tried several times to ping them and they
| never replied back. After 5 emails without reply, I told them
| that I was going to accept another job offer and the recruiter
| replied that this was the right decision, because the company
| made other choices.
|
| I lost so many hours on this interview process that I would like
| to send them an invoice :)
| vector_spaces wrote:
| I had an interview with a YC company last year. I went through --
| not exaggerating -- 8 interviews, almost all of which aside from
| the initial phone screen were an hour or more in length. 2 of
| them were technical interviews. I had finally gotten to the take
| home project, naturally a project in Ruby on Rails despite the
| fact that I haven't written a lick of Ruby in my life. Anyway, I
| was rejected after this step. To be fair, the take home step was
| paid, which was nice, but not nearly enough for the time it took
| me to learn enough Rails to be productive, learn best practices /
| idiomatic Ruby, and solve the problem they gave me.
|
| Incidentally I've noticed that the Ruby community has this weird
| thing about insisting on either N years of Ruby experience or
| requiring interviewees use Ruby during technical interviews or
| take home projects. Ruby shops were the only places where I've
| ever been required to use a particular language during an
| interview. I suppose it's because there's so much magic happening
| in DSLs like Rails that they assume it'll take too long for even
| experienced engineers to come up to speed?
|
| Obviously there's risk involved in the hiring process. But I
| think there's a lot more risk involved in procedurally treating
| people like garbage.
|
| Anyway, after that ordeal I'm going to insist on being allowed to
| interview in a language I'm familiar with. They'll judge me on my
| best work or not at all.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| How far in the process were you before you found out you had to
| code Ruby on Rails and present it?
| nowherebeen wrote:
| > Five companies told him they had to delay hiring because of
| Covid-19 - but only after he'd done the final round of
| interviews.
|
| This is a typical HR strategy to keep themselves busy so they
| don't get laid off. HR is not a revenue generating department, so
| even if they aren't hiring, then they still need to push paper.
| notjes wrote:
| There might be a psychological part in it to seek candidates that
| are willing to go through degrading interview meat grinders. I am
| not sure those candidates would be what a humane society needs.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| I remember over a decade ago interviewing at a bank and being
| asked how much experience I had with [insert list of systems] and
| integrating data specifically between two of those systems. I had
| never even heard of any of the systems on the list. Got home and
| Googled them, nothing. Called up a friend who worked there and he
| told me those were internal names for their systems, no one who
| did not work there would have any idea what they were, and he was
| shocked they were asking about them using their internal names
| during interviews. Oddly enough, one was just an Oracle data
| warehouse fed by Informatica ETL and generating Cognos reports,
| and I had experience with all of that technology, but answered
| "no" when asked if I had experience with "the Pulsar system".
| binarymax wrote:
| If you can't make a decision after 3 rounds then you have no
| business recruiting anyone and should just give up. You'll not
| only irritate and push away all your good candidates, but you'll
| also make your staff angry that they're always wasting time
| interviewing people.
| irrational wrote:
| It's weird I'm seeing this on the same day as
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28029344
|
| So... which is it? Or did some employers not get the memo? Or is
| this tech vs non-tech positions?
| kxrm wrote:
| Perhaps it depends on where you are in your career.
| tekkk wrote:
| I think the biggest give-away from the article and from the
| comments written here is that companies neglect recruiting as a
| chance to generate positive brand impressions and in general, use
| it for marketing. If people walk away from your interviews
| feeling disappointed or mistreated there's a good chance they
| won't recommend or advocate for that company in the future.
|
| You'd think spending some executive muscle to smoothen out the
| warts in the process would be beneficial to any company trying to
| recruit smart people. But I guess having regular engineers or
| other employees with whatever ineptitudes in empathy or social
| skills won't be fixed by somebody telling them to "be sensible
| and nice." If that's how they were treated and think it's ok to
| treat others the same way, that's how it will be.
| alephnan wrote:
| What's not mentioned is companies collectively want to waste
| candidate's time.
|
| If candidates have less time for interviews, they will have less
| offers/counter offers to use as leverage
| jijji wrote:
| the best jobs I've had were at most three or four interviews and
| then hired. The worst ones were more than 5 interviews and they
| still couldnt make a decision or one guy out of six didn't like
| you so you don't get hired...
| tomcooks wrote:
| Currently investing 2 hours of my time per job offer:
|
| - investigating the role, the company, their stupid website,
| their made up culture
|
| - doing the unpaid take home tests (currently investing 8 hours
| doing a technical test for yet another stupid startup)
|
| - answering dumb questions ("why do you want to work for
| $neverheardofstartup?") on fancy js forms
|
| - having to register to their stupid career backend, thanks for
| yet another chance of having my inbox filled with spam because
| you don't know how to encrypt data
|
| - uploading hours and hours of video presentations (as if cover
| letters weren't dumb enough)
|
| only to be canned with a copy-paste "due to the amount of
| curricula we received unfortunately we cannot provide feedback -
| good luck with your job search" nonsense.
|
| And if I'm lucky enough not to be weeded out by a bored-to-death
| HR person with the attention span of a starving kitten, this was
| just interview step 1/5
|
| Fuck you, from the bottom of my heart.
| jedeye wrote:
| failing on the 4th interview is vsry traumatizing
| jedeye wrote:
| I completely broke down and put in all my sick leave. I haven't
| cried like this in years and I have to go through therapy and
| all the things. I'm going to be ohkay at least my code still
| works and is still making the company I currently work for a
| lot of money. So I am just taking some time off to heal myself
| and address my burnout at the same time. There is hope after
| falling hard like that.
| elmolino89 wrote:
| I am fine that up to the ~3 interviews covering the different
| aspects (say HR person checking the general personality, IT guy
| for i.e. Linux sysadmin knowledge mini-test, the team manager).
| In 2020 after the Covid started, I got into the endless spiral of
| I believe 6 interviews spaced over a month or so, then the long
| wait and getting shorter contract with same salary but different
| from the advert job title. With the back against the wall I took
| the job. Within 3 months or so (including a 1 month training)
| they re-posted a job advert for my position. I had to extract
| from them an info that my contract described as "with almost
| automatic extension" will not be extended ("we run out of
| funds"). I work off my posterior for months to get this.
|
| In short: shit on input does not bide well
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > HR person checking the general personality
|
| I would say that's the worst person to do the personality
| check. Instead, engineers the hire would actually work with
| should probably do the personality check.
|
| Often HR is either a bureaucrat with a non-technical degree, or
| an inexperienced young "internal recruiter" with a non-
| technical degree and a pleasant appearance meant to attract
| responses on LinkedIn. Neither of those are uniquely well
| suited to judging personalities. (Unless this is another case
| of, #wontfix, we want to screen out engineers who have
| personality characteristics that random 24 year old sociology
| students don't like.)
| higeorge13 wrote:
| Exactly this! They are probably the most incompetent people
| included in the hiring process, and yet they will take part
| in the decision making with their 'magic' personality
| judgement and culture fit skills, always making the wrongest
| decision ever. I had candidates rejected by HR because they
| were too charming, too lively, too <insert random
| characteristic>, to find them later employed in way better
| companies and roles. Well done HR, now you have your culture
| and team fit, for a team and culture you are not even
| managing.
|
| Ah and your professionalism stops as soon as you hire
| someone. The rest of candidates might be left without a
| response even in their 3rd reminder. I guess it's tough to
| even setup the auto email notification in the ATS tool you
| are using.
| towtow wrote:
| Just recently experienced this. Interviewed at a FAANG company,
| process started 5 months ago, about 50 emails exchanged, a dozen
| or so phone calls of various kinds. 6 interviews, they came back
| and asked to re-do 1 of them, which I obliged. Then, they were
| silent for about 2 weeks, I asked about the status and they said
| they want to re-do 2 more interviews. I kindly refused and they
| said they wouldn't move forward.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Next time you hear a hiring manager complain about shortage of
| engineers, ask them why haven't they changed the process with
| recruiting instead of just trying to fan out and sending
| automated tests and take home assignments.
| ryeguy_24 wrote:
| I work for a big 4 consulting firm and I think our process works
| well and is extremely short. We hire financial engineers (quants)
| and data scientists. I've lived through working with hundreds of
| hires and can say from actual experience it works quite well.
| This is our process:
|
| 1. Review resumes to see who meets the criteria based on
| credentials.
|
| 2. Recruiter phone screen to screen for any glaring issues
|
| 3. We conduct an interview day and the candidate interviews with
| 3-4 people (30 minutes each). We have a mix of levels conducting
| interviews but make sure to have at least 2 leaders from our
| practice. We try to make sure we collectively poke around all
| areas (technical, cultural, communication).
|
| 4. That same day or the following day (want to make sure
| candidate is fresh in our heads) we discuss candidate.
|
| 5. Each interviewer (starting with the most junior) has to speak
| about candidate and rate them from 1-3. It can be any decimal
| rating but cannot be a 1.5 (an "I don't know" answer).
|
| 6. Interestingly, we are mostly in the same ballpark on these
| calls and when we move forward, we are generally happy with that
| person.
|
| I can't speak for the candidate who may have to wait a bit
| between application, recruiter conversation, and interviews. But
| at the very least, the interview to decision process is pretty
| painless and you'll have a decision within 2 days max.
| easterncalculus wrote:
| It's just such a waste of time, too - you toss out so many other
| potential opportunities when doing these. I've heard of this
| being done to interns, people that only have so much time to get
| a job. Six interviews until a rejection. If you can't start your
| career without this going on I don't really know what you can do.
| I can't imagine the recruiters conducting these in the same
| position, going for six interviews to get that job. For software
| engineers you just _need_ it, apparently.
| hasa wrote:
| I developed software professionally over 20 years and I get
| impression that I would not have survived any of these
| interviews. I remember the times in 90's when I had most of the
| Java classes & methods in my "working memory", but after that
| came syntax helpers and search engines. That ruined whole concept
| of programming with just text editor. I don't know if anyone else
| has similar experiences.
| solumos wrote:
| > That ruined whole concept of programming with just text
| editor.
|
| What "ruined" it for you, "made" it for me :)
|
| I absolutely hated my CS courses in undergrad and dropped the
| major after 2 classes. Didn't get back around to programming
| until a few years later - using Google makes it way more
| doable.
| hasa wrote:
| Actually I agree with you as I would not be able to program
| much without Google today. But many reported here about
| interview situations where they had like white paper and task
| to develop something. It is something they never face in real
| work.
| hizxy wrote:
| If you need more than 3 interviews then you don't know how to
| hire. Unfortunately, so many people don't know how to hire.
| Myself included ;)
| qubyte wrote:
| I once interviewed for a large game company. Their main office in
| Europe is in Dublin, but at the time they were opening an outpost
| in Brighton, UK (where I am) and were hiring a server engineer
| for their e-sports division.
|
| There were _a lot_ of interviews. For the fourth or fifth they
| flew me out for a whole day of interviews in Dublin. These
| included at least three different departments that I remember
| with separate coding interviews, and I had to give an hour long
| presentation.
|
| I didn't get the role, and shortly after the Brighton outpost was
| axed. In hindsight I'm pretty sure that I didn't get the role
| because someone high up didn't want the outpost office to exist
| (it was only there because someone important they wanted was
| determined to live here).
|
| I'm not sore though. Not long after the company hit the news for
| having a toxic culture (amongst other issues), particularly
| toward women.
| qubyte wrote:
| I should add, this was several years ago. I'd never put up with
| that sort of crap now.
| ivolimmen wrote:
| I don't recognize this at all in my country (Netherlands). I have
| 2 interviews max. My current employer I actually had one
| interview with the boss in a restaurant. We had a nice chat and
| he offered a job on the spot. I signed and never left. As I am a
| consultant I ofter do interviews and I always stear the
| conversation to the most important part of IT: communications.
| a_square_peg wrote:
| The trouble with interviews these days is that there is no
| penalty for false negatives.
|
| Long, multiple interviews are great for those who are already in
| the group - it provides legitimate excuse to hold off doing
| actual work, feel smug with their peers about how difficult the
| job is, and also provides acceptable excuse for project delays.
|
| As a senior engineer, it's amusing being interviewed by
| intelligent but very junior engineers who clearly cannot
| understand the scope of what's in the resume. This usually
| happens with a quickly scan of the resume followed by a
| realization (there is this peculiar look) that they don't have
| any relevant questions to ask about the experience, and finally
| landing on their favourite puzzle questions because what they
| really want to know is how my thought process works.
| [deleted]
| js4ever wrote:
| In 2007 I had 13 interviews with Microsoft before finally being
| rejected at the last step. Reason invoked was "Not enough
| corporate spirit". That was my last rounds of interviews, since
| then I have my own consulting company and never regretted this
| failure, quite the opposite in fact :)
| ravishankark wrote:
| While interviewing with a start up, I was asked to do an
| assignment which took almost a week to complete. After the
| assignment, I went through 6 rounds of interview.
|
| Then they kept me hanging for a week, only so send me a rejection
| mail.
| cik wrote:
| I've never understood this. The first interview exists to sell me
| on the company, and for me to express my desire to work there.
| It's for alignment.
|
| Three questions I always ask are 1. What's your hiring process,
| 2. What's the base salary range, 3. How does the company
| demonstrate its commitment to ongoing learning. Any reticence to
| discuss these items means that I learned about how the company
| just isn't for me.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Indeed, almost nothing is available without investing 5 or more
| hours of your time. I have seen interview 1,2 plus full day on
| site development with senior dev for a front end job and
| something like 10 hours worth of assessments at FAANG. These are
| not high paying jobs btw.
| andix wrote:
| Decision fatigue, one of the biggest problem of this century.
|
| There is a lot of pressure, if you hire the wrong person, someone
| has to be responsible. That's why they developed a lot of
| processes. So if the person turns out to be the wrong person for
| the job, you can tell everyone you thoroughly vetted them, and
| it's not your fault.
|
| From my perspective the only way is: Interview people once or
| twice, hire them as quickly as possible, work with them for a few
| days/weeks and make a quick decision (together with the person)
| if it is going to work out.
| jedeye wrote:
| I got recruited for a an interview at a fund management firm.
| Went through four interviews and got rejected a week later after
| the 4th interview. Companies don't realise some of as are so
| burnt out and have worked so hard during the pandemic. I removed
| myself from LinkedIn because of it. No hard working dedicated dev
| should be treated like the past didn't happen. I know what you
| guy's and girls are going through and I just want you to remind
| you you are more precious than gold and diamonds and you don't
| need beaurocrazy to validate determine your value. We will
| continue to build a better world and treat our future candidates
| with respect they deserve and not make them jump through
| impossible hoops designed for idealist machinemen
| karmasimida wrote:
| If all interviews are scheduled at the same day, I am OK with it.
| shanev wrote:
| DAOs are fixing this in the crypto world. You contribute to the
| protocol and get paid by the DAO. Everything is transparent and
| open. If you do this enough and earn the respect of the dev team
| it could even turn into a full-time role.
| eplanit wrote:
| These stories reinforce my decision to go into consulting so long
| ago. People hire me because they can't get stuff done, and they
| need it done now. We're not getting married, and I'll be gone as
| soon as the project/mission is accomplished. And, no BS coding
| tests.
| underseacables wrote:
| Top Grading: A complete waste of time and effort.
| Twirrim wrote:
| I had a friend who had a similar experience to the candidate in
| the article, but at T-Mobile.
|
| He was unemployed. They interviewed him 5 times over a month and
| a half, and tried to get him on site for a 6th interview loop
| roughly 2 months after starting the whole process. They were most
| put out when he told them he'd already got another job. He was
| amazed at how offended they were, especially that _he 'd_ wasted
| _their_ time.
|
| He was, apparently, supposed to just sit around and wait for them
| to make a decision, because who needs money to pay for things
| like rent, food etc?
| RIDDLERTHIS wrote:
| I can relate to the whole "never-ending job interviews" as
| described in the article.
|
| Two months ago, in June, a company reached out to me regarding a
| senior level back/front hybrid role. This company previously
| ghosted me two years ago but still had my resume and were now
| willing to hire me right away for a substantial increase in pay.
|
| Before I accepted any offer, I shopped myself out on Indeed and
| found there is a huge demand for folks like myself right now.
| Here's a taste of how it went: Company #1: Fintech startup. Two
| separate 30 minute, non-technical interviews. Third interview was
| a four-hour long interview involving multiple LeetCode problems.
| Fourth interview they wanted to discuss my performance during the
| third interview, and then schedule a fifth interview. I declined
| because a) I felt this was overkill and unnecessary, and b) one
| of their developers was rude and condescending because I am self-
| taught. He went out of his way for 8 minutes to berate me. I had
| never experienced anything like it.
|
| Company #2: AI-focused firm in analytics. Hiring for a
| management-level role. Went through three interviews. First was a
| 30 minute screening. Second was an hour long overview of my
| technical background. Third was mostly a follow-up to the
| discussion that took place during the second interview. And at
| the end of the third interview they informed me there would be
| four more interviews to meet the team, write code, and a
| whiteboarding session. I declined and said I'm not interested,
| again because of the time factor mostly.
|
| And I noticed this process repeat itself for most companies. It's
| mentally exhausting, plus I have a family, my current job
| requirements, and other responsibilities.
|
| The interview process is really unpredictable to a degree. Some
| folks want to see substantially more coding than others, taking
| into account similar job roles and descriptions.
|
| I see a lot of folks who have interviewed with FAANG companies,
| and while I don't have any experience with them, the process
| sounds somewhat similar.
| wesleywt wrote:
| Not a "tech" job, but I found that the best hires were people who
| worked on contract for a few months. They did not necessarily
| have the skills when they started, but you could see drive,
| diligence and competence in those few months. This attitude needs
| to be maintained every day and cannot be faked as easily as you
| can an interview. A bonus is that they get paid for their time
| while getting valuable job experience.
|
| It might only work for low-level entrants. For higher positions
| you are hiring the person for their experience, not on how well
| they can jump through arbitrary hoops.
| vincewolff wrote:
| Since I finished college I was on a interview loop. I'm so tired,
| at this point making my own company and freelancing seem more
| reasonable.
|
| I don't understand why there must be 4 different persons asking
| me the same questions just so in the final to give me a lower
| offer than we previously discussed or to ghost me.
|
| I had a bad opinion about HR when I was a student and didn't work
| based on how a few of my friends and family treated, now that I'm
| looking for work and have to deal with their bullshit daily I
| literally started to hate the people working on this dep and
| their lack of respect.
| dzonga wrote:
| problem, is as an industry we're treating software engineering as
| a science only. forgetting it's part science part art. now you
| can be smart, but not be artistic. which is a major problem,
| google n other faangs have notorious interviews which wannabes
| copy. yet can't make software that works half the time. maybe
| it's high time, the software industry looks at how creatives get
| hired. coz after all we're a creative industry - just only using
| engineering principles to create art
| ironman1478 wrote:
| I don't mind going through a single day with many rounds, but
| when it's spread out it's super frustrating. It feels really
| disrespectful of my time. I interviewed at Apple and had like 3
| onsites with different teams all in one week and got the results
| quite quickly. It was such a good experience compared to some
| companies where it's such a chore.
|
| I also think the attitude of companies during interviews really
| sucks. Many feel like they're doing you a favor or you're wasting
| their time. That was a distinct feeling I got when interviewing
| at Google, but not at Apple and I really think it's why I passed
| those and not google. They were collaborative and fun at Apple. I
| put a lot of effort into making candidates at my company feel
| welcomed and like they are already part of the team and IMO it
| really helps them succeed.
| kamkazemoose wrote:
| Part of the problem is that Manton the interview panel do feel
| like they're wasting their time. It is valuable to the company
| but for the engineers, they want to get back to coding or
| whatever else they are working on.
|
| It isn't fair to the person applying because they didn't pick
| the people on the panel, but if the one doing the interviewing
| doesn't hide their feeling it's obviously not great.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| That's true. I want to say that that's Google's fault right?
| Because not everybody is on the team you're interviewing for
| (I might be wrong)? At Apple you are interviewed by the team,
| who presumably needs another person to assist them.
|
| Also, regardless of whether or not they want to be there,
| it's a bad look for the company. Somebody took a day off to
| talk to you, it's only fair that an interviewer reciprocates
| ladberg wrote:
| Can confirm everything you said is true and that at Google
| you'll likely never see your interviewers once you start
| working there but at Apple you'll be working with your
| interviewers on a daily basis.
|
| It has upsides and downsides, like as you said you had to
| go through 3 different on-sites (one for each team), but
| you'll get a good sense of the team before getting an offer
| (and they'll get a good sense of you). I like the Apple
| method much better but I had an unusually bad Google
| interview process so it's possible other people had better
| experiences.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| The good thing about interviewing with your teammates is
| they will be invested in making it success if they
| recommended you. If you never see the interviewer again
| then they have no skin in the game.
| aix1 wrote:
| > at Google you'll likely never see your interviewers
| once you start working there
|
| Can confirm that this is largely true, with an asterisk.
|
| The interview panel (for SWE candidates) is indeed drawn
| at random, but it's becoming more and more common to
| conduct fit interviews for specific roles. This is
| usually done by the hiring manager, in rare cases also
| involving other people (e.g. the tech lead).
| noirbot wrote:
| Some of the difficulty is that the team may be hiring
| people because they're currently under-staffed. I've been
| on teams before where we're 3 engineers on a team that
| we're trying to hire up to 6 people. It's really hard to
| both try to keep up the work of 2 people, even in
| maintenance, and spend hours every week on trying to hire
| the replacements. Even if the company is good about
| reducing demands for new work after a departure, it's
| generally true that you're hiring BECAUSE you need more
| people on the team, which often means that team is
| overworked already.
| valdiorn wrote:
| I once applied for a job at an oil trading hedge fund in
| London. The company was small, and everyone who worked there
| became a partner in the firm once they joined. There were about
| 23 people there IIRC. I did a 1 hour interview with one guy, a
| bit technical, a bit of random trivia. Then another guy,
| similar thing. Then the third guy.
|
| After that I asked how many more interviews I should expect. To
| my horror the answer I got was "we only hire people if all the
| partners agree to hire you, we all have veto power, so you
| should expect to see everyone"... so TWENTY more interviews. I
| rather abruptly told the guy that was insane and I didn't have
| time for that, shook his hand and walked out. He seemed
| perplexed.
|
| ... they went bust about a year later.
| brainwad wrote:
| It can get very demoralising as an interviewer when you
| interview dozens of candidates, and none meet the bar - and
| even the ones you rate hire or leaning hire get rejected by the
| hiring committee. When I first started interviewing (at Google)
| I was like the Apple interviewers you admire, but I have slowly
| become inured the process and now I probably give candidates
| the impression that I've seen it all before and I would rather
| be doing something else - because it's true.
|
| But the alternative is more filtering before the main round of
| interviews, to increase the base success rate of candidates,
| which many people hate (see many other comment threads on this
| post). And too much would turn off the best candidates probably
| more than the worse candidates, as they have more outside
| options.
| robertwt7 wrote:
| Aren't FAANG companies doing at least 4-5 interviews now?
|
| More and more companies are doing this now in tech space (AU) as
| well. My last 4-5 job app contains 5 interviews, even the medium
| sized one.
|
| It is super annoying for me, but I'm not sure what to do about
| it, some of my dream big tech companies are like that so I have
| to go through that. I'm pretty sure a lot of people go through
| with that because that's their dream job too, not because they
| liked it
| dredmorbius wrote:
| In domains in which the underlying domain is complex, with an
| irreducible informational complexity, as well as rich and
| frequently highly significant interactions, there's a frequent
| emergence of faddish, or ritual-driven, behaviours. Both seek to
| reduce risks and accountability, as well as to increase credible
| signalling of traits.
|
| Both sides of the technical recruiting transaction (job-seeking
| and recruiting) exhibit these behaviours and tendencies (what to
| wear, how to format resumes, presentation, side projects, for
| seekers, interviewing, tests and screens, and other filtering
| practices for hiring teams).
|
| The consequence is a tremendous amount of friction, inefficiency,
| and fear-driven lore. Some years ago a senior Google staffer
| commented that they'd found a guaranteed hiring heuristic: "No".
| That is, reject _all_ candidates.
|
| My response was that if this was serious (and it was at least
| partially), that this was a profound sign of weakness within
| Google: an inability to seek out and onboard talent successfully.
|
| There are other possibilities.
|
| It could be that the notion of private firms hiring highly-
| skilled talent is inherently flawed.
|
| I've speculated that one of the justifications for the ancient
| Egyptians to build pyramids was as a combination of a skills-
| development, skills-retention, skills-demonstration, and brain-
| drain-mitigation programme. From what I've read there's at least
| some independent informed speculation along similar lines.
|
| One of the functions of writing a book, a notoriously
| unremunerative practice, is as a credible signalling of skill and
| ability. (And of book-writing capabilities, for what that's
| worth.) Books are very fat sales brochures.
|
| In a tech world in which typical tenures are measured in months
| or single-digit years (2--3 years being typical from what I
| understand), and correlations between _any_ hiring practices and
| actual performance ... at best weak, there 's an inherent issue.
|
| There's also the question of equitability of a process in which
| employers have vastly greater access to information on individual
| prospects than prospects do on companies or hiring managers /
| management teams. George Akerlof's "Market for Lemons" suggests
| that more information makes markets more efficient, though my
| fear is that _highly asymmetric_ information access further tilts
| the employment market in the hiring firms ' favour.
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/1879431
|
| http://libgen.rs/scimag/10.2307%2F1879431 Some of my earlier
| fad/information theoretic musing here:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/62uroa/clothin...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I've speculated that one of the justifications for the
| ancient Egyptians to build pyramids was as a combination of a
| skills-development, skills-retention, skills-demonstration, and
| brain-drain-mitigation programme. From what I've read there's
| at least some independent informed speculation along similar
| lines.
|
| Brain drain mitigation? Brain drain just wasn't a _possibility_
| 4400 years ago.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| If you're living in a domain in which your core competency is
| in constructing complex stone structures, then leaking that
| capacity to another kingdom or empire would be a risk.
|
| Pharonic Egypt circa 2580 was not without neighbours and
| there was both trade and warfare in North Africa and across
| the Levant and Mediterranian, notably with Syria, Canaan,
| Lebanon ("cedars of Lebanon" are a significant reference, as
| Egypt had virtually no timber), Ethiopia, and Nubia, amongst
| others. There's also the prospect of defection to internal
| factions. The Old Kingdom seems to have been generally
| peaceful with little internal _or_ foreign warfare, at least
| until the First Intermediate Period, which was largely an
| internal rivalry. But it wasn 't _entirely_ without defence
| concerns.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_trade
|
| https://www.worldhistory.org/Egyptian_Warfare/
|
| I'm very happy to admit that my hypothesis is just that, and
| that there's no evidence and only a very little external
| support, though there is _some_. But _if_ you 're going to
| develop an advanced skill that would be of use throughout the
| region, it might be advisable to find ways to hold on to it,
| and as a pragmatic explanation for what was an absolutely
| immense effort ... there's some sense in the concept.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If you're living in a domain in which your core
| competency is in constructing complex stone structures,
| then leaking that capacity to another kingdom or empire
| would be a risk.
|
| How? The only military use of large stone structures is as
| fortifications; their primary feature is that they can
| never move.
|
| And Egypt isn't even known for its city walls. That's the
| other civilization of the time, ancient Mesopotamia.
|
| But on top of all of that, none of that is a brain drain
| issue. You're talking about a hypothetical issue of loss of
| state secrets. Brain drain is the concern that the local
| population of skilled workers will all emigrate, leaving
| the country unable to do skilled work. It's not the concern
| that other countries may develop the technology to do the
| same things that you can do.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Building pyramids isn't simply piling rocks on top of one
| another.
|
| There's mathematics, surveying, architectural design,
| measuring, logistics, labour organisation, planning,
| transport, engineering, and a whole mess of related
| skills. If not kept in practice, they are lost (you're
| focusing strongly on the "brain-drain" element at the
| expense of "skills retention" and "skills development
| bits).
|
| Too: once you've got those capabilities, there are
| numerous _other_ abilities which derive from them. Large
| structures means civil engineering, construction, grain
| storage facilities, and quite probably some degree of
| metalworking and related crafts, again, which can prove
| useful in either foreign or civil war.
|
| Take some time to think through possiblities,
| consequences, options, risks, and opportunities here.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > you're focusing strongly on the "brain-drain" element
| at the expense of "skills retention" and "skills
| development bits
|
| Well, yeah. Look at my comment, in its entirety:
|
| >>>> Brain drain mitigation? Brain drain just wasn't a
| _possibility_ 4400 years ago.
|
| If you can't defend that, then... don't? Make the
| argument that isn't obvious nonsense; you don't get more
| credible by throwing in a laundry list of "concepts that
| sound bad".
|
| > There's mathematics, surveying, architectural design,
| measuring, logistics, labour organisation, planning,
| transport, engineering, and a whole mess of related
| skills. If not kept in practice, they are lost (you're
| focusing strongly on the "brain-drain" element at the
| expense of "skills retention" and "skills development
| bits).
|
| There would have been no lost opportunities to exercise
| these skills in the absence of pyramidal efforts. They
| built temples, palaces, and cities on a continuous basis.
| Surveying is a constant need of anyone who collects
| taxes. (And it's _particularly_ important in Egypt, where
| everyone 's property lines move every year to match the
| extent of the flooding of the Nile.)
|
| As far as I've read, the Old Kingdom pyramids stopped
| being built when the colossal economic strain they
| involved nearly collapsed the state. That doesn't suggest
| that they were useful in employing otherwise idle
| technicians. It also doesn't suggest that the system
| governing them was especially capable at logistics and
| planning. Planning would have involved noticing "this
| pyramid will cost X amount to build, which is more than
| we can afford".
|
| > Large structures means civil engineering, construction,
| grain storage facilities, and quite probably some degree
| of metalworking and related crafts
|
| I think this is backwards to a certain extent; I'd run
| causation from grain storage -> large structures, not the
| other way around.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'm not interested in litigating minutia. I've addressed
| the point. I've admitted, repeatedly, that this is a very
| weakly-supported hypothesis, though not entirely without
| merits. Substantive proof is unlikely to emerge from a
| tendentious HN debate.
|
| You're the one constructing a far more magnificant
| pyramid of this than I'd ever intended.
| 7sidedmarble wrote:
| This is the most hacker news comment I've ever read on
| hacker news
| kxrm wrote:
| I am actually going through the hiring process now. I was a
| hiring manager at my last shop and I tried to be very respectful
| of the candidates time.
|
| The process was first interview was 30 mins and basically a
| getting to know you and us session. Second interview was a two
| hour technical interview with debugging/fix this function type
| question and a single from scratch example question in the
| candidates language of choice. The final round was purely
| optional if the CTO or CEO wanted to meet the candidate (they
| rarely did).
|
| If you made it through all that you got an offer. Of all the
| candidates I hired only 1 didn't work out long term.
|
| Now that I am on the other end, I don't understand the need for
| this overly complex and generally noncommittal (on the employer
| side) process. If it's FAANG I am lucky if I can even get a
| fucking job description these days. They want to interview me for
| jobs I can't know about and best fit me for their needs. What
| about my needs? What about my time? If I can't even get a job
| description, why do you think I want to waste 3 hours doing
| "homework" before I can even talk to anyone for more than 10
| minutes about what possible job I could be actually doing for
| you?
|
| Hiring in Tech is broken and I don't know what we can do to fix
| it.
| bsder wrote:
| > If it's FAANG
|
| And that's really the issue.
|
| The FAANG's are throwing around so much money that people are
| willing to put up with almost any amount of abuse to be on the
| other side of the line. The FAANGs can deal out any amount of
| abuse and they will still have a line of applicants around the
| block--there is no negative feedback in the interview process
| no matter how bad they make it.
|
| > Hiring in Tech is broken and I don't know what we can do to
| fix it.
|
| _Software_ hiring in the _Valley_ is broken--possibly.
|
| Hardware folks I know still go through the same old, same old.
| Single phone call with an engineer to make sure you're not
| simply a waste of oxygen. One on-site with 4-6 people (and 6
| would be an unusually long day--generally that would mean
| you're doing well and some extra people want to talk to you).
| One week to response--two weeks _MAX_.
|
| WTF are you software people _doing_?
| m-ee wrote:
| I've interviewed for ME, EE, FW, and SW roles. It's not
| better in hardware. There's an equivalent to all the things
| people are complaining about here. Take home coding challenge
| -> take home hw design challenge where they expect you to
| have access to expensive software. I got a FW challenge once
| that assumed I had two different dev boards on hand. Spot the
| bugs in this printed out code? Find everything wrong with
| this schematic in 5 minutes. Now quick what's the transfer
| function of this filter? I have a dozen more questions to get
| through.
|
| I had an ME friend who got into an argument with an
| interviewer about the convection equation. The interviewer
| was completely wrong, eventually my friend admitted "Ok I
| literally have it pulled up on my screen right now, I think
| you're mistaken."
| bsder wrote:
| > Spot the bugs in this printed out code? Find everything
| wrong with this schematic in 5 minutes.
|
| I don't consider those terribly unfair. Depending upon how
| the discussion goes, I could see myself doing something
| like this.
|
| For example, one of my standard questions for firmware
| people is a state machine in Verilog (for those who claim
| to know Verilog). What I'm looking for is whether you know
| the difference between blocking and non-blocking
| assignment.
|
| > Take home coding challenge -> take home hw design
| challenge where they expect you to have access to expensive
| software.
|
| > I have a dozen more questions to get through.
|
| These are not fine, though.
|
| > The interviewer was completely wrong
|
| This, sadly, happens. I have had an interviewer cite
| incorrect information about semiconductor device physics.
|
| Quite often, though, it happens in more junior interviewers
| with "standard" questions that are passed around because
| the interviewer doesn't fully grasp the question. When I
| was a junior engineer, I was always _terrified_ that I
| would make that screwup. I used to do review study on my
| own questions and area before every interview to make sure
| that didn 't happen.
|
| For example, I had an interviewer who gave me a question of
| "clock a binary number in serially and use a state machine
| to divide it by 3." It's a really cool question and was
| passed around between engineers of a certain company. But
| ...
|
| This is either a really easy question or a really hard
| question depending upon your choice of direction to clock
| the number in. If you pick the easy way, it's something
| like 3 states and it's obvious. If you pick the hard way,
| it's 6 states and takes a somewhat subtle inductive proof
| to show that you're right. If the interviewer doesn't
| _know_ that this can happen, he can 't dig the candidate
| out if they pick the hard direction.
|
| Of course, you know which direction I picked in the
| interview. LOL.
| devnull3 wrote:
| > WTF are you software people doing?
|
| I think it stems from the fact that software is "soft" i.e.
| highly malleable and flexible. This improves time-to-market
| considerably and there is an inherent expectation built-in to
| "move"/"execute" quickly.
|
| This also creates problems. Now the same thing can be done in
| multiple ways. There is a "my-company" way of doing. There is
| "my-way" of doing. Throw in personal tastes, likes-dislikes
| for testing, syntax, editors to name a few. Over the time,
| people take on multiple identities (e.g. FAANG, language
| fraternities, clubs of certain technology, editor
| fraternities etc). These mix and match in at best interesting
| ways and at worst in toxic ways.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Seems like software engineering too often attracts
| personalities that like creating uncessary complexity. It is
| deeply ingrained in the culture.
| echelon wrote:
| > If it's FAANG I am lucky if I can even get a fucking job
| description these days. They want to interview me for jobs and
| best fit me for their needs. What about my needs? What about my
| time? If I can't even get a job description, why do you think I
| want to waste 3 hours doing "homework" before I can even talk
| to anyone for more than 10 minutes?
|
| Why don't you find people working on a problem you like, then
| ask them if they have open positions?
|
| Working though engineers is almost always better than filtering
| though company recruiters. You'll wind up with a role you like
| rather than being stuffed into open head count.
|
| I've done this. It works.
| kxrm wrote:
| > Why don't you find people working on a problem you like,
| then ask them if they have open positions?
|
| That's not always straight forward. Once you get patched over
| to HR, it's their process.
|
| I am glad to hear that this is still working for you,
| hopefully a serendipitous moment will occur soon to open a
| door for me as well.
|
| > Working though engineers is almost always better than
| filtering though company recruiters.
|
| Doesn't this say something about hiring being broken when you
| have to dig through profiles on a company website or linkedin
| and cold contact devs to get your foot in the door?
|
| I am by no means suggesting that what you are saying is a bad
| idea, just that this reeks of poor and inefficient hiring
| policies.
| postit wrote:
| That's not about selecting the most qualified, the extra "lunch",
| "coffee", "working habits", "cultural fit" ..., it's a way found
| by companies to involve the maximum number of people in the
| hiring process to make people in the team feel confortable with
| the new hire. It's a very expensive team bounding exercice.
| sebyx07 wrote:
| Just do interviews with at least 5 companies at the same time.
| Pick the first which offers you the position, semi ghost
| others(keep them for backup), profit and no hurt feelings.
| martindbp wrote:
| I'm starting to think these interviews are not about skill, but
| about resiliency. It filters out people with (occasional)
| physical/mental health issues, difficult/many kids or other
| difficult life situations etc. Which is fair I suppose, companies
| would prefer perfectly healthy 26 year-olds that can dedicate
| their life to the company without burning out.
| FinanceAnon wrote:
| I think "resiliency" is a positive way of phrasing it. In my
| opinion, it's more of a case of checking if you can fit in and
| put up with corporate BS.
|
| I also doubt that companies are on purpose designing the
| interviews to be this long. It's probably more of the case of
| "more is better" thinking and no one being able to make a
| decision by themselves to streamline the process.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Reading all the replies its still quite a surprise that more
| engineers don't go and build their own products.
|
| Building companies is hella risky and hard, but if you're a
| senior engineer you could quite easily do it on the side
| andrew_ wrote:
| I recently agreed to go through a 5-round process which totaled
| to about 6 hours. I'm the first person to bitch about the
| ineffectiveness of leetcode/hackerrank bullshit for people with
| 10+ of verifiable experience, but I went through this one because
| it was a field I had never worked in before, and the personnel I
| was speaking with were truly interesting.
|
| Sans all of those qualifiers, anything more than 3 rounds is a
| deal breaker for me. If you don't know if I'm the right fit after
| 3 hours, verifiable experience, a public body of work, and a list
| of references, then your company culture isn't a good fit for me.
| echelon wrote:
| Devil's advocate.
|
| Every bad hire costs the company $50,000 - 200,000. Sometimes
| more. They can also sink or demoralize teams.
|
| Many of the people conducting interviews are new to the process
| and don't know how to extract signal. Sometimes scales don't
| line up.
|
| When you have a revolving door of employees (because that's the
| way things are these days), have trouble scheduling interviews
| (busy engineers trying to get their own work done), and can't
| get enough skilled interviewers on a panel, then of course the
| process will be a suboptimal experience for candidates.
|
| To a degree, companies would rather a good candidate was passed
| over than a bad candidate was accepted. Type I and II errors.
|
| Companies also don't like telling candidates how they did
| because that opens them up to lawsuit liabilities.
|
| You have to do enough interviews to get signal yet not piss off
| candidates. (Or your employees in the interview pool!)
|
| It's a hard problem for companies too.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| +1 to everything you said.
|
| I'd like to add time aspect as well. If selected, candidate
| will spend next 12-18 months with the team, 5 days a week. I
| look at those 5-6 hrs as worth an upfront investment from
| both the sides just ensure those days months aren't miserable
| and you don't end up parting ways on bad terms.
|
| I'm saying this as an interviewee as well as hiring manager
| who has conducted more than a thousand interviews.
|
| Nothing frustrates a team and hiring manager more than a
| mishire. It's the same for candidate, they have to go through
| the charade of interviewing at tens of places again.
| Gauge_Irrahphe wrote:
| When you have a revolving door of employees, the job sucks in
| some way and people leave for places that suck less.
|
| You have two ways to solve this problem:
|
| 1. Figure out what makes your employees keep leaving.
|
| 2. Hire people who are not good enough to work elsewhere.
| _carbyau_ wrote:
| "revolving door of employees (because that's the way things
| are these days)"
|
| 2 things that line hits me.
|
| 1. Remuneration. If I can jump ship and come back later to
| much more money, why not?
|
| 2. I work to _make_ myself replaceable. This is what good
| documentation, code comments, architecture is for!
| tcmart14 wrote:
| So what I get is, write shitty confusing code and don't
| document it. Job security, got it!
