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Comment by sxp | Hacker News Reader

The section in that article about 'Defining “Intelligence”' is similar to a previous discussion on HN about whether a FAANG interview is just "an IQ test which is disguised as a relevant skills test for legal reasons". [1] This article does a good job of supporting that claim. Theoretically, both IQ tests & FAANG interviews test for whatever "innate intelligence", but in practice, both of them can be gamed by grinding brainteasers & leetcode respectively.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22705057

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The tech interview process is just so badly messed up. Even if the process were a reasonable proxy for IQ (it's not), or correlated somewhat with use of actual required technical skills (it doesn't), it still almost entirely ignores the EQ (emotional intelligence) and CQ (cultural intelligence) factors which comprise the other 2 legs of the "good hire" stool.

>Even if the process were a reasonable proxy for IQ (it's not), or correlated somewhat with use of actual required technical skills (it doesn't)

I wouldn't be so quick to presume that FAANG IQs aren't above average.

>the EQ (emotional intelligence) and CQ (cultural intelligence) factors which comprise the other 2 legs of the "good hire" stool

EQ may be difficult to measure but the spoken part of the interview should generally take care of 'CQ', if that's a thing.

IMO the only surefire way to hire is to bring people on temporarily and evaluate their performance in 1-3 months. I don't know why this isn't popular.

One answer to your last: people aren't going to leave their permanent job for one that has a risk of being temporary.

If you make it as far as internship to hire, the company is signaling more of a commitment than just temp work. It's basically like a probationary period.

Also this would be especially good for graduates with little work experience.

Sure, that’s exactly what an internship is and it’s why these companies offer it. If you gave a similar opportunity to people who are already in the industry, you would have a major adverse selection problem where the better candidates would never pick a “probationary” job with second-class status over a normal job.

>Sure, that’s exactly what an internship is and it’s why these companies

I don't think so, to me an internship is temporary by nature and does not have a "guaranteed" job at the end based on good performance.

>you would have a major adverse selection problem where the better candidates would never pick a “probationary” job with second-class status over a normal job

The selection process is so competitive right now that I think plenty of people would be happy for such a change if it meant a more reasonable interview process. Plenty of strong candidates are being thrown away over arbitrary metrics right now anyway.

Personally I'd take a non-leetcode non-white board interview with a probationary period over the typical grueling 2-5 round FAANG process, and I'm sure I'm not the only competent developer who expects to have trouble with the typical FAANG process.

>I don't think so, to me an internship is temporary by nature and does not have a "guaranteed" job at the end based on good performance.

If you do a great job in a FAANG internship then you will get a full time offer at the end. Does the probationary period you propose have a lower performance bar than is applied post-internship? If so then it seems it wouldn’t achieve FAANG’s standards.

> The selection process is so competitive right now that I think plenty of people would be happy for such a change if it meant a more reasonable interview process. Plenty of strong candidates are being thrown away over arbitrary metrics right now anyway.

FAANG doesn’t need to attract more weaker candidates who can’t pass the interview, they are more concerned about getting strong candidates who have multiple offers to pick them. For less competitive candidates there are contract positions.

This only works for new grads. Why would I ever want to quit my job to get hired as an intern? In our industry, quality people overwhelmingly already have jobs, so this way you’re restricting yourself to pool of lower quality candidates on average.

The last time I was applying, I was finally at a place in my career where I felt I could choose an interesting company to work for. I applied for places like Tesla and SpaceX and Boston Dynamics and such. I ended up in a fantastic role through the typical process, but if someone had offered me internship to hire at a desirable company I gladly would have taken it and used it as an opportunity to demonstrate my value.

Maybe this is something only companies with reputations can do.

Hiring a candidate based on a 1 hour interview and a minimal coding exercise is a pretty substantial risk. I'm surprised more companies don't do this as a sort of hedge. I doubt it'd be that discouraging - do you know how many candidates apply for the average role right now? And if they're willing to jump through all the ridiculous leetcode hoops now, I imagine they'd be willing to take the internship too. Especially if that means we can return to saner interviews.

This sort of already exists. Many companies take on university students to intern for 3 months over the summer, and offer full-time return offers to seniors. At least in the US Bay Area, this is substantially more common than offering internships to full-time employees. Mainly for the reason people mention: 1-3 months is a huge time investment for what amounts to an extended (albeit paid) interview, when they can interview somewhere else and get a full-time offer with no uncertainty.

Google also offers associates or something similar to that. But it's for much longer, 6 months or a year.

> the only surefire way to hire is to bring people on temporarily and evaluate their performance in 1-3 months

In countries that have decent leave policies this might be possible for people who have jobs, but it would be expensive then and even more expensive for others. I can see myself taking a month off to go and work at Elite Company X, then going back, working out my notice, then starting the new job. But that stretchs the hiring period and makes them vulnerable to counteroffers (I can give notice to Elite Company X too).

But where I am now, no way. I can't take a month off on less than about six months notice, and right now I wouldn't get it because of the pandemic. So in the event that someone wanted to hire me, or someone senior in the US (etc), they'd have to front enough money to make it worth while quitting my current job on the off chance I might make it past the trial period.

Albeit when I was younger and jobs were much easier to get, I used to habitually negotiate salary at new jobs by saying "pay me what you want, then in three months you either start paying me what I'm asking or dump me". It is effective, sounds a bit arrogant (and not everyone likes that), and only once did someone try to negotiate after the trial period. That was a very short negotiation and they decided they'd rather keep me.

In my experience interviewing candidates for a FAANG, people say that they weight "CQ" heavily behind closed doors, but it is mostly used as a way to enforce various -isms under the guise of "probably would[n't] be a good cultural fit". It's how they screen out people who might have or develop a family life, among other things.

But that's just my anecdotal experience.

I work for a company where almost everyone has a family and kids. We work in FinTech and highly value cultural fit.

I am also single.

However I don’t think this company would generally tolerate brilliant assholes; who would almost certainly not be a good cultural fit.

IMO the grueling FAANG interviews actually optimize for how much people want to work at the company. If you're sitting through 10 interviews and grinding on LeetCode problems every night then really all you are proving is how badly you want the job. It's effectively a hazing ritual.

That seems to be it. But I don't get why. It's like wanting to join a gang or mafia: you have to prove how dedicated you are to join a particular organization.

It should be a job like any other.

> it still almost entirely ignores the EQ (emotional intelligence) and CQ (cultural intelligence) factors which comprise the other 2 legs of the "good hire" stool.

all of them have "behavioral round" which is similarly hacked as white board rounds. Check leetcode discuss.

Describe the time you had a conflict with your team == Invert a binary tree.

I've got a high IQ [1], so they say. But, apparently, I interview like an idiot. Make sense of that.

[1]: And, tons of professional work experience

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