[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) (HTM) web link (www.bbc.com) (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? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-02 23:02 UTC)