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > because that's the way things are these days
|
| Why is nothing done about this? As turnover soars and tenure
| plummets, I am willing to buy that companies do not value
| codebase knowledge, domain knowledge, or believe that it
| takes time for an engineer to get going. I can buy them
| seeing us engineers as replaceable widgets.
|
| But we are at the point where a lot of companies cannot
| replace us and yet nothing is done about the endless parade
| out the door. The focus is entirely on shovelling new people
| in.
| creato wrote:
| I think most engineers overestimate their irreplaceability.
| If a company actually wants you to stay, they'll fight for
| you. They just choose not to for >90% of engineers leaving.
|
| Chances are, the new hire replacements will be in the same
| 90%, so it is a wash (minus ramp-up time), but maybe the
| company gets lucky and finds someone in the other 10%.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I get them being replaceable, but there must be companies
| would be getting to the point where there aren't
| replacements, or at least not good ones as the demand for
| engineers grows.
| thayne wrote:
| They least they could do is let you know up front what the
| interview process is going to be like. From what I've seen
| the candidate often has no idea if the second interview is
| the final interview or just the next in a long series. And
| I've even seen employers wait weeks befor calling back to
| inform the candidate they qualify for a third interview.
|
| And if you have a revolving door of workers, that suggests
| something else is wrong. Maybe you should focus on retaining
| existing workers rather than acquiring new ones.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| If someone is new to the interviewing process, then they
| shouldn't be doing interviews alone. If they don't know how
| to gather information from a resume, then they shouldn't be
| reading resumes alone.
|
| You say that a bad hire is worth tens of thousands of
| dollars, but if that's the case, then most of what you said
| is irrelevant because a company that is smart enough to
| recognize this would be smart enough to never put a junior
| manager in a situation to make a terrible decision.
| echelon wrote:
| > If they don't know how to gather information from a
| resume, then they shouldn't be reading resumes alone.
|
| You would be shocked how many people blatantly lie or
| overstate their roles on resumes. Senior, junior, it
| happens all over.
|
| A good practice is to ask candidates to go in depth about
| recent resume items and explain the technicals, business
| needs, etc.
|
| > If someone is new to the interviewing process, then they
| shouldn't be doing interviews alone.
|
| Most don't. But are you really calibrated after five
| interviews? Ten? And what about all the other folks that
| need to shadow / train?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| It's either important and expensive or it isn't. I
| wouldn't be "shocked" by anything. I used to be a
| recruiter. In my current dev position, I have absolutely
| nuked candidates by asking basic questions that the
| managers (who were eager to hire someone to fill a spot)
| and other devs (who would feel uncomfortable if they
| asked the question and hence didn't) failed to ask. A
| candidate who will try to bullshit me about something he
| doesn't actually know is someone who will waste time on
| projects by not using all the resources available to him
| to find the correct solution (this usually involves being
| brave enough to ask questions if you don't understand
| something). If my future depends on your success, then
| I'm going to ask questions that will make me feel like I
| can trust my future in your hands.
|
| If a manager is getting paid $150K a year and it costs
| $200K to fire a bad employee, then "when they're ready"
| is the correct metric to use.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| So they can learn from experienced interviewers who just
| make you leetcode and answer dumb stock questions (my
| biggest weakness is...)? What we need is for people to
| interview with zero experience and figure out a better way
| on their own, not copy a bunch of bad processes out of
| insecurity
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| If you've surrounded yourself with incompetent people,
| then you still shouldn't assume that everyone else is
| equally incompetent. Cynicism isn't wisdom.
| void_mint wrote:
| Your response is the voice of the company. The person you're
| responding to, and lots of candidates, don't really care
| about the voice of the company. From a company's perspective,
| sure waste all the time you want, you want to be _sure_. But
| to candidates, getting dragged around sucks, and is usually a
| waste
| s5300 wrote:
| The lower end of that, and honestly, the higher end, is just
| about complete rounding error to any FAANGM+ caliber company.
|
| I have seen a fairly small amount of employees hit the lower
| end on a singular dining bill when they had a company card
| and were meeting with business partners they were trying to
| "impress"
|
| (obviously, the joke is free nice food and drink for all
| involved at the companies expense)
|
| If you were fickle you could perhaps justify that as priced
| in to keeping good relations... but in the same light I'd
| call your figures priced into the talent acquisition process.
| billytetrud wrote:
| Yes, every bad hire is really bad. However, companies
| generally don't put in any effort into seriously evaluating
| your publicly available work. I have reams and reams of open
| source code companies can take a look at, and I've never seen
| any evidence that any company I've ever interviewed at has
| looked at that work. That's a result of companies being
| completely incompetent at evaluation and disrespecting their
| candidates time. Its wasteful and stupid. Its honestly
| flabbergasting how many companies don't put in the effort to
| make their hiring process passible, much less anything near
| "good".
| cubano wrote:
| Well the obvious issue here is...how do they truly know
| _you_ wrote the code? Its pretty much impossible to source
| where OS code comes from, and it sure wouldn 't be hard to
| find an obscure OS project and pass off the code as yours,
| if you were that sort of person.
|
| And this takes me to my 2nd point, and that is they current
| hiring model totally leads to companies hiring _people who
| are good at interviewing_ not necessarily people who are
| good at doing the work required. There is no doubt t that
| interviewing for a job is a skill that can be learned and
| improved upon, and lots of crappy programmers have learned
| to be damn good at being I interviewed.
| azemetre wrote:
| If a person has a history of giving talks, writing books,
| or creating content around code they've written there's
| probably a high likely hood they are capable workers and
| can code.
| bfung wrote:
| Being on the hiring end, it's less out of incompetence and
| more of not enough time, and open source code is low signal
| that the candidate can actually solve problems.
|
| If I submit some "open source" code as some proof that I
| can code, how do you know I didn't copy the code from
| somewhere?
|
| Also, writing code for the sake of writing code doesn't
| tell a hiring manager if the person can take requirements
| and translate that to an automated process. It just say
| that person isn't that busy and can, excuse my language,
| shit out code for the sake of appearing productive.
|
| Writing code can be a hobby, sure, but that's only a small
| part of a software job and no amount of open source code
| can tell a company if the candidate can work with others
| and solve problems.
| code_duck wrote:
| > Writing code can be a hobby, sure,
|
| > writing code for the sake of writing code
|
| > It just say that person isn't that busy and can, excuse
| my language, shit out code for the sake of appearing
| productive.
|
| It sounds like you have a serious misunderstanding of
| open source at a basic level. It would have been
| questionable enough in 2000 but I'm not sure why anyone
| in 2021 would think that way.
| bfung wrote:
| I'd argue the other way - open source in 2000s to central
| libraries were of decent quality. The quantity of code
| now these days is so much and of questionable quality -
| everyone and their bootcamp writes code to GitHub and
| call it open source, just to show they have open source.
|
| Hell, I have public code on GitHub, but I'd never put it
| on my resume.
| code_duck wrote:
| There may be a signal-to-noise problem, but the amount of
| useful open source projects and the extent to which we
| rely upon them has only increased in the past 20 years.
| "Open source" includes projects like Go and NodeJS, which
| are hardly trivial, disposable projects like you're
| referring to. Pretty much all crypto is open source and
| people have invested tens of billions in that ecosystem.
| I could continue and list at least half a dozen projects
| that are considered critical infrastructure which are
| developed in that fashion.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I agree on your open source comments as far as, the only
| open sourced code a person has is personal pet projects.
| However, if you see someone has PRs and commits into
| something like the Linux repository or a major well known
| project, then their open source contributions could be
| very meaningful. As an example. If you are hiring for a
| position for a developer to work on garage band at Apple,
| if an applicant is an audio dev for FreeBSD, that is a
| pretty good sign the candidate knows what they are doing.
| bfung wrote:
| Agree - it'd have to be some contribution to a
| significant project. Those are radar and far in between.
|
| Usually it's "I wrote some code and put it on GitHub,
| call it open source".
| buck4roo wrote:
| > no amount of open source code can tell a company if the
| candidate can work with others and solve problems.
|
| Balderdash. When was the last time an interview task
| involved working with others? I'd offer that open source
| PRs show this way better, and in an appropriate context
| (as a collaborator) rather than what we have now:
| adversarial interview{er,ee}s.
| billytetrud wrote:
| > how do you know I didn't copy the code from somewhere?
|
| You can ask your candidate to explain the code... Is that
| not obvious?
|
| > writing code for the sake of writing code doesn't tell
| a hiring manager if the person can take requirements and
| translate that to an automated process
|
| Kind of sounds like you don't know what open source
| software is.
|
| > excuse my language, shit out code for the sake of
| appearing productive
|
| I won't excuse your language. You sound like you're part
| of the problem buddy. I don't think you have any idea how
| to evaluate a programmer.
| bfung wrote:
| > You can ask your candidate to explain the code... Is
| that not obvious?
|
| Asking about projects is the obvious thing, but only
| substantial and interesting projects really provide any
| interview value. Yet another Todo app doesn't fit that
| criteria. Neither is another scaffolded crud app.
|
| A PR to fix a bug in a semi-popular library is worth. But
| saying "I have a lot of repos" is def not.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| This is mostly management speak for: _don 't blame us, we're
| just incompetent_.
|
| If you run a company and you have a "revolving door of
| employees" (ie: we can't retain talent), your managers "are
| new to the process" and don't know what they're looking for
| (ie: we hire inexperienced managers), and you "can't get
| enough skilled interviewers on a panel" (ie: "we don't hire
| enough engineers and we're too cheap and shortsighted to put
| them on tasks like hiring")... then yeah, you should expect
| your hiring costs to go up, have a revolving door of
| employees (because you don't know how to hire), and your
| teams to be demoralized.
|
| The consequences of that are your (company's) fault. You
| should own up to your shortcomings and work on your hiring
| process... don't just punish the candidates indefinitely so
| that you can ignore your problems.
|
| (I say this as a serial founder, and hopefully never need to
| be on the other end of the hiring process.)
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Are there companies that don't have a revolving door?
| Talent retention seems to be solidly tagged #wontfix.
| [deleted]
| stevekemp wrote:
| It's interesting to hear of these experiences because my own
| job applications have usually taken four steps:
|
| * See the advert online, and send an email/fill out a form to
| apply.
|
| * Have a quick phone-chat with a HR-person, where they ask
| about salary, history, and try to decide if I'm a chancer, or I
| have some somewhat useful skills.
|
| * Have a 30-60 minute interview with some technical people, in-
| person.
|
| * Optionally have a second interview with a tech-lead, or
| somebody else higher up the chain.
|
| * Receive offer, rejection, or get ghosted.
|
| Smaller companies sometimes have different processes. More than
| once I've sent an email/CV in to apply and been invited out for
| beer/food, and received a verbal offer the following morning.
| No other interviews, or tests.
| ExitPlatosCave wrote:
| Hey Steve,
|
| Thought your comment was interesting, so went to check out
| your profile.
|
| That was also clean and well made, so followed through to
| your website.
|
| Found this: "I published a simple tool to all your repository
| details from Github, self-hosted Github Enterprise
| installations, and other compatible systems."
|
| Do you mean: ...to [pull] all your repository details
|
| Since you have such a nice profile and everything I thought
| maybe you intended to include this word in there.
|
| Hope this is helpful.
|
| Somewhat related to interviewing and getting hired.
|
| If it's in an appropriate comment for this threat then please
| remove it. @admin
| tome wrote:
| Hey ExitPlatosCave,
|
| Thought the beginning of your comment was interesting, so
| went to check out the middle of your comment.
|
| That was also clean and well written, so followed through
| to the end.
|
| Found this: "If it's in an appropriate comment for this
| threat then please remove it."
|
| Do you mean: If it's in an _in_ appropriate comment for
| this threa _d_ then please remove it.
|
| Since you have such a nice comment and everything I thought
| maybe you intended not to make these typos.
|
| Hope this is helpful.
| stevekemp wrote:
| A little off-topic, but appreciated regardless.
|
| I'll fix the entry you mention - as you suspected a missing
| word there.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Yes, same for me. I was going through my past interviews, and
| the most I've had before an offer has been two, both
| scheduled on the same day. And I've worked in agencies and
| big orgs, in both private and public sector. Maybe we've just
| been lucky?
| ImaCake wrote:
| I do research assistant work in biology. The best way to get
| one of these rare jobs is to email the professor directly.
| They then have a "chat" with you (don't be fooled, this is
| the formal interview!) and then several weeks later they get
| around to bypassing the Uni's hiring process and you get a
| job.
|
| I really am not looking forward to going through a formal
| interview process, because it will be so jarring compared to
| what I am used to!
| stanford_labrat wrote:
| Fwiw I also work in molecular biology and did a recent
| round of interviews (summer 2020).
|
| Started with applications over a web form on the university
| careers website, then chatted over email with the hiring
| manager. Eventually got set up with some interviews with
| current lab people, and eventually the PI.
|
| Mirrored in industry, although that was back in 2018. So
| all in all the "regular" route at least for this level of
| work in biotech/biology is pretty sane.
|
| That being said, I've used your method in the past as well
| to great success, and is one of my secret techniques to get
| more traction when I'm looking ;)
| Plasmoid wrote:
| I wonder if this is a way to crowd out competitors. Take up so
| much of a candidate's time that they can only interview at a
| handful of places successfully. Either the candidate goes all
| in on you or they pass without using your resources. Kinda the
| grocery store shelving model of competition.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| And it's to weed out people who value their own time and who
| won't take part in pointless company mandated bullshit.
|
| If someone sits though 6 hours of interviews and pointless
| exercises that should instead be solved by consulting the
| documentation, they will probably just do what they are told
| without fuss, will work overtime for free and will let the
| company walk all over them with regards to sick pay,
| holidays, etc.
| [deleted]
| strenholme wrote:
| I've interviewed with Google twice. It's not that many separate
| rounds: You have the recruiter sell Google to you, then there are
| two phone screens, then it's the all day interview (with multiple
| people). Which is reasonable. I didn't get the Google job, but,
| looking back, my life is better because I didn't relocate back to
| Silicon Valley to work for Google.
|
| I've never had a company string me along. Four separate phone
| screens or interviews seems to be the limit. I've even been hired
| after one video conference interview.
|
| I once was given a "we want to hire you, but we need to get the
| funds together before we can give you the offer" spiel during the
| great post-mortgage economic recession, but they did hire me
| after about a month.
|
| After five separate rounds (again, talking to multiple teams on
| the same day after one or two technical phone screens and one
| recruiter call doesn't count; that's standard practice with many
| companies), I would tell a company they need to either, as my
| father put it, "shit or get off the pot".
|
| In terms of take home assignments, I have no problem doing them,
| as long as the employer has no problem having me put my answers
| on a public GitHub repo. I will not do Codility tests, because my
| experience is that employers who do those kinds of tests are
| Unicorn hunters.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| I had fourteen (14) interviews at my current employer, with a
| similar "how about this position instead?" switch in the middle,
| including redoing a whiteboard coding interview.
|
| I've been there 8 years and counting now, and my current job
| bears virtually no resemblance to what I was hired to do.
| chriski2021 wrote:
| I run a company. When I need to hire someone it's because I need
| someone to do something, and either do it now or really soon. I
| have never had the time (or inclination) to do any more than two
| interviews
| paulmendoza wrote:
| I have a small startup. We try to be super responsive when
| someone applies to a job. Generally within 2 weeks of an resume
| being submitted we can have an offer letter to the person.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I'm usually OK with doing more than three calls after a recruiter
| call (which are ideally with a hiring manager, peer manager, and
| a prospective peer), but that is usually because I quite like
| getting a feel for company culture.
|
| More than that is just silly and contrived (although I usually
| end up talking to a VP or similar these days on account of my
| seniority).
|
| There are usually three major red flags that make me step away
| (or at least curb my expectations):
|
| - Any kind of automated coding test (I have a GitHub profile and
| plenty of public code, plus HackerRank and the like can be gamed
| if you have enough free time)
|
| - Whiteboard or live coding interviews (I find contrived
| discussions about algorithms stupid when I can reach into my
| actual, physical bookshelf to a well thumbed-through copy of
| Skiena, get a tested approach going and _then_ figure out how
| best to optimize things)
|
| - When I am asked for compensation on the very first interview. I
| see it as culturally rude, and if they read through my CV at all
| and have a target for the role they are interviewing me for they
| should have already done the math.
|
| But as I am edging towards 50, a lot of the above just doesn't
| happen. Instead I have long, rambling conversations about company
| values, people culture, and even end up doing free corporate
| strategy consultations, in which I am obviously expected to utter
| the right buzzwords that fit the interviewers' worldview.
|
| I quite enjoy those conversations for the insights they provide
| into how completely broken some companies are - instead of
| getting down to brass tacks and discussing their challenges, many
| startups end up coming across as cargo culting FAANG concepts
| without addressing their actual pain points (how to grow, how to
| retain employees, how to actually deliver product, etc.).
| lixoaqui wrote:
| regarding the last point, nowadays what I see is the opposite
| where candidates still struggle with getting a clear salary
| range before engaging into time wasting exercises.
| vdomingos wrote:
| Hear, Hear! For me it's when they put junior people doing
| interviews to senior roles. I get the point - not enough
| resources, culture check, etc - but at a certain level we're
| not even talking the same language or even working experience.
|
| On the other hand, any Amazon interview has tons of people :)
| matoyce wrote:
| But some are pulling strings like connections for them to get the
| job that they want. It is quite rampant, and it even gives the
| job to those who are not quite competent enough for that certain
| position.
| cudgy wrote:
| "Google, for example, recently examined its past interview data
| and determined that four interviews was enough to make a hiring
| decision with 86% confidence, ..."
|
| Does this mean that 14% of Google hires are incompetent for their
| role at Google?
| axaxs wrote:
| My one and only Google interview went this way years ago. Each
| round they'd send me more books to study, which frankly I
| couldn't be bothered to read given the circumstances.
|
| My experience ended when an interviewer in round 3 or 4 asked me
| an obviously scripted question. I answered sarcastically, he got
| peeved, and I never heard from them again.
|
| I'm not claiming I'm Google caliber, whatever that means.
| Obviously I'm not because I don't have the patience for their
| interview questions.
|
| To be clear, the entire question was: What's not in a Linux
| inode?
|
| My answer was: Lots of things...dinosaurs, the moon...
|
| The interviewer told me very matter of factly that it was in
| fact, the filename.
|
| I honestly lost all respect for the process, sorry Googlers.
| laurensr wrote:
| A lot of people tend to forget that hiring, certainly in
| software engineering, is a two-way process. The employer
| assesses "is this a good candidate?"
|
| But a clever candidate assesses "is this a good employer?".
| Even during the hiring process.
| drclau wrote:
| There is asymmetry involved, tho. They judge you as a single
| individual, while you have to judge an entire company from
| your experience with one single interviewer. The company can
| be employing thousands or even tens of thousands of
| engineers. Also, you don't get to ask so many questions. The
| time allotted to your questions is but a small portion of the
| interview.
| Faaak wrote:
| I had a similar experience with Proton's recruitment. They sent
| me a dumb IQ test with stupid questions like (how many
| triangles are in this triangle). I answered with "Way too
| many", and that was the end for me
| izgzhen wrote:
| There is no need to "respect" the process, but just to be more
| thoughtful:
|
| > What's not in a Linux inode? > My answer was: Lots of
| things...dinosaurs, the moon...
|
| You can answer that you want more clarification, or even answer
| that "we can google this".
|
| The "dinosaurs" thing might make the interviewer feel that you
| are being unprofessional since the interview is to test one's
| ability to perform in a professional environment. You don't
| help your colleagues by answering in this way when asked
| similar questions in work...
| selcuka wrote:
| While technically true, that's irrelevant here. The point is,
| the answer was going to be wrong unless they said "filename"
| anyway.
| Scarblac wrote:
| That kind of question is never asked in a work
| situation,that's why it invites an absurd answer.
|
| What _is_ in an inode, sure. Or _why_ is the filename not in
| an inode. But what _isn 't_ in an inode is just a useless
| trivia question.
| nicky0 wrote:
| To me the dinosaurs answer demonstrates a sharp mind, the
| kind of person I would want to work with. Can you see why?
| Nition wrote:
| And yet if they ask you for an answer to a quirky question like
| "why are manhole covers round?", they expect a clever answer
| like "they can't fall in", rather than a pedestrian answer like
| "well, probably they just started making them that shape for
| some simple production reason, and then everyone else just
| kinda of did the same thing because it worked."
| emptyfile wrote:
| What? Manhole covers aren't round. Silly americans.
|
| http://lh4.ggpht.com/_LWPSf1_ugFI/TA4tx-22QRI/AAAAAAAAFx0/T1.
| ..
| [deleted]
| Nition wrote:
| And look at that, it's got a hinge on it, so it can't fall
| in. _And_ it can 't be stolen or misplaced.
| signal11 wrote:
| Manhole covers come in a variety of shapes. A non-ironic
| "why are manhole covers round" question speaks more to lack
| of life and/or travel experience than anything else.
|
| There are triangular[1] and even more exotic-shaped[2]
| covers.
|
| [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/g82
| 6ve/m...
|
| [2] https://manhole.co.il/doSearch.asp?tp=114
| darkwater wrote:
| > [2] https://manhole.co.il/doSearch.asp?tp=114
|
| Holy crap, I never thought a website dedicated to
| manholes pictures was a thing. I love the human species
| :)
| tssva wrote:
| They aren't even all round in the US. Where I live there is
| a high and rapidly growing number of data centers. In fact
| there is currently another large data center campus being
| built for the company famous for asking this question.
| Among other things this means installation of fiber optic
| cabling along the roads leading to the data centers. This
| in turn means the installation of a large number of
| manholes to service the cables. All the covers for these
| manholes are rectangular.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Manhole covers are round because they minimize the
| circumference per area that must be cut to make the cover
| fall in.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| Obligatory
|
| https://sellsbrothers.com/12395
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Ok but consider - is there any department at Microsoft
| other than marketing that Richard Feynman would have been
| suited for?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Richard Feynman oversaw the IBM computer's use and
| programming used in the Manhattan Project. Microsoft also
| has an R&D department that would probably just give him a
| budget and a team of assistants to see what he came up
| with.
| neilv wrote:
| Feynman made significant contributions to supercomputing.
|
| https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-
| machin...
|
| I'm guessing Feynman would've had a much better chance
| getting hired at old Microsoft, than through the current
| FAANG/wannabe interview process.
| [deleted]
| gcheong wrote:
| I don't know but I shudder at the thought of what state
| the world would have to be in for Feynman to be
| interviewing at Microsoft or any FAANG company for that
| matter.
| paganel wrote:
| In my area there are lots of square manhole covers. I have
| it on my personal to-do list to photograph almost all the
| older manhole covers from my city and geo-locate them at
| some point, I think it could be a good indicator of how my
| city grew and evolved ~100 years ago.
| achow wrote:
| Most probably, because manhole covers were/are made using
| cast iron, which were sand casted.
|
| Mold for sand casting is easily done in lathe (turning a
| wood on lathe for precise shape is faster and more accurate
| than sawing).
|
| So as one of the parent comment mentions - it is round
| because of production reasons.
| eecc wrote:
| My guess is it's also a matter of practical usage:
| they're made of heavy iron and a round one will fall in
| place whatever orientation it's thrown over the cover,
| while a different shape needs to be carefully oriented. I
| suspect this also means less broken fingers.
| achow wrote:
| But round one is easier to steal.. just roll them off.
| Whereas a square or any such shape, would be very
| inconvenient to move.
|
| [Edit in response to a question]
|
| Some people have attempted to steal manhole covers in
| order to sell them for scrap metal. China Daily notes
| that there has also been a problem with taxi drivers
| removing manhole covers to "steal water and clean their
| vehicles". https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-
| elsewhere-52400235
| bluedino wrote:
| Who steals iron to turn in for scrap? It's only worth
| about 10 cents a lb. And then you have to haul it to the
| scrap yard. It's heavy!
|
| On the other hand, copper is $3/lb, brass $2/lb, aluminum
| is $0.50/lb
| pards wrote:
| Read "Playing the Moldovans at Tennis". According to that
| book, most of the manhole covers had been stolen for
| scrap.
| adrianN wrote:
| Why would someone steal a manhole cover?
| takeda wrote:
| If Google is asking about them on an interview they must
| be important.
| rplnt wrote:
| It's a very common thing to steal. Lots of iron. That's
| why they use concrete-filled ones. That's why they are
| stamped so a scrapyard can be checked (or alert
| authorities).
| xapata wrote:
| To sell them at the scrap yard. Gotta be careful driving
| in some countries; drive over an open manhole and you
| might crack an axle.
| xapata wrote:
| If you're going around stealing covers, you're probably
| driving a truck and carrying them in the truck bed.
| varjag wrote:
| Isn't as easy to shatter in handling too, lacking stress
| concentrators.
| discordance wrote:
| ... fell for it like a dude trying to get his try at
| opening a stuck jar lid.
| PinballWizard wrote:
| My take is because the manhole is round.
| achow wrote:
| The mouth of the 'hole' could be easily square, actually
| making a square shape is perhaps easier - since laying
| concrete is easier in straight lines.
|
| So, _most probably_ the shape of the cast iron cover
| (circular), drove the shape of mouth of the hole.
| GistNoesis wrote:
| It's just an invitation to discuss curves of constant width,
| like the Reuleaux triangle, that has indeed been made into a
| man-hole cover.
| ivanche wrote:
| Ah the famous Reuleaux triangle, something which 99% of
| software developers around the world deal with every day!
| cedilla wrote:
| Lots of man-hole covers are rectangular though. Turns out
| it isn't very important at all to have manhole covers that
| don't fall in. They are quite heavy and don't roll around
| on their own, so having them fall somewhere really is of
| minor concern.
| gowld wrote:
| Hand-Rolling is a good reason to make them round.
| GistNoesis wrote:
| Yeah, but they don't sound as nice when you hit them with
| the hammer (even when you make them of width/length
| golden ratio so that they look nice).
|
| The manhole cover question, is more of a check to test
| whether the candidate belongs to the math-circle people
| where this is well known.
|
| Even if they don't it's then an opportunity to test if
| the candidate can see the question behind the question.
|
| With these sort of open-question in an interview context
| you have to roll with it, otherwise it's seen as an
| unwillingness to play (sphericon) ball.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| A bad interviewer might expect a certain answer but a good
| interviewer will use it as an opportunity to examine the
| interviewee's critical thinking skills.
|
| Are there any other reasons the cover would be round? It
| gives you an insight into their thought process as they come
| up with more ideas and explanations.
| bikson wrote:
| I had same question, i was pissed because that was another
| stiupid question. My answer was: Because its easier for ninja
| turtles to jump on.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > "why are manhole covers round?"
|
| asked that question I would have answered: "that's a trick
| question! they are not round!"
|
| http://www.theromanpost.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/11/cropp...
| jcelerier wrote:
| Isn't the question nonsensical ? inodes are a property of some
| filesystems like ext, xfs..., that you can happen to use on
| Linux. If you installed Linux, say, on an NTFS partition there
| would be no inode anywhere, no ?
| pjerem wrote:
| I'd be curious if you already saw / read about a working
| Linux installation on NTFS. IIRC, even WSL works with an EXT4
| layer.
| jcelerier wrote:
| https://github.com/nikp123/ntfs-
| rootfs/blob/master/guide_in_...
|
| does not seem trivial given the differing permission model,
| but not impossible either. for fat32 I wonder though if the
| total absence of permissions allows for that.
| rcxdude wrote:
| There's a few things you'd need to patch up because a few
| important utilities are picky about the permissions of
| their config files (as a protection against
| misconfiguration).
| gpderetta wrote:
| the inode vs filename distinction is historical unix behavior
| (but I don't remember whether posix mandates it), and it is
| quite important and relevant in many system programming
| scenarios. Of course not all filesystems support it.
|
| The question is still phrased terribly of course and the
| candidate would have to reverse engineer what the interviewer
| is actually asking to have a chance to answer it.
| neilv wrote:
| > the entire question was: What's not in a Linux inode?
|
| Were they considering you as an experienced developer of a
| Unix/Posix filesystem, who would almost certainly know what an
| inode is?
|
| Or were they considering you as someone who had been using a
| Unix so long and extensively that you had a chance of once
| having had to configure an older filesystem for huge numbers of
| inodes. Or a chance that, for some rare reason, you once had
| occasion to learn that the `ln` command isn't always used in
| conjunction with `-s`?
|
| In either of those cases, you might then guess at what the
| question was getting at, in a slightly clever way. If you got
| it, then both of you could share a bonding moment of both
| knowing this thing not everyone knows, and it could be a quick
| warmup to better questions.
|
| Or, if you didn't get it, you could feel thrown off, and
| insecure or negged, which is also a win for an evil interview
| process.
|
| If I'm feeling punchy at 3am, an alternative theory is that
| they could be a recent CS grad, who'd had a class in which they
| were told to recite, after the professor, "What's not in a
| Linux inode is the filename," and that's what they think is
| important about that. (By way of introducing the separation
| between inode and directory entry in Unix, through catchphrase
| and rote memorization. Other professors would probably instead
| explain using a diagram or the code for structs.) (Theory
| variation: perhaps the only professor who ever said this phrase
| was at Standford, which would make calling for it an especially
| transparent shibboleth for frat-like alumni affinity, and an
| overly-precise filter for socioeconomic class.)
| mrits wrote:
| technically the filename can be in the inode. Just depends on
| the filename.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| It was probably an opener for discussion. Assume the best
| about the interviewer for a minute. What is the _best_
| possible interpretation of where they wanted to go with the
| question?
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| But this was the third or fourth round. By then you might
| expect a meaty discussion about file systems rather than a
| trivia quiz.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| I'm not 100% certain of this, because I don't know what
| job they ask a question like that for. It isn't a
| software engineering interview. However, generally:
|
| The rounds don't build on each other. You have X
| interviews and the interviewers don't talk to each other
| and are independent events.
|
| They have gone through phases of having an initial phone
| screen interview which is a hurdle, but the rest
| are(/were) as laid out above. There may be exceptions for
| very senior people, but they are sufficiently rare to
| exclude.
|
| Google has it's problems to be sure - but by and large
| the individual people there mean well.
| resonious wrote:
| The fact that the interviewer didn't get the joke and
| immediately divulged "the answer" makes it hard to assume
| the best here. If they were really trying to open a
| dialogue, I'd expect a chuckle and maybe some clarification
| (like, what _is_ in an inode?)
| tinco wrote:
| I once cost my employer a bunch of valuable data due to a bug
| in my code that the second I discovered the data was gone I
| knew why it was gone because I understand inodes and their
| relationship to filenames.
|
| That's to say it's information that is useful to have in your
| head if you're an SRE, just part of understanding Linux
| fundamentals.
|
| That's not to say it was a good question. Despite my
| encounter with that bug in my code I still wouldn't have
| answered the question correctly. Filenames point to inodes,
| inodes point to data. The word filename might not even pop
| into my brain when thinking of inodes in isolation.
|
| Also it doesn't show the full picture, I'm not at all sure I
| have what it takes to be an SRE let alone one at Google, that
| I sort of know what an inode is says nothing about if I can
| properly use that information to make architectural
| decisions.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| So... What does this comment have to do with the posted
| article? In the article Google claims that 4 rounds is what
| they see as the max to get a good hire/no hire signal.
| nuker wrote:
| Someone, please, write a book "Interview Questions: Linux".
| Just questions and answers with short explainers. I got inode
| question on every second interview! Make it good and expensive
| af.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| >What's not in a Linux inode?
|
| Wow, even if you were hiring filesystem experts to write
| filesystems I think there are a million better ways to ask that
| question.
|
| e.g.: "Hey, talk me through the design of a really basic
| filesystem, it needs to support hardlinks, symlinks, files and
| directories."
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I'm not experienced in tech interviews nor knowledgeable
| about inodes ... but your question and the interviewer's
| question seem like they're functionally equivalent. They
| presumably don't just want you to say "names", they're
| expecting you to talk about what is in a Linux inode, what a
| directory is, etc., and they can drop in further questions to
| prompt you if you don't "talk me through the design of a
| basic filesystem".
|
| If the question is too vacuous surely you ask for
| clarification -- "well, what happens when you issue the 'mv'
| command" -- and presumably if you designed file systems you
| can talk about different implementations, optimisations, and
| problems crossing filesystem boundaries or whatever.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| I think there are multiple things wrong with the original
| question:
|
| - It's unclear what they're trying to judge. Do they want
| to know if someone understands filesystems on an intimate
| level? Do they want to know if someone knows how hardlinks
| work? Do they want to know if someone knows what fstat
| returns? Are they trying to trick someone since an inode in
| many contexts is just a number? This is an unnecessary
| level of uncertainty for a question and encourages random
| tangents which may not be the answer the interviewer is
| looking for or cares about.
|
| - Someone who has studied google's standard questions which
| this apparently may be one of [1] would be able to answer
| this without understanding the implications, what does that
| tell you about the candidate?
|
| - If you want the candidate to go into a tangent about
| filesystems in order to figure out how well they understand
| them, this is as mentioned before a really stupidly open
| ended question.
|
| - If someone did understand you were talking about inodes,
| they may be of the opinion that the inode contains a
| reference to the file's contents and as such contains the
| file contents. In the case of a directory this means that
| an inode "contains" the file names of files in that
| directory. This makes the question a leading question which
| is trying to lead to what would be a wrong answer from that
| person's point of view. How do you answer a leading
| question when you disagree with what it's trying to lead
| you to?
|
| If you want to determine if someone understands filesystems
| on an intimate level. I think my question would be far
| better at elucidating that.
|
| If you want to understand if someone knows how hardlinks
| work, I can't come up with a question off the top of my
| head but I doubt that "what is not in an inode" is anywhere
| close to the best one.
|
| If you want to trick someone, go ahead, this is a good
| question. Likewise if you want to screen for people who
| have googled "Google SRE Interview Questions" and memorised
| the answers.
|
| [1] http://www.gwan.com/blog/20160405.html (
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701272 )
|
| Regarding the above reference:
|
| I've spoken to someone who interviewed for an SRE position
| and she said the questions were very similar to an early
| phone interview she had. She said the interviewer did not
| know what they were talking about and were just going off
| an answer sheet. So I don't think the interview in this
| case is representative of one for a Director of Engineering
| but is representative of an early screening interview for
| SRE. In which case anything BUT the expected answer to the
| question "What is not in an inode" would be considered
| incorrect.
| beebmam wrote:
| What an insane interview question. If someone asked me that
| question I'd quickly end the interview.
|
| A team looking for people with knowledge instead of looking for
| people to know how to reason is a team that is already dead.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| I don't think this was scripted; it's a typical sign of bad
| interviewers when they think that
|
| 1) they are smart
|
| 2) therefore if you're smart you have the same way of thinking
|
| 3) also you have the same knowledge (and gaps!) about
| irrelevant details
|
| Therefore instead of checking your knowledge they check whether
| you're like them.
|
| It's just amateurish.
| lrem wrote:
| Nope, the inode question is part of the 50-ish long trivia
| quiz that a sourcer uses to figure out if a candidate is
| worth putting on the phone with an engineer.
| janoc wrote:
| It is also scripted. Google used to use internal people do to
| the screening but not anymore, they have outsourced it to
| agencies. And a random recruiting agency drone on the phone,
| paid minimal wage, can't be expected to ask sensible
| questions, so they get a script to choose questions from,
| along with expected answers.
| konschubert wrote:
| I can't believe that Google would outsource their hiring
| process, do they think they can keep their quality this
| way?
| randomdata wrote:
| Have they kept their quality? Google does a few things
| really well, but that drops off very quickly when you
| look across their suite of offerings.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| I doubt Google has outsourced their entire process.
|
| But many recruiters work as independent contractors or in
| recruiting firms. They often do a minimal phone-screen,
| vs sending a candidate "cold" to the hiring company.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| This is pretty spot on
| agumonkey wrote:
| Happy to see that many recruiters have lost touch with
| reality..
|
| Is there a curated list of simpler, more human, more efficient
| for both parties, companies ?
| lbrito wrote:
| Had a similar experience.
|
| I was a recent grad, around 10 years ago. A Google recruiter
| called me out of the blue. After a couple of minutes, she
| started asking technical questions about Linux, which I had
| just started using.
|
| After a while came the final blow: I was asked what was the
| fastest way to sum two integers (there were probably some
| additional specs I don't recall).
|
| I mumbled something. Wrong! The answer is, in fact, using the
| TLB. I vaguely remembered what the TLB was from my CPU
| architecture classes, but was aghast at the connection between
| that and summing two integers.
|
| The recruiter pretty much said I wasn't Google material on the
| spot and said goodbye. I felt bad for myself at the time, but
| now I can see this is a ridiculous approach to interviewing.
| silon42 wrote:
| I think this is not a bad question...
| tyingq wrote:
| That's a weirdly phrased question anyway. There's a directory
| entries reference in the inode that leads to the filename. So
| the name(s) isn't exactly "not in" an inode.
|
| A lot of those interview questions just seem to test for "how
| good is their memory", which I don't think correlates to future
| performance very well.
| ugjka wrote:
| No, they just have to turn down 99% of candidates because it
| will look bad for interviewers to have too many promising
| ones
| jd115 wrote:
| I interviewed for a software engineering position with Goldman
| once (in London). The process spanned several weeks of phone
| interviews with people in the UK and US (I lost track of the
| count), followed by a full day of back-to-back interviews on-
| site with 12 different people - some via video conference with
| New York. Questions were extremely diverse, both wide and deep.
| Early on in the process I decided to look at this like a game
| and try to actually have fun, which I did... I had fairly
| positive feedback along the way so I thought I was doing well
| ALL the way until the next-to-last interview with someone in
| NYC on video link. I was sitting there in a room, waiting for
| that next interview... the person on the other side was taking
| longer than the others to show up. About 20 - 30 minutes into
| my waiting, someone I had not seen before walked into the room
| and informed me very matter of factly that we will not be
| proceeding with the last interview and he will escort me on my
| way out of the building.
|
| To this day I have NO idea what happened. I never heard back
| from them and the recruiter wasn't able to provide me with any
| further feedback when I asked.
|
| I thought maybe they saw me on camera taking a photo of the
| Goldman-branded water bottle on the table while I was bored
| waiting... Or someone was digging and saw an anti-Trump tweet
| of mine. Or whatever.
|
| Would have been more fun for me to turn them down after this
| whole madness (which I fully intended), but I didn't get that
| pleasure :)
| jd115 wrote:
| Hey! Did I just get some downvotes from Goldman junkies?
| Ahahahaha That's adorable.
| rwmj wrote:
| I once had a weird interview at an investment bank for a
| backroom sysadmin position. I went to the interview in a
| smart cotton tennis shirt, black trousers, and was
| interviewed by a bunch of techie people wearing pretty much
| the same kind of clothes. The interview covered many
| technical issues and seemed to go really well.
|
| When I got out and was on my way home, the recruitment
| consultant phoned me up and quite literally screamed at me
| for about 5 minutes down the phone about why I hadn't worn a
| suit. He didn't mention this interview requirement
| beforehand.
|
| So yeah, weird things happen at investment banks :-) I didn't
| get the job obviously.
| mcv wrote:
| For one of my first job interviews I called to company
| whether they wore suits. They said yes. I bought a suit and
| got a haircut, and was interviewed by two techies in smudgy
| polo and sweater. I felt way overdressed, didn't get hired,
| and decided to never do this again. A neat button-down
| shirt is plenty.
| xvector wrote:
| The software industry interview process is such a disaster.
| The worst part of every job I've ever had (including FAANG)
| is hitting the LeetCode grind when I want to leave. It's so
| fucking _worthless._ Just a giant waste of time. This entire
| fucking industry has its head up its ass.
|
| I can't think of a single other high-paying profession that
| pulls this shit.
| devmacrile wrote:
| Yeah the process always struck me as just as much a barrier
| to exit as a barrier to entry (maybe even more so).
| killtimeatwork wrote:
| It's not that stupid from company's point of view - they're
| preselecting for people who really want the job, and have
| enough energy to pursue it. These are the people you want
| to for your company.
| xvector wrote:
| Strange that this only seems to be necessary in the
| software industry while literally every other industry
| seems to be getting along fine without these dehumanizing
| interview processes.
| killtimeatwork wrote:
| Software industry is also paying much more that most
| other industries. Maybe it's special in some way?
| __app_dev__ wrote:
| I think to the fact that other "engineering" industries
| do have licenses. There is no way legally they could get
| away with these types of interviews.
|
| I used to be a software developer and an architectural
| firm (that designs buildings). The architects plus
| engineers had to go through 5 years of college, do years
| of on job training, all before they can be licensed.
|
| I felt kind of bad for them though because I made more
| then most of them before I was 21.
|
| The interviews are crazy though. The last big company I
| worked at had a "probation" period. For Sr Software
| Engineers we would only do a single 1 hour interview. But
| if they did not do well in the first 90 days we could
| fire them.
|
| Seems much better than telling people to study leetcode
| hours per day for 2 months prior to an interview.
| __app_dev__ wrote:
| Totally agree! I've been getting hit up by FAANG recruiters
| (and other companies) non-stop this year.
|
| I live in Los Angeles where companies never did this type
| of interview when I last got a new job (4+ years ago) so I
| had to grind LeetCode for several months then didn't get
| the job I studied for even though I got all questions right
| (I was a little slow on some of them). I kind of resent it
| because I know my time can be much better spent (keeping up
| on security topics for example).
|
| The process is so bad it makes me hope to be no longer
| doing software development as a employee sooner than later.
| oblio wrote:
| Don't feel bad. It's entirely possible that they filled that
| position somewhere along the way and some departments didn't
| communicate to figure that out in time.
|
| Or the position was cancelled during the interviews.
|
| Not every reason has to be personal.
| TheHypnotist wrote:
| Amazon pulls something similar with their LP's. I spent more
| time working with the recruiter and working GP's into my
| stories/experience than I did actually interviewing. What an
| incredible waste of time.
| mancerayder wrote:
| I skip any and all interviews that require math, algorithms, or
| anything else. First of all, I'm an infra / devops engineer and
| not a full-time software developer. Secondly, I've never used
| this stuff.
|
| And thirdly - because it's a proxy for intelligence by people
| who think they're smart for having memorized sorting
| algorithms.
|
| Who wants to work in a place where people who memorize things
| are conceived of as smarter than people who didn't memorize the
| same thing at the same time interval (i.e. cramming before
| interview or just out of college?)
|
| Fuck those places, I'd rather work with human beings.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| Sounds like a failure of communication on both ends. The
| interviewer should perhaps be more explicit in his question,
| i.e. "What file metadata is not stored in its inode?". He
| skipped the explicit part, since it probably seemed obvious for
| him. The failure of communication on your end was not picking
| up the obvious context of the question.
| chovybizzass wrote:
| I was asked if I was the size of a dime how would I get out of
| a blender. I was like "Honestly, what does this have to do with
| the Frontend role?"
| naruvimama wrote:
| While I have never interviewed with Google, my experience with
| other companies is that.
|
| 1. With senior or experienced developer, it is usually pleasant
| and respectful and they are open to a diverging answer if it is
| justified.
|
| 2. Some of these companies either have an inexperienced person
| in a senior position or delegate it to an inexperienced
| developer to do the initial filtering.
|
| 3. Inexperienced people are extremely painful to interview
| with, they have "accomplished" something in their
| current/previous job but do not realise there are better ways
| than that. Sometimes it might just be an opportunity to
| reinforce their own confidence (imposter syndrome).
| pinewurst wrote:
| I remember getting one like that - Googler demanded some random
| value from a system .h file. Easy enough to grep if necessary,
| but _no_ it had to be from memory to make one Googley.
| wyclif wrote:
| Google interviewers must hate Einstein. He said, "Never
| memorize something that you can look up."
| Akronymus wrote:
| If you need to look up something enough times, it'll stick
| anyways. But still, don't go out of your way to memorize
| something.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| That one of my rules I always give to junior devs. Just
| read the docs again for what you are doing. You may
| perfectly 'know' them but sometimes there is an extra 'oh
| if you are doing this do this other thing too'. Or worse
| the call is _similar_ to some other call but does
| something slightly weird. Does not come up often but has
| caught me out a few times. Never hurts to re-read it. You
| mostly can get away with it but sometimes...
|
| A more human anecdote for example I have movies I know I
| have seen dozens of times. Yet my recall of what happened
| in them is not as good as it used to be as the last time
| I watched them was a few years ago.
| whatshisface wrote:
| If the meta-interview system has even a modicum of sanity in
| its design, that question will be discounted when none of the
| candidates get it.
| peakaboo wrote:
| It's so stupid, all of it. They try to come up with random
| questions that doesn't mean anything if the candidate remembers
| the answer at that point in time.
|
| I've read about Linux inodes. I know what they do. In fact I
| even have had Linux systems where I get inode related error
| messages because the partition had too many small files on it.
|
| But given that question, in that situation, I would likely not
| know what they even meant with that question. Am i supposed to
| have all the inode details memoried forever in my mind? It's
| fucking ridiculous.
| corpMaverick wrote:
| If I remember correctly the name of the file is not in the
| inode. That allows you to have a file with different names.
| (links)
| [deleted]
| laumars wrote:
| I've written a few Linux file systems and I'm not even sure
| I'd have answered that question correctly.
|
| I've also failed job interviews where I was told there was no
| coding expected in the face to face and then got given a
| piece of paper and asked to solve 3 theoretical problems in
| SQL on paper while 3 interviewers watched. 10 years prior I'd
| worked for several years on Oracle middleware so I knew SQL
| inside and and out but I still lost my nerve at that
| interview and was told I wasn't experienced enough.
|
| There was another telephone interview where I was asked all
| sorts of command line questions, the problem there is they
| spelt out the command line flags differently to how I
| normally talk and read then (eg "what's see hatech em ohh Dee
| seven hundred and seventy seven", had i seen it written down
| I'd have been like "oh you mean see hatech mod seven seven
| seven" (chmod 777) but they way they read it out sounded
| cryptic has hell.
|
| So there's a valuable lesson I've learned for interviewing:
| putting pressure on interviewees is just as likely to filter
| out good candidates as it is bad ones. So you're better off
| making them comfortable during the process. Good but nervous
| candidates will perform better. The interviewing process
| shouldn't be about who can hold their nerve the longest.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Seems like in these cases bad interviewers are a great
| opportunity to glimpse into bad companies
|
| A frustrating way to find out though
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| > hatech
|
| I've never heard 'h' pronounced like that.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| hay'tch
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| There are moments in life when I wish everyone was forced
| to learn NATO phonetic alphabet early in school.
|
| "Charlie Hotel Mike Oscar Delta Seven Seven Seven".
