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Comment by justinmk | Hacker News Reader

> “I think it’s offensive and I don’t like how the industry has standardized on basically assuming everyone’s a bullshitter,”

I think it's weird for people to complain about whiteboards and technical questions, given the implied alternative. There are many other industries if you prefer the traditional hiring model.

That is, if you can get an interview. While you complain about the awkwardness of a whiteboard, people in other industries are quite happy to get a call. And in the interview, they compete in terms of poise, diction, rapport, and other intangibles, without the chance to repair any lack thereof by demonstrating technical competence. And they get 1 hour to make their case, not 3-6 hours.

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If you give someone gold long enough, eventually they'll complain how heavy and ugly gold is.

Whiteboards are an unbelievable utopia compared to so many other disciplines. It's an amazing stroke of luck that software developers don't have to do medical-style "residencies". We don't have to rely on letters of recommendation from our professors (hope that professor you slaved away for for six years doesn't have a bad day when he writes your letter!) We don't have to pay thousands of dollars to take excruciating standardized tests to obtain certifications that expire in a decade. We don't have to do unpaid internships, we don't even have to wear business suits to the interview.

Software devs don't realize how many people in the world would kill to have things as good as we have them.

A relatively badly paid and low status utopia at the same level of experience and you don't get pushed out at 45 as to old.

There's a lot of truth in that.

But I'm not sure it's that developers are being given gold and don't recognize it. It's that developers are being given mud and recognize it, while most other people are being given shit instead.

I'd rather be handed a pile of mud than a pile of shit, but it's not hard to feel that there must be some alternative that's better than either.

(Maybe there isn't, though. Matching candidates to jobs is just hard, I think; everyone's incentives are misaligned, performance is difficult to predict, it's amazingly difficult to get past your initial snap judgements or even to realise that you're failing to do so, etc.)

Well, some developers feel like they are being given mud. But developers who are really good at whiteboard interviews feel like they are being given gold.

I'd be thrilled with that. I've got a great resume, great references from former bosses, and have plenty enough confidence in my ability to work contract for a while to prove myself.

The problem is those things only get you in the door, then it 100% comes down to your whiteboard under-fire skills - which admittedly have gotten worse for me the older I get. Although I know I'm a better programmer now.

> That is, if you can get an interview

That's a solid point. Yeah, engineering interviewing could be better, a lot better, but as we push to improve it, it's really important to keep in mind how privileged we are. I remember having a discussion with one of my friends in a different field who was thrilled to get a recruiter pinging them on Linkedin, for example.

Also, given how chaotic the field is, and how people come from all sides (some with CS degrees, some self taught, some who worked at great tech companies, some who didn't, etc), assuming everyone's a bullshitter is unfortunately kind of expected. We absolutely should treat people with respect and dignity, but that doesn't mean being naive either.

And in other fields getting fired and even demotions are pretty common, while in big tech hubs thats nearly unheard of, except for extreme cases or very very entry level people.

"Engineering"

Hah. Point taken.

Wasn't about you in particular to be honest (but I like how you owned it). Personally, my official position is "software engineer" and I hate it. We have nowhere near the culpability engineers in other disciplines do.

In theory "yes" but in practice engineering doesn't disbar people in the same way law and medicine does.

When was the last time you saw a news story about a Ceng / PE getting disbarred? Stories about doctors are much more common.

Ironically it took me a while to even start using that terminology. Where I'm from, "engineer" means something specific, even in software, and you can't just call yourself an engineer (well, there's no LAW against it, but people will call bullshit pretty fast if you didn't go through the right channels). In the US, everyone's an engineer. Im surprised the person who serves me my burger at the counter isn't a Bovine Product Assembly Engineer.

And politicians are Bovine (Something Else) Engineers.

I haven't had much trouble sifting out the bullshitters. There are patterns to their resume and their conversation. You just need to ask the right questions and be able to understand the answers. No coding problems required. I mean, if you can't tell weather a person can actually do what they claim to do when you work in the same field, you have to work on your people skills.

There's a reason that "talkling the talk vs walking the walk" is a thing.

A lot of people can speak (very deeply) about many topics, but as soon as they're in front of a keyboard it falls apart.

Heard of a PIP or forced grading to the curve at say Microsoft back in the day.

You cant directly compare a professional job to say an skilled worker in a corner store / bodega - we may have similar problems but they express them selves in very different ways.

In other industries their past experience is also believed, rather then tested by random facts. I’ve had an interviewer ask me how to change Swift method names when exposing them to Objective C and then take that as an indicator of my whole iOS skill set.

