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Comment by lz400 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know. If all the candidates are that well prepared, then if you are not you are at a disadvantage, even if it didn't used to require it. And at companies where people want to work for, like Google/amazon/FB/Netflix, etc. and startups many people come prepared.

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No matter what system you use to interview people, if the position is desirable enough, and the number of positions is smaller than the applicant pool, isn't gaming the system the expected outcome?

If people at Google were interviewed by juggling raquetballs, there would be books, courses, etc. on how to juggle better. People are willing to pay for this prep because they want to work at Google. Eventually most everyone interviewing at Google would be very well prepared to juggle.

Sure but if that were the case wouldn't you think it's silly that you need to train months to be able to juggle to land a SWE position? wouldn't it be stupid? the current interview culture in those companies is not as silly as juggling but is also not a fair representation of candidates, with too much weight being in algorithmic puzzles and behavioral checkboxes you can train for.

Obviously if the process was a 100% fair assessment of knowledge and potential and people do better than you then good for them.

Yes, it is silly that you have to train for an interview for months to land a SWE position at a top company. However, until someone comes up with a less gameable system or a magic wand that stack ranks applicants, then I don't see a viable alternative :\

As someone who gives a lot of interviews, I'd love a better way to assess a candidates ability that is less gameable, but we haven't found one yet.

Google is special in that they seem to have a generic SWE interview unrelated to the candidate's actual specialization. So everyone at Google must be algorithms/systems people, even if they focus on say, HCI or PL or whatever. For junior people, I guess that's fine, for senior people they are obviously going to bias the pool (which explains how Google in general can be so great at A and not so great at B).

Other companies are much more specific in their interviews...you actually get a specific JD with expected skills that you hope will form the basis of your interview, and not all JDs require you to be a distributed systems/algorithm wiz.

I just paid program with people on the actual work we have that day. The only way to game that is to become great at what you'd do once you got the job.

> until someone comes up with a less gameable system or a magic wand that stack ranks applicants, then I don't see a viable alternative

This is exactly the concept of an IQ test, right down to the stack ranking.

They're pretty well understood by now, and they take less than a day, which compares pretty favorably to "months".

Isn't it illegal to hire people based on IQ in the US?

It is presumptively discriminatory unless you do a formal study documenting that high-IQ employees perform better than low-IQ employees. PG&E and the NFL use IQ tests in hiring.

Low-effort correction: I may or may not have been thinking of GE when I said PG&E.

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