|
| The reason to cram into people a standard spelling
| alphabet is that it minimizes confusion over the usual
| "see as in $random-first-name". The reason to standardize
| on the NATO one is that it's already an international
| standard, and a subset of the population that goes to
| work with anything resembling a radio transceiver will
| have to learn it anyway.
| laumars wrote:
| It wouldn't have helped in the interview if they did use
| the NATO phonetic alphabet because when you read CLI
| commands or talk about them in the office, you don't
| spell it out using the NATO alphabet.
|
| The point was the interviewer read a written command
| differently to how I'd typically hear it. It's a little
| like the S-Q-L vs Sequal debate and how that can
| sometimes throw people.
| [deleted]
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| In terms of topical content it's a good question. The idea
| that the name is a link stored in a directory entry is a key
| part of filesystem architecture and anyone familiar with unix
| filesystems should be able to immediately talk about why.
|
| The problem here is that what could be an invitation to
| showcase knowledge is reduced to a vague, one-dimensional and
| non-obvious trivia question. There are a _ton_ of valid
| answers to this question, like:
|
| * The file data
|
| * Extended attributes (ACLs, etc)
|
| The topic is fine, but the framing of the question is
| terrible.
|
| If I wanted to test a candidate's knowledge in this area I
| would probably ask: " _Why_ isn 't the filename stored in the
| inode?" -- this initiates an architectural discussion, rather
| than a poorly designed guessing game.
|
| Guessing games in general are a red flag for the employer.
| They tend to indicate the interviewer isn't competent freely
| discussing the subjects at hand.
| mike_hock wrote:
| > They tend to indicate the interviewer isn't competent
| freely discussing the subjects at hand.
|
| Ding ding ding.
|
| Even the question, as asked, was OK. The interaction with
| the interviewee wasn't.
|
| OP's joke was clearly just asking the interviewer to be
| more specific. Instead of exploring the question with the
| interviewee (e.g. "well, can you think of something that
| one might naively assume to be in the inode, but that is
| not"), they get pissed? lolwat?
| snuxoll wrote:
| > * The file data
|
| Except on some filesystems really small files can actually
| be stored directly within the inode, so even that's not
| always true.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| Yes and that's true of ACLs as well which I think
| underscores my point: Questions should be an opener to
| dialogue. A topic, not a conclusion.
|
| Discussion of these whys and hows and whens is the most
| valuable part of an interview and will more accurately
| illustrate depth and breadth than any number of fixed
| questions.
| atoav wrote:
| If your question has that "gotcha there is just one right
| answer"-feel to it, you are doing it wrong.
|
| I had a teacher once who constantly asked questions like
| these in such an imprecise fashion there was _no way_
| anybody could have guessed how the question was even meant
| to be answered. I still cringe when I think about it,
| because the only purpose of these questions was to show us
| that he is really clever and we don 't know shit -- and it
| didn't work at all.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| Yes, absolutely.
|
| Personally, I have always approached interviews as an
| opportunity to either teach or learn. I pick a subject
| and drill down until either the interviewee reaches their
| limit of knowledge, or I do. Why is it like that? How
| does that work?
|
| Then, we have a discussion. One (or both) of us is
| learning and we work out the whys and hows together. If
| I'm the one learning, and I hope that I am, I fact check
| the discussion after the interview. If not, I get a
| strong indicator not just for the technical level of the
| candidate but also how they operate at the edge of their
| comfort zone. I've found this can be a strong predictor
| of future growth.
| pjmlp wrote:
| After failing two Google interviews both triggered by being
| reached directly by Google HR, telling me how my public
| information and CV was impressive and I should be really at
| Google, I told them to never ever contact me again.
|
| My feedback was that, if the CV is so impressive, according to
| them, why do I have to endure such interview processes?
|
| Anyway I never bought into the whole do no evil marketing, nor
| bothered to apply, if it wasn't for their HR reaching out to me
| in first place.
| coldpie wrote:
| I had the same experience, some internal recruiter reaching
| out that they were super impressed and wanted me for some
| special group, then a phone call where they never bothered to
| show up(!) so we rescheduled, then some stupid interview
| where they asked me to estimate the value of 2^10 or
| something and then told me they didn't want me for the
| special group after all. Complete waste of time, especially
| given I didn't really even want the job, they reached out to
| me. Taught me a lesson, at least: I'll never work at a big
| company, no salary is worth that kind of treatment of other
| people.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Most processes are flawed I found, in most companies,
| especially bigger ones. They try to come up so arbitrary
| methods to differentiate between candidates that it has little
| to do about the position in subject, a persons ability to
| fulfill that position successfully throughout a prolonged
| period. What they test if one candidate is better answering a
| specific question or not. Some random question - usually
| relevant to the subject. Impossible to cover all the knowledge
| is necessary for that position, especially the adaptability,
| capacity to learn (essential), accuracy, work ethics, all much
| more important than if a specific fact is readily available in
| the head of the candidate. Testing how good someone is in
| tests. Or if the candidate can perform well while people are
| watching and judging (very rare circumstance during the
| workdays, except for actors or performing artists).
|
| Based on perhaps a dozen intervies here and there I had the
| conclusion that recruiters have no idea who they are going to
| employ but practically draw a name from a hat (after filtering
| out obvious incompetents, if at all). This includes the
| position I won, and those I did not.
|
| In one occasion I refused a fairly well paid and interesting
| job because they tried to measure my competence by performing
| quick basic calculations (related to financial topics), giving
| impossible amount and urging as many answers as possible. Being
| an engineering development position it was hopelessly
| incompetent way to test, which they intended to be the base of
| future promotions and assignments of roles too. They claimed it
| is for the sake of fairness, testing every employee equally,
| regardless of the role. How supid is this for god's sake?!
| Roles and expectations of the roles are different and cannot be
| tested the same way. It was just lazyness from the HR, pure
| lazyness to rely on robotic methods. Robots from the HR (ironic
| calling themselves !human! resources) pushed through
| incompetent methods. Destroying fairness under the flag of
| fairness, crazy. I considered better not be engaged with such
| an organization.
| neycoda wrote:
| Why did the Google interviewer need their potential recruit to
| know what wasn't in a Linux inode? Was knowing that part of the
| job? That seems so esoteric.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > The interviewer told me very matter of factly that it was in
| fact, the filename.
|
| which is not even true in some file systems that can inline
| data directly into the inode, if the data is small enough.
|
| for the downvoter(s):
|
| > _If the data of a file fits in the space allocated for
| pointers to the data, this space can conveniently be used. For
| example, ext2 and its successors store the data of symlinks
| (typically file names) in this way if the data is no more than
| 60 bytes ( "fast symbolic links")_
|
| > _Ext4 has a file system option called inline_data that allows
| ext4 to perform inlining if enabled during file system
| creation. Because an inode 's size is limited, this only works
| for very small files_
| gowld wrote:
| I've never seen " _the_ file name " used to describe "name of
| a symlink".
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > the data of symlinks (typically file names)
|
| This means the name of the file the symlink points to. It's
| not the file name of the symlink itself.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| true
|
| but they are both paths in the end
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| You have to understand the context of the interviewers. The
| person may not have really cared. They probably weren't
| interviewing for their own team. They may have their head in
| the middle of some problem they are thinking about.
|
| Google is hiring 10's of thousands of engineers a year. It's
| really hard to do well. Most of the questions are deliberately
| scripted because they are known to be good questions on some
| dimension.
|
| So... work with them. Most of them actually want you to do
| well. Most of them are smart. Some of the questions are an open
| invitation to just _talk_ and show that you can behave like
| someone they 'd want to work with.
|
| Your answer of "dinosaurs" etc, while the result of frustration
| more than anything, just said to the interviewer "not someone i
| want to work with".
|
| It sucks, but you have to know your audience.
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| In which case they should have teams dedicated purely to
| technical interviewing, with members regularly rotated in and
| out to keep them fresh.
|
| When I did technical interviewing for my company for a
| period, granted it was still on top of my 'day job ' but I
| had the scope to get really invested in the process, and
| wrote guidelines for other reviewers. Treat technical
| interviewing as a respected role in its own right and not as
| a chore that interferes with 'real' work and it's a better
| outcome for all parties
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| That might well be a good idea. I can imagine downsides to
| it, but it might work.
|
| The long and short of it is though - one has to face the
| reality of the situation they are in. If you go interview
| at Google (or any FAANG I would guess), you have to
| understand what you are in for and do your best to get
| through. Or, just don't interview there.
| mLuby wrote:
| One company I interviewed at in late 2019 referred me to
| an interviewing-as-a-service. I forget the name, but the
| gist was that this service hired and interview-trained
| software engineers (at least part-time, maybe full-time)
| who then conducted interviews and provided feedback to
| the companies purchasing the interview-as-a-service.
|
| From my perspective as a candidate, it was fine (the
| interviewer was friendly and asked industry-standard
| questions) but I do wonder how it goes for companies that
| essentially outsource their hiring bar.
|
| On the other hand, you'd need to be doing a lot of hiring
| to make it worth dedicating a software engineer to just
| interviewing people. Or you have someone who doesn't
| really understand code--like a recruiter--run the
| interview, with all the difficulties that creates.
|
| TL;DR: hiring still isn't a solved problem.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Yup, totally. It seems unsolvable.
| janoc wrote:
| Google is notorious for this.
|
| I have been headhunted by them multiple times in the past. The
| last time their recruiter called me and explained me that after
| the usual screening and HR calls I would need to pass multiple
| increasingly complex technical interview rounds - and then THEY
| will decide on the role and project I am best suited for (if at
| all). I have flatly asked the guy whether they are being
| serious and turned him down.
|
| To be fair to Google, though - their interviewing used to be
| first class. When I got into the first call sometime in the
| early 2000 or so, the interviews were difficult but with
| competent interviewers and no BS scripted questions. But that
| was because it was done in-house, I was talking directly to
| some engineer in Palo Alto over the phone. Even the HR lady was
| actually pretty technical and was asking me rather pointed
| questions.
|
| Later on they outsourced it to HR agencies and it became "the
| process", with people being called over irrelevant/not
| interesting jobs (entry level sysadmin in Ireland once - even
| the HR guy on the phone recognized it makes no sense to call me
| over it ...) and the "we decide ..." at last.
|
| However, Google is by far not the only company doing it.
| Microsoft's hiring process was very similar and Google's
| explicitly inspired many smaller companies or "less desirable"
| (for the candidates at the time) companies to ape this,
| thinking it is somehow a good idea.
|
| This seems to be pretty much the norm in the tech industry.
| Along with attempts to effectively have the candidate redo all
| comp-sci final exams during the interviews - because
| "credentials can't be trusted", as someone told me.
|
| Give me a break. It is high time tech companies should start
| treat (especially experienced) engineers with a bit of respect
| and dignity, we are not school kids anymore.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _even the HR guy on the phone recognized it makes no sense
| to call me over it ..._
|
| Well, he had a quota to fill so -\\_(tsu)_/-.
|
| There are situations where the market can be spectacularly
| efficient. Outsourcing hiring to third parties is definitely
| not one of them.
|
| In this case, big companies can afford broken interview
| process, because it's not _their_ time that 's being wasted,
| and the inertia of a big corporation can hide a lot of
| inefficiency.
| crisper78 wrote:
| facebook had me as someone who could fill their quota for
| 1st rounds etc I sent an email asking them not to do this
| twice now. It is quite funny though, because every time I
| bring up NYC being the only possible location for me, the
| recruiter usually grumbles says its "tough to get into NYC"
| and then usually I get that the engineering manager
| "doesn't like that many people" I wonder how many people
| have been rejected working for Facebook because one person
| in NY doesn't like them? I mean that person might be
| amazing, but still seems limiting. They do fine anyway
| though, most of the hard parts have already been done long
| ago at Facebook I would suppose.....
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| >credentials can't be trusted
|
| As much as I dislike interviewing I totally agree with this
| statement. Almost none of my graduating classmates could
| write a fizz buzz and I wish I were kidding.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| FWIW I've been at Google for a decade and I have done interview
| training twice and each time opted not to do interviews,
| because I think the interview process is terrible.
| yobbo wrote:
| The interview-process is a way for engineers (who might feel
| underappreciated or insecure) to demonstrate how rare they are,
| by asking questions no one seems to get right.
|
| At one point, why not just drop the pretence and ask "repeat
| back to me the algorithm on p. 343 in book xyz."
| gretch wrote:
| As someone who works at google, that guy has a stick up his
| butt. Sorry for your experience.
| maharajatever wrote:
| That's nerds for you - making sure any kind of personality is
| kept well away...
| torginus wrote:
| It's cruel and inhuman, but if you're Google, there's some cold
| rationality behind this. I think the process goes for them like
| this: There's 100 people applying for any given position, 10 of
| which might be good hires. It's reasonable from their point of
| view to subject the interviewees to a process that culls 83 bad
| ones, and 7 good ones so that only 10 people need to be
| interviewed by expensive on-staff engineers, even though it
| looks like madness from the outside.
| xvector wrote:
| It's definitely questionable whether the process retains many
| good engineers. That said, I suppose it works as long as it
| culls more bad engineers than good engineers.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > I suppose it works as long as it culls more bad engineers
| than good engineers.
|
| That's a pretty low bar. A Fizzbuzz test culls more bad
| engineers than good ones.
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| The rationality doesn't reflect the reality of Google being
| unable to innovate and continually competing with itself.
| Will another engineer from the same cohort who knows the same
| trivia and has the same education be able to shake things up?
|
| What happens to the 3 that get rejected, do they try again
| later and filter through? Or do they tire of the process,
| give up, and work for competitors?
| jack_riminton wrote:
| When you're in such a dominant position they don't care
| about people being able to shake things up
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| Neither did IBM, GE, Oracle.
| konschubert wrote:
| Have you seen their earnings, they're in a monopoly
| position, none of this matters any more.
| incrudible wrote:
| Their process may simply be optimized for their particular
| purposes. Google doesn't _need_ more engineers, but there 's a
| certain kind of hire they don't want to pass up on. No company
| really needs a genius rockstar coder that's going to quit after
| two years to become competition. That's why the inode question
| makes sense. It's a stupid question that deserves a stupid
| answer. If you're the kind of person that actually gives the
| stupid answer, you're clearly not a cultural fit. Google is
| looking for the person that disregards the stupidity of it, who
| has prepared themselves and gives the "expected" answer.
| sdevonoes wrote:
| Google wants soldiers, and they can get them.
| ladberg wrote:
| I had a similarly bad Google experience that I've talked about
| before[0] but will copy here:
|
| I was asked to do a task that eventually boiled down to a
| topological sort, and I thought the question consisted of
| recognizing that the answer was a topological sort and moving
| on because it was over the phone.
|
| However, that was not the case. The interviewer wanted me to
| code it all out over Google Docs, but I didn't remember the
| exact algorithm so I basically had to re-figure it out on the
| fly, which took most of the interview (I even similarly mention
| "in any real situation I would just look this up", but that
| didn't help). At the end, I had a bunch of pseudo-C++-code that
| should do it correctly.
|
| I thought I was done, then the interviewer said she would go go
| copy my code and compile it after the interview to see if I was
| right, which blew my mind. It was never mentioned previously
| that the code would actually be compiled and run, and with no
| syntax highlighting or ability to compile and test the code
| myself there is zero chance it was ever going to work.
|
| I never heard back, so I'm assuming my code failed and they
| left it at that. Anyway, I'm much happier now that I think I
| would have been at Google.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23848556
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I've never written a sort from scratch since my college days,
| over 30 years ago. Also never had a job interview that asked
| me do to so, or any other coding questions. I'm planning more
| for retirement than a next job at this point, but I shake my
| head at what my younger colleagues need to go through these
| days for the opportunity to write JavaScript with IDEs that
| do most of the work for you.
| Demonsult wrote:
| I happened to have, by chance, practiced writing sort from
| scratch right before an interview where they asked me to do
| just that. Doing it correctly in just a few minutes gave me
| pretty high status. Higher than I deserve. The randomness
| cuts both ways.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I had one interview where they asked me to write out some
| fairly complex SQL joins on a white board. This was for a
| Java dev gig, NOT a SQL admin gig. I decided to really lean
| into how awful it was by putting in notations for three
| different implementations (Oracle, MSSQ, and Postgres). I
| was subtly making fun of them but they didn't pick up on
| it.
|
| I got the offer and took it because I do contracting and
| had just unexpectedly gotten a contract canceled early, so
| I was unemployed and have a family. At the end of the 3
| month contract they offered me a full time position and I
| declined.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| SQL I can do in my sleep. Still haven't ever needed to
| write sorts (other than ORDERY BY).
| alxlaz wrote:
| Not all younger developers have to jump through those
| hoops. There are plenty of companies that don't do that
| kind of nonsense, because they're trying to hire good
| engineers, rather than, specifically, engineers -- good or
| bad, that'll get sorted out later -- who will happily
| sacrifice their spare time to figure out how to jump
| through the arbitrary hoops that their jobs entail.
|
| Holding this kind of bullshit interview isn't a bad idea if
| you're a megacorp with chaotic teams and fourteen levels of
| management hierarchy where people spend most of their time
| on infighting and career building. You _need_ people who
| jump through hoops, because successfully delivering most
| projects in these environments is 10% difficult technical
| work (which the good engineers can handle, and you can
| typically hire enough of them via recommendations), 40%
| YAML-poking bullshit work, and -- optimistically -- 50%
| jumping through all sorts of technical and non-technical
| hoops, most of them self-inflicted.
|
| I navigated this kind of process successfully early in my
| career, and the only thing that made me more miserable than
| interviews like these was the work I got to do afterwards,
| after accepting the offers. Once is happenstance, twice is
| coincidence, three times is probably just how these things
| are -- I'm now pretty convinced that the quality of the
| interview is (barring statistical accidents) highly
| correlated with the quality of the actual position.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > I've never written a sort from scratch since my college
| days, over 30 years ago
|
| I didn't study CS at college, and I've never needed to
| write a sort on the job, so I've only ever written sorts in
| job interviews! I think I worked out a basic bubble sort,
| and told them it probably wasn't the fastest way of doing
| it but that it'd do the job.
| simias wrote:
| I sometimes have to implement a sorting algorithm when I
| write bare metal code that doesn't have any sort of
| standard library available. Of course, being a 1337 hacker,
| I then resort to the state of the art bubble sort. Or maybe
| an insertion sort if I'm feeling fancy. But enough
| bragging.
| jt2190 wrote:
| OT: I wish I could relocate a blog post (on Microsoft's
| site, I think) about a very a naive and "obviously wrong"
| sorting algorithm that a dev identified in their (Excel?)
| codebase. Turns out the code was naive because the vast
| majority of their users were sorting very small sets of
| data and the implementation actually performed much
| better in those circumstances.
| jhck wrote:
| Maybe it's this one?
| https://ericlippert.com/2020/03/27/new-grad-vs-senior-
| dev/
| JTbane wrote:
| Funnily enough, if you're sorting small amounts of stuff
| it does not matter what algorithm you use. If fact your
| O(n log n) sorts are probably a lot slower on less than
| some millions of elements.
| bear8642 wrote:
| > I then resort to the state of the art bubble sort
|
| Remember reading Bentley's _Programming Pearls_ and
| fairly sure that 's what he starts Sorting section with a
| short implementation of
| neutronicus wrote:
| I do my own Graph algorithm implementations sometimes
|
| Especially when I'm not sure the Graph approach is the
| right one, it's easier than either
|
| 1. Getting the Boost.Graph in the source tree to actually
| compile
|
| 2. Dealing with the bureaucracy of getting some, other,
| Graph library requiring feats of compilation possible for
| mere mortals into the source tree
|
| This is, however, not something I do from memory - much
| like the ancestor comment I see the relevant skill as
| closer to recognizing positive-weight Shortest Path and
| knowing you want Dijkstra than being able to write Dijkstra
| without wifi
| rubicon33 wrote:
| I liken it to what lawyers go through with the bar here in
| CA. It's gatekeeping.
|
| Just like I don't think the CA bar should have a pass rate
| in the 20% range, I don't think coding interviews should
| ask riddles that are nearly impossible to solve on the fly
| unless you get lucky and memorized THAT riddle in your
| studying.
| hmsshagatsea wrote:
| While I do agree the CA bar is tougher than it should be,
| a lot of the low passage rate comes from graduates of
| less-than-stellar schools. If you look into passage rate
| per school it's naturally much better at the higher
| ranked universities.
| enumjorge wrote:
| Isn't that almost the definition of gatekeeping? Make the
| process to enter the law profession so difficult that
| only students from select universities have a good
| chance.
|
| Of course prospective lawyers should clear a certain
| level of knowledge before they are allowed to practice,
| but the passing rate is puzzlingly low. CA law schools,
| as a group l, really only prepare such a low number of
| their students to practice?
| meta4s wrote:
| Law school teaches you theory. The practical part is
| supposed to come from competitive internships.
|
| The bar is hard for CA because we go to school for the
| theory and then no one really teaches you the formulaic
| way to answer bar essays. Add on top of that it's a lot
| of memorization and study. Most students I went to school
| with had egos and thought they had it in the bag only
| studying on the weekends.
| hmsshagatsea wrote:
| Well, not exactly. You need to have a certain level of
| competancy to be an effective lawyer. Those who arent
| "good enough" for the better law schools are often preyed
| upon by overpriced and underresourced schools to give
| false hope those who couldnt cut the mustard. Not saying
| you cant be successful if you go to a crappy school, but
| the chances of it happening are slim to none. Just look
| at pass rates of Whittier (I think they're shut down now)
| or Thomas Jefferson and then look at the tuiton rates.
| And this isn't even counting the non-ABA approved
| schools...
| gmadsen wrote:
| shitty law schools has become a huge problem in the last
| couple decades. similar to ITT tech or phoenix online.
| They drastically lower the lsats needed to get in, then
| almost no one becomes an actual lawyer from that school,
| but they do get 100K in debt.
|
| also, gatekeeping has a negative connotation because it
| is usually used when it seems unwarranted. If only
| schools with high quality education are passing students,
| that doesn't seem like a problem with the gate, but
| instead with the other schools. I absolutely want lawyers
| and doctors to be required to pass certain criteria.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Except that lawyers have to pass the California bar once
| in order to get licensed; we SWEs have to pass the "bar"
| every time we look for a new job.
| bokchoi wrote:
| Lawyers have to pay dues yearly and take a certain number
| of CRE (continuing education requirement) hours every
| year to maintain their license.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| SWEs have to learn new things _every day_ to keep their
| jobs. But, this is kind of stretching the metaphor past
| its breaking point, really.
| nicoburns wrote:
| From what I've heard, the bar is _much_ harder than SWE
| interviews.
| pkaye wrote:
| My first degree was civil engineering and I took the
| California Engineers in Training exam back in my college
| days and boy was it tough even though I had stellar
| grades from a top university. You could bring mountains
| of reference books to the exam but you had no time to use
| them. You had to solve endless problems based on
| fundamental techniques you already learned during your
| education.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Oh, I'm not about to claim that these licensing exams
| people in other professions take once and then never
| worry about again (bar exam, medical boards, _etc._ )
| compare in difficulty to a typical SWE interview.
|
| But, here me out here:
|
| Suppose the CA bar exam were changed in format to be more
| like a SWE interview. That is, instead of being a 2 day
| affair consisting of 5 essays of 60 minutes apiece, a
| 90-minute performance test[0], and 200 multiple choice
| questions, let's shrink it down to a format that fits in
| one day and under 5 hours.
|
| Now, let's nix the performance test right away, because
| it would be incredibly difficult to shoehorn in any kind
| of real, practical task in under 90 minutes.
|
| According to [1], it looks like 100 multiple choice
| questions are allocated 3 hours worth of time. So,
| basically, our cut down format could be 100 multiple
| choice and 2-3 essays. So, that's about half the amount
| of testing that's done currently, more or less.
|
| Now, if you have half the amount of testing available,
| you have a choice: you can cover half as many areas of
| law, you can cut down the depth of coverage in each area,
| or some combination of the two. In any case, what you've
| done is increase the variability in the test. In other
| words, passing is now more likely to be influenced by
| exactly which version of the test you get.
|
| If there's an area of law you're weak in (say, bird law),
| it might not even be covered. Conversely, if you're a
| real expert in bird law, you won't get as much of a
| chance to shine in the new format. That means our new
| format both allows somewhat more marginal candidates to
| pass, _and_ gives up some sensitivity in detecting people
| who are really, really good.
|
| So, in summary, the new format omits any sort of
| practical task, increases the variability of the test,
| increases the probability that marginal candidates will
| get through, and decreases the ability to distinguish
| truly excellent candidates.
|
| Seems to me that's sounding more and more like a typical
| day-long SWE interview, isn't it?
|
| ---
|
| [0]: Interestingly, this is essentially a work sample
| test, which is the thing proven to correlate best with
| job performance:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_test_(bar_exam)
|
| [1]: https://www.tjsl.edu/academics/bar-prep/california-
| bar-exam
| taude wrote:
| Is there a shortage of attorneys in California?
| anoonmoose wrote:
| many people including myself believe that availability of
| legal services is broadly lacking in the US. not
| necessarily a shortage of attorneys, but a shortage of
| attorneys that can do work for anything but top-quintile
| clients. artificially restricting who is and isn't
| allowed to perform certain jobs often has that sort of
| effect.
| ghoward wrote:
| Not GP, but I never thought of this side effect before.
| Thank you for making me aware of it!
| mistrial9 wrote:
| attorneys multiply when left to their own devices, which
| is often bad for society.. (since like law enforcement
| and middle management, LOTS of new people every year want
| the job for all the wrong reasons) so California Bar
| limits the new attorneys, which both lessens the total
| number of attorneys, and also advantages the incumbents.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| we must have had the same interviewer! It boggles my mind how
| this helps their business case / bottom line. And I was
| applying as a UX designer lol.
| gspr wrote:
| It's also incredibly telling that the interviewer couldn't
| figure out whether your code was correct or not without
| compiling and running it.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| I hate this. People have IDEs and internet when working.
| Having to write something that can be compiled in a doc is
| just stupid.
|
| As someone mentioned in another comment, I also never had to
| actually implement a sort since I left university more than a
| decade ago. I'm happy to discuss the different types and
| approaches to how they could be done - as to evaluate problem
| solving, logic, and general understanding - but to actually
| code in an interview...
|
| In a similar way, this week I even jokes on Twitter how I'm
| doing many improvements and refactors on a codebase, but
| there's the occasional 'how I do join 2 lists on Java again?'
| moment when I completely forget something basic.
| dekhn wrote:
| i failed quicksort the first time I interviewed at google.
| then got hired and worked there for 12 years and never wrote
| a sort.
|
| I also complained that google's coding solution (docs,
| basically) was a terrible way to code, other companies use
| coderpad or whatever, but I expect that Google will never
| change this. They love to hire people who are excellent at
| coding CS approximate solutions, but have little to no
| judgement on how to do good software engineering.
| telotortium wrote:
| The pandemic has _finally_. forced them to move to
| something more Coderpad-like
| endtime wrote:
| Standard disclaimer: everything below is my own opinion based
| on my personal experience, and I'm not speaking on behalf of
| my employer.
|
| > I thought I was done, then the interviewer said she would
| go go copy my code and compile it after the interview to see
| if I was right, which blew my mind.
|
| I've been interviewing at Google for nine years and have
| never done this. I generally don't think it's fair to ding a
| candidate for something I don't notice in an interview, where
| I'm at a huge advantage. If it looks right to me then that's
| good enough.
|
| But that said, I have often asked questions similar to what
| you describe. You have to write code in the shared doc
| because hiring committees want to see it - fair to blame the
| process for that, but not the interviewer. I actually
| appreciate this for a couple reasons:
|
| * It levels the playing field a bit, in the sense that code
| is more objective than an interviewer's notes on how a
| conversation went (especially for people who aren't native
| English speakers)
|
| * I sometimes find that candidates who communicate well
| struggle to turn their ideas info code. Other times,
| someone's communication and solution are kind of average, but
| then they use all the little things I like seeing
| (defaultdict(set), zip, etc. in Python). Lots of people claim
| to be very experienced programmers; seeing how comfortable
| and fluent someone is when actually writing code is a strong
| signal. If you don't like the focus on data structures and
| algorithms that you haven't thought about since college, you
| should probably appreciate the coding part.
| czep wrote:
| > It levels the playing field a bit, in the sense that code
| is more objective than an interviewer's notes
|
| Except that writing code in a Google doc on the phone
| doesn't in any way resemble the real "playing field". I
| grant that it's level in that everyone faces the same
| constraints, but to write code in a gdoc with red squiggly
| lines underneath every keyword, automatic capitalization
| after a dot, and variable width font? How does that give
| you any kind of useful assessment? It's like handing a
| butter knife and some twine to a doctor and saying "here,
| show me how you'd stitch up this wound".
| neemeizdabest wrote:
| Google interview process is designed around how badly you
| want to work there not what are your skills i.e practising
| solving bunch of leetcode puzzles on whiteboard and
| speaking out loud is all it takes to get through the
| interview process. It just takes some time to prepare.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I think that is basically it. I think many of these FAANG
| companies interviews are more of a hazing than an actual
| assessment. Everybody who works there had to go through
| that interview... if you want to be part of the pack, you
| too must endure it.
|
| When viewed in that light it actually doesn't seem quite
| as bad.
| mox1 wrote:
| How would you feel if you were going to a job as a writer,
| and the interviewee asked you to put a story, poem, etc.
| down on a napkin, with a crayon?
|
| Like thats how I would feel writing code into freakin
| google docs during a job interview...with Google.
|
| Tie 1 arm behind by back as the synax goes wonky, I'm
| fighting the spacing, etc. etc.
|
| Or put mario Andretti into a ford focus, then test his lap
| times, with 0 warning.
|
| Yuck.
| soheil wrote:
| Google Doc is specifically designed for writing and
| reading and used probably by more people than any other
| piece of software ever for that task. And you think it's
| fair to compare it to crayon and napkins? What a world we
| live in. Programming is often about thinking through the
| problem, but if you can't separate yourself form your IDE
| when writing code and it's about syntax then that says
| more about your style.
| bostik wrote:
| While I don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment, I
| can provide a real life take. Not specific to GDocs, this
| applies to _all_ browser based editors.
|
| You may usually write code in a terminal based
| programmer's editor (vim, emacs, ...) and realise the
| code you've just written is not quite right. You want to
| delete the last two words. There's even a default and
| handy keybinding for doing that.
|
| So you press ^W twice.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > mario Andretti
|
| If you're a world champion, you would probably enjoy an
| exercise like this.
|
| This lady pilot sure did:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KiC03_wVjc
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| What a delightful video! Unfortunately, her first time
| was 23 seconds over and she will not be getting a job on
| the Google racing team.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I mean tabs don't work like a normal editor. And it wraps
| lines. And the default font is not monospaced.
|
| If you are gonna require a candidate to write compilable
| code at least use one of the many tools designed
| explicitly for coding interviews.
|
| I think I'd rather use straight notepad than google docs.
| verticalflight wrote:
| Just fyi - Mario Andretti and other similar drivers could
| be placed into any car and would perform at a very high
| level after a lap or so...
| usefulcat wrote:
| On one hand, I can appreciate that it's unpleasant to be
| put on the spot. Or being forced to use crappy tools.
| Nobody likes that.
|
| That said, if a person is being considered for a coding
| job, wouldn't that person want to demonstrate their
| coding abilities? I mean, assuming they're actually good
| at coding?
|
| In interviews, I much prefer a concrete problem to an
| abstract one, and coding problems are typically far more
| concrete than most other subjects covered in SW dev
| interviews.
| nemonemo wrote:
| I consider google doc coding an extension of the white
| board coding, which often happens in pair programming. I
| do not think it should aim perfectly working code, but at
| least I would personally expect reasonably good
| whiteboard coding hygiene from a colleague, at least for
| a report to the committee.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Sometimes I sarcastically think they already have a friend
| who applies and needs to fail the others.
| lawn wrote:
| I had a similar experience interviewing years ago for Google,
| although I can't remember the algorithm they wanted me to
| implement.
| biztos wrote:
| I find it... troubling? That a technical interviewer can't
| tell for herself whether your code will work. Wouldn't you
| ideally want people who actually _understand_ code to be
| giving the coding questions?
| mLuby wrote:
| Funny and illuminating examples of this are the excellent
| "hexing the technical interview" series (read in any
| order): https://aphyr.com/tags/interviews
| ellenhp wrote:
| Are you saying that because this interviewer needs to run
| code to find logic errors, she's somehow not a competent
| engineer? Because I usually need to run code to find logic
| errors. Sometimes I use formal verification instead but
| that's pretty rare. Am I also not a competent engineer?
| agent327 wrote:
| He's saying that in order to judge someone's ability at
| something, you need to understand that thing yourself. If
| you require the candidate to write perfect code using
| nothing but a whiteboard, you need to be able to read
| that code using nothing but a whiteboard as well.
|
| If the interviewer cannot do this, how is he going to
| judge the result? Does he know how to run a compiler?
| Does he know how to run the code? Does he have the skill
| to judge the output? Is it really a good policy for a
| company to discard a possibly excellent candidate that
| just missed something silly that would normally be
| checked by a tool while you type?
| gspr wrote:
| Does this reasoning not also apply to the applicant,
| though?
| mlyle wrote:
| So, we can have an interviewer perform a possibly
| incorrect manual validation of an interviewee's possibly
| faulty code. Reading code is harder than writing it, and
| presumably the applicant has been asked to do something
| tricky.
|
| Or they can run it, asking the real arbiter of truth
| whether it works or not.
|
| Of course, "whether it works" is merely one (very
| important) metric of quality.
| tsukikage wrote:
| The interview is a proxy for working with the person. In
| this case, it's a proxy for pair programming / code
| review. A good chunk of what the interviewer, ideally,
| looks for when asking a coding question is communication
| from the interviewee - can the interviewee communicate
| what they are doing and why? Can they explain the intent
| of the thing they've just written? Do they have a clear
| picture of it in their head, and can they communicate it?
| When the interviewer spots problems with it, what does
| the ensuing discussion look like? - how well does the
| interviewee collaborate in solving them? If the
| interviewer is wrong, does the interviewee push back?
| How? Can they understand you, and can they make
| themselves understood?
|
| Can you work with this person? Can you collaborate to
| write code, or will it be a daily struggle?
|
| Whether the code actually builds and runs after the hour
| is up does not help answer these questions; it is
| arguably the least interesting part of the whole process.
| The time limit is artificial; if all the other things
| align but you didn't happen to get it working in one
| hour, you'll likely have got it in two. If they don't
| align, you'd likely never have got it.
| Hydraulix989 wrote:
| Every recruiter says the same thing, but in practice the
| interviewer is only looking for the right answer, and
| that is what determines the outcome of the interview.
| I've never seen anyone helped out by soft skills while
| still having an incomplete solution.
| shuger wrote:
| The problem is it won't run. It was written in google
| docs without IDE. Everyone who programmed in their lives
| knows this. You cannot write out a whole algorithm like
| that and not make any even trivial error.
|
| This is like writing code in notepad and creating a PR
| without building or running it to test once. What is this
| testing? There is no real world scenario where you are
| expected to work like this and for a good reason.
| ellenhp wrote:
| Yeah. If I were asking a trickier question and I got an
| interesting new variant of the solutions I'm aware of,
| I'd absolutely run it if I had time to type it up and
| everything. Most solutions are either something I've seen
| before verbatim or obviously wrong, though.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| If you can't tell the difference between sketched-out
| kinda sorta pseudocode and potentially workable C++ then
| you're certainly not competent in C++.
|
| And if you fail to communicate the requirement for one or
| the other then you're certainly not a competent
| interviewer.
|
| You also have to ask what exactly is being tested here?
| Is it the ability to remember syntax? To remember an
| algorithm? To improvise an algorithm? To recognise which
| algorithm is needed?
|
| What, _exactly?_
| Yacoby wrote:
| Maybe they are a bad interviewer?
|
| In my view, if the answer involves a topological sort the
| interviewer should know how to solve it and be able to
| follow and find errors in the candidates code. If the
| interviewer, knowing the answer, cannot find any issues
| then surely the code is fine (for code written in an
| interview)
| ellenhp wrote:
| It's also possible that she hadn't seen the particular
| algorithm used before, or that she was having an off day
| or stressing about a meeting immediately after the
| interview, or that there were errors that she did see and
| she didn't want to say "yeah there are errors here"
| because doing so could affect the candidate's confidence
| in the interviews after hers. I could imagine any of
| these being true. Or she could just be a bad interviewer.
| shuger wrote:
| That is irrelevant. Asking someone to type non trivial
| code outside of IDE and then expecting it to compile and
| run without issues is lunacy. Even junior programmers
| know this. The interviewer in this story was either an
| amateur, an idiot or on power trip.
| ellenhp wrote:
| I guess I'm also an idiot then, thanks, how kind of you
| to say that.
|
| Actually hang on, I'm editing this to be slightly meaner.
| Your whole take that doing this is a sign that she's
| either an idiot or on a power trip is a very familiar
| thing that people say about women in tech and I'm
| honestly tired of it, because I can see myself doing
| exactly what she did and I don't like it when people say
| those things about me. Please don't do that.
| xenocratus wrote:
| If you can't assess someone on their response then you're
| not interviewing them, you're just giving an exam by
| proxy. But that might very well be because the whole
| recruitment process is thoroughly stupid.
| ballenf wrote:
| My lesson learned was "don't listen to what they say, watch
| what they do". As in, don't trust them to tell you what
| they're looking for, understand that figuring out what
| they're actually testing is also part of the screening
| process.
|
| I don't see a lot of focus on the hide-the-ball aspect of
| interviews, but is something I've experienced a few times and
| bothers me way more than anything else.
|
| The clearest time this happened I was told the company was
| big on pair programming, so I'd be doing a pair programming
| session. It turns out they meant I'd be tested on whether I
| could finish a coding exercise in the allotted time with
| someone watching. There was zero "pair programming" of any
| kind involved and time spent on collaboration counted against
| me.
| trinovantes wrote:
| I once had an in-person interview where they gave me a sheet
| of printed code and asked me to point out the syntax errors.
| Some interviewers are absolutely insane.
| kevstev wrote:
| We may have had the same interviewer- tbh I thought this
| was pretty reasonable and more of a warm up really. I think
| this also lead to a discussion on some questionable logic
| and how you could improve the code.
|
| I had 10+ years experience in C++, I thought it was
| completely reasonable. Especially compared to their later
| questions around something along the lines of finding a
| shortest path in a tree. I interviewed there a bit before
| their process was so well known to be game-able, I went in
| with zero study time on obscure algorithms outside knowing
| the O(N) of the most widely used, and certainly did not
| practice actually writing or interacting with trees and
| such.
| neutronicus wrote:
| Yeah, I had an interview like that
|
| There was a function with a syntax error, that also
| returned a pointer to stack memory, and made some logic
| error where it assumed a class with no vtable would be
| polymorphic.
| ljm wrote:
| I had to review someone's PR for one interview. Ultimately
| I failed it because me feedback focussed solely on
| implementation details and asking if there are better ways
| to solve the problem (with some suggestions as a nudge).
| Apparently, that was fantastic and showed all the qualities
| of good coaching...but they expected me to point out all of
| the instances of poor indentation and other aesthetic
| things. My justification that it was unimportant and that
| running rubocop would fix it wasn't good enough - the PR
| had to know _all_ of the nitpicks.
|
| You know, if I had to do that for every PR I reviewed, I'd
| be burned out in no time.
|
| It was a shame, but if I didn't flunk that interview then I
| wouldn't be where I am now.
| Verdex wrote:
| Based on your description ... that wasn't a failure.
| Success is not working at places like that.
| dsr_ wrote:
| "if I didn't flunk that interview then I wouldn't be
| where I am now"
|
| This is, I think, the closest thing there is to a
| universal experience in this field.
|
| Followed closely by "how did I miss that single-character
| error?"
| Ntrails wrote:
| Github PRs also lack syntax checking etc - so it isn't
| something you'll never see at work right?
|
| (Admittedly if the PR doesn't build why are you reviewing
| it but whatever)
| rendall wrote:
| This is incorrect. You can run tests on PRs and disallow
| merging until it passes all the checks
|
| https://github.com/features/actions
| andix wrote:
| That's why you are reviewing a pull request in your IDE.
|
| And you are having a CI build and unit tests in place. If
| it doesn't compile or a lot of tests are failing, a sane
| person won't even bother to review a pull request.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Serious question, as I've never done a PR in my IDE;
| hadn't even thought to.
|
| If you check out the branch in your IDE, is there a way
| to have it highlight the changes in the branch you're
| reviewing? Or do you need to reference the output from
| `git diff` or the github PR view?
| Macha wrote:
| VS Code:
|
| 1. Open Source control window
|
| 2. Checkout the PR branch
|
| 3. Open the branches listing panel in the sidebar.
|
| 4. Mouseover the target branch of the PR
|
| 5. There's an icon that looks like two nodes with arrows
| pointing between them. Mouseover text "Compare with ...".
| Click it.
|
| 6. The search and compare panel in the sidebar has a
| listing of files changed, you can click a file to get a
| diff view.
|
| There are gitlab [1] and github [2] extensions which
| streamline this workflow if your code is hosted on one of
| those services, and let you leave comments in editor
| which show up in the web UI.
|
| IntelliJ has support for display a diff for a branch or
| github PR built in [3] but I hate their diff modal view.
|
| [1]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=
| GitLab.g...
|
| [2]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=
| GitHub.v...
|
| [3]: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/contribute-to-
| projects.h...
| yobbo wrote:
| It is disrespectful, but it is a proxy test for how many
| hours you have spent reading and writing code in that
| language.
| sokoloff wrote:
| What about it is disrespectful? It seems to me that it's
| testing for something relevant and I don't see it as
| otherwise bad (abusive, pure trivia, easily Google-able,
| etc)
| yobbo wrote:
| It is akin to giving a spelling quiz to an author. There
| is a level of decorum required when dealing with
| professionals. A junior verbally pointing out a syntax
| mistake reveals a naivete about the competency itself and
| "the mission" of the field.
|
| In this interview, I would have liked to receive two code
| examples (that might contain errors) and discuss benefits
| according various objectives.
|
| If the interviewer makes it clear that pointing out
| syntax mistake is not rude, I could mention them in
| passing. This demonstrates not only attention to details
| but also decorum.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| Then do it in a different way. Phrase it as a toy pull
| request that the reviewer has to review, and let that
| contain everything from minor syntax errors to logic
| errors to missing core stuff (like missing test cases).
| sokoloff wrote:
| If I claim fluency in a non-native language because
| that's a relevant qualification for the job, testing me
| on it is fair game IMO.
|
| That's true whether I'm an author writing in German, a
| newscaster reporting in Italian, or a programmer coding
| in C++.
