Show HN: interviewing.io is out of beta and open to engineers of all levels

The system is imperfect but is there actually a better alternative that fits the economic and cultural needs of our society?

FWIW I'm on your side, interviewing gives me the worst anxiety in the world even though my career has progressed to the point where I can consistently get an on-site interview.

And while it is sophomoric and ineffective, at least you’re not explicitly judged by where you went to school, etc. like you see in finance. It’s not like other high-paying industries are more meritocratic than tech. I still think tech is by far the most meritocratic industry to be in, despite the interviewing culture.

The only way we change the interviewing culture across the industry is by no longer making the FAANGs of the world the standard to aspire to, because it’s them pushing this misguided thinking.

One optimization I'd suggest though is to standardize the process. Algorithmic/data structure more theory-oriented problems are unrepresentative of "actual work" and are annoying, but what's more annoying is how the process is 1) opaque, and 2) repetitive. So you end up with candidates grinding through 80+ Leetcode problems to both master the skills necessary to ace these problems, as well as covering as many commonly-asked problems in a bid to game the system by preempting their interviewees questions. Goodhart's law abounds. This basically makes the process into an interview version of standardized testing. But- despite the standard prep process and a standard bank of questions, it can all easily fall apart because of subjective interviewer opinion, and so all the preparation is for naught. Candidates end up having to do the interview gauntlet for each company they apply at.

So standardize it. Put out clear, industry-standard rubrics for how one's performance is graded. Don't say "we only want to know how you think" and then ding candidates for not getting the right solution. You obviously care about the right answer as much as the thought process- don't be disingenuous about it. Maybe even standardize the level of difficulty of problems. And most of all:

Make this process a one-time thing.

Or rather, a once every five year thing. Outsource the ds/a interviewing section to a third party testing organization, like what Triplebyte is attempting to do, and have the actual interview be personalized to the company. Ask domain specific questions, relevant experience questions, system design, and culture fit questions during the company interview. And leave the DS/A portion be akin to the licensure tests that other engineering disciplines and STEM professions already have.

Software engineers may hate credentialism, but if it's a credential that you only need to take once or twice in a decade, then it's already far superior to the current system that forces candidates to undergo this each time they change jobs.

Perhaps some workplaces rely on that, consciously or not.

1. Ageism - not many seniors are desperate enough or have a free time for competitive programming preps.

2. Making switching jobs harder - for every next job one have to prepare again, because nobody is using competitive programming stuff during real work, so you forget.

Meanwhile I’m very good at competitive programming, I actually find it enjoyable because of the challenge, and I don’t need to practice it much even when interviewing.

Also to be perfectly blunt I think this just ties into people generally being uncomfortable with tests. All the examples you gave have the benefit of allowing unlimited time. What’s wrong with a test that challenges your knowledge of data structures and algorithms? I actually find that in general the very smart people I know are good at them and most of the people who “don’t test well” aren’t. And even then they can just practice them. They might even learn something. Sorry if that sounds mean, I don’t mean it to be, just blunt.

All of these are great signals IF present, but IMO not beyond.

I have a decent track record in the software industry (FAANG and other), but I don't tend to work beyond work (the results of which are mostly private). Likewise, I've worked with amazing developers who prefer to focus on family/hiking/baking/etc. in their free time over OSS/private projects.

It's great if you have the passion to go above and beyond in your free time, but it shouldn't be expected.

It feels like Leetcode is more of an aptitude test, but there’s tons of people that do great on the SATs but don’t necessarily excel in college.

From my experience, the number one thing a team should be assessing for is sensibility. Give someone the shittiest piece of code you’ve encountered at work and have that person write their true feedback about it. If it’s mostly what your team would have said, there, you found someone with the right sensibilities.

Then hit them with a few easy/medium Leetcodes as a fizzbuzz, and feel good about making a good hire.

I don't think it's hazing so much as it is a test, and we're definitely not the only profession that has tests. I'm sure medical professionals and lawyers might have books on their shelves on how to pass the MCAT, LSAT, or Bar exam.

