Hacker News Reader

Comment by glitchc | Hacker News Reader

Yet another article showcasing how the tech interview process is fundamentally flawed.

Personal anecdote: I recently underwent an interview process for a position in my field of expertise (computer vision) consisting of multiple in-person stages, whiteboard coding, product design and a take-home assignment that required developing a foundational (bubble-sort like) algorithm from scratch. After successfully completing all of these hurdles, I ended up with a low-ball offer targeting entry-level candidates. If we could have discussed the compensation up front, I wouldn’t even have bothered.

View on HN

It's very weird how some of those tech interviews are done. I've luckily never had to do one of those, but from the YouTube videos of training interviews and example interviews, almost everyone seems to be asked to implement a slight variation on something to be found in a Data Structures & Problem Solving book by Weiss. Great if that is what you'll be doing all day, but regurgitating some way to get the smallest number in a list or making a directed graph for a word morphing joke hardly represents anything other than a persons skill to repeat what someone else did and wrote down decades ago.

So everyone knows that the interview isn't perfectly realistic--it's a simulation.

Consider that when athletes are scouted, they are usually not asked to play in a full game of their sport. But instead certain stats like 'how fast can he run 100m' and 'how high can he jump' are used.

Sure, in a real game you will never run 100m in a straight line on asphalt--but the speed at which one runs 100m in a straight line is a good proxy for how fast one can maneuver during real play.

That's not a very good example. Athletes are being watched for 4-8 years before they are ever drafted. Colleges are watching all the high school games, and Pros are watching all the college games.

Perhaps--but it's the analogy I came up with while writing this comment. If you can replace it with a better one, go ahead.

Sometimes analogies are not really meant to be perfect, but just simpler methods of communicating information.

For almost any sport this is a spectacularly bad metric. Just because it can be measured doesn’t make it meaningful. FWIW, the “fitness” required for sportspersons is a very sport-dependent diffuse constellation of factors.

> Consider that when athletes are scouted, they are usually not asked to play in a full game of their sport. But instead certain stats like 'how fast can he run 100m' and 'how high can he jump' are used.

Teams rarely sign players based solely on measures like this, and those that do frequently regret it.

Additionally, the nature of contracts in professional sports are very different from regular employment. Players are cut or traded frequently, often find themselves on very team-friendly deals when unproven, and are granted employment in time-limited blocks.

I know. It's just an analogy. You can replace it with a better one if you want.

The general point I am making is: these are not trying to measure actual job tasks, but instead measuring something that (they hope) is closely related to, or correlated with one's ability to perform the job. The idea is that if one can do these sorts of problems, one can probably do the actual job at hand.

> (they hope) is closely related to, or correlated with one's ability to perform the job. The idea is that if one can do these sorts of problems, one can probably do the actual job at hand

This is a claim about the intentions behind these practices.

Intentions aside, the whole point of this perennially recurring discourse is about effectiveness — that certain overused methods of filtering job candidates are ineffective on their own terms — and negative side effects — that they're biased against people with non-traditional / from underrepresented backgrounds.

I had an interview question a few weeks ago (writing a JSON parser from scratch) that required me to remember that in python that a for loop allows you to iterate through not just a list but also each of the characters in a string. I forgot about that and spent several minutes wasting time trying to think of a regex-based solution before I remembered that was an option.

Why should an interview question reward you/require you to remember this? If I actually had to solve a real-world problem similar to this, I would google it, see a solution that iterated through the characters with a for loop and go “oh yeah, I forgot you could do that. Duh.” Why am I not allowed to google dumb things? On most days, my brain is focused on high-level abstractions that tie together two or more tools via disparate APIs, why the hell should I remember or think about for loops?

This is infuriatingly stupid. Not only does that waste your time (which we can be uncharitable and say they don't care about), but it wastes their time! i.e. costs lots and lots of money.

I'd say give them a doubly-linked list for their doubly-stupid hiring process.

Is cultural? I always discuss price AT THE START, when was hunting jobs, and now as contractor, and even when I sub-contract.

In the other side, I always pitch "We do this or that, this is what we need help for, and this is how much we can pay (or: how much is your rate?)".

Is an amazing filter. Specially when you don't have much cash to give. Because: If I can't pay... why lost more time? And if I can pay and the other accept it.. only need to solve if is capable.

This is also for my customers. I put a money estimate as soon as possible, or ask upfront what is the budget range.

Is an amazing filter. Because: If I the customer can't pay... why lost more time? And if can pay I only need to solve why I'm a good fit.

The less hidden variables the better for all...

A few years ago I had a case where I had told the company what salary I'm expecting. Then I had two in-person interviews and one phone conversation with an additional department in the company that I would be working with.

After that, they offered me something like $10k less than what I had asked for and minimum vacation, saying that when you add in the value of all additional benefits (health insurance, rrsp benefits), you end up at the salary I had originally requested. Did not exactly win me over.

Sad. But at least because you state your rate, you can see how much them lowered. I have lost customer after them say their own prices after I estimate a lot more (that is based in decades of experience, in the same market).

When the counter-offer is TOO BAD you can say, 100% sure, the experience moving forward will be VERY BAD. I'm not in a market where programming is well paid, and this is the most certain sign the customer will not pay on time, or even at all..

You counter with $15k over and keeping the benefits ...

Did you try asking about comp before interviewing though? I usually do and most of the time you get a reasonable answer. Probably depends on how easy it would be for them to estimate your own comp though

Yes indeed. And I received the standard "we have a large range and offer based on experience and expertise," but no explicit figures.

I recently interviewed for a job running a kubernetes cluster. I have two years of experience running a kubernetes cluster, including writing a custom provisioner and several controllers in go.

They spent two hours doing coding interviews and 15 minutes asking me about kubernetes, if that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com