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| OK then, I'm not fluent in any languages, I merely use
| them to create products that people buy for money.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Definitely not - if an author has written a book in
| German (even if it's not their native language) then
| giving them a German test is definitely insulting, the
| same applies for a newscaster in Italian if they have
| done reporting in Italian previously.
|
| What you say applies if you're hiring people for their
| _first_ position at that task (e.g. the author writing
| their first book in German or a newscaster who has never
| done reporting in Italian professionally). If you 're
| hiring people at some hypothetical "level 10" then your
| interview needs to discriminate between "level 9 or less"
| people and "level 10 or more" people, but asking them to
| assert that they meet "level 1" implies that they might
| not, and that implication is literally insulting.
| allo37 wrote:
| I think the issue is what happens if an author ghostwrote
| a book in German? I guess that's the book version of
| copying code off Stack Overflow and claiming it's yours?
| People trying to game the system make it crappier for
| everyone else.
| sokoloff wrote:
| In the interview case, you often have someone who _claims
| they wrote a book in German_ (but you can't see the book)
| or to be a professional Italian newscaster (but you can't
| see any of their reporting).
|
| Switching part of the interview to be in Italian or
| German would not be seen as disrespectful, right?
|
| It's interesting that some find the coding equivalent
| insulting rather than merely a bar pointlessly laid on
| the ground to be stepped over.
| PeterisP wrote:
| The difference IMHO is in the expectations of what's
| required from the applicant. Switching part of the
| interview to be in Italian or German would not be seen as
| disrespectful as it does not add much (if anything) to
| the length of the interview, but asking them to fill a
| 30-minute quiz on basic Italian/German grammar would be
| disrespectful.
|
| A bar pointlessly laid on the ground to be stepped over
| is reasonable iff it's you can just quickly to step over
| it - but if they ask the candidate to waste half an hour
| to prove their capacity for stepping over bars laying on
| the ground, that is disrespectful of their time.
|
| For programming, a trivial _short_ task (e.g. fizzbuzz)
| is appropriate but a trivial _long_ task is appropriate
| only for junior positions but disrespectful for senior
| ones - ask something that tests whether they 're capable
| of something serious, because passing the trivial task
| can't be sufficient anyway.
| Piskvorrr wrote:
| TBH, aeons ago, we had this as a high-pass filter
| (doesn't notice a glaring SQL injection hole, no problem
| with eval() on user input? Nope.) and a conversation
| starter (-why are you constructing a database handle
| right in the middle of business logic? -indeed; how would
| _you_ do this?)
|
| It very much depends on the code - but I was genuinely
| surprised how many applicants, claiming to be fluent _and
| applying for a senior developer position_ , had problems
| just grokking what the code did (a while loop reading
| from database).
| vidarh wrote:
| I once halted an interview because of this kind of thing.
| Told them their interview process suggested they were
| looking for someone substantially less experienced. When
| they then insisted everyone had to go through this, I
| told them that was a warning sign to me that their hiring
| process was a box ticking exercise rather than addressing
| the actual needs of the positions they were hiring for
| and that I was no longer interested.
|
| Recruiters need to understand that these kinds of
| processes will often filter out the wrong people, such as
| those skilled enough to be able to pick and choose.
| twic wrote:
| But also the right people, such as those arrogant enough
| to be upset by it.
| Loughla wrote:
| I mean, it all comes down to how that situation is
| handled.
|
| If OP was a dick about it, then yeah, it serves to filter
| out an arrogant assbag.
|
| But if OP simply explained that the interview led them to
| believe the position was a more junior/entry level than
| they were expecting, that seems fine. Further, to even
| explain that the interview process seems to just be a
| checkbox process seems fine; if you work in a critical
| thinking/creative role, checkbox culture is an absolute
| brain drain.
|
| Getting that out in the open, in honest and respectful
| terms, is a fine thing to do. Why wouldn't it be?
|
| Further, any hiring institution that feels the need to
| build in 'tricks' to filter people out of the interview
| process is toxic. Even if the people they're filtering
| are arrogant assbags.
| Frost1x wrote:
| A lot of interviewers have complete leverage, so they
| don't get any sort of feedback or real check on their
| ability or processes. It's only when a candidate isn't
| desperate for the position, is competent, recognizes red
| flags, and gives them the feedback that they'd ever be
| aware of. You don't have to be upset to realize there's a
| mismatch and withdraw your candidacy.
|
| Candidates often have to call out nonsense otherwise it
| may never be called out. Processes need feedback to
| adjust and adapt, otherwise they'll typically continue
| with momentum alone.
|
| With that said you can give feedback in a polite and
| professional way, you don't have to be arrogant about it.
| "Based on the questions, it appears you're searching for
| these specific abilities which are often attributed to a
| junior role, so I believe I may be a mismatch for this
| specific role. I'm going to politely withdraw my
| continued involvement in this process. I appreciate your
| time and interest and hope you will contact me if a more
| senior role is available." Or something to that effect.
| You don't have to be arrogant to give feedback.
|
| If you were like "what, this is ridiculous, what am I am
| an intern? Good luck filling this trash position!" And
| then walk out then sure, that person clearly had some
| anger management issues.
| ryoshu wrote:
| I once interviewed for a director role and the first
| round went something likes this:
|
| Interviewer: How would you reverse a string? Me: _boggle_
| Any language I want to use? Interviewer: Yes. Me: Okay,
| Ruby. "somestring".reverse! Interviewer: _boggle_ Me: I
| don 't think we're aligned on what this role is. _says
| thank you and leaves_
|
| Interviewers need to understand what they are
| interviewing for.
| naruvimama wrote:
| I usually write python code, I stick to pythonic styles,
| consistency and good practices.
|
| If there is an error, I can quickly figure out what that
| is and what I should do to fix it. I would know why the
| error occurred.
|
| Beyond that deliberate interview practice is the only way
| to get a lot of interview questions right.
| kamaal wrote:
| A while back Indian companies were notoriously famous for
| giving questions from _Let us C, from Yashwant Kanitkar_.
|
| The questions go like,
|
| What is the output of the expression below?
| int i = 10; ****++&&*+p;
|
| Followed by a myriad of options. Including things like
| _Syntax error_.
|
| Not sure how this measures language proficiency.
| rdedev wrote:
| My diskile of C and C++ were particularly due to such
| questions. Its always in C or C++ I see such convoluted
| questions
| mlindner wrote:
| I've been working in C for most of my career and I've
| never heard of such questions. They're not in any
| textbook I'm familiar with. In fact they're incredibly
| pointless and irrelevant.
| Bayart wrote:
| I wonder how many Indians partake in the IOCCC [1].
|
| [1]: https://www.ioccc.org/
| roland35 wrote:
| Ooof... I have done a few double pointers in my day *,
| but anything beyond that seems like bad practice!
| merlincorey wrote:
| > What is the output of the expression below?
|
| > int i = 10;
|
| > **++&&*+p;
|
| > Followed by a myriad of options. Including things like
| Syntax error.
|
| I consider myself fluent in C and to a lesser extent C++
| -- that's a Syntax Error in C, at least.
|
| This isn't a particularly difficult one to spot, but I
| can understand how it would be if you weren't very
| familiar the language.
| kamaal wrote:
| They mix the correct ones and wrong ones in a way, in a
| time constrained situation.
|
| Eventually your eyes will give being a lexical analyser.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| That probably explains a few things...
| xorcist wrote:
| I have done this. Is it really such an insane idea? Makes
| for a nice break from "what does this code do"? You need
| some technical "anchor" to make for more concrete
| discussion points.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Would you accept "my build toolchain and linter will
| catch all of these syntax and stylistic errors." as an
| answer? 'Cause that's what all your devs are going to do
| IRL.
| xorcist wrote:
| Not really since that doesn't leave much room for
| discussion, but that is my problem not theirs. The point
| is to have something to discuss, not to listen for a
| singular answer. Now we can discuss hypothetical
| situations and philosophy but I'd much rather have a
| concrete piece of code to go through.
|
| Seeking out problems and errors can be a good
| conversation piece. Hopefully you get to hear some
| anecdotes, prod the taste in style and how well that that
| taste might play with others. The interview situation
| isn't easy for anyone, and anything that can if something
| is even remotely qualified helps.
| bluedino wrote:
| I worked at a place that did something similar. VBA code,
| printed out in a proportional font, no word wrap so long
| lines spilled over...
|
| "What does this code do?"
|
| That was a pretty easy one to figure out, it pulled
| coordinates from a database table, and then it stepped
| along all the lines trying to find the longest one (they
| were a metal shop).
|
| "Do you see any evidence that this code has been
| optimized?"
|
| That was the dumb question.
| siva7 wrote:
| wait until you see this asshole move being pulled to find a
| bug in production code under time pressure their team has
| failed in the real environment by being given out some
| thousand-lines long printed code from the development
| branch.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| you prefer being asked to write it out long hand?
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Actually this one might make sense, depending on the code
| and the position you applied for.
| smt88 wrote:
| Your IDE can check your syntax. For people who have to
| switch between languages regularly, precise syntax
| memorization is difficult and a waste of time.
| Piskvorrr wrote:
| An IDE can check your syntax, sure. It can even catch
| low-level bad practices ("you're making a database call
| in a tight loop, this is horribly inefficient"). This is,
| in my opinion, basic tool usage: warn of LHF early.
|
| Last time I saw one of those test-ish pieces of code,
| though, an IDE+static analysis would have caught about
| 1/2 of the problems; the other half required actual
| thinking (not statistical pattern matching, aka AI):
| "don't trust user data, _that_ should not go _there_ even
| though the call signature matches, you 're holding it
| backwards."
| smt88 wrote:
| > _" don't trust user data, that should not go there even
| though the call signature matches, you're holding it
| backwards."_
|
| Good type systems do this, although it's beside the
| point.
|
| The point I was making is that the IDE remembers
| unimportant things so that my only concern _is_ the
| actual thinking part. It abstracts away the minor and
| sometimes very important syntax differences.
| handrous wrote:
| I'd struggle to code a five-line program that'd compile
| in languages I've written tens of thousands of lines of
| code in, in Notepad, that'd actually compile & run on the
| first try. I might fail that in a language I was writing
| _last week_. I mean, I might manage it, but it 'd be
| sheer luck. Decent chance I forget, in the moment and
| under pressure and without examples to crib off of, IDE
| support, or the ability to check the manual, the correct
| way to do _comparisons_ for all types, even, or basic
| stuff like how to print to the console or what this
| language 's sugar for a "for-each" is, or whether it
| _has_ such sugar. Reading input? The right calls for file
| IO? Anything more complicated than that? Oh god, there 's
| no way.
|
| Luckily I never fucking ever have to do that in my actual
| job. If I did, I might well get good at it. Since I
| don't, I... don't. I also haven't gotten much better at
| driving semi trucks or framing a wall, in my over-a-
| decade career writing software. Go figure.
| kragen wrote:
| Your IDE can tell you if your syntax failed to represent
| _any_ valid program. It can 't tell you if your syntax
| represents _the wrong_ valid program. If you can 't even
| spot _invalid_ syntax, you have no hope of spotting
| _bugs_ , because you can't _read what the code says_.
| Which turns out, contrary to your beliefs, to be
| important for many purposes.
|
| That doesn't mean you can't debug. You can step through
| the code step by step in the debugger, or add more and
| more logging around the bug, until you figure out which
| expression has a meaning unintended by its author. But
| that means that, if we're working in a language someone
| knows well, you're likely to spend hours debugging a
| problem that they can just _see_ immediately when they
| 're reviewing a merge request. That's an orders-of-
| magnitude difference in productivity when it's important
| for code to be correct, precisely due to what you call
| "precise syntax memorization".
|
| Most of programming isn't writing code. It's reading
| code.
|
| It's possible to go overboard with this. There are other
| skills that are more important than being able to look at
| some code and immediately see what it means. There are
| excellent programmers with severe dyslexia who will just
| never be able to do this. But it's foolish to think that
| gaining this skill is "a waste of time" for those who
| can.
|
| There are languages I've used where I don't know the
| syntax that well. PHP, Ruby, x86 assembly, OCaml. There
| are languages where I know the common syntax well, but
| there are plenty of obscure corners of the syntax that I
| don't: C++, Perl, bash. But I regularly switch between C,
| Python, and JS, and I'm pretty confident that I know
| their syntax, as well as numerous other languages like
| Tcl, Lua, Prolog, PostScript, and arguably Scheme and
| Elisp, which I don't use regularly but still wouldn't
| have any trouble spotting syntax errors.
| DougBTX wrote:
| I don't buy that argument, as a programmer you have to
| write out code following a precise syntax all the time.
| Programming would be insanely tedious without knowing
| correct syntax.
|
| Having said that, if someone came up with an interview
| test which used especially esoteric parts of the language
| in unconventional ways and then asked to spot the errors,
| the could be a dubious question.
| smt88 wrote:
| > _as a programmer you have to write out code following a
| precise syntax all the time_
|
| When did I claim that the IDE absolves you of needing to
| know the syntax?
|
| It doesn't. But between autocomplete, hinting, linting,
| and any other static analysis, it makes it close to
| painless to switch between languages without making
| horrifying mistakes. The top-tier JetBrains IDEs
| (IntelliJ and Rider come to mind) will even tell you ways
| to make your code more efficient or modern, like changing
| a bunch of if/else to pattern matching.
|
| Why should I have to remember the full truthiness table
| of JavaScript? Why should I have to remember what all the
| different string delimiters do in every language? It's
| not important. My IDE can (and does) know that I'm trying
| to do some kind of string interpolation and will just fix
| it for me.
| MrDresden wrote:
| While I understand where you are coming from, I disagree.
|
| IDE tools are great performance enhancers, but they can
| also be crutches.
|
| I would always expect a professional software developer
| to be able to parse some code on a page and point out its
| syntax errors (as well as suggest edits).
|
| edit; here I am thinking about something more substancial
| then just a missing ';' or a lack of a closing "
| megous wrote:
| Let's use (C++) something not common, but not all that
| crazy: bool x = false; x ||=
| something();
|
| How many multi-lingual programmers will remember which
| one of the 7 languages they know does have a boolean
| assignment operators and which do not without looking it
| up? Does that make them unprofessional?
|
| How many do remember exact operator precedence rules for
| all those languages, when in practice you may need just
| the basic ones and use () to work around the lack of
| exact knowledge.
|
| Also which version? Something not working in PHP 7.3 may
| be ok in PHP 8, but company wants you to code in PHP 7.3,
| or ES5. In practice you get quickly acclimatized to any
| of the languages you know after working with them for a
| few days or a week, but good luck remembering exact rules
| of any of them at any given time when asked.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| You're not mentioning or alluding to the one obvious
| syntax error. I don't know how to spoiler it so I will
| say there is an issue on the second line that, again
| repeating, I don't know how to call out.
|
| And yes, I work in multiple languages.
| leetcrew wrote:
| also if you can't spot that error, you might not realize
| a subtle, yet important, detail about that line (if
| written correctly). contrary to what you might expect, it
| cannot short-circuit the way || does, leading to possible
| performance or even correctness issues.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| This is very true. I hope that people are not using the
| short-circuit feature in a way that impacts correctness!
| I would have an issue with that code for trying to be too
| clever even if there were no bugs and it worked well.
|
| Performance issues, on the other hand, I can see
| accidentally arising.
| bryondowd wrote:
| I see short-circuit for correct behavior all the time,
| most frequently in the format: if (pointer &&
| pointer->member == value)
|
| Where you want to make sure a pointer you've been given
| isn't null before you try to dereference it. Without
| short-circuit, this becomes a segfault.
| lucumo wrote:
| That boolean assignment operator was addressed. Whether
| or not C++ has them (it doesn't) is exactly the point of
| that code snippet.
|
| They do exist in other languages. ES has it in exactly
| that form. Java has it in the |= form, not to be confused
| with the bitwise OR of the same form.
|
| Whether or not these short-circuit is not all that
| interesting for most boolean logic. (Though it can be
| useful to know if these are used as hacky error-handling
| and default-setting. It depends on how you read
| "something" whether or not that's going on here.)
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > That boolean assignment operator was addressed.
|
| Where and when? Because I was the only person alluding to
| it, and the replies to my post.
|
| > Whether or not C++ has them (it doesn't) is exactly the
| point of that code snippet.
|
| C++ has boolean assignment operators that operate the way
| that the code is clearly meant to operate. That code does
| not have have a valid one. Where do you think Java got
| them from?
| megous wrote:
| C++ does not have boolean assignment operator in a sense
| the ||= syntax works in ES.
|
| https://www.w3schools.com/cpp/trycpp.asp?filename=demo_op
| er_...
|
| ||= will not assign anything unless the LHS variable is
| falsy. It will not even evaluate the right side unless
| LHS is falsy.
|
| |= will work the same in C++ and ES mostly (depending on
| types)
| lucumo wrote:
| > > That boolean assignment operator was addressed. >
| Where and when? Because I was the only person alluding to
| it, and the replies to my post.
|
| The words "boolean assignment operator" are in the first
| sentence after the code snippet in megous' post.
|
| > C++ has boolean assignment operators that operate the
| way that the code is clearly meant to operate. That code
| does not have have a valid one. Where do you think Java
| got them from?
|
| As far as I can tell the |= operator in C++ is the same
| as in C, i.e. a _bitwise_ OR operator. It works for
| booleans due to their bit pattern, but it 's not the
| same. My C++ knowledge is extremely limited, so I looked
| it up and I may be misinformed though.
|
| Java's |= is different for ints and boolean. There are no
| bitwise operators for booleans: bool1 | bool2 is a strict
| logical operation (that doesn't short-circuit). bool1 |=
| bool2 is a logical operation that will fail when other
| types are mixed in. int1 |= int2 is a bitwise operation.
| Java does not have a short-circuiting ||= operation (but
| ES does).
|
| For the most part these differences aren't that
| important, but they do trip people up when switching
| between languages.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| How many of the multi-lingual programmers that know 7
| languages are really good in all 7? As an interviewer and
| hiring manager I am more impressed of people than know 2,
| max 3 languages very well than 7 at an intermediate
| level.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I think you overestimate the value of being super
| intimate with any given language. Pretty much no language
| in common use is so different from the others that you
| drastically have to change how you express any given
| thing you're trying to do. Knowing concepts and when and
| how to apply them is more important in my considered
| opinion.
| Frost1x wrote:
| In my opinion, if you're hiring for an expert in a
| specific language, you're not hiring a software engineer,
| you're hiring X language developer or X language software
| engineer. The language needs to be explicit in the
| position listing and perhaps even job title. That's fine
| if that's what you want but be specific about it so you
| don't waste people's time looking for a language
| specialist when most people anymore are generalists that
| have all sorts of knowledge distributions for any given
| set of technologies but can most likely adapt and learn
| to fit your distribution of technology given just a bit
| of time and opportunity.
|
| Modern development requires juggling too many
| technologies for most people to specialize in a single
| language unless their career goal is to niche themselves
| to that language.
| megous wrote:
| Someone doing webdev fullstack for more than 10-15 years
| will know at minimum ES + (PHP/Python/Ruby/Java/Go...) +
| SQL + HTML/CSS and a few utility languages.
|
| So at least 4. If you combine webdev with something low
| level/embedded, you need at least one systems language,
| so you're at 5 languages you need to be proficient in.
|
| Add one hobby language or a second web backend or systems
| language, and you're at 6 major languages.
|
| 7 is a lot. But 5 is plausible to be proficient in for
| someone who switches between webdev and lowlevel stuff to
| not burn out, or has a FOSS hobby.
| ryoshu wrote:
| I've shipped production code in 17 different programming
| languages. I wouldn't say I'm proficient in any one of
| them, they are all just tools to solve a problem and the
| knowledge of language specifics comes and goes. Need to
| hyper-optimize a DB query on an Oracle RAC cluster?
| PL/SQL. Need a shader? GLSL works fine. Need a webpage?
| HTML/CSS/JS. Need to build a 7' long flying robot fish?
| C. Programming languages are just tools.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| In over 20 years of working in IT I never found a single
| webdev-type of person that can write an efficient SQL
| query by himself. Yes, most are able to write a query to
| bring the correct result, but I saw way too many cases
| where the perf test on a database with the expected
| production volume was running in completely inacceptable
| times and the developer had no idea how to fix that; for
| each version of SQL perf-tuning is very specific.
|
| Also proficient != expert. I met enough developers that
| were brilliant in their work to be convinced that 5x
| developers are not a myth, but they are real, while rare,
| occurrences. For me a senior developer in X knows the ins
| and outs of that X to the level that his code is an order
| of magnitude better in term of efficiency, performance,
| productivity and security. A regular developer can be
| just proficient, but it is not what I wrote about.
| ryoshu wrote:
| As a hiring manager for over 15 years I prefer people who
| can pick up a language based on the need. Good problem
| solving is language agnostic.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| It is an option, but how fast will they be very
| efficient? It takes years to master something and some
| people, not all, need to have that mastery level.
| handrous wrote:
| I know what a language _ought_ to be able to do and where
| the usual foot-guns are. I haven 't even attempted to
| really learn a _language_ thoroughly since my first one
| (Perl--and yes, that 's probably part of where my brain-
| damage comes from). It's all the same stuff, more or
| less. Understand pointers and how things like how OO
| systems are usually implemented, how stacks work, that
| kind of thing, and all the languages start to blend
| together.
|
| 99% of the pain in a new language usually ends up being
| the (often god-awful) tools, platform/SDK bullshit, and
| learning where the clearest path is incorrect (no no no,
| the official docs and tutorials say to do it this way,
| but _everyone_ who knows what 's what actually replaces
| that entire part of the language/first-party libraries
| with this other library developed & open-sourced by some
| other company, since the official way is obviously so
| terrible, and you just have to know that, or notice by
| reading other people's projects--ahem, looking at you,
| Android). The language itself is typically nothing.
|
| This has worked out fine for me. It does mean I've
| gradually grown to hate languages that lack static
| typing. I don't want to remember or look up things when I
| can make a quick note and then let the computer remember
| or look it up for me. I thought that was kind of our
| _whole thing_ , no? Having computers do stuff for us,
| when they're able?
| smt88 wrote:
| I see this attitude in the corporate world and among
| people who are newer to programming a lot.
|
| For skilled, experienced programmers, most mainstream
| languages become an implementation detail. You have to
| spend time learning idioms, footguns, and generally the
| way the language manages memory, but you _absolutely can_
| be great at 7 languages because they fundamentally do
| many of the same things.
|
| I haven't hired people based on "their stack" in a long
| time, and it's been completely fine. Someone with skills
| can quickly learn your stack and be productive in it. I
| personally jumped on a project as a coder a few years ago
| having never written C# before, and I was productive in
| about a day. All the concepts were familiar, and the
| stuff I had to learn was mostly syntax.
| rimliu wrote:
| Exactly. "If a person can drive a Honda, how well can he
| drive a Mazda?". Duh, just as well as Honda. And just
| like the natural languages, the more you know, the easier
| it gets. > All the concepts were
| familiar, and the stuff > I had to learn was
| mostly syntax.
|
| This reminds me how I have learnt to program. I grew up
| in then USSR, we had no computers at our school but we
| had programming lessons. So I was introduced to all the
| fundamental concepts: variables, assignment, loops,
| control structures, etc. When I went to university I
| finally got access to the computer (Yamaha MSX). And then
| it was exactly as you say: "what's MSX Basic's syntax for
| this particular concept?".
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| If a pilot is only type-rated to fly an Airbus 320 he is
| not allowed to even try to fly an 737 nor a different
| type of Airbus. This attitude of "a car is a car, what
| can go wrong?" is deadly in some domains.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| In my (corporate) role most of the people around me have
| over 20 years of experience in a very specific domain
| (manufacturing execution systems) and it takes about 5
| years to train a new person. Having someone new
| productive in month is a dream for us, but it never
| happened.
|
| If you can be productive in about a day, please explain
| why a pilot gets ATPL (airline transportation pilot
| license) after a minimum of 1500 hours of flight. Also
| please tell if you would board a plane where the pilot
| has 100 hours - that's an awful more than a day or even a
| week.
| smt88 wrote:
| > _they can also be crutches_
|
| Yes, they are absolutely crutches. All great tools,
| libraries, and abstractions are crutches. I _want_
| programming to be easier for myself and my employees.
|
| The only problem with a crutch is that you might end up
| not having it when you need it. That's not an issue in
| this case.
|
| > _here I am thinking about something more substancial
| then just a missing ';' or a lack of a closing "_
|
| The original example that I was responded to was about an
| interviewer who expected their code to compile. That
| would include incredibly pedantic things.
|
| For example, if you're the kind of person who uses single
| quotes in JavaScript and then you're suddenly writing a
| different language where '' is different from "" and ``
| and $"" and whatever, you could easily make an
| unimportant mistake that prevents compiling.
| beberlei wrote:
| Yes! Because the IDE cannot help in Github Pull Request
| reviews for example.
| rendall wrote:
| If a company did not run automatic tests and lints on
| whatever they felt was important to have when merging to
| production, to the fullest extent possible, I would stop
| everything and write those. This leaves reviewers free to
| focus on the intangibles: architecture, expressiveness,
| logic and data flow, and so on.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| In my experience, Pull Requests aren't about catching
| syntax errors... the build will fail if there's errors
| like that. Rather, a Pull Request, and the code review
| involved, is about the underlying logic of the code; both
| with what it's doing it and how it's doing it.
| [deleted]
| ladberg wrote:
| Design mistakes maybe, but syntax errors are just not
| representative of any real debugging experience IMO.
| rwmj wrote:
| I think some of this is filtering out bullshitters. In a
| previous job I used to interview a lot of unfiltered
| candidates. What we did was sit them down at a Linux
| command line and ask them to show us the files in the
| directory, open a file for editing and that kind of
| thing. A surprising number of people who claimed years of
| Linux experience had clearly never used the command line
| at all.
| roland35 wrote:
| I've tried questions like this (super basic but can
| quickly filter out people who know nothing), but
| sometimes the candidate seems insulted! I try to quickly
| move on to a harder question.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| If you start with "I'm sorry if you find this question
| offensie, but recently we had a wave of candidates who
| had problems with basic things so we need to start from
| the beginning" and the candidate still feels offended,
| well, they're being offended too easily which might cause
| problems in the future.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I don't think the problem is offending the ones who know
| how to do things. It's making them think they're applying
| for a worthwhile job.
|
| I remember thinking what you're writing about there, that
| there's a lot of people to be filtered out, and that good
| candidates wouldn't be offended.
|
| So we had this simple two-part quiz question for people,
| starting with "what is the expectation of a dice roll?".
| Amazingly a lot of people can't figure this out.
|
| But also a lot of people know the answer immediately and
| will wonder WTF you are asking such a simple question
| for. I remember this one lady who interviewed with my
| firm, the look on her face when she realized we weren't
| asking anything complicated. You could just tell she
| thought we were a bunch of amateurs, and she'd better be
| on her way to see some other proper hedge funds.
| unishark wrote:
| I think people can still find it off-putting that after
| all the evidence they provided you to get to that point,
| you're challenging them to prove they aren't complete
| frauds. Like you could has spent 30 seconds googling them
| and verify they are legit, but it seems you didn't even
| bother to read their resume. Not saying it's the case,
| but rather that not everyone is aware of how good the
| frauds can be at presenting themselves and bullshitting
| through interviews.
| zealsham wrote:
| How did people like this even make it to the interview
| rounds
| rwmj wrote:
| Sadly because in that disfunctional start-up we didn't
| pre-screen except to have someone look through their CV
| to check that boxes were ticked :-(
|
| But I think the point in this thread is the Google
| question about Linux inodes was actually part of a pre-
| screen interview done by an outside agency.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I could see it if you're resume talks about a whole bunch
| of intense recent development in the exact same language
| they want to test, but only then.
|
| In contrast, I've been stuck in a giant multi-language
| integration-fest, and... well, there are definitely
| languages on my resume that I would not be comfortable
| being pop-quizzed on, simply because I've been using
| others for the past two years.
| agent327 wrote:
| I've been doing C++ full time since 1996, and yet I
| frequently have intellisense warning me about forgetting
| something silly - like a missing capture in a lambda, or
| even forgotten semi-colons. That's because I'm not an
| f'ing compiler.
|
| _Can_ I make sure the code is 100% correct before even
| compiling? Sure, but I'll spend an hour checking every
| detail, while intellisense does it while I type.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I mean, yes. In a whole program, typos or mistakes
| happen. No need to try to prevent those. So do spelling
| or grammar errors when writing in English. We expect a
| professional writer to have a human editor to catch those
| and not be perfect. But asking an applicant for a writing
| job to find the spelling/grammar errors in a paragraph
| seems reasonable to me.
| agent327 wrote:
| The simple fact that you think so tells me that you
| aren't a programmer, and that you should stay far away
| from interviewing or managing programmers. About the only
| thing the two situations have in common is that both are
| based around a text-based medium; for the rest there is
| just no comparison between writing computer code, and
| writing text for humans. Have you ever noticed how very
| few people can actually write both good computer code,
| and good documentation for the users of that code? That's
| because they are completely different disciplines,
| requiring a completely different mindset.
|
| Let's turn this around: if I were interviewed by someone
| who flagged down my code for missing a #include or lambda
| capture (both very easy mistakes to make), I'd know that
| the people I'm interviewing with are idiots with no
| understanding of the thing they claim to be testing me
| on. Would I want to work there? Nope.
| [deleted]
| HWR_14 wrote:
| You seem very confused. At first I was worried you
| misunderstood my text: maybe you have trouble with
| natural language but not programming (or maybe English
| but not code). That would certainly explain your claim
| that they are disjoint skillsets. But as you went on, you
| committed a logic error, so now I'm just thrown.
|
| There is a difference between "find the errors in this
| provided code" and "write code on a whiteboard with no
| errors". At no point was I talking about code you wrote.
|
| Also, it's an aside, but I find people who can program
| well write excellent documentation for the users, if what
| they are writing is an API. Of course, they are not the
| best at explaining the steps in a GUI, but that probably
| has less to do with communication skills in general and
| more to do with the difficulty understanding how they
| perceive the problem.
| rplnt wrote:
| e.g. a compiler
|
| But yeah, I think I've seen questions like that for an
| intern positions. It's basically a "have you ever seen
| this language?" to weed out people quickly.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > It's basically a "have you ever seen this language?" to
| weed out people quickly.
|
| It's not that. People who constantly use multiple
| languages in an IDE will not be able to point out most
| syntax errors outside the IDE. So it's not a "have you
| ever seen this language" filter.
| trinovantes wrote:
| It was for a junior c# position so I doubt it's
| applicable considering Visual Studio will point out the
| problems.
|
| But I'm curious what position would this question make
| sense?
| burntoutfire wrote:
| It doesn't sound that stupid, it checks whether you know
| the syntax of the language you'll be programming in.
| mns wrote:
| It's literally asking someone to write perfect code in a
| time limited situation, under pressure, how can someone
| with any kind of coding experience ask someone else to do
| in an interview?
| killtimeatwork wrote:
| It not literally asking to write any code, just to read
| it.
| coldcode wrote:
| Not one person ever code reviews code that was not
| already compiled. Requiring you know the syntax of a
| programming language (in my case, Swift, changes syntax
| in every release) outside of a compiler is pointless. I
| remember in the early days of J2EE people asking you for
| the home interface of an EJB stateful session bean. Like
| who the hell cares about memorization in the era of
| Google, and that was 20 years ago when Google did no
| evil. This isn't first year computer programming 101, you
| are paid to make things that work, not regurgitate
| syntax.
| exdsq wrote:
| Depends... imagine getting four pages of C# code and
| having to play Where's Wally but you're not even sure
| what Wally looks like. Surely it'd be better to just
| write FizzBuzz.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> I 'm curious what position would this question make
| sense?_
|
| I was once asked a similar but better posed question: I
| was given some code and asked what I'd point out if asked
| to do a code review on it.
|
| And the code had loads of things wrong with it, from bad
| variable names and incorrect comments, through unit tests
| that didn't have any assertions and loops that weren't
| actually loops, all the way to choosing a non-secure
| random number generator in an application that needed a
| secure one*
|
| In other words, it was a test of my ability to code
| review, with some glaring issues to give me some easy
| marks and set me at ease, and some subtle issues where
| talented people could really set themselves apart. It was
| fair and relevant to the job because I was presenting
| myself as a senior programmer with lots of experience
| doing code reviews and coaching junior developers.
|
| It's possible trinovantes's interviewer intended to give
| the same sort of test - but either didn't explain the
| question clearly enough, or trinovantes misheard or
| misremembered.
|
| * A bug right out of puzzle 94 in 'Java Puzzlers'
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I tend to believe that "walk me through a peer review of
| this code" is a great interview question. It speaks to
| the user's familiarity with the language, with problem
| solving in general, and also people skills. Sure, it's
| not the end all/be all, but someone needs to be pretty
| amazing to want to work with them if they are incapable
| of doing a peer review.
| whynaut wrote:
| This is awesome and I think every company should do
| something like this. You get to ballpark technical
| ability really well while getting some very relevant
| behavioral information (i.e. what will it actually be
| like to work with this person, without lame 'culture fit'
| questions). It can be hard to test competence in a way
| that allows all kinds of devs to shine; code reviews are
| pretty unavoidable on the job though so it's a good fit.
|
| Coding is a mostly solitary activity that you probably
| don't want candidates spending more than ~60 minutes on,
| ideally on something that resembles the actual day-to-day
| instead of sucking all the Leetcode possible out of them.
| Even just quickly pair programming on something nets you
| more data points in the same time.
| w0mbat wrote:
| Citrix gave me a page of code which had a lot of tricky
| obfuscated syntax problems. Code that looked live but was
| actually commented out, nested comments that were not
| terminated properly, code formatted in a very deceptive
| way, strings that were not quoted correctly so they would
| not end where expected on the page. It was all very
| contrived stuff that was deliberately deceptive, not like
| real broken code, and the errors would have shown up with
| syntax highlighting. I caught most but not all of the
| tricks. This is also the only interview I have ever had
| where a panel of engineers stood behind a desk and all
| barked questions at me. I did not get the job.
|
| At a different interview, this one with Microsoft, the
| lead engineer showed me a page of actual code from their
| app and asked me what I thought. Luckily the bug
| instantly leaped off the page to me, although many people
| would not see it. That was a good way of proving that I
| have a useful ability, and a better use of time than
| whiteboard coding or quizzes. I got the job and they were
| glad they hired me.
| tsukikage wrote:
| A past employer of mine used to have one of these. It was a
| true work of art: around two dozen lines of code with
| something to discuss in EVERY SINGLE LINE, ranging from
| dumb syntax errors to logic errors to problems of overall
| design. Made for some great conversations.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| The problem I see is that it probably looks really dense
| and complex the first time a candidate sees it. This is
| not a great way to start the interview. To me it comes
| across like "find Waldo in the next 30 seconds. Also
| there's a bunch of other characters hidden in there. Go!"
| We all know what we're looking for (kind of) but it's a
| very stressful approach. It might work better if you
| paired and wrote this crazy code, and looked to them to
| identify issues as you built it up.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| What is super frustrating is that these same companies and
| people are convinced they can find game-changing
| productivity gains in software development, like magnitude-
| level improvements, yet ask questions that, what little
| increases we've made in the past 50+ years have made
| trivial.This is just a lazy question.
| dspillett wrote:
| Done right there will be a lot more in there than syntax
| errors. A good example of this sort of test will separate
| those who have revised syntax without really thinking
| (they'll get the syntax errors but little or nothing else,
| great if you want to employ a human linter) from those who
| actually think about what they are looking at will spot
| much more (a logical error that would cause an infinite
| loop, a point where a comment and the code disagree, an
| incorrectly validated input, an injection flaw, a heavy
| expression inside a loop that could be done first and
| result-cached for efficiency (your compiler cannot always
| identify such situations), hard-coded credentials, bad
| naming, ...). The best may identify some but also state why
| in the grand scheme of things is might not matter
| (efficiency in code that runs once so 10ms and 100ms is
| statistical noise) or where other priorities might take
| precedence (for example readability and therefore ease of
| maintenance).
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| Does this kind of trick question work well in practice?
| If they explicitly ask for syntax errors it would be a
| waste of time to also check the code for other errors. I
| can't imagine many people opting to do that unless they
| know it's a trick question.
| flemhans wrote:
| If you'd see an obvious SQL injection, wouldn't it be
| hard to resist telling them?
| scrose wrote:
| I don't see what information people can glean from those
| trick questions.
|
| Any time I've interviewed people I've made it a point to
| emphasize that none of my questions are trick questions
| and if anything is unclear, they should ask clarifying
| questions. The result? Interviewees are more comfortable
| and are far more honest about what they know, what they
| don't know, and you get to see a glimpse of what they're
| really like.
| dspillett wrote:
| It shouldn't be a trick question, but an open one. "What
| can you see wrong in this code?, there are a few things,
| we don't expect you to see them all". For non-junior
| starters it is effectively a simulated code review -- can
| this candidate spot problems before they get committed
| further into the pipeline (and hopefully avoid them in
| their own code).
| robinson-wall wrote:
| More than a decade ago I had an amazon interviewer write
| some perl on a whiteboard, and ask me to find the error.
|
| There were two - I pointed out both and they didn't seem
| super happy about it. To this day I'm still not sure if one
| of them was an unintentional error.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| A friend encountered this with Amazon, although their tool at
| least has some code help (at least when I tried a year ago).
| The interviewer tried to compile his code.
| [deleted]
| TGImemegen wrote:
| Googler here. At some stage of the interview process, we have
| to check whether you're able to code, there's no way around
| it if you're applying for a coding position. So yes, we'll
| have you code the solution to a problem. Of course in the
| real world we'd use a library or look up the algorithm on
| stack overflow like everyone else. Good for you if you came
| up with a workable algorithm for the problem quickly. But
| that's not the only point of the interview. An important goal
| there is to check if you can really code. We don't usually
| care if you don't know find the perfect algorithm (unless
| it's for a senior position), and in fact it's a desirable
| property if you don't, because that allows us to see your
| thinking process. Some of the best interviewees I've had,
| they didn't have the right solution, but impressed me with
| how they thought about the problem and dealt with the
| situation of having a problem in front of them that they
| didn't know how to solve. How they considered possible
| boundary conditions and restrictions and extensions. Someone
| saying "yeah, this is just depth-first-search" and then spits
| up a memorized solution gives me zero insights on whether the
| candidate is good (and will likely not allow me to write
| great feedback on the candidate, unless they're able to sell
| me that they understand what they are doing and why and how).
| It's usually expected that most of the interview will be
| taken up by you implementing some algorithm, and it's
| expected that you won't get every detail right.
|
| We do NOT require you to produce token-by-token perfect code,
| and nowhere in the process will I ever have to give feedback
| on whether the code produced was actually valid. So maybe you
| misunderstood your interviewer's intention, or something else
| went wrong, or maybe they were just joking. But it's not the
| interviewers task to copy code into GCC and try it out,
| that'd be a huge waste of time. So let me be very clear and
| explicit: no-one gets classified as "no hire" because they've
| forgotten a semicolon somewhere. You messed up somewhere
| else.
|
| With that said, if a candidate says they can write in a
| language, we expect them to know the language, its idioms and
| at least parts of the standard library. Not every nook and
| cranny (e.g. I'd often instruct candidates "just pretend you
| have some library that implements a heap, and invent an API
| for it, I don't care about that part"), but if you call
| "strlen" in the termination-condition of your for-loop
| instead of before, or do other stuff that shows you don't
| know the language well, that's a red flag. After all, we
| expect you to be able to write production-level code that
| servers billions of users.
| gregkerzhner wrote:
| This statement "we don't usually care if you don't know
| find the perfect algorithm (unless it's for a senior
| position)" made me chuckle.
|
| I can see this interviewer writing feedback like "Well,
| this candidate didn't come up with a perfect implementation
| of Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm, but its OK, they
| were pretty close. Oh wait, they are a senior engineer?
| Nevermind... they should have really mastered these
| algorithms while building CRUD APIs all these years."
| bborud wrote:
| Well, in real life this varies. I've seen interviewers from
| among the first 200 Google employees, nitpick their way
| through someone's whiteboard code, obsessing over every
| comma and semicolon. It was embarrassing. And I have to say
| that while shadowing these interviews I couldn't help but
| think "I've seen your code - you have bigger problems than
| getting the syntax perfect, mate" (about the interviewer).
|
| It depends on who you get as your interviewers, so
| generalizing isn't really useful. Some interviewers can't
| relate the interview to what it is supposed to tell you.
| I've seen that in inexperienced interviewers and I've seen
| that in very experienced interviewers who had enough GOOG
| stock to buy a small country.
|
| If the interviewer can't think of a better way to test
| candidates, that's on the interviewer. Not the candidate.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| I would never want to work with someone like this.
| luffapi wrote:
| How does Google interview for product development skill?
| That's seriously lacking in that organization, definitely
| the worst of the FANGs.
|
| The arrogance displayed in your comment isn't backed up by
| the ultra-low quality of product being produced by Google.
| Something is clearly wrong with the culture and hiring
| process there. Maybe instead of fretting over people using
| strlen as an exit condition, you should look for people who
| can actually produce software people enjoy using. You don't
| even need to do a coding interview! Just browse GitHub for
| people you want to hire and get to work convincing them to
| join you.
| tchalla wrote:
| > So let me be very clear and explicit: no-one gets
| classified as "no hire" because they've forgotten a
| semicolon somewhere. You messed up somewhere else.
|
| How much money can you bet that this never or does not
| happen? If you can't put your money, I find it difficult to
| take this seriously.
|
| > We don't usually care if you don't know find the perfect
| algorithm (unless it's for a senior position)
|
| The unless clearly means that you "do care".
| notJim wrote:
| This is all ridiculous. Of course you have to test that
| people can code, but it doesn't follow that people must be
| able to code without any references available, or without
| using standard libraries. I can code just fine, but I still
| have to look up the arguments to functions I don't use very
| often, etc.
|
| As far as algorithms/data structures, most of what we do on
| a day-to-day basis is more about selecting the appropriate
| data structures and algorithms that fit the problem, and
| assembling them together correctly. I've never needed to
| code a hashtable, but I need to think about their
| characteristics and whether they're appropriate all the
| time. I've never written a btree, but I do understand
| database indices pretty well. So in my view, asking
| candidates to code up these things on the fly in an
| interview with no reference materials is a total waste of
| time. What matters more is if they can correctly apply
| them. If you're really sure someone needs to write these
| things, then a more realistic move would be to sit them
| down with a standard textbook or paper and see if they can
| get the code working.
|
| > After all, we expect you to be able to write production-
| level code that servers billions of users.
|
| And you do all this through sheer clairvoyance, rather than
| using tools like unit tests, code review, design specs,
| etc, right? No? Then why are you expecting people in
| interviews to do it without those things.
| cheschire wrote:
| There's enough counter anecdotes here on HN when this topic
| comes up that the wording of your post comes off as tone
| deaf. You actually seem to believe every interviewer at
| Google behaves like you, for the same reasons, to the same
| standards.
|
| "We do NOT"
|
| "You messed up"
|
| "let me be very clear"
|
| "whether you're able to code"
|
| These types of statements come off as patronizing. If your
| whole process sounded like this, and if you somehow
| actually do represent a majority of Google interviewers,
| then it's no wonder so many folks have a distaste for the
| experience.
| TGImemegen wrote:
| I tried conveying what I was told when I was trained for
| conducting interviews, what I've explicitly seen demanded
| on the interview forms I have to fill out and what I get
| as feedback from hiring committees. Thus I indeed assume
| that my opinion represents the majority of interviewers.
| Whether that assumption is warranted or not, I wouldn't
| know.
| hownottowrite wrote:
| "servers billions of users"
|
| And therein lies the problem.
| bborud wrote:
| I worked at Google and did a fair share of interviews. Two
| observations:
|
| When you have 3 interviews per week for a prolonged period,
| you, as an interviewer, are not going to do a stellar job
| every time. What's worse: you will develop a routine and it
| becomes very easy to give candidates that do not fit your
| routine a lower grade. It takes effort on the interviewers
| part to recognize talent that perhaps doesn't fit your
| routine or your expectations. If you are not going to end up
| being a bad interviewer you also have to try to relate what
| you see in interviews to what you know about work.