If anything, we've maybe not matured as a field enough to have an actual standardized test for this kind of stuff, which would maybe make things better. But that's doubling-down on the "test-y" nature of coding interviews.

I agree for the most part, but in fairness, most other high paying fields rely solely on credentials that can often be pay-to-play (at least in the US)

The only disadvantage is that the site did not have enough mid to senior positions and very little focus on positions for engineering manager and above.

Once I realized the interviews were done by real people, I realized that would be the case. I was looking around to see if that was something that could be done on their site. It looks like it isn't but I found the following in their FAQ [0].

>If you need a place to start, we heartily recommend Interview Cake [1]. There, you can work algorithmic problems at your own pace and get nice hints as you go.

I wanted to post it here for anyone else wondering the same.

[0] https://interviewing.io/faq [1] I don't want to put the link here but the link from their FAQ does appear to be a referral link, or at least some kind of coupon code. I have absolutely no affiliation with either site but if you want to support this site then I'd recommend checking the FAQ and getting to Interview Cake through there.

It's not broken for FAANG, because what they're looking for is willingness to spend time studying hard for their interviews over material that's (certainly not all) useful in one's day-to-day job (if it were then this wouldn't measure one's willingness to spend lots of time studying), to whatever degree is required by your raw natural intelligence/ability, to be able to pass their tests.

They're looking for (what they consider to be) a sufficient amount of wanting-it + intelligence (IQ, more or less), in whatever proportion is necessary to get the candidate through the gauntlet. That's what the interviews filter for, and it's what they want them to filter for.

(yes they're also favoring recent grads and people who have lots of time on their hands—notably those two categories overlap strongly—but I'm pretty sure those are secondary goals, if they're goals at all)

I have 60 minutes to convince you I can code. In my day to day work, I can look at another example in the codebase. I can look up the stupidest stuff in stack overflow, even if it's embarassing. I can walk around the block if it's just not clicking.

An interview is not the same thing as work. It's a performance of code. I am practicing talking about how I think about a problem. I am practicing smiling while coding. I am practicing having a conversation in the middle of an initial rush of panic because of the pressure of an interview.

but, honestly, whenever i interview for jobs that i know that i want, i'm not willing to give up on them over a few weeks of hoop-jumping.

This. The real-world best solution to many leetcode problems is to implement an iterator over their broken interface so that <algorithm> can solve it.

Because of how they constrain you, what you end up doing is just sloppily reimplementing portions of the standard library. That's something that you should never want to do in the real world. It completely selects for the wrong thing.

Of course, that requires putting time into designing an interview pipeline full of things like rubrics, bias training, and sometimes realizing that leetcode questions don’t evaluate for the skills you need. Most companies aren’t willing to invest time into this and prefer to just copy <big co X> which is why you hear so many bad stories with what sounds like the exact same interviewers.

But each their own, I'm sure people are happy going through that process and then also enjoy working there.

I said - oh yeah you heard about that. Yeah I'm doing that later if you can make it.

Got the job.

The practice is about getting comfortable with the process of being interviewed. Practice is a great way to become more comfortable and confident before the real thing.

Get the anxieties out before you sit down with a real job interview so you can focus on performing well in the interview.

I think some coding interview questions are bad, some are better, but I don't think the idea that you must take what amounts to a test to get a job is inherently bad.

Where I do think you're spot on is that you shouldn't focus all of your time practicing one specific type of interview or practicing for interviews at one specific company. FAANG is a good example. I've seen far too many people get enraptured with the "dream" of working at a FAANG, devoting all of their time to practicing FAANG-style interviews, making their whole life about it, and then either not getting the job or they do get the job but they quickly have their illusion shattered that FAANG isn't heaven and they wasted all that time preparing/fantasizing over something that isn't true. It's Paris Syndrome [0] but for jobs.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome

The money can compensate for a lot of unpleasantness. I think finding a “dream job” is an illusion for most people. The question is usually “bearable” or “unbearable”.