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Comment by NTDF9 | Hacker News Reader

Bullshit interviews are part of the system now. The only way to beat it is with interview-er accountability.

In interviews today, the expectation is that the candidate should be perfect, do this, that, don't forget to do this. But the interviewer has no such requirement. The interviewer can reject you because "They had a bad day".....seriously, this is what companies say. Look at some answers here: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-possible-reasons-of-being...

So the candidate has to be PERFECT but the interviewer can reject because they are just HUMANS? How the hell does this make sense?

Maybe we need yelp for interviewers. A rating system will weed out bad interviewers and bad company policies.

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I believe this is why Starfighters was being made; because the system is broken. Too bad it didn't work out(not the CTF or stock game; the idea). I wish there was a site where, in my own time, I can do some tasks to prove that I can actually do what I've been doing for the past 15 years. As in, "here I reversed a string and this is proof. now can we please discuss something relevant to the role or am I being hired to reverse strings all day?"

But then the interviewer trots out the old adage "but we're not testing your ability to reverse strings. I want to see how you approach solving problems." And yet, a wrong answer is an almost guaranteed no hire. I can't tell if these people believe their own bullshit or if I'm being lied to my face.

I don't know many of these interviewers (I myself interview but I would never ask people to do these silly tests) but I spoken to one of them from Boston a while ago at a party and he said he just has this list of questions and they need to be answered correct; he himself would not even be able to recognise if the person was attacking the problem right or wrong but he says 'I want to see how you approach solving problems' as that is what he has been taught. So in my 1 point empirical research I would say you are being lied to.

Well, now I know! thanks. :)

"I want to see how you approach solving problems"- Is almost always bullshit.

One person I knew at work had a question he used to always ask in interviews. One day while discussing this I asked him to show me some working code for his question. He struggles for a while then gives up(Note, this is his own question). Then he repeats the same trite - "We are just testing their approach".

And I was like "Oh sure, Their approach towards something whose answer you don't even know, to evaluate against."

> I want to see how you approach solving problems.

Which correlates nicely to "You didn't solve it the way I would have, so you're obviously wrong."

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Too easy to 'cheat' at. Just look at the comments page for the challenge and the answer is usually there. In the end, you just have to take a risk when hiring people, remembering that it is a 2-way street, and that you have to put in effort to make your employees great ones.

Also their tech is not great. I had one question in the python set which would've been very easy to solve if i could import a pkg from the standard library but it didn't let me.

I had a bad experience, this was some local server hosting company and I walk in there, granted I'm not wearing slacks/dress shirt so perhaps I'm not better but both the people I interviewed with (owner and an employee) were wearing sloppy clothes like basketball shorts, stretched out t-shirt, etc... and I read some reviews from former employees at this company on Glassdoor, I did not get a good vibe due to the mostly-negative reviews. I didn't get the job but what I didn't like the most is they never called me back or anything, they didn't say something like "We're sorry, we reviewed your application, you're not a good fit." I'm probably not the most social person anyway, I have a look on my face like "I'm miserable/tired" but I talked with a low tone/calm. I don't know, at least I have a day-time job and have some clients.

> The interviewer can reject you because "They had a bad day"

The only answer in your Quora link that has a lot of upvotes is by the author of CTCI and she is saying just the opposite, and instead of blaming the interviewer she is putting all of the blame on the person being interviewed. I find this quite disturbing, and you are right there isn't accountability on the interviewer, here are the things the author of CTCI is saying:

> Maybe you came off as arrogant

> A number of different things could happen. But when someone asks this question -- why did I get rejected even after doing well -- the problem is nearly always in the second part: You didn't do well

> If you were interviewing with a big tech company, they have basically infinite programming spots. They don't reject someone because they found someone better; they just hire both.

> So despite what you think about your performance, you probably didn't show good algorithmic problem-solving skills

I'm all for self-introspection to assist in self-improvement but her persistence in ignoring the fact that interviewers are fallible is troubling, she is the go-to resource for probably most interviewees and interviewers and I don't like that she assumes that the thing that went wrong is "almost always" the fault of the interviewee. It's some grade-A BS.

That Quora post is exactly what I am going through now. Answered all tech questions. Interviewer said he was impressed. A week later, I got a rejection letter saying I was slow. WTF! The interview lasted 1 hour. I solved 3 tech questions without knowing it's timed interview.

You can rate your interviews on Glassdoor, FWIW. I at least peek there where considering a company.

As someone seeking a job, yes, it's unfortunate. But from an employer's perspective, false negatives are safer than false positives.

>> As someone seeking a job, yes, it's unfortunate. But from an employer's perspective, false negatives are safer than false positives.

- Are you an employer complaining there is a shortage of good developers?

- How many candidates have you rejected in the past?

- How many of those were because of a bullshit interview question? (Eg: Find the maximum subarray of an input array in O(n)...cannot be brute force....within 20 mins)

- If you have faced a shortage of developers, have you considered calling back the people you rejected for bullshit questions?

- If you don't have a problem finding engineers who can solve bullshit problems, your technique succeeded right? How many of those successful bullshitters have you fired or been disappointed by their performance at work? If the answer is zero..great. Don't ever fire them. Else, review your interview process.

Thanks

The false negative/false positive question is more about the costs of hiring a "bad" engineer than how hard it is to find a "good" one.

I've been in that situation: Once, at an old job, I had put in for a new role that had been created. There was also an outside candidate who'd applied for the role. Management felt that having me interview this candidate would have been a conflict of interest, considering, so I wasn't asked to participate.

I knew within 30 seconds of meeting him that he wouldn't last. He didn't. They gave him three months, and we all agreed in retrospect that he shouldn't have been hired at all.

In the interim, I did my old job, as well as his job (in the form of handholding him through everything he did more complicated than surfing the web), and was very quickly given the title of "Senior $role", with him as a direct report.

The other engineers and I spent hours, daily, working hand in hand with him, correcting his code, repeatedly suggesting the same things he could do to avoid having those problems with his code in the first place, &c.

That's just one example of what the thing I thought the grandparent meant by "false positive" can cost you. I'm sure there are worse.

>> The false negative/false positive question is more about the costs of hiring a "bad" engineer than how hard it is to find a "good" one.

I'm familiar with the argument. Erring on the side of caution is wise. Thinking that the current interview process saves you from this is stupid.

Gameable systems are won by people who focus on the game. They are not necessarily going to do well if the job requires something different

The current interview process is a GAME.

From the employer perspective, they can never be sure if they hired someone who memorized stuff for the interview or a really smart guy.

It's very similar to the current US election process. Everyone thought the forefathers made a rock solid constitution. The few cracks it had was fixed with amendments. Lo and behold, the only person who could make it to the top was the one who gamed the system and not someone with real merit.

Aren't the parallels strong?

P.S.: Not claiming Hillary is meritorious, but at least she's not one to make radical decisions without counsel

Downvoted. This thread is about interviews, not politics. There are more than enough political posts on the front page right now if you're in the mood for political commentary.

>> Gameable systems are won by people who focus on the game. They are not necessarily going to do well if the job requires something different >> The current interview process is a GAME.

Exactly what I've been thinking about recently.

Isn't this true for a variety of things? The education system judging on the outcome of exam scores, elections, making money, marketing etc.

I wonder whether all this can be really be 'fixed'.

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