|
| For instance I _never_ asked people to code live (mostly on
| whiteboards back then) because it just isn't a relevant
| exercise. And I was kind of horrified at experienced
| interviewers who asked people to code and then got obsessive
| about small details that the tooling would have taken care
| of. Absolutely pointless.
|
| The only piece of advice I found useful from the interview
| training was this: this is the candidate's big day. For you
| it is a chore, for them it is their big chance. Keep that in
| mind and respect it. I kept telling myself this for every
| interview - and some days I felt really terrible because I
| wasn't properly prepared.
|
| The other thing that horrified me was when we let
| inexperienced people who had been out of school for less than
| a year interview people. These interviewers barely knew how
| to write software themselves, and they'd get even more hung
| up on irrelevant stuff because they simply had no idea how to
| be software engineers.
|
| I doubt that I would have done very well in those kinds of
| interviews because this isn't how I work and it certainly
| isn't how I teach people to do problem solving. Problem
| solving requires more time because any even mildly tricky
| problem worth solving tends to have a lot of facets far
| beyond picking an algorithm or knowing how to code it up.
| That's the easy part because for that part, you have books,
| papers, tools and other people to seek advice from.
|
| Junior programmers right out of school with no engineering
| experience have no business interviewing developers. They
| make poor and overly judgemental interviewers and only rarely
| are able to spot talent if it doesn't fit their template.
| They also aren't going to fight for candidates that may not
| fit the imaginary template, but have some special gift
| because they are junior programmers. It takes a certain
| amount of balls to say "I know you think this candidate is
| rubbish, but I see something here and I don't care what you
| say, I am going to insist".
|
| (btw, statistically, this used to be a good predictor for
| later success: candidates that were somehow "controversial"
| in that they didn't make the grade with some interviewers,
| but displayed something that made other interviewers fight
| for them)
| neilv wrote:
| Thanks, these seem like the most thoughtful Googler/Xoogler
| comments I recall hearing on the topic.
| tchalla wrote:
| > The only piece of advice I found useful from the
| interview training was this: this is the candidate's big
| day. For you it is a chore, for them it is their big
| chance. Keep that in mind and respect it. I kept telling
| myself this for every interview - and some days I felt
| really terrible because I wasn't properly prepared.
|
| Thank you for being kind and respectful.
| bb88 wrote:
| Back when I wanted to interview at google, I sensed some
| frustration between HR and the engineering. Some engineers
| just didn't make good interviewers.
|
| HR wished I had gotten a different interviewer.
| vidarh wrote:
| I had a recruiter obtain approval to have my technical
| review ignored because I pointed out so many flaws in it.
| At that point I had too much of a distaste for the process
| to continue.
|
| But I kept being approached by Google recruiters, kept
| recounting what had happened last time and asked if I could
| expect better this time. None could promise things had
| improved, and a few did express that kind of frustration.
|
| This was years ago now. Could have changed of course. But I
| started telling them to go away.
| bb88 wrote:
| I was getting HR hits like every six months and
| eventually I told them I would get back in touch when I
| was ready.
|
| Now I'm getting an email every month from FB, and about
| ready to do the same with them.
|
| The last time I passed the first and second rounds and
| Google let me languish on the third round for a month. I
| still probably would not have made it through, but it was
| surprising that my candidacy was dropped like that.
| papito wrote:
| The problem is that many out there try to copy the
| dysfunctional FAANG interview style. Google was asking
| those dumb brain-teaser questions for years, which were
| obviously useless to the naked eye, and then they realized
| themselves that those were counter-productive.
|
| Yet, you could expect one of those in almost any interview
| process. Seemingly smart people are ready to jump on
| bandwagons, too.
| dagw wrote:
| _Google was asking those dumb brain-teaser questions for
| years_
|
| Microsoft started doing this, realized it was a bad idea,
| and stopped before Google even really started this
| practice. So Google is as guilty of bandwagon jumping as
| everybody else here.
| sltkr wrote:
| Let me first concede a few points: 1. You
| should have been better informed about the expectations of
| the interview, so you would have had a chance to prepare
| yourself. 2. Coding in a Google Doc is a terrible
| experience. It's a step up from coding on a whiteboard, but
| that's not saying much. Google has since moved away from
| both, prefering an online text editor that's not quite an IDE
| but at least more programmer-friendly. 3. The goal
| shouldn't be to write 100% correct code without any compiler
| feedback. That's insane. Still, there is a big difference
| between "candidate forgot a semicolon once" and "candidate
| did not know how to write a for-loop without IDE feedback".
|
| But beyond those valid complaints, it sounds like you were
| also unhappy that you were asked to write any code at all. I
| don't think that's reasonable. The point of a phone interview
| for an entry-level SWE is to determine two things:
| 1. Can they figure out how to solve a nontrivial problem?
| 2. Are they able to translate ideas into reasonable, working
| code?
|
| For an algorithm question that boils down to a topological
| sort, the interviewer will see three kinds of candidates:
| 1. Those that don't have a clue how to solve it. 2.
| Those that recognize it boils down to a topological sort.
| 3. Those that recognize it boils down to a topological sort
| and are able to implement a solution.
|
| Each of these candidates is strictly better than the last,
| and Google only wants to hire the third one.
|
| > I didn't remember the exact algorithm so I basically had to
| re-figure it out on the fly
|
| Yes! That was the whole point of the question! You had
| already demonstrated that you were at least a "type 2"
| candidate, so now the interviewer was trying to move beyond
| that and figure out if you were actually a "type 3"
| candidate. Nobody expected you to have the exact solution
| memorized, but they expected you to be able to figure it out
| from first principles.
|
| > I even similarly mention "in any real situation I would
| just look this up", but that didn't help
|
| That was missing the point, which was to test your ability to
| actually implement a solution.
|
| In the real world, if you encounter a standard problem (which
| happens often, like "I need this list sorted" or "I want to
| put this stuff in a hash table for O(1) access") you wouldn't
| even look up how to solve it. You would just call the
| existing standard library function and move on.
|
| Logically, the problems that you end up spending most of your
| time on are _not_ of the standard variety, and involve
| actually thinking about how to break down the problem and
| actually implementing your intended solution. Those are the
| problems Google needs you to solve on the job. If you can 't
| even implement a topological sort from scratch, why should
| anyone expect you to do anything more complicated than that?
| XorNot wrote:
| At this point I'm pretty sure FAANG hiring is just a random
| walk. Every now again someone happens to have looked at all
| the questions they ask recently for that particular interview
| cycle (or avoid the trap ones like that) and that person gets
| hired (and then put on the ad targeting team or whatever).
| saagarjha wrote:
| You don't pass a FAANG interview by looking up all the
| questions and memorizing them, you just get a feel for what
| they'd ask you and learn how to respond with what they
| want.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| That's what they're trying to achieve, but it's imperfect
| at best, so I'm not sure you can state that professional
| leetcoders don't get jobs at FAANG
| lordnacho wrote:
| > At this point I'm pretty sure FAANG hiring is just a
| random walk. Every now again someone happens to have looked
| at all the questions they ask recently for that particular
| interview cycle (or avoid the trap ones like that) and that
| person gets hired (and then put on the ad targeting team or
| whatever).
|
| This might actually be part of the retention strategy. If
| everyone who works at FAANG knows that they're somewhat
| lucky to get in, regardless of ability, it means they are
| less likely to jump ship. What's the point in applying for
| another job when you're already paid well and it's unlikely
| to end in anything but lost time? You're unlikely to win a
| 10% lottery twice, given the amount of time you'd bother
| investing.
| oblio wrote:
| Congrats, you're discovered why hazing rituals have been
| a thing for thousands of years!
| eatbitseveryday wrote:
| One can interview without quitting the current job. That
| allows for multiple attempts over time while retaining
| the current status. People may do so to see what pay
| they'd be offered.
| cainxinth wrote:
| You're forgetting that it's easier to get a FAANG job
| once you've already had one. They love to poach each
| other's people.
| Lio wrote:
| If that's true it's at least is a change from the "no
| poaching" agreements that used to exist.
| Twirrim wrote:
| It's very true, and very natural. It's one reason why
| FAANG salaries have been getting so high.
|
| If I change jobs, and find myself in a good situation,
| and need more head-count, I'm going to reach out to
| people I like that I've worked with before, see if they
| might be interested in a job change. I know I can work
| with them, know we'll build good stuff.
|
| There's a constant drive in FAANG to hire more people,
| most teams have open headcounts. To the degree that it's
| extremely hard to build up that funnel of candidates. If
| my team has a head-count of 5, that realistically means
| I've got to find a bare minimum of 30-40 candidates to
| enter in to the pipeline from somewhere, to maybe get
| close to that target. That's a slightly optimistic
| conversion rate. Now scale that up across a company with
| thousands of teams that are hiring. Getting that pipeline
| filled on that scale is crazy. It's just one of many
| reasons why FAANG go all in on college hiring events.
|
| I can almost 100% guarantee to get someone I've worked
| with in a FAANG co-worker through the interview pipeline
| and in to a job. They know their shit, they know what
| they're doing, and they know what the process is like.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's because the DoJ Antitrust Division came down on them
| hard in 2010[1], and part of the settlement forbade the
| companies from engaging in that behavior again.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > They love to poach each other's people
|
| The 'FA.N.' part of it maybe:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
| Bodell wrote:
| Sometimes I see articles about a wrongfully convicted man
| being let out of prison. This usually comes with a cash
| payment of some sort. The whole we took 20 years of your
| life, oops, here's a million dollars. Every time I see
| this though I think 'no, no way does money replace my
| time.' That's simply not good enough. And not because the
| payments are usually ludicrously low, but because there
| is no amount of money that would buy off my life.
|
| Same as there is no amount of money you could give me to
| end my life, a position which I assume is shared by a
| vast majority of humans.
|
| Time is not money. It's not even close as an exchange
| rate. I would never put myself through these types of
| interview processes (not to mention that I would assume
| that sort of thing to be indicative of the job itself and
| company as a whole) because I value my actual life and
| dignity far and above what I value as an upper middle
| class income.
| dagw wrote:
| _I value my actual life and dignity far and above what I
| value as an upper middle class income._
|
| I am at least 90% sure that part of these interviews is
| to filter out people who these sorts of views. These
| employer would much rather have someone who wants to work
| 100 hour weeks and be the 'hero' over someone who works
| exactly 8-4 monday-friday and then goes home.
| notJim wrote:
| IDK, if the interview is just a few hours of misery to
| get a significant financial upside, it's not such a big
| deal. People always assume the job will be miserable too,
| but that varies from team to team. Especially because the
| salary is high enough that you may be able to save enough
| to buy your life back if you're careful and have time on
| your side.
| pintxo wrote:
| Be sure to price in general life risks like accidents,
| cancer, stress induced hearth attacks etc. The problem
| with this approach is, that a non zero number of people
| will not live long enough to buy their life back.
| notJim wrote:
| Very fair point, important to try to enjoy every stage of
| the journey.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Yes and what this means is that Google, and others, are
| hiring those most willing to do _anything_ for money.
|
| That always works out well.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _Same as there is no amount of money you could give me
| to end my life, a position which I assume is shared by a
| vast majority of humans._
|
| Pretty sure a lot of older parents would take a deal with
| lethal injection + $1M for their kids to inherit.
| throwaway9191aa wrote:
| I'll just +1 this as a datapoint.
|
| I am not looking externally until I'm sure I'm done at
| AWS. I've done 80+ interviews here, and I'm consistently
| amazed by what drives people to say "The candidate wasn't
| up to the coding bar". As far as I can tell, you are
| almost never up to the coding bar. I think we interview
| so many people just to remind ourselves that if we leave,
| we aren't getting back in.
|
| Just to head off the "So why don't I argue for change?"
| questions, I'd rather work on self improvement than fight
| tooth and nail to make the hiring process a little bit
| better. I'll let somebody else add that to their promo
| doc.
| pm90 wrote:
| You don't need to fight tooth and nail for change.
| Expressing dissent or disagreement with the status quo is
| a good start.
| pinewurst wrote:
| At Amazon, that's considered volunteering for a PIP.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I remember seeing a comment about Amazon once claiming in
| order to be seriously considered for a role, you have to
| be better than 50% of the existing team you'd be coming
| onto.
| themulticaster wrote:
| To be fair, that would mean that your ability level is
| the median ability of the team you'd be joining, which
| doesn't sound all that far-fetched to me. If the skill
| level of new hires is always close to the median, the
| overall team ability should stay the same in the long
| run. This line of thought obviously depends on the
| assumption that you can measure the exact ability using
| just a single quantity.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Exactly. Who wants to hire somebody who's dumber than
| half their teammates? That's a recipe for failure.
| Assuming inaccurate measurement, you'll actually have
| some below median, so you need to bias upward or else
| you'll just end up with a bunch of mediocre eng.
| treis wrote:
| The logical end to that is that you wouldn't hire half
| your employees again. When put that way it's pretty
| clearly an unreasonable standard.
| crmrc114 wrote:
| Yep, and that point has been brought up ad-nauseum
| internally. Also Jeff did comment how he would probably
| not be hired by his own company. I personally saw the
| business pushing the scales to the point of 'just get
| them in the door, oh my god we are growing too fast and
| don't have time for your bickering'. Depending on the
| business unit and how hungry the hiring manager is that
| issue of raises the bar can just be a hand wave and 'get
| em` in'. For some technical positions you have a 'bar
| raiser' interview you who is often an IC who was promoted
| to Management ranks and has to serve penance by being the
| one to conduct countless BR interviews. 99% of them were
| pretty chill on the Clark/Fufillment side of the
| business. Cant speak to the Jassy/AWS side of the house.
| Their concept of BR may be more concrete. We rarely kept
| people out just because they did not 'raise the bar'
| since that is subjective as hell and personally I like
| qualified metrics.
|
| I never interviewed for the AWS side of the house since I
| knew I wanted free time, and a life.
| kergonath wrote:
| That's true if we assume that ability does not change
| with time. But if you have a spectrum of experience in
| the team, it might be unrealistic to expect rookies to
| match the median.
| crmrc114 wrote:
| Inside that is called raising the bar. Often times I
| would personally aim to find people who were 50% better
| than the best person I knew in that role. Often times I
| would still incline on people during their POD. I would
| just strongly incline with 'raises the bar' on folks who
| met that rare exception. Honestly I was on the Dave Clark
| side of the business and we were much more chill about
| things vs the Jassy/AWS cult. Those dudes might as well
| be from the moon. So take my statement with a grain of
| salt. We worked for the same company... but we also
| didn't, Amazon is just that big.
|
| I had plenty of times where an entire hiring pod would
| incline on a candidate because they had the soft skills
| we were looking for in that role and we knew we could
| sharpen their technical skillset in house. You don't have
| to be a rocket scientist to work at a FAANG... you just
| have to be interviewed by a team that is hungry and likes
| you.
| nobleach wrote:
| That culture is so foreign to me. Each place I've left in
| the past 10 years, I'm pretty sure I could go back. I
| know enough folks or at least have been told by C-Suite
| that "the door is always open, just give me a call". I
| went through a few rounds of Amazon interviews in 2020...
| I don't think I'd ever way to experience that again.
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| I interviewed 100s of candidates and there was this one guy
| that I would pair up with and he never said yes. I'll never
| forget one candidate absolutely nailed it and his retort
| was "no, she clearly memorized the answers" so yeah, don't
| take it personally.
| bb88 wrote:
| What's funny is that I specifically remember a conference
| where some library that a google employee wrote was
| terrible. The one google developer talking about it,
| disavowed any responsibility of it.
|
| Whatever metrics that google is using in their interviews
| have probably become worthless in the past decade as people
| game the system.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Just check the Android code, specially the early versions
| looked like "C dev (not even C++) tries to create a Java
| based framework".
|
| And the NDK clearly is anything but modern C or C++.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Google is famous for having a C++ implementation that
| eschews a lot of what makes C++ powerful.
|
| I've heard it referred to as "C+-".
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yes and apparently clang is now suffering from Google not
| caring about latest C++ compliance.
|
| Apple mostly cares about LLVM based tooling in the
| context of Objective-C and Swift, Metal is C++14 dialect,
| and IO/Driver Kit require only a subset similar in goals
| to Embedded C++, so that leaves the remaing of the clang
| community to actually provide the efforts for ISO C++20
| compliancy.
|
| https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/compiler_support/20
| logicchains wrote:
| Yep. If Clang doesn't have C++20 support by the time
| C++23 is out, I'm pretty sure my workplace at least will
| completely drop Clang and build solely with GCC. A win
| for open source, if nothing else.
| kergonath wrote:
| That's fine. Having 2 (free software) tool sets competing
| on features is a good thing. Both need to stay relevant.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Is clang not also open source?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Clang has a permissive license, GCC is (of course) GPL.
|
| Which one is best for open source is debatable.
|
| Permissive licenses make it easier for companies to make
| proprietary software, or even a closed source version of
| the original project.
|
| Copyleft licenses (like GPL) are intended to promote
| free/open source software but they can be a legal
| headache, which can make users favor proprietary
| solutions.
|
| On HN, I think that people tend to prefer permissive
| licenses (but complain when large companies "steal" their
| work, go figure...).
| Macha wrote:
| Go is also an outgrowth of the Google idea that was first
| expressed in their style guide of basically "engineers
| are too dumb for harder features, let's ban them in the
| style guide (for C++) or just not have them (for Go)"
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| But I thought that Google engineers were all genius-
| level.
|
| Aren't they the company that pretty much requires an Ivy-
| League sheepskin to be a janitor?
| rualca wrote:
| It's my understanding that there is a colossal gap
| between the hiring bar imposed by recruiters and the
| companies' HR department and what's actually the
| company's engineering culture and practice.
|
| My pet theory is that HR minions feel compelled to
| portray their role in the process as something that adds
| a lot of value and outputs candidates which meet a high
| hiring bar, even though in practice they just repeat
| meaningless rituals which only have a cursory
| relationship with aptitude and the engineering dept's
| needs.
| unishark wrote:
| Well there might be a defense of that one.
|
| "Data-oriented programming" (to distinguish from object-
| oriented) is largely C-style C++ that is written for
| performance rather than
| reusablility/abstractness/whatever. In the embedded
| programming world where performance is paramount, a lot
| of people have low opinions of many C++ features. One
| could also never completely trust compilers to implement
| everything correctly.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Google usually has a
| good reason for what they do (not everyone is always
| happy with the reason, but Google can always explain why
| they do stuff).
|
| I come from an embedded background, and understand that.
| amalcon wrote:
| This one is extra weird to me because I've written a
| _lot_ of C++. I don 't think I've ever committed a bug
| related to dynamic dispatch, templates, or some other
| "fancy" features. Not that I haven't committed bugs, but
| they're mostly either language agnostic logic issues or
| things one could have written just as easily in C.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| How much of the early Android code was made by Google?
| Android existed for two years as an independent company
| before Google bought it.
| laurent92 wrote:
| In my startup I interviewed a 48 years old senior Java
| programmer with excellent resume, who took 1hr to write a
| String.contains(), it only worked for the requested 4
| letters, didn't work if a letter was repeated twice, and
| didn't work with Chinese characters. At least it had the
| JUnit. I asked an employee to do it too and he made his
| code pass the JUnit in 6 minutes.
|
| The candidate hated the interview, claiming it was
| discouraging. Coding is erratic, talent is strange, it
| really is a craft and we still don't know how to reliably
| raise someone to competency.
| mattkrause wrote:
| But which is more likely?
|
| 1. The candidate was a complete and utter fraud and their
| previous (and apparently well-regarded) employers were
| too stupid or negligent to notice this, wasting literally
| millions of dollars (48-21 * $100,000+).
|
| 2. Something about the interview failed to let this
| person demonstrate the skills that had kept them employed
| for two decades. Maybe their mind went blank under
| pressure, or at the end of a long day. Maybe they got
| hung up on something trivial (that a quick search---or
| nudge from the interviewer---would have resolved), or the
| question was unclear.
| jnwatson wrote:
| The second is certainly more likely, but I'd wager the
| likelihood of the first is greater than 10%. I've
| encountered my share.
|
| There are _so many "developers"_ just faking it, I can
| certainly understand using a test that would reject 90%
| of the good candidates if it could reject 99% of the bad
| ones.
| [deleted]
| stupendoustrace wrote:
| I had number two happen on an interview recently and I am
| incredibly happy the interviewer didn't hold it against
| me. I forgot an otherwise simple word/term, but the
| pressure of the interview just made my mind go completely
| blank. I think everyone has a tendency sometimes to
| forget what it's like to be on the other side, and will
| hammer on small mistakes, or not consider all the
| factors.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Me too!
|
| I'm sure I'm on somone's list of incompetent bozos for an
| interview that went like this: "Please, describe _Python_
| programming language. " That's it. I had no idea what I
| was supposed to be doing, and the two fellows
| interviewing me would not elaborate.
|
| I talked about what I had done with Python. Stony stares.
| Do I talked about the nature of Python itself
| (interpreted, multi-paradigm, lexical/LEGB scope, the
| GIL). Stony stares. I wrote some trivial programs on the
| board. Stony stares. Had I brought an actual snake, I
| might have tried to charm it.
|
| At the end, the CEO told me they weren't overwhelmingly
| sold on me, but would think about it. Never heard from
| them again.
| handrous wrote:
| I've repeatedly had employers _very_ happy with my
| abilities & results, and am also entirely sure I've, on
| a few occasions, convinced interviewers I'm entirely
| unable to write code and am one of these frauds
| everyone's sure exist and that they need these coding
| tests to "catch".
| lumost wrote:
| To add to this, I've found engineers more likely to hang
| on time series and string manipulation problems. Likely
| due to a combination of not having to code low level
| functions in these areas, as well as infrequently
| encountering the problem.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Sounds like the solution then would be to give
| interviewers all of the systems and support they would
| normally have access to on the job and see how well they
| adapt to a conventional task or an issue that was
| recently solved by someone in a similar position on your
| company, and have their result evaluated by someone
| involved with the implementation or fix.
|
| That would tell you if their workflow would fit your
| company much more than knowing how to run a coding
| challenge would.
| lumost wrote:
| On the other hand, tools tend to be fast to teach and
| pick up relative to fundamentals. Most companies have
| rough around the edges tooling that a candidate either
| wouldn't know about or need a couple weeks to get
| productive in.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Yes, strings are hard and times/dates have a ridiculous
| number of edge cases, and sometimes very poor language
| support. This works both ways though; if the problem is
| easy enough (calculate average cycle time) it can give
| you lots of edge cases to discuss and really show how
| someone problem solves, which is really the point of a
| programming interview. If someone even mentioned non-
| english language support that would be enough for me,
| forget about implementing it.
| lumost wrote:
| I personally dislike giving questions with too many
| rabbit holes. My observation on a few questions is that
| it's a 50/50 shot if the candidate who freezes on a
| question recognized more nuances than the candidate who
| didn't which means I'm not getting any data.
|
| Fizz buzz was a great question in that it had pretty much
| a Boolean success criteria.
| mattkrause wrote:
| The interviewer needs to be good/prepared to make it
| work.
|
| If the interviewer only says "Write String.contains that
| passes these test cases" goes back to playing with their
| phone, several things may happen. One person will take
| that absolutely literally ("It's a test; better do as I'm
| told"), and you'll dismiss that apparent garbage _or_
| move onto the "real" assessment where they're hoping to
| shine.
|
| Another will get bogged down in something the interviewer
| regards as a distraction, and "waste" a bunch of time on
| something the interviewer regards as a distraction. "He
| handled unicode, but not substring matching (KMP or
| Booyer-Moore) or vice versa." _Maybe_ someone will
| goldilocks it and hit the right (not-explicitly-
| specified) balance of (also unspecified) features and
| time, but...
|
| If you structure it as "Please, do the dumbest possible
| thing and we'll iterate"--and don't hold that initial
| pass against them--I could see it working well.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| I would say 1 is possible enough that it's worth checking
| for. Remember that insanely too hard programming detail
| is a reaction against a situation where 99% of candidates
| couldn't program at all.[1]
|
| [1] https://wiki.c2.com/?FizzBuzzTest
| padthai wrote:
| I interview for my company. 80% of the DS applicants
| (some of them with SWE background) that apply for our
| senior positions fail with FizzBuzz or some riddle of
| similar difficulty. This is already pre-filtering for
| seniors from established companies. We do not pay bad for
| the market. They also do equally bad with other FizzBuzz-
| level tests in other areas that they claim to have worked
| in.
|
| It is still a very useful test.
| geebee wrote:
| Thanks for posting. I'm always very interested in hearing
| form people who mention how ostensibly senior people fail
| fizz buzz.
|
| My question is: what happens after people pass fizz buzz?
| Failing fizz buzz is how you filter people out, but it's
| unlikely that coding up fizz buzz passes the technical
| screen. What kind of questions do you use to establish
| this, once you're past fizz buzz?
|
| I've failed far more tech screenings than I've passed. I
| could easily do fizz buzz, and when I've prepped for an
| interview, I could some tree and set permutation stuff.
| But the questions get so much more difficult than this.
| Since difficulty varies, an example of a difficult
| question for me is "find all matching subtrees in a
| binary tree" (at the whiteboard, in 45 minutes). When I
| got feedback about the no-hire, the explanation was that
| I had a good grasp of algorithms and made some progress,
| I didn't solve enough of the problem in code (tight
| pseudocode would have been ok) in time allotted (again,
| this was ~45 min at the whiteboard, one in a series of 5
| one-hour technical exam style interviews during a day of
| interviewing).
|
| I can't claim to be a great coder. I have understood how
| to code merge sort and quick sort and more complicated
| tree structures, and I could do them again if I studied
| and loaded it all back into short term working memory,
| but I'm content to know how the algorithms work generally
| and get back into the details when I need... but when
| anyone mentioned "Fizz buzz", I do insist on stating that
| my impression, based on quite a few interviews, is that
| fizz buzz isn't what is screening out software engineers.
| Lots and lots of people who can write fizz buzz (and
| build and print a binary tree pre order and post order,
| and do dfs and bfs, and solve problems with them) are
| still frequently screened out.
|
| I'm at the point where I just won't do tech interviews
| anymore (or take home tests). I won't study for exams or
| do mini capstone projects for an interview that may or
| may not work out. I would do these things for a degree or
| licensing exam, but not for a job interviews. It's just
| too much of a time sink.
|
| I accept that this may cost me good opportunities (in
| fact, it has), though of course I don't know if the
| interview would have gone anywhere, other than costing me
| another long prep session with "cracking the coding
| interview".
|
| I'll finish the way I usually do, by 1) acknowledging
| that you are free to interview how you like, and that
| nobody owes me a job, and 2) mentioning that many
| companies complain incessantly about hiring difficulties
| without realizing that their own interview processes may
| be filtering out talented people and that nobody owes
| them an employee either.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| This is exactly my experience too. Sometimes it's
| incredible just how little applicants understand about
| how to develop software. I've even interviewed people
| where they were allowed to have a web browser and IDE
| while coding a solution, and they still struggled.
|
| Personally I am a much bigger fan of using FizzBuzz as a
| gate than an algorithm question. I think algorithm
| questions optimize for the kind of developer who doesn't
| mind memorizing algorithms to get a job, which might be a
| useful skill, but you can test that same skill of
| memorization using FizzBuzz, and then you don't end up
| also filtering out people who can code but don't care
| about memorizing algorithms.
|
| In any case, I always think it's worth using their
| solution as a jumping-off point to ask other, more
| language-specific questions. Things like: how would you
| change this if it was intended for use in a FizzBuzz
| library, how would you annotate this if you needed it to
| be injected as a Spring dependency, why did you use a for
| loop instead of a Java 8 stream (or vice versa), what are
| the implications of declaring this thing as final or
| static, can you write a unit test for this, and so on.
| That's when you can get past the point of memorization
| into figuring out if they actually understand what they
| typed, which is helpful to ascertain their level.
| geebee wrote:
| "how would you annotate this if you needed it to be
| injected as a Spring dependency"
|
| well, I mean, you get to ask what you like... but this is
| how you determine if someone understands what they've
| typed on a conceptual level?
| alisonatwork wrote:
| No, it's just an opening to discussion. For example,
| depending on the experience of the person, it might lead
| to a conversation about dependency injection in general,
| the transition from Spring-specific to JSR-330 notation,
| maybe they can give some examples of where Spring-
| specific annotations are still useful, they could talk
| about constructor over field injection, or when it might
| be better to use a static/pure function instead of a
| bean, all kinds of stuff.
|
| For me there are basically two questions to answer when I
| am interviewing someone. The first is if they have any
| real programming ability at all, which hopefully FizzBuzz
| should answer. (Many people do not pass that threshold.)
| After that I'm looking to figure out where they could fit
| into the team, or the company. That means seeing if they
| are already familiar with the frameworks they will be
| working with in the position (usually, but not always the
| case for junior applicants who have held at least one job
| before), but then also if they can speak critically about
| some of concepts used in those frameworks, and perhaps
| compare different approaches that have been taken to
| solving similar problems over the years (if they are more
| senior).
|
| It's not a wrong answer if they don't know the framework
| or the concepts behind it at all, since they might be
| switching specializations, but that's important to know
| at the interview stage because they might be better
| suited for a different role than someone who is deep in
| the framework and more likely to be able to hit the
| ground running.
| mattkrause wrote:
| What proportion of your colleagues do you think are
| _wildly_ incompetent? Not just a bit sluggish, subpar, or
| sloppy, but not even remotely able to do something
| resembling their job description.
|
| There are certainly a few. The job market, being a
| combination of people who want new jobs and those that
| can't keep their old ones, is undoubtedly enriched for
| them.
|
| Even so, it seems unlikely to me that there are
| _anywhere_ near as many as most people say. You certainly
| don't have to hire someone who flubs your interview, but
| you also don't have to assume they are frauds.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| I should clarify I lifted the 99% stat from the linked
| wiki. I agree it seems high.
|
| I'll estimate zero to 10% wildly incompetent. Many of the
| folks who aren't able to program find other ways to be
| useful: Testing, requirements, prod support, sys admin,
| config. It's not even clear they couldn't program, but
| maybe came to prefer the other work at some point.
|
| What's your _wildly incompetent_ estimate?
| mattkrause wrote:
| A few percent maybe, but not as high as 10 percent. It's
| also not just people who "can't" do it, but also those
| that aren't motivated or cooperative (for whatever
| reason).
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The problem is the percentage of wildly incompetent
| applying for your job is a lot higher than the percentage
| of wildly incompetent overall.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| Didn't mattkrause acknowledge as much in his comment?
|
| > The job market, ..., is undoubtedly enriched for them.
| dnautics wrote:
| absolutely. The incentives to train for the job search
| and then apply (and succeed at) a job with zero relevant
| competency, are quite high. And there are...
| geographies... which have a deserved reputation of being
| mills for those sorts of individuals, likely because the
| economic incentive is even stronger than the median,
| which I suspect is quite annoying for actually competent
| people that come from those geographies.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| The problem is that it only takes one or two wildly
| incompetent people to completely disrupt the quality of
| the software. These are the kinds of developers who
| actively create bugs, usually by building (or
| copy/pasting) solutions that only work by accident, or
| who decrease the velocity of everyone around them by
| generating reams of overcomplicated and brittle code that
| is hard to test, hard to review and hard to maintain. It
| costs a lot of management time too, trying to find a way
| to get them to improve, or to build a solid case for
| letting them go.
|
| I think the reason why every developer tends to have a
| story about these sorts of incompetent colleagues is not
| necessarily because 50% of their colleages are
| incompetent, but because even if just 2% (one person in
| the department) or 5% (one person in your larger project
| team) is incompetent, that can be enough to cause a
| seriously negative impact.
| dnautics wrote:
| > What proportion of your colleagues do you think are
| wildly incompetent
|
| 30%, minimum. I was hired alongside a guy with a
| fantastic resume. He pushed zero lines of usable code in
| 4 months. When he left I purged about 20 files which were
| tests that were just completely commented out (but I
| guess those count for LOC according to github's crude
| measure). I would say that not only was he incompetent,
| he was worth negative (thankfully, nothing critical) -
| Maybe in order to cover his tracks? he had moved certain
| classes of tagged tests (e.g. skip, broken) to "ignore"
| status instead of 'yellow star'/red dot, I now, months
| after his departure, have a pr reverting those changes
| months after because I didn't notice he had done that.
| Thankfully it had not covered up any major defect in our
| codebase (someone could have left a corner case test as
| "broken" with the intent to fix it later and wound up
| forgetting to and sending it to prod).
|
| But hey. Programming isn't that bad. In the physical
| sciences it was 60-70%.
| laurent92 wrote:
| I'm the interviewer, I'm still wondering what happened.
|
| This was the introductory question before launching 200
| threads and asking him to solve the
| deadlocks/inefficiencies, which was the real question
| supposed to let him show off his skills in front of my
| employees, specifically crafted for him because I wanted
| to persuade my employees he was an excellent hire. So he
| had a taylored chance to show off his skills but failed
| at the introductory question.
|
| But on the other hand, how can you be asked "Here's a
| substring, return true or false if it contains the
| substring, this is the introduction of 5 questions so
| don't sweat it" and not just write two nested loops and
| an if? I'd pass on UTF8 problems, but when you've been
| working with Java for CRUD apps, you still should have
| your UTF8 correct. This is how you end up with passwords
| that must be ASCII because the programmer is bad.
| mattkrause wrote:
| I've seen an actual Nobel Prize winner get stuck
| describing their research.
|
| People's brains just occasionally lock up.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Unfortunately, both are fairly likely.
| BossingAround wrote:
| What was the goal of the question? Why did you want the
| person to implement a contains method? Did you really
| want to verify they understood String implementation in
| Java?
|
| And if the candidate was able to do this in 6 minutes,
| what would you have thought? "Great, let's hire"?
|
| In my humble opinion, the question is a waste of time
| either way. You'll get much further trying to probe what
| the candidate does know rather than randomly creating an
| exercise that you think they "should be able to do if
| woken up in the middle of the night". People forget how
| stressful interviews are and how easy it is to assume
| shared context.
|
| The fact that your employee was able to do the test might
| be indicative of the fact that you share context with the
| employee that you did not share with the candidate, thus
| confirming your bias.
| Lio wrote:
| > The fact that your employee was able to do the test
| might be indicative of the fact that you share context
| with the employee that you did not share with the
| candidate, thus confirming your bias.
|
| This! When giving interviews last I really worried if the
| questions I asked where just indicative of my own
| Dunning-Kruger effect.
|
| i.e. Do I only ask questions I already know the answer to
| and not questions I don't know the answer to?
|
| If I do then am I just filtering for people with the same
| background and knowledge and missing out on people with
| other skills I don't know, because they're in my blind
| spot, I need yet?
| magnetic wrote:
| > i.e. Do I only ask questions I already know the answer
| to and not questions I don't know the answer to?
|
| I've been advocating for a "coding interview" where both
| the interviewer _and_ interviewee draw some random
| question from leetcode or other problem bank, and try to
| work at it together.
|
| This would show collaboration skills, and you can tell
| pretty easily how helpful the candidate is with his/her
| contributions, and whether you find there is an impedance
| mismatch somewhere.
|
| It probably also maps more closely to the kinds of
| interactions you'd have after the person's been hired.
|
| I think it would also help calibrate: if you can't figure
| it out, is it fair to expect the candidate to figure it
| out? Maybe it's just a hard problem!
| mattkrause wrote:
| Beating up on this example some more:
|
| Multi-lingual support seems _really_ _really_ hard,
| especially in six minutes. I would think most people
| would need to look at technical (i.e., unicode) and
| linguistic references to get it right.
|
| Should does the ligature f l match itself, or the ASCII
| constituents 'f' and 'l'? How about combining vs. pre-
| composed characters? Some Chinese characters show up in
| other languages (Japanese, Korean) and are sometimes
| split between Hong Kong/Taiwan/Mainland language tags
| too. In fact, there's a mess of work devoted to this
| ("Unihan"
| https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode13.0.0/ch18.pdf).
| Having figured out what you _can_ do, you then need to
| decide what you ought to do. Not being a Chinese-speaker,
| I have no idea which options would seem natural....
|
| In fact, having written this all out, there's no way
| someone "solved" it from scratch in six minutes. It would
| be a great discussion question though....
| laurent92 wrote:
| for (int i = 0 to text.length() - substring.length()) {
| boolean found = true; for (int j = 0 to
| substring.length()) { if (text.charAt(i) !=
| substring.charAt(j)) { found = false;
| break; } if (found) return true;
| }
|
| We're not taking rocket science here. This code already
| properly handles surrogates and Chinese characters. The
| question about characters that can be written in two
| different ways should only be raised as a second level,
| once the first implementation is done.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Parent here.
|
| > What was the goal of the question?
|
| This is the introductory question before solving
| concurrency problems, because it's much easier to
| understand what a thread does when you've coded the body
| yourself.
|
| > Why did you want the person to implement a contains
| method?
|
| The job is CRUD + integrating with Confluence + parsing
| search queries from the user, so finding "<XML" in a page
| and answering "Yes! This is totally xml, I'm positive!"
| is a gross simplification of realistic tasks in the real
| job (and in fact in most webapps), with characters
| instead of XML or JSON.
|
| I have the feeling that you think this question is
| entirely abstract, but I both tailored the exercise
| because he touted being good at improving app performance
| on his resume (including using JProfiler) and I took care
| of using a realistic on-the-job example.
|
| > Did you really want to verify they understood String
| implementation in Java?
|
| Well, what consumer product _can_ you work on if you trip
| into all UTF-8 traps? Telling customers "Just write
| English because we can't be bothered to learn the easy
| thing in Java that handles UTF-8 properly" is... is
| acceptable unless he also fails the fuzzbizz test. And
| once UTF8 is mastered, it's good for life! I wouldn't
| mind teaching him if he didn't fail the rest, but as a
| senior you should really know the difference between
| .getBytes() and .codePointAt(i).
|
| > If the candidate was able to do it in 6 minutes, what
| would you have thought? "Great, let's hire"?
|
| The 4 other questions were classic gross concurrency
| errors, tailored because he touted it in his resume and I
| wanted him to shine. A senior should be able to guess
| them blindfolded as soon as I tell them "There are
| concurrency problems", without even looking at the code
| ;) Volatile, atomic, ArrayList non-synchronized, 200
| threads for a connection pool of 10, a DB accepting 7 cnx
| (note the prime numbers make it easy to spot which
| multiple is causing the issue), and strings of 10MB each
| with Xmx=100m, if he finds any 3 of the 12 problems, and
| 2 more with help, I'd hire him. If he ditched the code
| and postes tasks into an ExecutorService (as they teach
| in the Java certification level 1), I'd hire immediately.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I don't do interviews in my current job (mostly because
| the pandemic really did a number on hiring) but in my
| previous job the only coding question I asked was what I
| thought was a fairly simple string problem. They could
| assume ascii, use any language they wanted, and make any
| other assumptions to simplify the problem.
|
| My then-co-workers liked to ask harder algorithmic
| questions but I wanted to give the candidates a little
| bit of a break with something easier.
|
| It didn't always work, but at least I tried.
| walshemj wrote:
| Why would you not use the language built-ins?
|
| I am not a Java programmer but it took me 30 seconds to
| find the contains() method.
| eloisius wrote:
| Did they have to write it in a google doc with no ability
| to compile and run their code?
| notJim wrote:
| Curious about the age of the person who supposedly wrote
| it in 6 minutes. If you're fresh out of school,
| "String.contains" may be top of mind, but the vast
| majority of people never write that function in practice,
| so it's easy to not think about.
| wheelinsupial wrote:
| What was the problem statement you gave to the candidate?
|
| What were you trying to tease out from the problem
| statement?
| OOPMan wrote:
| My profile on LinkedIn for the longest time stated "No PHP
| jobs please" as a way to weed out recruiters that would
| send me job offers for PHP roles on the basis that I once
| did some PHP.
|
| I've updated the profile to include "No FAANG companies"
| because I'm pretty sure I would not be a good fit for them
| but that didn't stop their recruiters from pestering me.
| __app_dev__ wrote:
| Good one, I get contacted by Amazon several times a week
| on LinkedIn to apply.
|
| For my LinkedIn I listed minimum requirements and it
| saves me 100+ inquiries per week but I still get a ton of
| irrelevant jobs.
| mring33621 wrote:
| Ahh, reverse psychology!
| ownagefool wrote:
| I got an offer for Production Engineering tail end of last
| year and the interviews were mostly reasonble but the
| process was mega long.
|
| I took a different offer in the end, but the recruiters
| reach out every few months for a chat.
| Twirrim wrote:
| 100%, speaking as someone who's been both sides of the
| equation in FAANG hiring.
|
| Part of the problem is the sheer scale of hiring, but I
| think most of the problem comes down to the lack of
| feedback or evaluation mechanisms on the interviewing side.
|
| They train you up, half a days worth, training tells you
| not to be an arsehole, not to ask stupid questions, not to
| have unreasonable demands of candidates, not to be biased.
| They don't train you in valuable skills like active
| listening.
|
| Next thing you know, you've done training, and you're
| interviewing candidates every week or two (or more often),
| and there is _zero_ feedback mechanism. No one evaluates
| your interview questions, no one asks candidates to provide
| feedback on the interviewers. No one looks to see if you
| 've got unreasonable expectations as an interviewer, or
| have your expectations set too low.
|
| You do have to do a post-interview group discussion with
| the other interviewers to make a yay/nay decision, but it's
| super easy to present what you did/asked in a positive
| light.
|
| The whole system is designed around the interviewer being
| right and infallible. Is it any wonder the process is so
| completely and utterly broken?
|
| edit: > or have your expectations set too low
|
| This is where I bias towards in worrying, imposter syndrome
| and all that jazz. I've made a conscious choice to not
| raise that bar higher. I think the questions I ask are
| good, I think they're set up well enough to encourage
| candidates to go as deep as they feel comfortable with. I
| try to design them with no one true answer but have a few
| in mind so I can go where the candidate goes.
| tschwimmer wrote:
| I also did interviewing at a FAANG and this was not my
| experience.
|
| 1. We trained 4-5 times on each type of question. The
| first few were shadows, and then we did reverse shadows
| where someone watched us give the interview and gave
| feedback later. In one category I asked for and was
| allowed to reverse shadow an extra 1-2 interviews.
|
| 2. There was auditing. In debriefs where you discussed
| the candidate and reviewed notes, the debrief lead was
| supposed to closely examine what questions you asked and
| how you conducted the interview, with the explicit goal
| of making sure that the interview was conducted within
| spec and your recommendation made sense given
| performance. Shortly after I was certified to do
| interviews, a debrief leader (correctly) identified a
| major issue in an interview that I had conducted. That
| candidate was given another interview in the same
| category. Although I didn't face any official sanctions,
| it was definitely an embarrassing experience and made me
| handle future interviews more thoughtfully.
|
| Overall, I was fairly comfortable with the rigor of the
| process that I saw. I'm certainly not saying the process
| is perfect but my experience did not align with yours.
| notJim wrote:
| > No one evaluates your interview questions
|
| Are you saying each interviewer just makes up their own
| questions?! That's ludicrous if so. Where I work, we have
| a standardized pool, with standardized evaluation
| criteria.
| Twirrim wrote:
| Everyone makes up their own. I can't for the life of me
| fathom how this doesn't subject them to all sorts of
| discrimination etc. claims (one of the reasons lots of
| companies favour standardised questions).
|
| Obviously the drawback for FAANG is that standardised
| questions would rather rapidly leak. Very quickly you'll
| just end up with candidates that know how to answer your
| questions.
|
| Where I work now, it's a mix of pool questions ("soft"
| skills) and interviewer-made questions (technical
| skills), but it's not a hard and fast rule to use the
| pool questions. I rarely use the precise wording for the
| pool questions, and instead adapt them to match the
| conversation with the candidate.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| I've mentioned before but at my previous FAANG gig everyone
| only looked at the resumes they were assigned to interview
| like 15 minutes before the interview time was scheduled
| down the hall / building somewhere.
|
| No one knew who they were interviewing or what was on the
| resume until they glanced at it while walking to the
| interview room. I suspect all interviews and the process
| are just made up as folks go along, and half the time you
| get a gig or not mostly based on if one of the people you
| talk to is in a good mood or not.
| rcthompson wrote:
| I think there's probably one or more "real" filtering steps
| to start with, but after those steps there's still way more
| qualified candidates than positions to fill, and at that
| point the only possible solution is to choose randomly. But
| that's not "satisfying" so instead they just keep
| interviewing and finding reasons to reject people (all
| completely arbitrary, since everyone is already qualified)
| until they reach the target number, at which point all
| remaining candidates get offers. Which effectively results
| in wasting a bunch of everyone's time and then choosing
| randomly anyway.
|
| (This is a massive oversimplification, of course, but you
| get the idea.)
