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Comment by vanusa | Hacker News Reader

The fact that one can just ahead and cram for these problems should pretty much... severely downgrade, at least, their usefulness as hiring filters.

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Everyone always says this, but the fact remains that it is a filter in the sense that not everyone can learn it, or retain it. People always complain that the techniques requested in an interview are not required for the job. I see it in a different sense. The jobs they ultimately qualify for do not require such skills.

There's now doubt that these tests serve as some kind of "a" filter.

The question is, whether they serve as a particularly good filter.

It’s a how-bad-you-want-it filter. Plus a bit of an IQ test (to recognize which solution applies—of course even more studying can help here, too).

It’s working as intended.

It’s a how-bad-you-want-it filter.

As long as that's how it's thought of - I can see the value.

I think people are in the habit that it does a lot more than that, though.

It's not so much that you can cram for this stuff (you can cram for anything, to some extent!) and more that this whole 'coding' interview and whiteboarding stuff has evolved into something that actively encourages cramming, and discourages professionalism and commitment to the actual work. It's indistinguishable from a cargo cult at this point.

FANG recruiters will even give and encourage these study aids to candidates before their interview.

Wouldn't you want people who care enough about their career to cram? That itself is a good signal. Cramming algorithms problems is difficult and succeeding shows grit. It also selects against sociopaths who BS their way through subjective personality interviews.

People who care enough about their career to cram falls into 2 groups pretty evenly:

1. People who care about building good products, leading to good careers.

2. People who care about their career for the sake of their careers. This group tends to focus on office politics.

Therefore, caring enough about their career to cram has not a signal for how much they will care about building great products.

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