Most fields where experience is "believed" fall in one of a couple of categories:

1) Extremely regulated fields with strict education, training and certification requirements (eg: a physician)

2) Fields where you have to show something. Designers frequently need to have extensive portfolios. Carpenters need both that and real world referrals of happy customers (not just nearly automated HR checks we have in software dev where no one will say anything bad out of fear of getting sued)

3) Trial period followed by sink or swim. Come work for us and if it doesn't work out we'll demote you or fire you. There's a few places like that (I think its Netflix's model?), but generally firing someone has everyone around calling foul.

The trial period is not without its flaws but I’ve always preferred that over take home tests and puzzles because it gives both parties time to truly assess one another. I’ve done it twice in my career and I appreciated getting paid like a contractor and giving more time to understand whether or not I really fit at the company I was joining. Likewise, the company’s weren’t 100% assured that I was good but I was able to prove my value both times.

I wouldn't deal with the contractor paperwork myself, but in at will employment states that's not even needed. Hire by W-2 and let go after a few months if it doesn't work out.

Thats absolutely my personal preference. The argument against it (very valid), is that if someone with a family relying on their paycheck quits their job to go work at another with that policy, and gets let go after 3 months, they're kind of fucked.

As the USA is at will don't you effectively have a probation period.

I think its state by state, but even where it is, companies get a pretty bad rep for actually using it regularly on software engineers. In the current political climate it if the company involved isn't one where the koolaid is being drank by the gallon but big enough that it has a reputation, it would quickly end up on Glassdoor and social medias as a big deal.

"Wrongful termination" lawsuits are still a thing. If you fire someone, they can file a lawsuit that is written to make it look like they have a case. You can fight it, you can win, but it still costs you lawyer time, which means it costs you money.

> Fields where you have to show something

We could have this for our field - and to a certain extent we already do, at least via a github repo. Only problem is, nobody seems to look at them.

People have mentioned that SWEs should have a portfolio - but I've never worked for a company they let me take home code and put it in my portfolio. For web development, I may or may not be able to point to a specific site and show someone "see this here, I developed this part" - and even if I could, how would I prove it? Most of the time, it doesn't matter - as that code/feature/website is likely gone or changed by that time.

So you only have a couple of options to develop a portfolio, and those options only work for some people, not all: Either contribute to an open source project, or work on your own side-projects, putting them all up on github or similar repository you can reference.

But not everyone has the time or inclination to do this.

> and to a certain extent we already do, at least via a github repo.

There are significant pushbacks in some communities that this isn't inclusive, because people can't spend that much time outside of work hours to build one (and as you pointed out, internal code can't really be included).

Graphic designers and stuff are always sketching/drawing stuff on the side for their portfolios though, and that seems pretty expected, so... /shrugs.

The problem isn't technical interviews it's bad technical interviews. I think this is pretty "regional", with many people reporting big tech companies in e.g. the Bay Area doing things like have people code textbook algorithms on whiteboards.

Technical interviews where you look at some code and review it, or is asked to broadly describe how to design a system etc isn't unreasonable, and as you say it's better than judging only on poise...

Without the chance to repair any lack thereof by demonstrating technical competence.

As if it's a given the whiteboard process actually provides a useful measure of technical competence.

False dichotomy :) Just because something is different from the stupid option, doesn't make it a good option.

White boarding is the worst form of interviewing, except for all the other forms that have been tried.

There must exist a middle ground somewhere.

But we are not in an "extreme".

All of the complaining is tiresome. Some companies have difficult interviews, many do not. Who cares?

All companies cargo-cult some version of this nonsense today.

All? No.

I've not interviewed with one that didn't in almost ten years, possibly more.

Did you try to interview at companies paying $80k to senior engineers? Low status companies tend to have more normal interview processes, many don't even ask you to code before hiring you. This way you can get similar pay and interviewing as people get in other fields.

Not a viable wage in Southern CA these days; have not seen an ad at that rate in any case.

Guess the gist is that bottom of the barrel jobs have easier interviews. I could buy that.

>And in the interview, they compete in terms of poise, diction, rapport, and other intangibles

Don't forget the interviewer's arbitrary "system" for weeding out applicants that has no basis in research and varies from one hiring manager to the next.

I think it’s interesting when people characterize feedback about technical interview shortfalls as “complaining” ... reveals a lot of the pre-existing bias in this very contentious topic.

The few times I have been able to get genuine feedback, I have always been incredibly grateful.

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