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It may be a random walk but I think the goal is to convince
| whoever gets hired that they're special and talented and
| elite members of their discipline.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Oh you mean a real rockstar? a code ninja?
| cptaj wrote:
| You think they're doing this to make you feel... good?
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| Well they do pay a bit more than 15 dollars an hour. Hard
| to not feel good about that.
| handrous wrote:
| Harsh hazing and initiation rituals are a pretty
| effective way to build team "spirit" and make people
| believe the group they've joined is special, and being a
| part of it makes them special or better than non-members.
| It may or may not be part of why FAANG interviews the way
| they do, but it is likely part of the outcome.
| AJRF wrote:
| Geohotz had a good rant about this once - the kind of
| people who need to cram leetcodes and memorize algorithms
| are not the kinds of people who Google wants to pass these
| interviews.
|
| Makes a lot of sense, you could solve all these questions
| without knowing specific algorithms as long as you are good
| at problem solving - which is, I assume, the intent of the
| process.
|
| Obviously it doesn't always work like that.
| sdevonoes wrote:
| > the kind of people who need to cram leetcodes and
| memorize algorithms are not the kinds of people who
| Google wants to pass these interviews.
|
| I thought it was exactly those who Google wants to pass.
| Anecdote: ex-colleague of mine who is not specially
| bright studied 3 months how to "crack the coding
| interview" and got a job at Google. His knowledge about
| algorithms and data structures was like mine: I know what
| a tree is, I know there exists operations one can perform
| on them and some of them are more performant/efficient
| than others... but I would need to Google how to "reverse
| a binary tree" if I had to do it in less than 1h.
| pinewurst wrote:
| I read an article recently about Google's fairly awful
| interactions with HBCUs (historically Black colleges and
| universities). One thing that caught my eye was Google's
| disapproval of seemingly standard CS programs in favor of
| a syllabus for cramming algorithms into student heads.
| That was one of their excuses for hiring differentials.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| I'm trying to think of how many tree structures I've
| encountered in all the projects I've ever programmed on,
| in my entire career. Maybe one or two?
| AJRF wrote:
| You probably aren't the demographic Google want/needs to
| hire by the sound of it.
| Macha wrote:
| A perusal of Google's recent software track record would
| indicate that optimum efficiency aided by a wide
| knowledge of a library of algorithms and manual
| implementation of the same is either not what Google
| actually cares about, or if it was what they think they
| care about, not effectively delivered by the steps they
| take to achieve it.
| Macha wrote:
| A tree for performance? I've used a rope once or twice.
|
| Plenty of times where I've used trees because they're the
| logical representation of the problem (ever had a field
| called "children" in your code? HN comments are a tree.
| Etc.)
| missingrib wrote:
| >ex-colleague of mine who is not specially bright studied
| 3 months how to "crack the coding interview" and got a
| job at Google.
|
| Sounds bright to me.
| tchalla wrote:
| > Geohotz had a good rant about this once - the kind of
| people who need to cram leetcodes and memorize algorithms
| are not the kinds of people who Google wants to pass
| these interviews.
|
| And yet, they routinely do pass these interviews.
| [deleted]
| keyb0ardninja wrote:
| > Makes a lot of sense, you could solve all these
| questions without knowing specific algorithms as long as
| you are good at problem solving - which is, I assume, the
| intent of the process.
|
| You could solve all these questions as long as you are
| good at problem solving, *given enough time*.
|
| However, with tight time constraints and perfomance
| pressure, the only way you could solve all these
| questions is memorizing and practicing all these
| algorithms.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| There was a hilarious rant about a FAANG hiring question
| that was something like: "Write an algorithm for
| detecting if a linked list has any loops in it, in linear
| time, using a constant amount of memory."
|
| Apparently the correct answer is to use "Robert W.
| Floyd's tortoise and hare algorithm", which is trivial to
| explain and code.
|
| The catch?
|
| It took a _decade_ of computer science research between
| the original statement of the problem and Floyd
| discovering the solution.
|
| So... no worries, you have an hour, a marker, and a
| whiteboard. Your time starts: now.
| porb121 wrote:
| it took a few million years until Newton figured out
| basic mechanics. but i don't think it's unreasonable to
| ask a junior engineer some basic kinematics questions!
| mattkrause wrote:
| Subtly different, IMO.
|
| You're expecting the mechanical engineer to _recall_
| something they learned about kinematics, not derive it on
| the spot. It's a test of knowledge, rather than
| cleverness. The equations of motion are also more central
| to physics and engineering.
|
| A decent programmer should know that linked lists exist,
| their general properties, pros and cons, etc. However,
| cycle detection is not a particularly common operation,
| so not knowing Floyd's algorithm tells you very little---
| and their failure to do years of research in 45 minutes
| even less.
| neutronicus wrote:
| Yeah, I think a closer analogue would be asking something
| like "derive the conserved quantities of the
| gravitational two-body problem" and then dinging
| candidates for forgetting about the Laplace-Runge-Lenz
| vector
| RichardCA wrote:
| It would bias toward people who are comfortable doing
| basic calculus on a whiteboard.
|
| Also, it took around 13.8 billion years for Newton to do
| what he did.
| Macha wrote:
| A software engineer? Sounds totally unreasonable. A
| mechanical engineer, sure, it's going to be required
| material on their education.
|
| The tortoise and hare algorithm is not the foundational
| skill required to make software work the way an
| understanding of motion is for building structures.
| That's why it's often omitted from educational material
| yet these people are able to produce usable software
| after even something like a bootcamp (which I guarantee
| basically no bootcamps ever touched this algorithm).
|
| I'm not sure I approve of asking even more well known
| algorithms like Djikstra's algorithm or A* in a job
| interview, unless the role was something that
| specifically required that area of knowledge like
| building pathfinders for video games or robots or
| something.
| abledon wrote:
| ya its dumb, but also CTCI question 4 or something or
| linkedlist chapter
| gorbachev wrote:
| Which becomes forgotten knowledge in about 6 - 12 months
| time after you've last needed to apply it, depending on
| how often you'd have to use that information.
|
| These sort of questions have an incredible recency bias,
| and have zero relevance to engineering competence.
| josephdviviano wrote:
| I have a theory that these q's _legally_ favor recent
| grads without having any explicit requirement to do so.
| Helps them filter for young, freshly-trained students who
| they can mould into whatever they like inside of the
| FAANG-bubble.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > These sort of questions have an incredible recency bias
|
| Of course; how else do you do back-door age
| discrimination?
| ramimac wrote:
| This is exactly the point!
|
| If they actually aren't looking for people who just cram
| CTCI or leetcode, coming to this answer from first
| principles is demonstrably far more difficult than you'd
| expect achieved in an interview.
| Verdex wrote:
| I'm just imagining an engineer coming up with a novel
| solution to this problem in under the hour deadline and
| then not getting hired because it's not the "Robert W.
| Floyd's tortoise and hare" algorithm.
|
| "So we specifically asked for linear time."
|
| "Uh, yeah, I did it in log(n). That's better."
|
| "It doesn't match what's on this paper they gave me.
| Thanks for your time. We'll be in touch."
| deepGem wrote:
| It's funny you put it this way. I actually did a couple
| of hard level Leetcode problems and I thought they would
| help me immensely in my day to day life in addition to
| helping me get better at interviews.
|
| No such avail. In fact, unless these algorithms and
| problem solving methodologies are baked into your memory
| there's no way you are white boarding a Leetcode hard
| level problem in an interview.
|
| What I was impressed at an Uber interview was their
| system design interview process - which basically boiled
| down to 'how do I abstract retrying a 429 - rate limit
| exceeded.
|
| What I take is that - the interviewer is expecting a very
| specific solution even in an open ended system design
| question. It's like throwing a needle in a haystack at
| you and expect you to get to the needle in like an hour
| :).
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> which basically boiled down to 'how do I abstract
| retrying a 429 - rate limit exceeded
|
| They're probably looking for some sort of variable
| refilling leaky bucket implementation, which is funny
| because I believe this is exactly what they do
| internally. It was probably the task the interview had in
| front of them in their day-to-day and wanted you to do it
| for them!
|
| This is a fair design question for a senior role (which
| this sounds like) that promotes disccussion, but
| expecting a specific solution is really only testing
| "does this person match my preconceived ideal for what a
| <dev> is?" which is really dangerous and has very little
| value.
| pawelwentpawel wrote:
| I went through a marathon of interviews for one FAANG
| company (8 in total - coding screen, 4x in first round,
| 3x in second round). I did enough preparation to remember
| quite a couple of the Leetcode solutions by heart. I was
| pretty much a code printer if I got one of those, not
| much thinking involved anymore. I reckon it was clearly
| visible that I've seen a similar question before which is
| unavoidable if you've done enough prep.
|
| While it's probably not what an interviewer is looking
| for, having the most common solutions memorised gives you
| an advantage of time. A coding interview usually consists
| of two challenges. If you get stuck on the first one and
| take too much time to answer it, you won't have enough
| time to go through the second one.
|
| To avoid the code printer perception you can always go
| through an explanation what alternative solutions could
| be applied to the given problem, what their complexities
| would be and why the one presented is the best.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| You need to act and pretend to think it through. Then you
| seem like a brilliant programmer they want to hire rather
| than someone that recently worked on the problem.
| omgwtfbbq wrote:
| >Makes a lot of sense, you could solve all these
| questions without knowing specific algorithms as long as
| you are good at problem solving - which is, I assume, the
| intent of the process.
|
| That's just absurd. If someone with no "algorithm"
| experience who was a good problem solver had to work out
| an answer from scratch for the interview its almost
| certain they're going to find the brute force answer and
| FAANGs pretty universally want the most efficient one so
| these people would routinely fail.
|
| Its totally clear that what FAANG hiring optimizes for is
| recent CS graduates who passed tough Algorithm weed out
| courses at well known colleges in the past 18-24 months.
| They are young with no families or obligations and are
| happy to work 12 hour days at Google because they have
| hip open offices and ping pong tables.
| zealsham wrote:
| I've always said that FAANG don't hire professional
| software engineers, they only hire professional leet
| coders
| crispyambulance wrote:
| The experiences that people describe here just confirm
| something that many of us has learned a long time ago:
|
| NOBODY HAS "FIGURED OUT" HIRING !
|
| Not Google, not Apple, no one. Sure, some places (and
| individual interviewers) are better at it than others. But
| at the end of the day, hiring is a deeply subjective
| process with lots of error and uncertainty built into it's
| nature. The subjectivity is intrinsic.
|
| Places like Google can afford to be nonsensically picky and
| not suffer drastic consequences from it. They have a thick,
| never-ending stream of highly qualified candidates. At
| their volume of hiring, it doesn't matter to them if they
| screen out some folks that would have been brilliant hires,
| nor does it matter if they hire some promising but
| ultimately disappointing duds. All of that is OK.
|
| Sadly, however, it seems that small shops are trying to
| cargo-cult Google's hiring practices. That IS harmful to
| the company and the candidates, IMHO. I think folks in
| these non-FAANG companies should get trained on how to
| conduct interviews, especially if they're interviewing non-
| senior candidates. Interviewing is a skill in itself. It's
| not something that comes automatically with expertise nor
| is it something that can be left entirely to HR drones.
| heywherelogingo wrote:
| There's nothing to figure out. Relationships aren't a
| maths sum. They work out to varying degrees, and have too
| many variables and depth to predict. But the group of
| people with a reputation for having maths skills, a
| reputation for not have social skills are going to figure
| it out - what could go wrong?
| ghaff wrote:
| Or you hire people you know. Which isn't perfect, has
| it's own set of problems, and doesn't scale. But I can't
| really complain given it's how I've gotten every job
| (just a few) after grad school and my interviews have
| been mostly perfunctory.
| ghaff wrote:
| >The good news is, it's a very open network.
|
| I'll accept the statement. But I will say that hiring
| from a network is at least a very _different_ thing from
| hiring through a grueling set of often artificial
| interview hoops. It requires a potential candidate to
| have genuinely interacted at a higher than superficial
| level with a lot of people in a professional capacity.
| Which may not be harder than "leet code" but is
| certainly very different.
|
| And yes, all the big companies have referral programs but
| that's mostly just a very rough first pass as a lot of
| referrals are basically I'm connected with this candidate
| on linked in. Referral bonus please.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Here on the other side of the FAANG spectrum working with
| and for other independent contractors and various small
| (5-20ish devs) consultancies, I'd say that hiring based
| on who you know and you your peers recomend is far and
| away the primary way work is done.
|
| The good news is, it's a very open network. We have a
| highly active Meetup scene, pretty regular public
| hackathons, annual small software conferences and un-
| conferences, and coworking spaces are (well were) packed.
|
| For the most part this has worked, people new to the
| community are able to find jobs and the people hiring
| them know what hey are getting. But also like you say,
| this doesn't really scale to larger operations.
| woofie11 wrote:
| Pretend there's a Programming Quotient (PQ) which is like
| IQ.
|
| Let's say Google would like candidates with PQ>130 with
| 95% confidence. Google has an error with std. div. of 15
| points in measurement of PQ in jobs interviews. Google
| then needs to set the hiring bar at 160 PQ in order to
| get those candidates. This:
|
| - screens most qualified candidates out; but
|
| - most candidates who do screen in are qualified
|
| Statistics would suggest this leaves you with 95%
| qualified candidates. A more precise Bayesian analysis
| will show you don't end up with 95% qualified employees,
| but the basic idea works -- it's still a majority. You
| set an impossibly high bar, so that candidates hired need
| to be qualified AND lucky. You discount unlucky
| candidates, but you don't hire (many) unqualified ones.
|
| The problem, of course, is that all Googlers are
| convinced they all have a PQ>160, and are superior to
| everyone else. That's where you get the obnoxious Google
| incompetent arrogance.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| This is an excellent way of looking at this and many
| other high bar organisations - thank you !
| woofie11 wrote:
| It's helpful to explain this to recent grads.
|
| A lot of really good people are discouraged by repeated
| rejection. However, high levels of rejection of very
| qualified people are built into this (and many similar)
| systems. You have to be qualified AND get a lucky die
| roll to get in the front door. Once people stop taking
| rejection personally, they can start acting more
| rationally, and there's less emotional harm. People feel
| really bad about themselves otherwise.
|
| There are back doors with less luck involved.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| I've used Google's software. I'm not sure they're all
| that great.
|
| Someone just released a product that offloads Chrome to
| the cloud. Gmail has a very long loading screen. Hangouts
| was replaced by something like 4 incompatible apps.
| Android phones are significantly less power efficient
| than iPhones. YouTube copyright notices are trivial to
| game. Etc
| nobleach wrote:
| The number of things Google farms out to "the
| contractors" is crazy. I've talked to a few folks that
| got to work in the big beautiful facility but, the code
| they were writing was the worst, "pound it out, who cares
| how it looks or how well it performs" quality.
| woofie11 wrote:
| I think the bar I gave, PQ of 130, is about right for
| Google. Your typical Google programmer is pretty bright
| and pretty competent, but not spectacular.
|
| Most of what makes big companies succeed or fail is in
| the overall culture, organizational design, incentive
| structure, and corporate structure -- properties of a
| network of individuals rather than of those individuals
| themselves. I think most of Google's success and failings
| can be explained that way, much more so than the success
| or fault of employee quality.
|
| Organizational design is really hard to get right. A
| senior manager described it like a herd of cats. If you
| get them all mostly moving in a beneficial direction,
| you're doing okay.
|
| That's why they pay executives the big bucks. Executives
| fake understanding how to manage this stuff. Most don't,
| but they do a good job of convincing boards that they do.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| Yeah I don't know, I've been extremely disappointed with
| Abseil, protobuf, and gMock. So whatever metric they're
| using, it's not generating particularly great C++.
|
| I wouldn't care about some company's code quality but in
| these cases Google's clout (due partly from their
| maladaptive hiring practices) causes these bad libraries
| to get grandfathered into many projects that I have to
| deal with.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Except that the measurement error is very clearly fat-
| tailed, and the std.div. is clearly much larger than one
| std.div of competence of the population.
|
| Place the bar high enough and you will get more and more
| people far into the tail, and less and less people that
| actually fit your bar.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| > all Googlers are convinced they all have a PQ>160, and
| are superior to everyone else.
|
| And likewise, other employers looking to hire ex-Googlers
| are convinced of the same.
| wsc981 wrote:
| Well no-one ever got fired for buying IBM.
| russh wrote:
| They do now.
| graphenus wrote:
| I very much agree with everything you wrote, except for
| the arrogance bit. Many actually suffer from the impostor
| syndrome and just a few I could call arrogant. I'm sorry
| you had to deal with them but please don't generalize
| from just a few.
| woofie11 wrote:
| Outwards arrogance is often the manifestation of impostor
| syndrome, but I digress.
|
| Corporate arrogance isn't a property of individual
| personalities. Most Googlers are perfectly nice people.
| The Google corporate culture is a whole is rooted in a
| deep superiority complex and dripping with arrogance.
| Google believes it knows better than its users, and that
| translates to all aspects of product design. If you moved
| those same engineers to a different company, you wouldn't
| have the same behavior.
|
| I'll also mention that each organizational design has
| upsides and downsides.
|
| This culture seems to work well in Google's early markets
| (e.g. search) where users are statistics, and where most
| problems are hard algorithmic problems, and users are
| secondary. It has upsides in B2C markets like Google Docs
| or Android. It crashes-and-burns in a lot of B2B markets,
| like Workspace or GCP, where customers have a high degree
| of expertise which ought to be respected.
|
| I'll mention a lot of fintech companies, as well as elite
| universities, have a similar culture. Those are domains
| where it leads to success as well.
| nobleach wrote:
| I think you've hit the nail on the head. I've been on
| both sides of the desk so many times. When I'm hiring,
| I'm trying so hard to recognize the person is nervous,
| probably interviewing at multiple places, and they don't
| want to be asked to solve stupid algorithmic puzzles that
| will never come up in their daily work. While
| interviewing, I try to recognize that they NEED to
| ascertain whether I can actually solve problems
| performantly and quickly. They also need to quickly
| decide if I'm worth the high dollars they're about to
| offer me.
|
| Because of this, I often hire people I've already worked
| with. I'm also often hired by people who've already
| worked with me. I hate that this leads to a very
| homogeneous experience... or even what might seem like
| gatekeeping. I've just found that the best indicator of
| how a person will perform, is already being familiar with
| their work.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| we have, we don't have technical interviews anymore, just
| a 'cultural fit' discussion. coding has become so trivial
| anyone with a brain can piece together snippets from
| stackoverflow. do yourself a favor and if all you do is
| crud operations in a web app, don't even bother with tech
| rounds.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| I'm really curious what company "we" is.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| > Sure, some places (and individual interviewers) are
| better at it than others.
|
| In my, admittedly not super extensive experience, I tend
| to believe that about 1 in 10 companies actually knows
| how to run a hiring process. I'm not sure precisely what
| kind of error bounds I'd put on that, but I doubt I'm off
| by more than a factor of 2 either way.
| eplanit wrote:
| I lose respect for their engineers, if that one was typical.
|
| Egos are the worst parts of humans. A lack of sense of humor is
| a personality or character flaw.
| tech_tuna wrote:
| Inodesaurus would like to have some words with you.
| aseerdbnarng wrote:
| Good for you for having a spine. I had a similar experience
| (not google). I was expected to do prepwork and the interviewer
| couldn't be bothered to think up any questions other than
| following a script is incredibly rude and telling of that
| company's culture
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > more books to study
|
| Curious if you happen to remember what any of those books were.
| axaxs wrote:
| I have some of the correspondence but not others, for some
| reason. I went digging through my email and found these -
| this was from 2014. Most were 'Google Research' links.
|
| "Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next
| Job"
|
| Authors: John Mongan, Noah Suojanen, and Eric Giguere (Wiley
| Computer Publishing)
|
| "Programming Pearls"
|
| Author: Jon Bentley
|
| "Introduction to Algorithms"
|
| Authors: Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest & Stein
| lrem wrote:
| Now, the inode question is part of the pre-screen. That's
| normally _before_ you get put on phone with any engineers. How
| the heck did you get it in "round 3 or 4"? Was your process
| started from scratch for some reason?
|
| The question is meant to be asked by a sourcer - a contractor
| whose list of requirements does not include being answer
| themselves any of the questions they ask. Famously even if you
| know the answer pretty well, say because you were the original
| creator of the thing, but answer in a way that they can't link
| to the answer key, you still fail.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Wait, seriously? That's an absurd screening question.
| xorcist wrote:
| > Famously even if you know the answer pretty well,
|
| Everything above would make sense if the question was "what
| is an inode?". But it was "what is an inode _not_? ". That
| wording doesn't make much sense to ask anyone, no matter how
| you spin it.
| janoc wrote:
| >Famously even if you know the answer pretty well, say
| because you were the original creator of the thing, but
| answer in a way that they can't link to the answer key, you
| still fail.
|
| Which is the most ridiculous part of it. You are being
| examined and evaluated over trivia in a subject that the
| examiner likely has no idea about and where there are only
| 1-2 possible "correct" answers.
|
| That's like sending a janitor to "source" surgeons by asking
| questions to people in white coats in a competing hospital
| about appendectomy.
|
| Yet this is considered effective (and acceptable) somehow ...
| lrem wrote:
| What alternative would be more efficient and acceptable? A
| typical team of 6-8 replaces two persons per year. The
| number of resumes per opening is measured in thousands.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If you want to mechanically apply a trivia test, then at
| least make it multiple choice.
|
| You will still be choosing people through a mechanical
| procedure, what is quite stupid, but it's less stupid
| than that way.
| VonGallifrey wrote:
| > A typical team of 6-8 replaces two persons per year.
|
| How is this fact not seen as a complete failure of hiring
| practices or company/team leadership?
| bostik wrote:
| In an industry where the median tenure for a SWE is ~2.5
| years, that's "doing no worse than the industry average".
|
| Turns out upper management rates predictability quite
| high.
| lrem wrote:
| Internal mobility is strongly encouraged. People
| typically move after promotion, which is expected after 2
| years. Some people don't like to move, bringing it down
| to about 2/year. All working as intended. Then, people
| moving out tend to want to join new teams, for the career
| growth opportunity, while you want new hires in
| established teams.
|
| Note: that's anecdotal from a couple years of
| observation. I haven't looked into any Google-wide
| statistics (and if I did I would not blabber about them).
| But I'd be surprised if this was way off.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Are you saying a company with the resources of Google,
| which expects all of its employees to answer trivia and
| whiteboard answers in interviews - all of that brainpower
| and money _can 't invent a better process?_
| incrudible wrote:
| Having too many resources tends to lead to sub-optimal
| processes. Just look at the Joint Strike Fighter program.
| lrem wrote:
| I don't think it's a matter of impossibility. The current
| process is simply a local optimum. Most practicing
| software engineers can pass the trivia quiz. Most time
| wasters can't, unless they googled for the answer key.
| The result is a pool of candidates that usually can
| understand a real interview question an engineer will
| ask. The system works, at the price of being annoying.
| mcv wrote:
| If there's only a single correct answer that the
| interviewer doesn't understand and an expert might get
| wrong, it's people who google the answers that have the
| best chance of passing.
|
| I tend to ask open-ended questions. Let them talk about
| code, and I can probably figure out whether they're full
| of shit or not. And a real coding challenge proves better
| whether someone can code than any code question or
| whiteboard challenge.
| lrem wrote:
| But you're an engineer, aren't you? Do you think you
| could figure out if someone is bsing you about their
| experience in mRNA manipulation?
| radiator wrote:
| If the applicant has graduated from a university,
| technical school, whatever, then look at the records from
| their exams there. Also taking into account the average
| level of the university, technical school in question.
| tnecio wrote:
| That'd be really unfair on people who were busy e.g.
| gaining actual work experience
| pwdisswordfish8 wrote:
| > Google caliber, whatever that means
|
| It means the sort of people for whom Golang was designed.
| aix1 wrote:
| I'm curious, how long ago was this? And, if you don't mind,
| which job ladder were you interviewing for?
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Same-ish. I got through several phone interviews and was asked
| on-site for a full day of interviews, back to back, with a
| lunch break in the middle. The HR girl was honestly running
| around like the mad hatter, apologising for being late and then
| running away as soon as she had left me in the general area
| where my interviewer would be. Some of the interviewers left me
| with the next, others just wandered off, leaving me in a room.
| One of the interviewers was in a different office so we talked
| over video conference. I say "we talked" but he was reclining
| so far back in a chair that he might as well have been in bed,
| and he read questions from a sheet without once looking at the
| camera. After that I did actually get a decent interview from
| someone who was on the team I interviewed for. During the lunch
| break someone had to take me for lunch, and from the moment she
| showed up I gathered that, like perpetual interviewering,
| bringing ten-percenters for lunch was another boring part of
| the job. I also got a really bad 'vibe' just walking through
| the building. Lots of fun-looking-stuff like games and beer
| fridges, but everywhere, people with headsets on staring into
| screens, never once looking up to see who is in their vicinity.
| Anyone ever seen Coraline? The people with buttons for eyes...
|
| After that whole depressing charade was over, I figured it
| would be an offer or GTFO. Nope, I got called for another
| interview. I said "eh, no thanks".
| mrb wrote:
| As an ex-Googler who interviewed 100+ candidates (mix of phone
| & onsite interviews) I can tell you that there is a great
| variance across the company groups in the quality of questions
| we ask. And the reason is simple: it's up to the interviewer to
| choose his questions. Questions aren't standardized.
|
| I took great pride in the fact that my questions were unique. I
| designed them myself, about 30: some quick knowledge tests,
| some elaborate coding challenges, and everything in between.
| And for a given candidate I would pick about 6-7 questions of
| the 30 to ask them.
|
| I didn't care if the candidate didn't know or didn't find an
| answer. I would entice the candidate to drop it and just move
| to the next question. Some candidates make it hard because they
| want to keep persevering, keep thinking, but there is limited
| time in an interview. As an interviewer, my goal is to
| (quickly!) find and evaluate what you are good at, not what you
| don't know.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > I took great pride in the fact that my questions were
| unique. I designed them myself, about 30
|
| ... Is this part of the process? Questions made up by random
| person? That sounds absolutely ridiculous if you want any
| sort of consistency.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Given that you probably had 60 minutes tops, you expected a
| candidate to answer each question in nine minutes at most? If
| you left time for candidate questions (I'm assuming you
| didn't), there'd only be 7 minutes a question.
|
| I don't think you learned this style of questioning in
| interview training. Going off script like this uncallibrates
| the entire system. In fact, if I was your coworker, let alone
| manager, I'd recommend you for remedial interview training.
| This is not how you conduct an interview for any role.
| manish_gill wrote:
| Unique questions? What's there to be so proud of in selecting
| questions? Are you playing jeopardy with the candidates
| careers? Enticing the candidates to moving on and not
| answering questions in what is probably the biggest interview
| in their life? "Quickly!"?
|
| > Some candidates make it hard because they want to keep
| persevering, keep thinking
|
| Yeah, amazing that some candidates want to demonstrate their
| perseverance even in face of problems that they find
| challenging. Crazy right?
| ljm wrote:
| I'm wary of pushing people to move on to something else
| because I know that if I was on the receiving end, I would
| think that I fucked up and the interviewer is trying to get
| the interview done early.
|
| A candidate who spends far too long on a part of the
| problem without getting anywhere will get some guidance and
| nudging. If they take that on board and get back on track
| then that's great - they're responding to feedback and
| correcting course. If they remain too committed to their
| chosen approach and continue to struggle, then we've seen
| it with our own eyes.
|
| At the end of the day, we're giving candidates the benefit
| of the doubt and recognising that, a lot of the time, it's
| their nerves that are doing the talking and you need to
| work with that.
| mrb wrote:
| Well, as evidenced by this thread, candidates are
| frustrated by the interviewing process at Google, in
| particular by poor/generic/boring questions that test a
| narrow/irrelevant topic. So, yes, I took pride in selecting
| questions that aren't like this in order to find what the
| candidate is good at, not what they don't know.
|
| And rest assured that I always made it very clear to the
| candidate that abandoning a question they are stuck on is
| best to maximize their chance of doing well in the
| interview. If I have a 45-min time slot to spend on a
| candidate, I don't want to waste 30 min on a single coding
| challenge that they do poorly on and have barely 15 min to
| cover other topics. If I get a sense they won't do well
| after 10 min, I stop it, move on, and that leaves us 35 min
| to do other coding challenges. I have more chances of
| finding what the candidate is good at in 35 min than in 15
| min.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| You were really terrible at these and everyone thought so.
| [deleted]
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Google is infamous for jerking people around in the interview
| process. I had a very similar experience, as did several people
| I know.
|
| They do it because they know they can get away with it, but I
| do wonder if they have a backup plan if the lustre of working
| for Google ever fades, because it's an open secret that their
| interview process is a fucking nightmare for no reason.
| billytetrud wrote:
| That lustre has faded already.
| newsyyswen wrote:
| Yeah, it's probably been 3-4 years since I've heard anyone
| use the word "Xoogler" in a positive or unironic way.
|
| Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn
| over?
| [deleted]
| SCUSKU wrote:
| Mine (and the public's) growing awareness of surveillance
| adtech really has taken away from my desire to apply to
| Google or Facebook.
| swader999 wrote:
| Restoring my faith in humanity ^^^
| axaxs wrote:
| Yeah... reminds me of a past coworker. He spent weeks
| writing weird comments in code, then writing weird code to
| read comments. From the actual source files. Then when
| deployments didn't work, he said they worked on his machine
| the deployment must be broke.
|
| He was hired by FAANG less than a month later.
| grp000 wrote:
| To solve the hiring problem that seems rampant in the
| industry, I propose for all resumes that get past the
| auto-filter, we just implement a lottery system. Maybe
| it'll be even more effective than the current method!
| devnull3 wrote:
| > fucking nightmare for no reason
|
| Absolutely! To add, the amount of nit-picking that happens is
| staggering. I was downgraded from strong-hire to lean-hire
| because:
|
| 1. I did not use classes in Python. That problem could easily
| be solved using simple functions. The feedback I got was
| "candidate does not know idiomatic use of modules & classes"
|
| 2. I did not use one of python's standard lib functions and
| instead I coded it myself (I could not remember it at that
| instant)
|
| 3. I could not spot a scenario in the first 5-7 min of
| interview. I eventually spotted it and coded it well within
| the time limit.
|
| Somehow I felt that I am supposed to feel grateful for lean-
| hire
| wwweston wrote:
| > 1. I did not use classes in Python. That problem could
| easily be solved using simple functions. The feedback I got
| was "candidate does not know idiomatic use of modules &
| classes"
|
| Apparently they missed this classic HN discussion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3717715
| paganel wrote:
| > The feedback I got was "candidate does not know idiomatic
| use of modules & classes"
|
| Many googlers probably haven't read this blog-post from
| some time ago [1]: "Python Is Not Java". I mentioned that
| at my first interview for a Python programmer job ~15 years
| ago, i got hired (truth be told the interview was for a
| small-ish startup, not for a behemoth like Google).
|
| [1] https://dirtsimple.org/2004/12/python-is-not-java.html
| aix1 wrote:
| Did you choose Python or were you asked to use Python by
| the interviewer?
| devnull3 wrote:
| I chose Python because its faster to code
| aix1 wrote:
| It's quite a common pattern these days: I often see
| candidates who choose a language because they think it's
| better suited for interviews, not because they know it
| well (we leave the choice of programming language to the
| candidate).
|
| Sometimes this works well, sometimes it really backfires
| on them. Coding is one of key rubrics on which we assess
| software engineering candidates, and if the only signal I
| have is that they don't know know their chosen language
| very well, it's hard to justify scoring that rubric
| highly.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The root comment is saying the interviewee knows the
| language well enough to consider one solution better than
| another solution.
|
| And this was _misinterpreted by the interviewer_ as not
| knowing the language.
|
| An effective interviewer would have asked "Why are you
| doing it this way?" instead of assuming - wrongly - it
| was all the candidate knew.
|
| This actually matters. Before you even get to coding
| skill you want people who can parse reality accurately,
| and not make incorrect assumptions about what's happening
| in front of them - either out of narcissism and
| arrogance, or because of poor communication skills, or
| because they're following a set process which is
| bureaucratic and inflexible and operates with a poor
| signal to noise ratio. (Among other possible reasons.)
| devnull3 wrote:
| I really well versed with Python, Golang & Rust. I will
| not choose Rust for interviews. For me, Python is much
| more productive in an interview setting.
|
| But I get what you are saying though.
| aix1 wrote:
| I didn't mean to imply that this applied to your case.
| Just a general observation (rather frustrating for
| someone like me, who wants candidates to do well but not
| that infrequently sees them being let down by their own
| choices).
| bostik wrote:
| > _I could not spot a scenario in the first 5-7 min of
| interview._
|
| This is endemic and part of a much wider malignancy in the
| tech interviews. Cram two medium-to-high difficulty
| questions in the span of 45 minutes and require the
| candidates to solve them both on the spot. In other words,
| you have at most 20 minutes to work out a complete solution
| to any given problem.
|
| In practice that means that you need to come up with the
| correct base solution in the first 2-3 minutes, because
| there is no time to actually work _through_ the problem.
|
| I call these types of interviews Epiphany Lottery.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| They're IQ tests, it's that simple.
| devnull3 wrote:
| > correct base solution in the first 2-3 minutes
|
| Not only correct solution but also generate alternatives
| to showcase what other things you know to get strong-
| hire.
|
| Example:
|
| This problem was asked in Google:
| https://leetcode.com/problems/cat-and-mouse/
|
| It is actually based on a paper [1]. Plus it seems it is
| expected that one needs to know about 'alpha-beta'
| pruning algos for such problems.
|
| If you solve this using dfs ... its basically gtfo
|
| [1] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Undirected-Cat-
| and-Mou...
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| I don't know how I'm ever going to be happy. I just
| straight up don't have the intellect to be considered
| competent in this field.
|
| What's worse is how people downplay the difficulty of
| this or say it's easily gameable if you just "grind
| leetcode", as if the rest of us aren't trying already but
| failing because of our genetic failings.
| VonGallifrey wrote:
| When people say "grind leetcode" they don't mean it as a
| tool to get better at these kinds of problem solving.
| What they basically mean is that if you "grind leetcode"
| you have a better chance of being asked a question in
| these interviews that you have solved before and simply
| write down the solution during the interview.
| loftyal wrote:
| If they're IQ tests, then why does doing a whole bunch of
| leetcode questions make me better at it? Isn't IQ
| supposed to be relatively stable throughout one's
| lifetime?
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| I've done hundreds and I have gotten better, but only to
| a point. At some level it's not pattern recognition
| anymore, just inspiration. And I'm not smart enough for
| that.
|
| This one, for instance is expected to be completed in 30
| minutes. I spent 2 hours on it yesterday and failed most
| test cases. I'm a failure.
|
| https://leetcode.com/problems/exam-room/
| grumple wrote:
| They are memorization tests at best. At worst they test
| which candidates have been unemployed most recently so
| they can cram leetcode study.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| > At worst they test which candidates have been
| unemployed most recently so they can cram leetcode study.
|
| Or which ones are young and single with no
| responsibilities outside of work. Which is likely a
| feature, not a bug.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| I mean that describes me. But if you don't have the
| mental acuity and length of short term memory required to
| solve these problems...
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| https://www.kalibrr.com/sites/default/files/featured_images/...
|
| Every year, Google receives over one million resumes and
| applications. Only 4,000-6000 applicants will actually be hired
| -- that's less than a 1% hiring rate.
|
| Given those odds it's not worth it.
| axaxs wrote:
| Sure but I never applied...they reached out to me. Hence why
| I didn't read their materials to interview. I've been happily
| employed the entire time.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| These numbers are misleading af. Most of those applications
| are just spam, not really relevant and never get read by any
| human. I've done ~150 interviews for backend roles at google
| and based on my experience 4 years ago if you make it to
| onsite you have 5-10% of getting an offer
| mbit8 wrote:
| if you get onsite at most companies for an experienced
| position the chance is rather 50% to get hired. if i would
| know the chance is only 5 % i would decline the onsite
| interview at google.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| From my experience 50% couldn't write code at all. So
| yeah if you only look for "can code" checkbox then you'd
| probably extend offers to half. Google chose to place the
| bar higher and that's their right to do that
| gowld wrote:
| > if you make it to onsite
|
| So those numbers are accurate and not misleading.
| edoceo wrote:
| You've been interviewed 150 times to get in? Or are in and
| have interviewed 150 candidates?
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Yes
| speedgoose wrote:
| That confirms that we shouldn't bother if we value our time
| and energy.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| Many people apply to all the FANGS, since the
| interviewing skillset needed is similar. Moreover, you
| can reapply every six months. In result, this gives you
| perhaps 5-10 lottery tickets every year, which means it's
| very feasible to get in within a year or two (or three).
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Moreover, you can reapply every six months. In result,
| this gives you perhaps 5-10 lottery tickets every year,
|
| you are aware of the saying that the lottery is a tax on
| stupidity?
|
| I guess that is perhaps a little harsh, but only a
| little.
|
| First off, I don't think I would want to work at any
| place where getting in there is represented as winning a
| lottery ticket. Think of the poor oompa-loompas enslaved
| in Willy Wonka's factory.
|
| Second off, perhaps it's just my vantage as a consultant
| in Denmark but everything I've read about working in
| Google has made me think it doesn't seem very enticing.
|
| Third off, even when I was not married with kids I would
| not have wanted to spend so much time twice a year! How
| many unpaid hours a year are people willing to work for a
| lottery ticket that essentially pays out a top-paying
| job?
| gowld wrote:
| Do you understand the difference between spending money
| on a negative expected value lottery, and spending time
| developing your knowledge skills?
|
| Almost everything in life is "lottery ticket" with some
| odds.
| maccard wrote:
| Going through 5 companies hoops for 2-3 years sounds like
| a full time job. There's no way I would have time to do
| that on top of work right now.
| dagw wrote:
| What if doing so could double or triple your salary?
| Would that change the calculus?
| maccard wrote:
| It doesn't change the number of hours in my day, so
| unlikely.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| I think i may have given the impression that it's 10% by
| pure chance which it most def isn't. There's certainly
| some randomness in the system but if someone is in the
| bottom 50% by skill they can probably apply like 100
| times and still fail every single one.
| janoc wrote:
| In other words - don't bother to apply if you actually
| _need_ a job. And if you have a job already, why would
| you bother to apply there? It used to be attractive but
| is it still? With all the scandals and upheaval in the
| recent years?
| dudeman13 wrote:
| >And if you have a job already, why would you bother to
| apply there? It used to be attractive but is it still?
| With all the scandals and upheaval in the recent years?
|
| $$$
| killtimeatwork wrote:
| The reason is that it doubles or triples regular SWE
| salary.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| Eh, I've had two offers from Google that were far below
| the "market rate" I was receiving at some of the largest
| pre-IPO unicorns of the last decade, and their interview
| processes were substantially better.
| gowld wrote:
| "pre-IPO unicorn" is the same rarified air. We're
| comparing to average paying jobs most people have.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| So the top range is 10% chance of getting an offer? And how
| many hours do you have to spend chasing 10%?
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Somewhere between 0 and infinity? I asked extremely
| simple questions algorithmically (not anything posted
| online) and didn't discount candidates on not knowing the
| algorithm but about half of the people couldn't write ~20
| lines of code after we'd already talked through it.
| Another 30% could but the code was total mess. I passed
| roughly 20% personally of which about half passed the
| hiring committee.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| It's true, and the end result is you probably consider
| 90-95% of the people you interview to be morons right?
| atoav wrote:
| Weird. When I was casting for actors instead of trying to
| "trick them into doing something bad" and throwing them out, I
| tried my best to get it to work with them, even if it meant _I_
| had to do something different.
|
| A casting is always stressful, they don't need me as an enemy
| as well. If they are not good enough with a ton of help, they
| won't be good enough period. If they are _really_ good with a
| little of help, they can still be better than someone who needs
| no help at all. In the end I care about the final result, not
| about whether they grade well on some invisible scale that only
| I can see.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| This. Help the person you're interviewing. You'll both get
| more out of it, you'll both enjoy it. If you're in a company
| that is expanding, you'll be interviewing a lot, so it's
| really important that it doesn't depress the shit out of you.
| konschubert wrote:
| There is a risk that you accidentally do the thinking for
| them and give the answers for them without noticing.
|
| Doing a collaborative interview requires careful attention
| by the interviewer, but I agree it's worth it.
| gspr wrote:
| I mean, sure. Nobody said interviewing should be easy. Be
| attentive and focused as an interviewer too!
| atoav wrote:
| That is the hard part of the job. You need to be able to
| take yourself out of the equation. If you can't do that,
| you are simply the wrong person for the job.
|
| Usually it is not hard to notice whether you'd _like_
| someone to succeed and then factor that in.
| balls187 wrote:
| > Usually it is not hard to notice whether you'd like
| someone to succeed and then factor that in.
|
| What about the opposite, that you don't like someone, or
| worse, you are indifferent to their success?
| atoav wrote:
| Same thing. One of our main actors was once a guy I
| didn't like at all. But he was fantastic for the role and
| it turned out to be a good decision afterwards (despite
| him being complicated to handle, which we also factored
| in).
|
| Maybe the hard part is to get a HR person that cares
| about the outcome instead of their authority.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| So factor that into your judgement. If you needed to help
| them constantly, you still know they're a bad candidate.
| Nothing is gained by stonewalling them other than
| potentially getting someone who's going to badmouth you
| to everyone.
|
| I've definitely had interviews with solid candidates who
| just faced an early roadblock, but were brilliant after I
| gave them an early push. Sometimes that's more of a sign
| of communicating a question poorly or nerves than genuine
| lack of knowledge on the candidates part.
| embik wrote:
| This, so much. Interviews are very stressful for
| candidates, everyone should remember what it's like
| sitting on the other side.
|
| I've been doing a bit of technical interviewing and I
| usually try to help people along so they reach the "end"
| of the interview, especially if they're not doing too
| well. So many candidates sound defeated when they're
| struggling with a task and it's a form of respect for me.
| They've put themselves out there, after all.
|
| Treating candidates - which you know you are going to
| reject at some point of the interview - with dignity is
| the right thing to do and can go a long way when it comes
| to your company's reputation.
| balls187 wrote:
| I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, and in light
| of the role unconscious biases plays in hiring, I'm
| challenging my own beliefs on how to run an interview.
|
| How does an interviewer ensure all candidates are offered
| help fairly and equally?
|
| What is the purpose of asking a question, that if a solution
| is found after "hints" are offered, would be acceptable for
| hiring?
| wjamesg wrote:
| But you were correct
| snissn wrote:
| i can't imagine a real world scenario where knowing that helps
| you.. especially when you.. can.. just.. google it
| nosianu wrote:
| Maybe these firms prepare for the apocalypse when all
| technology fails and has to be recreated from scratch, with
| only a few half-burned books around. Of course, if that were
| true there should be some blacksmithing and basic herbology
| questions in the interviews.
| z77dj3kl wrote:
| Or the case where you work google which goes down and then
| you can't possibly duckduckgo it, that'd be too
| humiliating.
| bschwindHN wrote:
| But think of how smart he felt after telling you the answer!
| That confidence boost alone was probably worth their time to
| interview you, mission accomplished.
| atoav wrote:
| IMO asking gotcha questions like that to make yourself feel
| smart is just cringeworthy and silly.
|
| Your goal when interviewing people should be to find things
| out about _them_ -- with gotcha questions you don 't find out
| _anything_ about them, but they find out something negative
| about _you_.
| lrem wrote:
| I don't think a (non-technical, mind you) sourcer gets that
| much confidence by reading out loud the answer key.
| axaxs wrote:
| LOL. He was obviously way smarter than me. He probably told
| his colleagues about how some dummy was talking about
| dinosaurs in an inode.
|
| I feel the smartass part of my brain eternally dooms me...
| yarky wrote:
| This makes me thing of the time I was interviewed by three
| bankers. I'd probably be rich and miserable had I answered
| non sarcastically :/
| badbetty wrote:
| You have to say what happened
| gffrd wrote:
| The suspense is killing me. What was the question, and
| how did you answer?
| yarky wrote:
| Oh don't worry it wasn't just one question but the whole
| interview. One I remember was how would I explain [
| _insert random algorithm_ ] to a board of decision
| makers, I made it sound like I was explaining a 100 year
| old how to turn on a computer.
|
| I had no interest in ever "explaining" stuff to non-
| technical people at that time, all I cared about was the
| code. So I also trolled one of the guys interviewing me
| since I happened to be stuck with his legacy "code",
| which made me judge him and take him with absolutely no
| seriousness: he was one of those "cfa" people who learnt
| how to "code" a line of VBA and think they're Linus.
|
| I also remember the face of the HR person who was like
| wtf the whole time and politely told me they had "chosen"
| another person for the job, I laughed inside and politely
| answered that I understood.
|
| I recommend against this behaviour to past me anyways ;)
| gffrd wrote:
| > I recommend against this behaviour to past me
|
| We all have to feel our oats at some point ... and then
| realize later how childish it was / how poorly we treated
| others ... so we can be forgiving of those who come after
| us ...
| vidarh wrote:
| My experience with Google (in the UK) was an interviewer who
| asked a very similar question, among a number where he was
| clearly unprepared to deal with answers that weren't 100% as
| expected, and asked questions that had basically no relevance
| to the role.
|
| The experience was so bad that afterward I sent a lengthy email
| to the recruiter thanking her but pointing out I expected to
| fail the interview because the interviewer insisted on things
| that were wrong or irrelevant and set out why as a courtesy so
| they could address it for the future.
|
| I was rung up and was told the recruiter had gotten the
| interview set aside, and offered to just have me bypass the
| technical interview and wanted to move on to an interview with
| the hiring manager.
|
| In the end I declined, as the first interviewer would have been
| one of the people I'd have managed, and I just did not want to
| deal with a team with a person like that, and the whole process
| was just excruciatingly slow to the point I had offers on the
| table before they could line up an interview.
|
| It seemed to be a process optimised for people who either
| desperately want to work specifically at Google, or doesn't
| have alternatives.
|
| I kept getting calls from Google recruiters for years after
| that and kept recounting my past experience and asking if they
| could provide a better experience this time around.
|
| I have had worse interview experiences than Google, including
| one where I halted a phone interview halfway through and told
| them they'd shown me I didn't want to work there, but Google is
| pretty high on my list of places I'm not particularly
| interested in interviewing.
| tchalla wrote:
| > In the end I declined, as the first interviewer would have
| been one of the people I'd have managed, and I just did not
| want to deal with a team with a person like that,
|
| Oh, I can totally empathise with you because I've been there.
| I applied for a position which was the head of a team and a
| future direct asked me esoteric statistical questions from
| his PhD thesis. I did quite well to answer most of them but
| he wasn't impressed.
| thweroi23434 wrote:
| I was once asked to prove that K-means is _not_ NP-hard in
| 1-d ?!
| pram wrote:
| I love when you can tell an interview question is someones
| very personal pet issue that no one on earth could
| reasonably care about.
| powerapple wrote:
| it is not optimal, but there is no alternative. The interviews
| should show 1) you want the job, i.e. you put some effort; 2)
| you can learn, i.e. those ridiculous questions; 3) team fit,
| i.e. you like them, and they like you. Programmer interviews
| are the only thing people can do in a reasonable timeframe.
|
| As programmers we always learn, we learn what we need to learn
| to do the job, there is no reason to reject someone because he
| does not know the answer to a technical question, but if you
| are not making the effort to know the answer in order to get
| the job, maybe you don't want the job.
| sneak wrote:
| There are alternatives.
|
| They don't prescreen for candidates that will put up with a
| large amount of big corporate bullshit without fucking off
| unexpectedly, however.
| janoc wrote:
| Sorry that's utter BS.
|
| I have just passed an interview for my new job and it was
| none of the above. Yet very technical, still very involved -
| but with competent people on the other side that were showing
| they are as interested in getting someone hired as I was in
| getting the job.
|
| There were 2 interview calls in all (normally the second one
| would have been on-site but Covid ...).
|
| No need for BS scripted questions, no need to ask trivia,
| there was coding test but on a computer (not paper) and
| nothing crazy you would need to read books or study for.
|
| Is it perfect? Of course not. But that's why there is a 3
| months trial period in the contract during which they can
| terminate the employee "overnight" if not performing
| satisfactorily.
|
| That's a much better solution than trying to evaluate
| everything and the kitchen sink in an interview by asking
| trivia questions and wasting the candidate's time with reams
| of books to study. Which, in the end, evaluate only whether
| the candidate is able to cram for interviews and not whether
| or not they are actually competent at doing their job.
| powerapple wrote:
| Software engineers can learn everything and can take on
| whatever tasks. Small teams may look for specific skillsets
| they need, big companies can afford to hire people then
| find something they can work on later. Also, they are more
| candidates so they are basically doing a filtering rather
| than looking for the right candidates.
|
| Yes, there are 3 months trial period, but Google will have
| thousands of candidates every week, they need to quickly
| filter them rather than evaluating them equally. Many
| people interviewing don't even know the job they are
| interviewing for, that's the problem of big organization.
| vsareto wrote:
| >2) you can learn, i.e. those ridiculous questions;
|
| So why do I have to re-prove this at every new job? It's not
| obvious enough I can learn if I've learned a programming
| language or framework in the past? Do companies have some
| brilliant insight into neuroscience where they know people
| become incapable of learning at some point?
|
| Any 2/4-year degree should also answer that question as well.
| Lots of things can answer that question. Ridiculous questions
| are about the laziest way to test someone for it.
| catgary wrote:
| The hiring process is like, 80% about marketing hype, right?
| Like you have to manufacture consent for the public to just
| accept that a private institution has a monopoly on search and
| browsers.
|
| It's pretty clever, I'm surprised Microsoft didn't try it (or
| maybe I was just too young to remember).
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| I believe Microsoft were the first to do it.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| This sounds dreadful, on the positive side I had very enjoyable
| interview rounds in places like Goldman Sachs and Lehman
| Brothers (obviously this was a few years ago), 3 or 4
| interviews hour long plus depending on if they were before or
| after work. These tested what I new, how I would approach
| things, and giving me a very good view of the people that
| worked there from more junior devs, architects and management
| in the teams I would be working in and those around it.
|
| The best interviews aren't scripted but are created from around
| the interviewers expertise but based on the skills and
| qualities needed for the role.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Quite honestly, I am torn. The best jobs I had so far
| involved multiple interviews (Amazon with a total of 6 one
| hour interviews and my current employer with 7, the jury is
| still out on my current job one month in), the worst involved
| either one or two interviews or multiple, but very easy and
| yet unpleasant ones. Scripted questions suck, Amazon in my
| case was good, as there was only on scripted logical question
| and the rest was STAR-style leadership principles centered
| questions.
|
| Multiple rounds give you more opportunities to ask questions
| to multiple people and get a better idea of the company. They
| can also be a pain in the ass.
| sdoering wrote:
| Exactly that. I often interview people as part of the team.
| We have normally one HR person, the team lead and one of the
| team present.
|
| More often than not I give my spot to a more junior team
| member if they are available. So that they learn something
| from watching the interview as well as "just" see if the
| person interviewed would be a cultural fit. If they could
| imagine working with them.
| jcolella wrote:
| I went through the exact same thing with Google. The interview
| was very impersonal, never going into if I'd be a great culture
| fit and it was simply on the basis of if I knew how to do this
| algorithms problem that doesn't show if I'm a good engineer or
| not. Ended up in a much better company culturally, and I've
| never looked back
| nvarsj wrote:
| For all the complaints, people will continue to jump through
| the hoops given an engineer with 3-5 years experience can make
| close to 400k in TC/year. That is not happening anywhere else
| outside of FAANG and certain finance companies. Google can be
| as picky as they want.
| mongol wrote:
| The inode question is tricky. It is certainly not something an
| employer should take for granted you have memorized. But the
| answer can be reached by reasoning, at least if you know
| something about filesystems and the concept of hard links.
| Which you probably do if you have read the "ln" man page.
|
| It is still a pretty poor question, I remember getting a
| similar kind of question when I passed through the (at the
| time, in Sweden) mandatory conscription testing, where you are
| tested for which role you best fit as a military conscript.
|
| One question on the intelligence test was: "What is heaviest,
| gasoline or water?". I did not know how to approach the
| question, I had not memorized the density of gasoline and I
| didn't think an intelligence test could have assumed that
| either. I was stumped. How could that be an intelligence test
| question? Only afterwards did I realize that the test creators
| probably assumed that knowing that gasoline floats on water as
| common knowledge, and if you were intelligent enough you should
| be able to derive the answer from that. I think the inode
| question is similar.
| fredgrott wrote:
| mote not a good example as oil which is also hydrocarbon
| based does in fact float for awhile but not due to density
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> "What is heaviest, gasoline or water?"_
|
| It depends on the amount. Two pounds of gasoline are heavier
| than one pound of water.
|
| Yes, I get that they are asking about density, not mass. My
| point is that tests need to be carefully written. I remember
| once during an early online screening at a multinational they
| asked something like
|
| _Alice went shopping in the morning and bought apples. What
| did she buy?
|
| A) Apples. B) Oranges. C) All of the above. D) None of the
| above._
|
| With the information provided, the only answer we can reject
| is D, because we know that she did in fact but apples.
| However, it is possible that she _also_ bought oranges (and
| /or something else), in which case answers B and C would also
| be correct. We don't have enough information.
|
| Bear in mind this was a test for recently graduated software
| engineers, who are supposed to be trained in logic, so I
| spent a few seconds puzzled wondering why the question was
| worded so strangely.
|
| I did answer A and moved on.
| jaredsohn wrote:
| If looking for the best answer, you can rule out B but A vs
| C is still ambiguous.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Almost everybody with some Linux experience knows that the
| file name is not stored on the inode. It's not this part that
| makes the question bad.
|
| What makes the question bad is that nobody can guess what
| answer he wants, and anything else, as correct as it may be,
| will be understood as a mistake (what is evident by the OP's
| answers that were perfectly correct).
|
| "What number am I thinking right now" may be a really strict
| question that fails your expected number of people, but it's
| not a good interview question.
| kevstev wrote:
| My first linux install was Redhat 5.2 bought at a bookstore
| in ~1997. I have not always been a primary linux user, but
| I have been using it in some capacity for over 20 years
| now- though as a means to an end primarily- in the bad old
| days I mucked around with drivers and X configs and have
| even recompiled a custom kernel on occasion. Never once has
| it come up that the filename is not stored in the inode.
|
| I am actually just curious as to why this would ever even
| be a thing you come across unless dealing with filesystems
| directly?
| arp242 wrote:
| Probably the most common case where this comes up is in
| the context of hard links: two (or more) files with
| different names that point to the same inode. I guess
| actual usage of hard links is rare enough that it doesn't
| come up all _that_ often, but I 'm actually surprised you
| didn't know this - not judging you, just something I
| thought most more experienced Linux/Unix users knew, but
| it seems not.
|
| Hard links can be a somewhat notorious footgun due to
| this by the way; with a soft link you _know_ you 're only
| deleting a link, but with "rm hard-link" this is a bit
| trickier: if you think there's another link but actually,
| it turns out you made an error and there's not then
| you've lost that file. A "hard link" isn't really a thing
| on its own: it's just another reference to an inode. This
| is why symbolic links are used in most cases, but you can
| hard links are still used from time to time in e.g. /bin
| and some other places.
| pram wrote:
| You'd never need to know anything about it as a user. I
| don't know how anyone could seriously make the argument
| otherwise.
|
| In fact the only reason I know anything about inode and
| dentry specifics is because they are 'very clever'
| interviewer favorites! I've been a professional UNIX
| admin for 15 years and I've dealt with inode issues
| literally once in my life lol
| kevstev wrote:
| Thanks. Its comments like the GPs that makes me wonder
| how I have avoided learning some very commonplace issue
| and its these types of comments that foment imposter
| syndrome.
|
| I have even read books on linux architecture and remember
| discussions about filesystems and inodes and remember the
| general structure and form, but a detail around what is
| and what is not stored in the actual inode... seems like
| an absurd detail to memorize.
|
| The only way I could see this being commonplace is if I
| somehow missed out on a widespread bug that somehow
| caused inodes to be corrupted and requiring manual
| intervention/surgery to prevent data loss.
| pram wrote:
| It's easy to remember that inode = the stuff that shows
| up in 'ls -l'
| jozvolskyef wrote:
| If you ever carried a canister of gasoline, you'd notice it
| to be uncannily light. It may have been a practical
| experience question.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| > canister....uncannily light...
|
| I see what you did there
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Well, maybe it'd be better called "aptitude test": if you
| don't know that gasoline lighter than water that means you've
| never handled it manually, so better not put you into an
| automechanic position.
| mongol wrote:
| It was 2 days of various tests, resulting in a number of
| scores, physical, intelligence, psycological etc. All
| together an aptitude test. I don't know why this was called
| intelligence test, it was a mix of questions, not all of
| these kind. I remember many were something like "circle the
| fourth word of the second sentence except if..."
| [deleted]
| AlexAltea wrote:
| Years ago, while applying to some security engineer position at
| Google, they were testing low-level skills focusing on
| vulnerability research, C/C++ and x86. At that point having
| spent 10+ intense years on that arch: having written binary
| translators for it, reversing/exploiting software and writing a
| micro-kernel. After rejection, they recommended me to read a
| "x86 assembly 101" book which was truly infuriating at that
| point.
|
| Granted, it was an automated email, but an automated "No" would
| have been more appropriate. Is it so hard to offer different
| standard responses? Why does the company consistently fail at
| human interaction, be it candidates or customers?
|
| From my circles, most share the feeling that FAANG/MSFT are
| insulting for candidates (I can only speak for
| Google/Microsoft).
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Yeah I was asked to complete a pretty challenging question in
| 25 minutes (eventually solved it after the interview ended in
| 2 hours) and after it was clear the interview wasn't going
| anywhere, asked for tips. They said "study data structures
| and algorithms"
|
| Like... yeah thanks I guess this degree and 5+ years
| experience isn't worth much. Such a broken process
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| Because they have a money printing machine called AdWords
| which affords them the opportunity to be terrible at anything
| and everything else without any impetus to recognize it or
| need to care.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| feedback is the hardest part of any assessment, not just in
| interviewing
| napolux wrote:
| I once had a 3 hours live coding session (without any previous
| warning it was a live coding session) on a problem described by
| some examples, while the 3 interviewers were clearly watching me
| and commenting my code or what I said in their chat.
|
| The expectation was that I made the example exercise + tests.
|
| Fu*k them.
| nmstoker wrote:
| This is a major red flag that the firm isn't sufficiently serious
| about hiring and I would always walk away from a firm without a
| clear idea of their needs and the number of rounds.
|
| My experience with a firm that started with three, then paused,
| had an "open evening" for interviews and then wanted more (which
| I politely declined and privately blacklisted them) reminds me of
| the lucky escape I had: the firm went through this mess only to
| uncover (a little later) an operational error that left them
| refunding several billion to clients, trundling on as a zombie
| firm!
| user3939382 wrote:
| Recently hired for director level at big startup. 11 interviews.
| napolux wrote:
| Klarna, is that you? ;)
| StriverGuy wrote:
| We are looking to solve this over at Chatkick
| (https://chatkick.com) if anyone is interested in working on this
| problem.
| suchislife wrote:
| So much time and money is spent interviewing it seems like it
| would be cheaper to just subcontract the candidate to do a real
| task as a trial run. That would give a much more meaningful
| signal. People say it's a risk mitigation strategy to do so much
| interviewing; but, is it? Are we sure it isn't just making us
| feel like we are mitigating our risk? Do we have any data that
| hire quality goes up with each incremental interview?
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I think a big part of the problem is how much software engineers
| are being paid now. 4, 5 or more rounds is not unheard of for a
| VP/CTO role. Companies are acting like that Intermediate
| Developer is a critical role because the _pay_ is making it seem
| like a critical role, they are making what would have been a
| Director salary within institutional memory.
|
| I just had candidate that was already getting paid what would
| have been an insane amount a few years ago, get a counter offer
| that included a 20% raise and significant equity.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Reminds me of this MonkeyUser (love that comic):
| https://www.monkeyuser.com/2020/new-hire/
| discmonkey wrote:
| Having recently won the google hiring lottery, I wanted to add my
| experience
|
| total length of time ~ 7 months emails sent/received ~ 50 phone
| calls ~ 20 technical interviews: 7 (1 with screen with recruiter,
| 6 with engineers)
|
| team match interviews: 3 (for me at least these were real
| interviews, in that I "flunked" the first 2, and decided to take
| the 3rd one very seriously before getting an offer)
|
| Before getting hiring approval, I honestly felt that I would get
| rejected, and I can honestly say that being more "personable" and
| very "communicative" probably had a lot to do with why I made it
| through.
|
| My honest advice would be to stop thinking of these long
| interview processes in terms of a a binary outcome that you have
| complete control over. Instead, think of it as trying to maximize
| some hidden parameter of a binomial distribution, where every
| interaction slightly increases your odds in the final coin flip.
| clint wrote:
| sounds like a literal nightmare, and your prize is... working
| at Google? No thanks!
| discmonkey wrote:
| For what's its worth, I really didn't think the technical
| interviews were nightmares. It was mostly talking with very
| intelligent people who were volunteering their time to screen
| candidates. Though how much one enjoys brain teasers over
| productive work is of course a matter of personal perference.
| Everything else (emails, phonecalls, etc) were definitely
| tedious.
|
| As for working at Google, I think it really depends on the
| person. For me it was a good gamble in terms of both
| immediate learning and future opportunities; for others it
| won't be. I do find the opportunity to have my code (or
| what's left of it after reviews anyways) reach billions of
| people a thrill like no other though.
| moistoreos wrote:
| I agree w/ the sentiment of your last statement.
|
| However, I wholeheartedly could not disagree more w/ "having
| won the <insert_x_silicon_valley_company_here> hiring lottery".
| 80+ hours of interviewing? No offense, that doesn't sound like
| winning the lottery. That sounds like you don't value your
| time. Unless you're getting paid for that many hours of
| interviewing or receive a signing bonus to make up for it, any
| company that does 10+ hours of interviewing can take a rusted
| iron rod and shove it up their own arse.
|
| In a market where software engineers are in super high demand,
| if a company cannot refine the technical interview(s) down to a
| max of 3 hours for any specific role, then why waste your time?
| I understand wanting to gauge a candidate's technical
| abilities. But there's a balance between understanding the
| candidate's technical abilities, the technical knowledge
| required for the job, and (the most important bit) what can be
| learned on the job for the role.
| discmonkey wrote:
| Agreed that the hour invested may not be worth it for a large
| percentage of people (again I got lucky, I would feel so
| differently if I was rejected after 7 interviews).
|
| Google's point is just that they prefer to avoid false
| positives at the cost of (potentially) a lot of false
| negatives. The current interview process is probably some
| local optimum;
|
| I haven't worked at a company yet that is _actually_ good at
| interviewing. Where good is optimized over high recall and
| accuracy and a small time investment.
|
| I know that Google does have one big advantage, in that a
| good percentage of people that get the offer end up
| accepting. That (unfortunately) gives Google a lot more
| leeway and possibly less incentive to further optimize the
| interview process. Software engineers are in high demand, but
| also Google is in high demand among software engineers.
|
| At my previous job, trying to find a candidate for a role
| essentially involved lowering the bar until somebody was no
| longer in demand, since we weren't "in demand".
| deedubaya wrote:
| In-house recruiting have few incentives to provide a fast and
| efficient hiring pipeline.
|
| Slow pipelines mean low conversion rates (survival of the most
| pain tolerant), generating more internal demand. Natural reaction
| to to widen the pipe (more recruiters) not speed it up.
| blueyes wrote:
| The hiring process is fundamentally broken, but not always in the
| ways that job-seekers think.
|
| It's hard to establish during the interview process that someone
| will be able to do the job you need them to do. Hiring them is a
| huge risk, both legal and cultural. It's not easy to fire people,
| and lawsuits/arbitration are common.
|
| The endless interview process, which costs companies many good
| candidates, is there because they fear the bad ones they can't
| recognize.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Aside from being tech lead for my project I am also technical
| interviewer and I regularly interview candidates.
|
| Recently I have asked my HR if they could set up longer meetings
| with candidates because, honestly, 1.5h is in my opinion not
| enough to evaluate candidate. I would like to ask some technical
| questions, I would like to see the candidate write some code, I
| would like to have a discussion on general tech topics just to
| get the feel of the candidate. And also have time to respond to
| questions that the candidate may have.
|
| Usually it is the coderpad part that overflows and takes more
| time but it is also hugely helpful in understanding how candidate
| works and deals with problems.
|
| So the response from HR was that they "don't want to scare the
| candidate". And if I need, maybe they will set up follow up with
| the candidate "just don't tell the candidate upfront to not scare
| them".
|
| So that's that.
| mouzogu wrote:
| I think the post-covid wfh job market has clouded something a bit
| which is that the tech industry in particular is becoming
| increasing oversaturated.
|
| There is so many people applying for positions now that companies
| are resorting to these more and more annoying filtering
| processes.
|
| My first job in this field 14 years ago was one interview and I
| got the job the next day. That would be almost impossible today.
|
| I blame it on two things, oversaturation of the "learn to code"
| meme and the rise and growth of recruitment agencies and their
| influence on HR practices. They have to justify their own jobs
| after all - just 10 years ago there wasn't really much of a
| concept of an HR or IT recruiter as far as I recall - or it was
| just emerging.
|
| I've said this before but I believe this field is becoming
| increasingly commodified. Soon you will be either a "white-
| collar" fang or a blue-collar "independent contractor".
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| As someone who is stuck with a "junior developer" who hasn't
| produced a single line of working code during past 1.5years in
| my team the "one interview and done" isn't working these days.
| theonething wrote:
| how is this person not fired?
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| We have too good employee laws. As long as you are trying
| your best it is really hard to fire anyone. There needs to
| be evidence that they aren't capable and even then they
| need to be given multiple chances over multiple months to
| correct this problem.
|
| Only way to fire someone on the spot is if they are
| breaking law or refusing to do the work
| supersereneblue wrote:
| Which part of the world is this happening in?
| valdiorn wrote:
| this is 100% your companys fault.
|
| If this person is literally not producing anything
| useful, then set them a basic piece of work and tell them
| to complete it. If they can't give them a warning, tell
| them to upskill. Repeat after a month. And again a month
| after that. If they still can't do it then you have
| plenty of evidence to justify firing them, anywhere in
| the world.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Not that easy with our labor laws
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| I actively tell career switchers to avoid coming with more then 3
| rounds unless they really really want to work for that company.
|
| I did 5 rounds over 7 hours with a top tier company recently only
| to loose out for my solution to one of the 3 coding tests not
| being as elegant as the interviewer would have liked.
|
| I've been told to speak to them again in 6 months, we'll see.
| buro9 wrote:
| Ah Amazon... 14 interviews, an additional 5 hour technical test,
| spanning a total of 3+ months. Only to be informed at the end
| that I was too technical for the role they had in mind but they
| were offering me a Senior Principal SDE role instead.
|
| By the time we got to the end of the process I'd already
| concluded that the hiring process was a reflection of their
| internal decision making and that this was not a company (or
| department) I wanted to work for.
|
| Then I was hired elsewhere and I saw something similar happen to
| a candidate and realised that this was truly an indication of the
| indecision. We had lots of roles, just none shaped in a way that
| fitted the person, and what we should've done is reject the
| person but on that occasion we hired and it was a terrible
| decision. They were a good person and very capable, but not a fit
| for the role finally offered. I had the sense that if I had
| accepted the Amazon role that would've been true for me too.
|
| An interview process of more than 3-4 defined steps that takes
| longer than a month to schedule, is a bad sign.
|
| Top tip for candidates: Ask what the process is, if they cannot
| conclusively tell you then double down on interviewing at a
| company that can.
| TheHypnotist wrote:
| As i mentioned in another post, don't forget to work in those
| LP's otherwise you get 0 Bezos points and your experience is
| worthless.
|
| Edit: Meant LP's. Leadership Principles.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| What's GP? Gaussian process? General practitioner? Or, most
| commonly on HN, grandparent [post]? Or maybe the whole point
| of using that abbreviation is to exclude those outside
| Amazon?
| fridif wrote:
| I think he means LPs, Leadership Principles
| TheHypnotist wrote:
| Right - I meant LP's, for some reason they are "Guiding
| Principles" in my head this morning.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| If you had said LPs instead, I still wouldn't have known
| what you meant.
| bombadilo wrote:
| This is one thing that really pisses me off about hacker
| news. The excessive use of abbreviations only hinders
| communication, it doesn't improve it.
| [deleted]
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| I honestly think this is a product of large corporations being
| essentially incapable of firing bad resources. Companies are
| terrified of litigation and bad PR so the only control
| mechanism is the interview process.
| buro9 wrote:
| I do not disagree.
|
| The more people who interview, the more average the candidate
| has to be to succeed.
|
| For all the talk of "hire fast, fire fast" the reality is
| that most companies do not know how to evaluate someone
| within the probation time period in which they could let go
| of someone with ease (usually under 60 days) and after that
| they then fear doing so even when it's miserable for both the
| person (candidate) and team involved.
|
| I hire a lot, and some of my thoughts on the process:
|
| 1. The interview process should be short and sweet. 3 steps
| is enough, if you can't make a decision in 3 steps then the
| decision is to decline.
|
| 2. The hiring manager should be the first to interview. We
| have a good idea of what we're looking for in a team and what
| other roles other managers have open, we can speak of most
| teams and can spare both the candidate and ICs from
| interviews that cannot realistically result in a hire.
| Likewise, we can increase the chance of a successful hire by
| having the people from the team the candidate would be
| joining conduct the interview.
|
| 3. Some of the best candidates get love/hate feedback, a
| candidate who consistently gets "hire" feedback is seldom as
| good as those who get "strong hire" mixed with "no hire"
| feedback. The consistent "hire" usually typifies an "on the
| fence but don't want to take responsibility for declining so
| will wave through"... opinions should be stronger,
| interviewers should be excited for people - challenge whether
| a consistent stream of "hire" feedback actually means "hire".
| All that said, always listen to "strong no hire" when it
| turns up.
|
| 4. To increase diversity you only need to interview people
| who aren't already over-represented in your org... you will
| hire those people at exactly the same rate as you hire
| everyone else. If you don't have these people in your
| pipeline you have a sourcing or branding/reputation problem
| so focus on those things. If you do have those people and
| aren't hiring at the same rate, you have a bias problem and
| should root it out with urgency.
|
| 5. Degrees are not a signal, so absence of a degree is not a
| signal.
|
| 6. Don't hire based on what someone has done as it only
| reflects what their employers asked them to do, instead hire
| on what they can potentially do - if it lines up with what
| you want to achieve it's a win-win.
|
| Most of the above can be summed up as: Have an opinion and
| care about what you're doing.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > the probation time period in which they could let go of
| someone with ease (usually under 60 days)
|
| Is this a thing? I would certainly judge a company doing
| this, and likely leave a manager who hired someone with an
| expectation that the beginning is just a probationary
| period, if I'm understanding you correctly (I hope i'm
| not).
|
| Leaving a safe job for a probationary period puts too much
| risk on the employee that the employer doesn't really
| share.
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| IME most UK jobs have probationary periods. There's also
| a statutory probationary period of 2 years where you can
| be fired for any[1] reason.
|
| [1] strictly not any reason, you can't be discriminated
| against, but enough reasons that they could invent one.
| buro9 wrote:
| Some companies do "hire fast, fire fast"... so yes.
|
| But I choose not to work for those companies, instead I
| prefer a strongly opinionated hiring process that won't
| play with anyone's life like that.
|
| That said, treating probation as probation is definitely
| a thing. Especially in legal domains such as France and
| Germany. In the USA it's far less of a thing as employers
| can mostly let go of people at almost any time if they
| wish to and it's not a pattern of discrimination (though
| this is the fear of course, that a pattern could be
| formed).
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I see. I could imagine accepting something like that if I
| got legal protections afterwards like some of those
| countries have.
| abeppu wrote:
| Why are companies afraid of litigation? My understanding has
| been that, excluding discrimination on the basis of a few
| protected categories, sexual harassment retaliation, and
| whistle-blower protections, in the US private employers can
| fire non-union employees at any time without cause. (IANAL)
|
| Are large companies really afraid of PR in firing
| individuals? If a company with many thousands of employees
| fires one person, outside of the C-level officers is that a
| news story? Even if disgruntled former employee tries to say
| anything disparaging, doesn't that immediately make them less
| credible as a source?
| dimmke wrote:
| This is not the case at Amazon. They are known for PIPing
| engineers. They're not shy about it.
|
| Also all of these big tech companies can just not refresh
| your stock if they don't want to bother with firing you,
| which effectively halves your compensation.
| amznbyebyebye wrote:
| Sr principal is like L8 so you're easily taking close to
| 1M/year salary.. 14 interviews is still a bit much, but you're
| basically one step away from distinguished engineer which is
| pretty much end of the road for the engineering track at amazon
| majani wrote:
| If he has the skills to get such offers, then he's in a power
| position with employers, which explains his demeanor towards
| them
| amznbyebyebye wrote:
| Definitely, if you're being recruited for L8, thats a level
| of distinction all on its own..
| buro9 wrote:
| Hard to know what to make of these comments.
|
| I've known a lot of far better engineers than I am. We've
| all been in this game a long time. Titles, companies and
| package aren't the most important thing to any of them.
| I'm sure most will look back and even though our titles
| and roles appear to have changed it feels like we still
| do much the same as we always did, just at a different
| scope and what's important is whether the work is
| engaging, there's as little politics as possible, and
| you're setup for success.
| buro9 wrote:
| I can't say on the money front I didn't kick myself after I
| had declined, and the interviewing was at a very high level.
| At the time I was focused on finding a role that had my
| requirements for high job satisfaction and money wasn't an
| important part of that (I'm not rich, but money wasn't
| important then and isn't now, we only have one life to live).
| duxup wrote:
| I call it the 'hiring people industrial complex'.
|
| It's endless, every little bit of concern about personality or
| "We did this at X." place and "Need this guys input." are added
| and has zero proven value, but it is added.
|
| At one company I worked at it wasn't uncommon for a department to
| decide to hire someone and HR or the recruiters somehow were able
| to hold things up for months.
|
| My most recent job was at a smaller (not a start up) company and
| as an applicant I was talking to people I would work with and was
| asked legitimate questions and etc.
| austincheney wrote:
| I remember the one time I worked at a design agency. 6 separate
| interviews in one day. The account managers were thrilled with me
| and absolutely did not want anybody else. The technical people
| were far less confident because nobody in their right mind could
| possibly hate jQuery. That meant some more interviews.
|
| What's maddening about that is that this was for a consulting
| position not a developer position. It didn't matter though
| because the contract written one way, the management at the
| client refused to accept the terms of the signed contract, and
| the developers I was there to help thought I was their
| subordinate to dictate.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| A lot of jobs will put you through multiple interviews then ghost
| you. I interviewed at several tech companies last year and it was
| crazy how few would email a simple letter saying they had moved
| on in their search. It's like they want the option to put you on
| the back burner for weeks and then reach out again if things fall
| through with others. Really gross and selfish.
| itsbits wrote:
| Here most of them seems to be pointing at number of interviews
| that's being conducted for a candidate by the companies and how
| emotionally torment it can be.
|
| I can tell you it's not an easy job to take interviews as well. I
| have been interviewing candidates for my company for past 4-5
| years. It drains your brain a lot than giving interviews IMO.
| Sometimes I get exhausted and frustrated for the day after taking
| 4-5 interviews. start to feel, brain stops functionating. And
| frustrating thing is you have to provide feedback for audit
| purposes in more than 100 words. Especially rounds like System
| Design, Hands On coding, Knowledge of Technologies, Resume
| drilling.
|
| Also interviews been happening continuously at least for past 2
| years due to attrition issues linked of pandemic. So never ending
| process now a days to take interviews in the company.
| runbathtime wrote:
| Do diversity hires have never-ending job interviews? Or are they
| just streamlined in?
|
| It would be considered oppression if black candidate where given
| as many interviews as white candidates.
|
| Actually it is a serious question. When diversity is apparent
| what is the difference in the number of interviews required?
|
| Are white and asian males more scrutinized to make up for the
| logical shortfall of affirmative action hires that just get to
| mess stuff up while the asians clean up their mess?
| phibz wrote:
| I interviewed with a company out of SV that did this. They
| started with 3, added another 3, one hour interviews and finally
| another 3. 9 interviews over the course of almost a month.
|
| I was being interviewed for a principal engineer. I was very
| clear and kept saying I wanted a management track position. They
| kept saying we love your background we can work with you on this.
| Ninth interview was with the CTO. He said the same. Them ghosted.
| Wouldn't answer my emails or calls. 9 hours, plus prep time
| wasted.
|
| The company I ended up getting hired by also did a large number
| of interviews, 8. And they took even longer. Just over three
| months from initial contact. They're fantastic to work for, but I
| do think there comes a point where if you keep digging you're
| going to find something you don't like.
| wittyusername wrote:
| I think it's time to name and shame not sure why you are being
| coy when they jerked you around so much.
| gedy wrote:
| Yeah it really bugs me when companies reach out to
| experienced people, put you through multiple rounds, only to
| ghost and ignore you after. I'm looking at you Glassdoor.
| phibz wrote:
| Fandom.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I'm too shy to name and shame, but my former company would
| ask us to advertise and interview for jobs, but only after
| countless hours of interviews decide they didn't want to
| increase headcount. I lost about 1 day week for months doing
| our best to find great people. We would fly them in from all
| over the place. This happened multiple times. I think I left
| to make indie games after the third time.
| imroot wrote:
| Redhat: This one was for you. From the moment I applied through a
| recruiter until I got an offer letter was about 13 months.
|
| In that time, I had already started my new job -- I didn't
| actually take the role at RedHat, but, I was able to use their
| offer letter as leverage to increase my salary.
|
| I've worked for YC companies, I've worked for large companies.
| The larger companies seem to be a little bit easier to get into:
| my only interview at Luxottica was literally someone asking me
| about some retail experience I had about 20 years ago and some
| very basic Linux questions (retail technical architect position),
| but, I've had YC companies have a multi-month long interview
| process where I've been told after 10 or 11 interviews that they
| thought I was "Too senior for the role," which, just kinda blew
| my mind.
|
| The whole process is broken, but, there's not really a good
| solution to fix it.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| Don't they have a 3 month probation period where they can just
| say nah, it's not working?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I had a round at accenture about 8 months ago, multiple
| interviews over a month and a half maybe; and it went first
| interview with a manager wanted me to go forward, second
| interview someone who okayed me for tech interview and what
| position I should be looking at, third interview tech interview
| said fine now you need to talk to HR head and she will make final
| determination, HR head said send you info later in day some days
| later still nothing, about a week later message from HR needed to
| have another interview with someone, consulting offer came in I
| figured well this isn't going anywhere took consulting offer.
|
| 1 week later the managerial guy called up and said ok everything
| went through now we can talk about the job I said "sorry, I took
| a job". He wished me good luck but I'm not sure from his voice if
| he really meant it.
| known wrote:
| Interviews are an "activity" for HR/Managers to fill in their
| time sheets;
| ab_testing wrote:
| I know BBC is writing this from the perspective of a new
| interviewer. However anybody who is preparing for FAANG or even
| hangs out on Blind knows that getting into any of these big
| companies, now includes multiple leetcode style programming tests
| and system design interviews . Just as a point of reference, CTCI
| is now on its 6th edition and it is still playing catch up to the
| ever changing interview processes at these companies.
|
| In fact if you spend time on leetcode , you would get a fair idea
| of what companies ask LC medium/hard, which ones ask Dynamic
| Programming and which one will specifically ask questions that
| are not on LC
| plondon514 wrote:
| I've applied to and been rejected by Codecademy 3 times. After
| the 3rd time I decided to build my own just to prove to myself
| that I could and that the interview process is broken:
|
| https://codeamigo.dev
| kook_throwaway wrote:
| A family member went through five interviews for blockchain.com
| at 4-5am (they were in England). For the last one they
| (blockchain) were asked to do 6-7pm their time but couldn't be
| assed to have a call after hours and suggested another 4:30am (to
| us) interview, yet they had no problem asking people who didn't
| work there to be up at ridiculous hours week after week. The
| cherry on top was being offered the job at _half_ of what the
| position should have paid and at a $20k pay cut from what they
| were told my family member was already making.
| mlengineerio wrote:
| I have a lot of friends got FB offers and most of them spend
| between 3 months to 6 months to prepare for the interview. With
| that level of preparation, some of them have to sacrifice their
| responsibilities on their day job. It's tough. (you can read some
| stories from my blog).
| FinanceAnon wrote:
| All you complaining about the length of FAANG interviews... One
| of my family members was recently applying for a job to stack
| shelves in a supermarket. They had to do a tricky 3-hours long
| multiple choice questions test. After that, they got an email
| asking to record a video about themselves. No idea what would
| come after that, but they gave up at this point. All this is also
| very difficult to go through if you are older and not
| technologically well-versed.
| gumby wrote:
| I talked to a company for three weeks -- I went over and would
| talk to a couple of people, a couple of times a week -- and then
| decided they wouldn't get their act together.
|
| I didn't mind the way it unfolded -- people were busy, I wasn't
| working, and it was only a couple of minutes away from me, so
| really it was only perhaps 8 hours. But after three weeks _I_
| felt I wasn't getting the answers I needed and they didn't seem
| to be making progress on the hire. So I said no thanks.
|
| This was a company with 50 or so people -- I have no idea how
| they managed to hire them.
| lysecret wrote:
| So, I have been hiring a lot for 2 startups i was involved one
| was a kind of bootcamp which involved basically a never ending
| hiring process.
|
| I learned a lot about hiring there and how incredibly stupid and
| broken the standard hiring process is of big comps.
|
| If anyone tells me to invert a binary tree now i just get up an
| leave haha.
|
| But my main takeaway there was that this is actually a huuuge
| competitive edge Startups have. They dont have to adhere to the
| BS standard process and can snatch up a lot of good talent which
| falls out of the standard metrics.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| What's happening is that companies want to completely remove risk
| from the hiring process.
|
| In the real world, you cannot remove risk. You can manage it, but
| you cannot remove it. Asking candidates to go through 6
| interviews before making a decision and not telling them when a
| decision will be made signals a risk adverse culture that cannot
| make decisions.
| DSingularity wrote:
| The reason they want to remove the risk is because it takes
| years to prune bad talent.
| chunkyks wrote:
| And they're also in the situation where good talent isn't
| going to tolerate that rubbish.
| Swizec wrote:
| The worst performer you tolerate on your team sets the tone
| for the whole team.
|
| The best teams embrace and level up their low performers
| and make the whole team better.
|
| The delta can't be too big.
| zhte415 wrote:
| Do you have probation period where you work? i.e. if an
| employee doesn't live up to expectation, release with short
| notice? Where I am, a 3 year contract typically carries a 3
| month probation period, and a 1 year contract carries a 1
| month probation period.
|
| The problem is management are often too busy or overwhelmed
| with other stuff to observe and provide feedback until
| someone's passed the probation period then releasing them
| becomes a bureaucratic nightmare - and when the new hire's
| not getting feedback, you can be sure not a lot of the rest
| of the team are.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Probation periods in the US are rare, especially for white
| collar positions like software engineers. Of course, that's
| mostly because of at will employment where either side can
| choose to part ways at any time.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| That sounds like infinite probation period to me
| hnzix wrote:
| They'll miss most of the good talent if they're doing 6
| interviews for a standard role. The candidates with skills
| and options will go elsewhere and you'll be left with the
| desperate dregs.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > The reason they want to remove the risk is because it takes
| years to prune bad talent.
|
| I've never understood this given that the hiring is so often
| at will.
| madengr wrote:
| How? I have seen people with 25 years service (electrical
| engineer) walked out with zero notice. Unless you are
| unionized, you can be fired on the spot.
| dahart wrote:
| Increasing risk of liability for firing is real, as is
| increasing oversight of discrimination law. You can be
| fired on the spot for breaking company policy, or doing
| something illegal. Without more info, that's what I might
| assume you saw. But getting fired for mildly low
| performance without notice is not normal, at least not
| among engineers in large companies, and assuming it's not
| because a division or the company is being shuttered.
| Companies have to give people feedback and give them time
| to respond. Failure to do that can and sometimes does
| result in legal action compelling the company to prove the
| employee was failing and that the company did not unfairly
| discriminate even unknowingly, which is costly, difficult,
| and risky. Plus, most companies aren't capricious with
| firing engineers, and are also aware that hiring is
| expensive and employee ROI can take time.
| learc83 wrote:
| > result in legal action compelling the company to prove
| the employee was failing
|
| The company doesn't have to prove that the employee was
| failing. It's perfectly legal for a company to fire an
| employee because they the employee likes the wrong
| football team.
|
| The employee or people pursuing legal action on behalf of
| multiple employees has to prove that the company fires
| the employee(s) _because_ they were a member of a
| protected class.
|
| Assuming there are no incriminating emails stating that
| that was the reason, the only realistic way to do that is
| to show a pattern.
|
| If an employee decides to sue, whether you had them on a
| documented performance improvement plan for 6 months or 6
| days isn't going to be the deciding factor.
| dahart wrote:
| > The company doesn't have to prove that the employee was
| failing.
|
| They do if the employee sues claiming age discrimination,
| for example. At least, they have to defend the accusation
| to show it's not discrimination. When someone has been at
| the company for 25 years like in the parent's example,
| and they get fired abruptly without notice for liking the
| wrong football team, it's likely the stated reason is
| untrue and inviting a challenge.
|
| > If an employee decides to sue, whether you had them on
| a documented performance improvement plan for 6 months or
| 6 days isn't going to be the deciding factor.
|
| It certainly helps show that the company isn't
| discriminating arbitrarily, and gave the employee notice
| and a chance to improve the situation.
|
| BTW actual legal action isn't necessary for firing to be
| getting harder. The fear of legal action is all you need,
| and that is in fact going up.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Taking years to prune bad talent is another sign of a problem
| in the organization.
| 2001lodyssee wrote:
| In my long and storied career, well long at least, every
| single truly heinous, project-killin', crazy person actually
| interviewed pretty well.
|
| Honestly, I don't have a good solution to the problem.
| akamia wrote:
| I have experienced the exact same thing. In fact, the worst
| person I have ever worked with consistently aced interviews
| wherever he went.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Fire fast. Use that 90 day try out period. Contract-to-
| hire.
|
| In the past I would never have been interested in a
| contract-to-hire. These days though if the company and role
| is right, and this an option to short-cut a ridiculous
| interview process, I might spring for it.
| duped wrote:
| Just personally I would never accept an offer that was
| contract for hire and think it's downright insulting a
| suggestion. My family needs health insurance and the
| market has never been so cold that I'd be desperate
| enough to take such a garbage offer.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Nothing about contracting precludes having health
| insurance though? For the roles and situations I'm
| talking about this would all just be factored into the
| rates.
| tfehring wrote:
| Even if they can just pay for health insurance out of
| pocket, they'd be switching plans twice, and each time
| they'd reset their deductible and possibly need to find a
| new doctor.
|
| When I was an actuary we used to do "intern to hire" for
| unemployed recent grads, but I can't imagine leaving a
| full time position for a contract-to-hire position. I
| think for me personally the opportunity would have to be
| really interesting _and_ the comp upon converting to FTE
| would need to be at least double my previous comp
| (meaning the contracted rate would probably be something
| like 4x my implied hourly).
| duped wrote:
| I've only ever seen it done in legally dubious ways to
| skirt paying benefits for 3-6 months for new hires in
| entry level positions.
| 2001lodyssee wrote:
| > Fire fast. Use that 90 day try out period. Contract-to-
| hire.
|
| I've see that work before, but it was some time ago. The
| company also had a very large test department with
| separate management and kept to a strongly enforced
| waterfall-esque design routine.
|
| Of course, it used to be a lot harder to ship out version
| 1.01 of the software.
|
| I just assume it was a different world as this was in the
| days of US manufacturing, very limited set of software
| tools, high importance placed on domain knowledge as
| opposed to toolset, longer average stays at employer,
| lower wages for programmers. Probably not applicable to
| modern times.
| Salgat wrote:
| The solution is to accept that shitty candidates can't
| always be filtered out and to have a probation period to
| remove them before they do too much damage to your
| codebase/morale.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I suspect the reasons they killed the project were all over
| the map too, so you are basically searching for a big
| unknown problem.
| 2001lodyssee wrote:
| I would also suspect that any filtering mechanism that
| cuts out the truly destructive people might well be
| either unacceptable or illegal at this point.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| It's a bit like the good-books/bad-movies phenomenon.
|
| There's a quality-distribution of both books and films.
|
| There are only so many good books. And a percentage of
| films end up poorly made.
|
| Sufficiently low-quality books tend not to get made into
| films. The ones that succeed are notable --- there's
| nothing but upside.
|
| A good book can be made into either a good or a bad film.
| If it's a good film, then yay, but if it's a _bad_ film,
| people are _aware_ of it (through the book 's quality and
| popularity). This is a _perception illusion_ called Berkson
| 's Paradox. It's an illusion because what awareness fails
| to account for are all the bad films made from bad books.
|
| Hannah Fry of Numberphile does a much better job than I of
| explaining this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FUD8h9JpEVQ
|
| In the interviewing / performance case, you have good vs.
| bad interviewees, and good vs. bad performers.
|
| Someonehone who interviews poorly but performs well is a
| positive exception. Someon who interviews well _and_
| performs well meets expectations. It 's the good
| interviewer/bad performer who stands out. But it's the
| poor-interviewer/poor-performer who is missed by this
| assessment.
| danjac wrote:
| There's probably not a single one-size-fits-all solution -
| what works for FAANG and their millions of applicants is
| lunacy when you're a three-person startup, much like
| adopting Kubernetes to run an internal web app with half a
| dozen users. It probably starts with proper training in
| conducting interviews, a respect for candidates' time, a
| realistic appraisal of your needs and budget, and constant
| feedback-driven refinement of your process.
| technofiend wrote:
| Isn't that one of the things Netflix is famous for getting
| right? Generous severance but quick to exit you if you're not
| a good fit.
| caoilte wrote:
| I don't think it's that at all. It's very easy to fire people
| in US. I think they are trying to hire cultists. The harder
| it is to get in the more people think they're special once
| they do and the less likely they are to leave.
| finolex1 wrote:
| The difficulty isn't with regards to the process/legality.
| It's more behavioral/organizational
| twelve40 wrote:
| I don't know if you've been through the firing process on
| either side, but after you go through a couple of dozen of
| these, and the hit to the morale/performance they entail, not
| to mention emotions involved, you tend to at least try to vet
| better to avoid such huge distractions in the future (a lose-
| lose for everyone involved!)
| analyst74 wrote:
| I'm not sure if people prefer Amazon's PIP culture. That's
| what it'll lead to if companies hire more loosely and have to
| fire people more frequently.
| bb88 wrote:
| One Fortune 500 company I worked for was honest enough to
| admit that the number one reason employees left was because
| they didn't like their boss.
|
| It's a huge risk on the other side as well. Not to mention
| that management usually gets to control the narrative and not
| the employees.
| alephnan wrote:
| I left a hedgefund interview loop for this reason.
|
| I finished the 7th on-site interview. After I left NYC and flew
| back home, they wanted a 8th ( phone screen ) interview because
| one the interviewers lost the results.
|
| On the one hand, this space's modus operandi is more data is
| always better.
|
| On the other hand, they have to trade and make decisions in a
| fast paced environment with imperfect information.
| thrwaway122 wrote:
| funny same experience here. I interviewed for four months at
| a very select and under the radar fund. Once a week I would
| go in from 730 am to 9 am and speak with a member of the
| fund. I got all the way to the end, and in a bout of
| emotional torment, I turned the offer down. In hindsight, its
| one of the biggest regrets I have. Would have retired long
| ago
| kortilla wrote:
| Why did you turn it down if I may ask? I've made the
| decision several times to go with lower paying offers
| because I ended up deciding there was more to life than
| just a paycheck.
| marto1 wrote:
| > because one the interviewers lost the results.
|
| yeah, no. You dodged a bullet with that one.
| sp332 wrote:
| Companies don't want to do job training anymore. Instead of a
| general background and attitude check, they need to know if the
| candidate has all of the individual skills that will be used on
| the job.
| danbmil99 wrote:
| If that's true, then the interview process would focus more
| on skills. From what I hear, faang companies are all about
| the leetcode on the Whiteboard oh, and they don't seem to ask
| specific questions about domain knowledge. In fact, you often
| don't know which department or project you're going to be put
| on when you get hired by one of those companies. And
| apparently the interviewers don't know either.
|
| At least a few years ago, Google made it a point that the
| interview process was generic, not specific to any position
| or team. More like an undergraduate admissions process.
| kinkrtyavimoodh wrote:
| Job training is not as much worth it for companies when
| employees can switch jobs at the drop of a hat.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| You say that and I've seen several companies in practice
| echo what you're saying. However, I fail to understand why
| they don't simply make better use of contracts and
| probationary periods to solve that specific problem.
| kinkrtyavimoodh wrote:
| Contacts in what sense?
|
| Probationary periods could work but it's a coordination
| problem. Such periods are the norm in Europe (coz it's
| very hard to fire someone) but for an at-will place like
| the US, given that the industry doesn't really do
| probationary periods in general, any employer who starts
| doing it would be at a disadvantage.
| xcambar wrote:
| I think GP meant "reference check"
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I meant "contract" but you've brought up another good
| idea.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| *contracts
|
| In the sense of offering signing bonuses for term lengths
| that get repo'd if the contract length is broken.
| danjac wrote:
| The problem of a probationary period is that it pushes
| all the risk to the employee.
|
| While I agree interviewing has gotten ridiculous with all
| the leetcoding and ten rounds of interviews and FAANG
| cargo-culting and whatnot, one small advantage - assuming
| I'm not desperate for a paycheck - is that it gives me,
| as a prospective employee, time to consider and withdraw
| my application if I see too many red flags or I just
| prefer the devil I know.
|
| A short interview process with a probation period on the
| other hand is a big roll of the dice. Maybe I'm not able
| to ramp up on time, or make a silly mistake due to
| unfamiliarity with the codebase or underlying business
| logic. Maybe I don't get on with the team or manager.
| Maybe I'm going to be dumped into a doomed death march
| project on day 1. I could find myself unemployed a month
| later with an embarrassing gap in the resume. Perhaps on
| the other hand a better interview process (not longer,
| just have properly trained people and constantly improve
| the process with feedback) would save us all that pain.
| sokoloff wrote:
| In a world where short, high-risk interviews dominated,
| you could just go roll the dice again. It would be a
| negative signal (why is @foo interviewing after only 60
| days?), but nowhere near as bad as "why is @foo still
| interviewing after 6 months in this job market?!".
| godelski wrote:
| Then give them a reason to stay (note: it's also not all
| about money)
| austhrow743 wrote:
| Whatever you offer, including non-monetary, someone else
| can offer and then also spend their training budget on
| higher comp.
| newsyyswen wrote:
| Not necessarily. It's not easy to find a boss who you
| genuinely trust to consider your best interests, for
| example.
|
| Out of curiosity, what sort of "non-monetary" benefits
| were you thinking about? There's usually not a reliable
| way to turn (small amounts of) money into the sorts of
| things that really build loyalty.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| That works if this is a "one time game" (game theory) as
| opposed to a repeated game.
|
| If an employer does do training, it means they'll
| probably continue to do more training over time, which
| helps the employee become more valuable.
|
| If the employer doesn't do training, yes they may be able
| to allocate the training budget to salary, but they are
| not going to spend anything training you or letting you
| work on projects to increase your skills while you're
| there, unless they absolutely must.
|
| I think people also have some human perception of how
| they're being treated, and prefer to work for people that
| invest in them.
| godelski wrote:
| Is this supposed to be a rebuttal? I don't see a problem
| here.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| Yes. Spending money and then not recouping is a losing
| strategy.
| brewdad wrote:
| So the answer is to not spend the money at all? How much
| are you costing your company by putting candidates
| through 8 hours of interviews only to reject them. Rinse.
| Repeat.
|
| All the while, productivity suffers as the remaining team
| falls further behind due to short-staffing and being
| pulled away from their real jobs to interview.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| Professions mandate training minimums per year in order
| to maintain credentialled status. They're low, sure, but
| they at least create a need for ongoing professional
| education.
| godelski wrote:
| I literally said it isn't all about money. Most people
| leave because managers[0]
|
| > In general, people leave their jobs because they don't
| like their boss, don't see opportunities for promotion or
| growth, or are offered a better gig (and often higher
| pay); these reasons have held steady for years.
|
| And if it is about money, then this is called paying
| competitively.
|
| But lastly, recognize that if everyone is training
| employees you're still not really losing out unless
| you're only hiring entry level employees. Sure, you might
| be training someone that leaves, but so does your
| competitor. But if you're only hiring junior engineers
| then you're probably doing something wrong that's much
| bigger.
|
| [0] https://hbr.org/2016/09/why-people-quit-their-jobs
| wyldfire wrote:
| Every process has pros and cons, you have to weigh the
| net benefits.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Working at a company that doesnt pay for my training
| while my skills fall behond is a loosing strategy.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| People change jobs at the drop of a hat for reasons that
| are well within companies' control. It's not like people
| _want_ all that stress and hassle, they do it because they
| 're incentivized to do so.
| jcims wrote:
| Sometimes. Other times they are just sampling what's out
| there to see what suits them the best, or playing the
| comp boost game until even their best face forward isn't
| able to garner a higher offer.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| The former happens, I'm not convinced that it's a common
| occurrence. Changing jobs is genuinely stressful, I don't
| think people do it lightly. The latter is usually
| something the company could fix, but won't.
|
| Even still, it's obvious that comp alone isn't enough to
| retain employees. Even FAANG companies, which pay
| extremely well, have pretty low retention numbers.
| Facebook does best here, at an average job length of only
| 2.02 years. If comp was enough, people would stay there
| longer. This implies that people are changing jobs for
| reasons aside from "this other company will pay more".
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| It's not just about absolute comp. If google will pay you
| more, then maybe you leave facebook. That's not because
| google pays more than facebook, just that it's easier to
| get a "promotion" by taking a hire role elsewhere than it
| is to get an actual promotion. It doesn't mean you don't
| pay market wages, but it does mean you don't pay that
| person their market wage.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| That's exactly something companies have under their
| control. If people are leaving because it is seen as the
| sure route to a promotion, then perhaps providing clear
| advancement opportunities internal would reduce this
| phenomenon and help keep your high performing talent.
| jcims wrote:
| The present employer and prospective employer have a
| different perspective on the individual. It's entirely
| possible, and indeed somewhat common, that individuals
| are hired to levels to new employers beyond what they
| would be able to justify promotion at their existing
| employer. The only way to eliminate this is prolonged and
| comprehensive interview process, which is what TFA is
| railing against.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I disagree that this is the only way to eliminate this
| problem. Companies could loosen promotion criteria to be
| more in line with what external candidates bring.
| Ultimately the cost of lost knowledge and backfilling is
| quite high, and could easily justify faster promotion
| cycles on a monetary basis alone.
|
| Even if some of them genuinely get promoted before
| they're ready and wash out, you're not really that much
| worse off than if you'd lost them before. Besides,
| there's always the risk that your new hire is unprepared
| too, which is a much harder thing to quantify.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| That works when you're employing a bunch of Wordpress
| monkeys who do nothing all day but mess with CSS and
| install plugins. Not so much when you've got a mature SAAS
| product, parts of the system are tricky to work with, and
| stakeholders are breathing down your neck to implement new
| features so you don't have time to cross-train your teams.
|
| Losing people who are experts within the domain of the
| software they're maintaining because you refuse to invest
| in them is going to cost you thousands of dollars... the
| only question is whether that's tens or hundreds times that
| amount... and in some cases it can cause you to lose your
| entire business.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| I'm friends with a few "Wordpress monkeys," as well as
| some people who "do nothing but mess with css all day."
| That was extremely condescending and dismissive
| anchpop wrote:
| Yep. Apprenticeships solved this problem in the past (and
| of course created many others). Actually it's almost a fun
| little exercise in economics.
|
| Basically there's two types of efficiency, investment
| efficiency and allocative efficiency. (There may also be
| other types I don't know about.)
|
| Investment efficiency means people are incentivized to make
| positive-expected-value investments. Think about how people
| are incentivized to invest in their house, e.g.
| preventative maintenance, because if the expected value is
| positive then they will recoup that value when they sell
| the house. If you're renting you don't have this with
| respect to where you live - water damage or no, not really
| the renter's problem. Investment efficiency is maximized by
| private property, where you know that no one will take your
| property without your consent.
|
| Allocative efficiency means things go to whoever is
| willing/able to pay the most for them. Renting does have
| this property - if both of us want to rent a house, and I'm
| willing to pay more, in most cases I'll end up getting the
| house. This is why gentrification can cause displacement -
| when wealthier people come into a city and are able to
| outbid the current renters, they win and the current
| renters lose. Allocative efficiency is maximized by
| auctions and things like them, where the good goes to
| whoever is willing to pay the most.
|
| Bringing it back to your comment, job training isn't worth
| it because our careers as programmers are dominated by
| allocative efficiency, not investment efficiency. If you
| can train a programmer create $50,000/year more value in
| general (i.e. it's not training that would only be useful
| to your company), they can now get paid about that much
| more from any of your competitors, and you will have to pay
| them about that much more to stop them from leaving. So you
| gain nothing from giving them general-skills training.
|
| Another way of solving this problem is with sectoral
| bargaining. If you have a sector-wide union, they can make
| all companies start training simultaneously, or assume some
| of the costs themselves. It's a win-win for the industry
| and for the programmers, but it doesn't happen nearly as
| much as it could because of that coordination problem.
| ladyattis wrote:
| >Yep. Apprenticeships solved this problem in the past
| (and of course created many others). Actually it's almost
| a fun little exercise in economics.
|
| But it makes Reginald the investor angry that his ROI
| isn't exactly 20% each quarter, so they jettison
| apprenticeships and start cooking the books to make that
| possible.
| sokoloff wrote:
| So, in this hypothetical, the sector-wide union is
| preventing individuals who learn to create an additional
| $50K/yr in value from realizing the increase in pay which
| would otherwise accrue to them?
| ptx wrote:
| In return for wasting training on employees that will
| leave for other companies, the company is getting its
| employees trained for free by other companies in the same
| way. In aggregate everyone wins because employees now get
| training.
|
| The union is ensuring that no company can ruin it for
| everyone.
| anchpop wrote:
| Yeah, or at least they aren't able to capture the entire
| $50k/year in value. It kind of sounds bad but it's a
| trade and there has to be something in it for both sides
| for it to happen.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| I have no idea why people think this. I've trained all
| sorts of people on all sorts of new things and it was
| always worth it.
|
| Sometimes they leave. By that time they've used what
| they've learned and passed some of it on to the next
| person.
| planet-and-halo wrote:
| Incredible that you're the first person I've seen mention
| a second-order effect in this conversation.
|
| I don't know what it is but I feel like people have
| forgotten just like basic truths about how humans work.
| Maybe it's because managerialism has infected everything.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| This a hundred times over. I still remember in 2020 multiple
| places asking me "I see you've used .NET core, what *version*
| have you used?".
|
| I had a kind of career crisis/breakdown, where I realised no
| one gave a shit about anything except my utility as a walking
| set of tech keywords. Accepting that it wasn't working for me
| was one of the best things I've done for my career.
| amitport wrote:
| The fact that they ask this question does show some bias
| but it may not be as much as you think. I can interview a
| person and be interested in finding out how much he/she
| fits like a glove for the tech stack _and still_ put more
| focus on other qualities. Moreover, I expect a capable dev
| to not be too judgmental /unconfident and just answer
| something along the lines:
|
| "No, I'm not familiar with this, but I have done [market
| themselves, mention relevant experience, ask relevant
| questions] and I'm confident I can get the job done"
| stadium wrote:
| > Accepting that it wasn't working for me was one of the
| best things I've done for my career.
|
| How did you pivot after this?
| purplecats wrote:
| did you expect others to have empathy for you?
| vmception wrote:
| I think the bigger issue here is that this process has
| made it too random and dilutive of the candidate pool.
|
| Many software engineers have accepted that they have to
| continually learn and will do so.
|
| This process though, makes it impossible to know what to
| learn with an impossible random and unknown credential
| set. It's not the same as something like elevator
| attendants having an obsoleted skillset. It's a
| combination of not having time in a lifetime to even try
| to specialize in the random employer chosen skillset.
| When instead, employers should expect a good engineer to
| adapt quickly and employers should also commit to
| training staff.
| purplecats wrote:
| > When instead, employers should expect a good engineer
| to adapt quickly and employers should also commit to
| training staff.
|
| At the risk of suggesting you might be dating yourself, I
| think this is an outdated model. It's simply no longer
| realistic. I personally believe that having personal
| expectations of what my adversaries or those outside of
| my control "should" do will inevitably result in sadness
| on my part.
|
| Corporations will aim to do what they must to increase
| profits (given, by definition). Any additional
| assumptions from that are liable to be faulty. Perhaps
| you are used to the times when they needed to train staff
| but that's simply a symptom of the circumstances as
| opposed to a duty.
| vmception wrote:
| I'm not used to that time, it would be more productive
| than what is currently happening which does not increase
| the profits of the corporations
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| It's not that I wanted them to love me for who I am as a
| human or anything.
|
| It's that I firmly believe that there's more to software
| dev than just knowing a 'stack'. And even then, fair
| enough if they were curious about my .NET skills. But
| them asking about specific versions of .NET core really
| woke me up into how much of a commodity labourer they
| were trying to turn me into.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > where I realised no one gave a shit about anything except
| my utility as a walking set of tech keywords.
|
| I am genuinely asking. Why is this objectionable?
|
| Why do people find it so horrible that their labour is a
| commodity? To me that just tells me I should treat my
| labour like a merchant treats his goods. Always be checking
| the market to ensure you have something worth selling and
| while you might sign long term deals, periodically check
| for the best price to ensure you are getting it.
|
| Why is it important to you that your employer view you as a
| person?
| pabs3 wrote:
| Because people have brains, can learn new things and
| technologists don't need experience with particular
| technology to be successful using or working on it.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| > Why is it important to you that your employer view you
| as a person?
|
| It's not about being viewed as a person. It's about being
| viewed as a professional.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Ah. I understand this objection.
| planet-and-halo wrote:
| Great response. This is why I ended up not becoming a
| teacher, despite everyone and their brother telling me
| that that's my calling (I still hear this at work
| constantly from people I train). I could have absolutely
| dedicated my life to something with low pay. What I would
| not do is accept an environment where I was not treated
| as a professional. As far as I can tell, the modern
| American education system treats its educators like crap
| and hamstrings them every step of the way. No thanks.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Because selecting candidates based on tech stack is
| almost universally the sign of incompetent tech
| management. Anybody who understands software, knows that
| intelligence and master of fundamentals trumps tech stack
| experience without exception. Linus Torvalds would
| unquestionably become a better Ruby on Rails developer
| within four weeks than 90% of people with 10 YoE in it.
|
| Good organizations hire talented and bright people with
| mastery of CS and SWE fundamentals. Bad organizations
| think "oh we use Java, better hire Java programmers".
| Really bad organizations think "oh we use JUnit, Spring
| Boot and IntelliJ, better hire people with experience in
| JUnit, Spring Boot and IntelliJ"
|
| One of the strongest signals of how good an engineering
| organization or a tech team is how few specific
| technologies they list in their job ads.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| I got turned down once by somebody in hr because I didn't
| write I had experience with .net but rather wrote c# on
| the paper.
| golemiprague wrote:
| Usually a language is not only a language, it is tools,
| paradigms, frameworks, libraries, conventions and many
| other bits and pieces one needs to know. So while there
| is some commonalities it usually takes time to get to a
| certain level of productivity, which is sometimes
| required sooner rather than later.
| asp_net wrote:
| This is so true.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| I absolutely agree with your take.
|
| Case in point: a Stripe job listing I picked at random
|
| https://stripe.com/jobs/listing/backend-api-engineer-
| core-mo...
|
| No single language is named! And this specific sentence
| is a really great sign (unsurprisingly)
|
| "Languages can be learned: we care much more about your
| general engineering skill than knowledge of a particular
| language or framework."
| rgallagher27 wrote:
| On the other hand, it would be nice to know the core
| languages in play. I have no interest in working in Java
| anymore, I avoid job listings for companies that would
| expect me to write Java. I don't want to have to go
| through recruiter screens etc before I can ask someone
| who will know what language I would be spending the next
| year of my life working with
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| That's a fair point.
|
| I think that in the specific case of Stripe, they
| specifically mostly use Ruby (from answers I found
| online). I may be wrong, but I assume that not mentioning
| Ruby is a way to attract Python/Go/C/etc. developers that
| might otherwise think that since they don't code in Ruby,
| they shouldn't apply.
|
| Your main point (re: Java) remains of course.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Not to pick on Stripe, but why not say this explicitly?
|
| "We mainly use [language X], but you don't need
| experience in [language X] for us to consider your
| application" - this is a totally normal thing I've seen
| in many job postings.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| I agree.
|
| Stripe is sometimes more explicit about it:
|
| https://stripe.com/jobs/listing/infrastructure-engineer-
| ruby...
|
| "Our most popular language in the company today is Ruby,
| and we are building a new Ruby services practice in
| support of this."
|
| ... but that job is also an openly Ruby-centric job.
| 59nadir wrote:
| Our solution to this is that we are clear that we're
| looking for Haskell programmers (as in that is what they
| should expect to do) but we have very modest requirements
| in terms of prior knowledge. I made sure to relay to HR
| that almost nothing is _required_ in terms of prior
| knowledge (language-wise) and that we should expect to
| teach Haskell to people instead.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| They are massively profitable too. I'm not implying a
| correlation here but.....
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Good organizations hire talented and bright people with
| mastery of CS and SWE fundamentals. Bad organizations
| think "oh we use Java, better hire Java programmers".
| Really bad organizations think "oh we use JUnit, Spring
| Boot and IntelliJ, better hire people with experience in
| JUnit, Spring Boot and IntelliJ"
|
| You can't just go around telling people that: you are
| going to make hiring harder once everyone figures it out!
|
| When you get a referral for a 10x and you're meeting at
| Blue Bottle you need an ice breaker; clueless community-
| college tier HR asking for versions of frameworks makes
| for an excellent one!
| arp242 wrote:
| I've been hired as both a Ruby on Rails and Go developer
| without prior experience, and managed just fine in both
| case. Of course there's a bit of ramp-up time, but it's
| not that bad.
|
| I'm not even an exceptionally talented programmer: just a
| competent one. Of course there are real differences
| between languages that matter, but at the end of the day
| ifs are ifs, ints are ints, functions are functions, etc.
|
| Relevant old joke: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHum
| or/comments/4k994j/if_...
|
| That said: there are some reasonable scenarios when you
| want to hire someone with prior experience; for example
| as a first or second hire it's probably a good idea in
| most cases, or if you really need someone who can hit the
| ground running.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| This makes a lot of sense. If a person has good
| fundamentals and understanding of engineering and CS,
| then they should be able to master any tech stack. I
| think in software development, we are in a weird
| position. In other engineering fields, it is expected to
| have a base line knowledge and the ability to learn into
| new processes. Most software companies seem to not want
| hire engineers who can do that.
| anchpop wrote:
| I guess this is how I think of it. I enjoy the fruits of
| modern society, the airplanes and fast food and nice
| phones. But to make that happen, you need specialization,
| you need people know get really good at flying planes
| then just do that, and people who get good at making fast
| food and iphones and everything else. And inside that,
| you need people who specialize at every part of the
| supply chain, and what you end up with is people who have
| spent basically their whole lives fixing bugs in
| webservers used to sell analytics software to businesses
| etc. etc. and it becomes so abstract and you're so
| disconnected from the feeling that you're actually
| helping anyone or worth anything to society that it
| doesn't really matter that intellectually you know the
| whole system would collapse if you don't have people
| doing jobs like yours. And you should have friends
| outside of work, but many of us don't really, at least
| not to the extent that way like, and even then work is
| literally most of your waking day most days of the week,
| and the knowledge that not even your coworkers or
| superiors or anyone else really cares about _you_ in this
| grand societal project called modern civilization that
| you're basically dedicating your life to maintaining, I
| can see how that would get to someone.
| planet-and-halo wrote:
| Dear god, that was beautiful but also depressing to read.
| I think this is it, exactly. I also think that it
| explains a large part of why so much software is bad.
| Specialization is a powerful thing, but without a
| unifying concept of the end goal, it's easy to become
| trapped by local maxima.
| yarky wrote:
| > Why is it important to you that your employer view you
| as a person?
|
| Because we, generally speaking, are people and not robots
| ;)
|
| That being said, I agree with your point : people would
| have less issues if they just felt happy about whatever
| makes logical sense. That's just way too hard to live by
| for most people.
| phdelightful wrote:
| The answer to a charitable interpretation of your
| question: most tech workers don't mind exchanging their
| labor for money, of course.
|
| The answer to the question as written is...of course
| people want the entity that has outsize influence on 40
| hours of their week to view them as a person instead of a
| mindless cog in a machine. People get treated better than
| cogs. Workers want their working hours to be as pleasant
| as possible, which is much more likely if your employer
| sees you as a person.
|
| Is that really surprising to you?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Not a mindless cog, but more as a merchant or even a
| labour supplying Lambda function. Just simply acknowledge
| that my employer and I are trading, the arrangement may
| end at any point for business reasons, and likely will
| end in a few years as our needs diverge.
|
| Needs can include a nice workplace and you can negotiate
| specific details about what that means to you. I did not
| mean to say that it needs to be money.
| playing_colours wrote:
| There can be vast difference in the work of two engineers
| with the same "Java - very good" in their CVs.
| OJFord wrote:
| But not all of us want to trade at that level of
| granularity. 'Do you have any mechanical engineering
| jobs' not 'Do you have any ceramic ball bearing housing
| design jobs'.
| Krisjohn wrote:
| A screwed hiring system is something most companies
| appear to be able to afford, given how many have one.
| When that same experience is flipped around to the
| employee, they can't afford it and it's a disaster. Few
| employees want zero job security and an expectation to be
| wading through the job hire swamp every couple of years.
|
| You're not describing an employee, you're describing a
| consultant. Not everyone wants to be a consultant,
| particularly since most people don't get any training in
| it before they have responsibilities. If proper
| entrepreneurship was a subject at school, then maybe
| people would be willing to be their own business, but
| that's not what the system creates (or wants).
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Few employees want zero job security
|
| Fair, I can see why this might bother people. I don't
| think job security is a thing (career security perhaps),
| but I can get why its absence would be disturbing.
|
| > expectation to be wading through the job hire swamp
| every couple of years.
|
| The high level of turnover in this industry indicates
| that people at least tolerate it. The only people I know
| who make it 24 months in a role are chained by stock
| options.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| It's not about humanism but mutual investment. I am
| investing my (very limited) time into your company to
| make you profit, you can invest in training me or helping
| me get up to speed on your specific needs.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| But that is just trade and you can negotiate for those
| things. The employer benefits from getting you up to
| speed in the same way that someone might offer to send a
| truck to a store to get something delivered faster.
| mettamage wrote:
| IMO, because the different .NET Core versions the
| commenter talks about aren't that different and one can
| easily learn another version if they are already well-
| versed in one if them.
|
| Learnability is totally ignored.
| andi999 wrote:
| Also I am wondering: if management eventually decides
| (advised by external consultants of course) to switch to
| a newer version, then what do they plan to do? Hiring a
| new team?
| ookdatnog wrote:
| In short, employers have some degree of power over you,
| and if you perceive people who wield power over you as
| wielding that power arbitrarily, that is nearly
| universally experienced as frustrating.
|
| In GP's case, the arbitrariness originates from their
| potential employer not taking the effort to really
| evaluate GP's relevant skills in software engineering,
| but instead resorting to lazily ticking boxes on a
| checklist. And what's on the checklist isn't even
| particularly relevant.
|
| What I imagine this does to GP's view of the world (based
| on what it would do to mine) is: "I believe I am
| competent because I've built up a set of subtle skills in
| software engineering over many years, and this is what I
| take pride in. But from an employment point of view, this
| is wasted time: I should instead have focused on
| optimizing the checklist (and I only found this out after
| years in the industry)."
| XorNot wrote:
| Because the buzzwords are never even coherent. "Puppet or
| Ansible" - well no, those are not even slightly the same
| thing, _which_ one are you using? GCP or AWS or Azure -
| same thing. Which one are you using, not what are you
| imagining?
|
| This would all be fine, but no one writes ads saying what
| they actually need or what they're trying to do.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I want to know what HR people ask Santa for in their
| letters. It would be so confusing.
| x0 wrote:
| Minimum four slice toaster with proven experience to
| deliver results and work autonomously in a fast-paced
| family kitchen. Ability to cook eggs a plus. Must comply
| with government product safety laws.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I wonder if they realize they asked for a large frying
| pan in an oven with a timer?
| [deleted]
| ratww wrote:
| Because a Company expecting a _" walking set of tech
| keywords"_ is a terrible deal for everyone but
| charlatans.
|
| It is terrible for inexperienced developers eager to
| learn on the job as is common in other industries or was
| in ours in the past.
|
| It's terrible you're an experienced developer that is
| able to pick technologies quickly, or just wants a proper
| work-life balance.
|
| It is terrible for developers who are deeply familiar
| with the technology but expect to work with a team of
| professionals, rather than with _" walking set of tech
| keywords"_.
| wwweston wrote:
| > Why is this objectionable? [to reduce an employee to
| "utility as a walking set of tech keywords"] > Why is it
| important to you that your employer view you as a person?
|
| If what you mean is that it can be rewarding
| (intrinsically and extrinsically) to think about skill,
| craftsmanship, and other ways to make your labor a great
| value add, sure. Most of us benefit by thinking about
| that.
|
| If you're really asking about why keywordification is a
| problem, well... keywordification of job roles indicates
| a way in which companies are quite possibly struggling to
| _actually model the roles_ they 're hiring for and
| identify what makes make an individual productive within
| them.
|
| This happens on at least two levels:
|
| 1) Technological. Engineering decisions are _sometimes_
| "we have a specific problem, specific tech is _the_
| solution to our problem, therefore we need expertise in
| specific tech. " In that case, the keywords regarding
| that tech are meaningful. But for non-trivial use cases,
| engineering problems are very, very rarely _just_ that,
| they 're commonly the aggregation of off-the-shelf +
| consideration of how to mix them with what tradeoffs +
| in-house custom solutions embedded in an organization
| attempting to understand and model its domain problems
| and fit/reshape all those solutions to those models. This
| is not exactly a keyword-driven process. Keywords
| represent the shallow end of the pool.
|
| 2) Human. While labor clearly _is_ something bought and
| sold on the market, even from a point of view of a value
| system which is OK thinking of humans primarily as
| industrial inputs, it turns out that 's a significantly
| leaky abstraction and most of us have all kinds of
| "compiler flags" or other inputs of our own that make us
| more or less productive. Some might consider this to be
| too warm and fuzzy; they might find it comforting that it
| can be approached from as a-humane and manipulative point
| of view as one might approach tweaking a database to get
| it to perform better:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkFztAgK-8U
|
| As for whether it's _OK_ to think of humans primarily as
| inputs to any process on a moral level... like Terry
| Pratchett 's character Granny Weatherwax said "Sin, young
| man, is when you treat people like things. Including
| yourself. That's what sin is." What are the consequences
| when social institutions consideration human beings
| primarily as inputs to institutional purposes? Generally,
| individual life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness become
| valued less, and individual suffering is more freely
| disregarded. Not super desirable under my value system.
| YMMV.
| fsloth wrote:
| "I am genuinely asking. Why is this objectionable?"
|
| Software engineering is at a schizophrenic point where it
| is very hard to categorize in either of traditional "blue
| collar" vocational job (given people seem to be employed
| close to very little formal schooling) or as a "white
| collar" professional job (given some roles need a CS
| degree level understanding of the fundamentals).
|
| Some roles are more the other than the other.
|
| I'd say listing a very specific tech stack signals the
| employer is looking for "blue collar" "commoditized"
| labour.
|
| White collar "professional" types probably feel treating
| their contribution as "commoditized labour" is a category
| error.
| garren wrote:
| Could you elaborate on how accepting it improved your
| career? Did it change the way you interview or the kinds of
| jobs you accept?
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| It made me realise my normal process of:
|
| - going on $JOB_BOARD
|
| - sending out CV & Cover letter
|
| - talking to recruiter
|
| - going to 3 interviews
|
| - rinse and repeat
|
| Wasn't working. I was not in demand. I had to constantly
| reach out to people, just to get interviews at places I
| didn't really want to work for. And even then they'd
| usually reject me.
|
| It was a wake up call that I was on the fast track to
| nowhere, and something had to change.
|
| Ended up specialising in an industry and doing contract
| work. I'm not super successful yet, but there's a lot
| more interest in me. My work days are much less
| frustrating and I'm earning more.
| vlttnv wrote:
| Looks like I am on a similar path to you but you are a
| couple of steps ahead of me. Is there a place I can
| contact you with a few questions. I'd really appreciate
| it.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Sure, email in profile, happy to chat.
| moistoreos wrote:
| I think this is a problem for the greater .NET community in
| general. I've participated in dozens of interviews where
| the "technical" interview is them asking obscure .NET or C#
| related questions like your some kind of technical
| glossary. What's worse is these questions are likely
| related to the one or two instances it's ever used in their
| entire codebase(s).
| jshmrsn wrote:
| Is it possible the interviewer was asking this question
| because they wanted to get a sense of if you were aware of
| which version was being used? And as follow on, were you
| part of the decision to update or not update, and your
| thoughts on the trade offs in that kind of scenario? Just a
| possibility. Certainly if the _recruiter_ is asking you
| that, that's a bad sign (although recruiters are often very
| detached from the thinking of the teams they're hiring
| for).
| smcl wrote:
| Yeah it could be a lazy way for an interviewer to check a
| requirements box that says ".NET Core 3.1 experience". But
| there is a chance that this is a way to determine whether
| any upcoming questions are relevant - like if you haven't
| used .NET Core 3.x, it's probably pointless to ask a
| question relating to some feature introduced in C# 8.0.
|
| It's a contrived example of course (particularly if the end
| goal was just to check the "knows feature X from C# 8"
| box!) and I wasn't at those interviews so I've no way to
| know what their intent was. I'm occasionally on the other
| side of the interviewing table though so I'm just trying to
| reason through why this might come up. FWIW I hate the
| "what _isn 't_ in a linux inode" type questions, or
| situations designed to fuck with the interviewees.
| machinevision wrote:
| What did you do differently once you accepted it?
| andix wrote:
| In reality nobody knows what skills will be needed for the
| position. Quite often not even the people who do the job. You
| can let them write down what skills are needed for the job,
| hire somebody who checks all boxes, and it could still be a
| catastrophic failure.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| John Ousterhout: A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of
| y-intercept.
|
| https://clairehu.com/2014/02/18/a-little-bit-of-slope-
| makes-...
| wyager wrote:
| The risk is artificially inflated by how hard it is to fire
| people.
| jt2190 wrote:
| This is actually true. A bad hire, once in the door, can be
| very expensive and time consuming for an employer to rectify.
| This is what leads to all sorts of weirdness like "contract
| to hire".
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I find attitudes towards risk in hiring very strange. Many
| companies seem to treat it like an opportunity for massive
| downside without much thought to the potential upside. I think
| the downside potential is mostly less than companies seem to
| worry (an argument against me is that a 'bad' employee
| negatively affects their teammates too). I also think the
| normal interview processes aren't even very good at filtering
| out those feared candidates.
|
| Instead I think companies, especially large companies where
| small numbers of employees aren't a massive proportion of
| spending, should try to see the potential for upside more.
| Especially in a world where everyone does a similar
| interviewing process, a candidate who performs poorly at those
| interviews could be cheap and an excellent hire who is
| undervalued by the market because of their poor interviewing
| skills.
| hiyer wrote:
| Almost every single tech company I've interviewed at (ranging
| from medium-sized startups to FAANG), I've given at least 5
| interviews, going up to 7. The only exceptions were very small
| startups and a couple of large Chinese organizations, where
| they stopped at 3.
| worker767424 wrote:
| Interviews or rounds? Phone screen and 4-5 on-site is pretty
| reasonable, but that's only two rounds.
| hiyer wrote:
| I'm not sure where the distinction lies - both seem same to
| me :-)
| sokoloff wrote:
| To me, rounds imply a decision point (and delay) in
| between.
|
| If I talk to HR on Monday, take a phone screen with an
| engineer on Wednesday, and come on-site (or Zoom now)
| with 4 engineers next Monday, that's 2 rounds and 5
| interviews (or 3 and 6 if you count HR)
| [deleted]
| hiyer wrote:
| > To me, rounds imply a decision point (and delay) in
| between.
|
| My experience has been that if you clear the engineering
| phone screen the company asks you to go through all the
| rest of the (4-6) interviews, even if your performance in
| one or more of them has been sub-par. And at least here
| in India the post-screen interviews are spread out over
| several days to 2-3 weeks - there is no "onsite" as such,
| even over Zoom.
| hogFeast wrote:
| I remember interviewing for some grad roles. No hackerrank,
| no bullshit, very straightforward companies with "easy
| processes". Both had one "interview day", and five/six
| interviews total.
|
| I read your comment and I was thinking in my head...wow, five
| seems like a lot, and then I realised that even these places
| I liked went pretty hard...I think they call this
| conditioning.
|
| I didn't get either job btw, the work was trivial but I get
| terrible interview nerves so tanked both of them...in both
| cases, I also had a 6-hour take home...the results of which
| were largely ignored. Neither company is ever fully
| staffed...ofc.
| hogFeast wrote:
| I was going to say that there are tons of parallels with how
| some fund managers approach investment. I have met lots of
| people who have this trait for over-analysis, not one has ever
| made consistently profitable investments. Over-analysis is a
| failure to understand what information is important.
|
| This is going to become more and more common though. In fund
| management, there has been a huge move towards
| "professionalisation"...which, ofc, means doing lots of
| pointless exams that select for the wrong thing. MBAs are the
| same. It is very hard to solve because the system selects for
| people who will play into this self-image (in my experience,
| this isn't solvable...you can either handle the risk of being
| wrong or you can't).
|
| This also overlaps with a lot of the issues that a lot of
| companies are having with hiring. A company which frames hiring
| as a risk rather than opportunity and has these very long,
| negative process of hiring (be real, the point is to uncover
| "weakness", not learn more about someone) is going to fail to
| hire people of different backgrounds. The amazing thing about
| the "candidate shortage" is that it isn't more severe.
| Companies are so bad at hiring, it is surprising they end up
| making any decisions at all.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Does any fund manager make consistently profitable
| investments? Most don't even seem to make sporadic profitable
| investments.
| marto1 wrote:
| Reading this it just seems to me we're in for a really bad time
| with the new managerial class.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I think this is a problem our whole society will have to learn.
| Reducing risk is probably good, but we have to reach the point
| where trying to eliminate is universally seen as a pathology.
| It's already kind of a meme in consumer products ("warning
| labels these days, right?"), but it crops up in hiring, movie
| production, etc.
| slickrick216 wrote:
| Salesforce have ever green roles which they casually do
| interviews for but never actually act on. The roles can be
| easily spotted as they'll be posted and reposted on job boards
| like LinkedIn every 4 days.
| 100-xyz wrote:
| I have recently been through this.
|
| Google took 3 months. 1 month was from the virtual onsite final
| interviews to the Hiring Committee decision. It was a miserable
| month and even my wife hated Google by the end.
|
| Second was for a Director of Engg position at a mid sized
| company. It took 2 months and finally I had to force them to
| answer. It was a company with weak leadership and it showed in
| their inability to make a decision.
| adventurer wrote:
| It's odd. I'm tending to think going through recruiters is the
| answer. The recruiter can be the bad guy and actually get a yes
| or no by putting pressure on otherwise I'm emailing multiple
| times and lucky to even get a response. If you weren't sure
| what the next steps were then why are you even hiring?
| wdb wrote:
| Yeah, two phone interviews, day of interviews, get job offer and
| then they rescind your job offer.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| I think there should be initial round with HR just to see that
| you aren't out right lying on your application and/or CV. Then
| you should have at home coding exam (still time limited to an
| hour or two) and if your code looks good then there should be the
| final interview with the team/manager where you are going to
| work.
|
| EDIT: now that I think about it there probably needs to be one
| more where you can negotiate the sallary and benefits and
| actually sign the contract.
| runbathtime wrote:
| Do diverse candidates have the same amount of interviews as non
| affirmative action hires?
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