(I say this as someone with a weird background/employment history who'd be at a fair disadvantage in many respects if they had to get a normal job - but I know I can get a bit of normie cred by brushing up my algorithms at least...)
I suspect you could teach someone to pass a lot of tech interviews without them ever building a production system.
It's all a bit broken. Best method I've seen so far is to sit down with candidates and pair on some code, and it's still got issues.
Im not saying its right, just that it didnt come naturally to me to be in that situation.
If you feel it's out of your control, it could've just been a bad day, but you may be suffering from something like generalized anxiety or a similar problem, you might want to look into that with a health professional.
Im just saying its thanks to my instinct that I have been so successful in my life, and I have never lost anything by refusing fizz buzz, yet have attained good things.
Maybe its survivorship bias.
It goes against my rules to proceed in interviews I think don't lend themselves to the situation.
The most substantial and complex projects I've worked on can end up sounding simple and boring when I describe them. It's not that I can't discuss the details, it's just that I'm not good at _selling_ them. I tend to stick to facts and give a simple overview of the project, and I'm never sure how to approach the gritty details. And honestly, the right choice at the time was likely "Pair a MySQL db with a cron job" or something, and that sounds really underwhelming in an interview.
On the other hand, I've heard people describe projects they worked on, and you'd have thought they were leading the charge on the reinvention of Internet. But when you do the math on their resume, they were two months out of university at the time.
Those types of interviews basically and inevitably end up being "tell me a good story". Non-fiction is preferred, but interesting fiction will win out over boring reality.
Maybe I was just lucky, but I think you don't have to be all "florid", just show enthusiasm when talking about what you did, and it doesn't have to come from the vocabulary; people can tell whether you're enthusiastic from your tone.
Most day-to-day "programming" can be broken down into that "Pair a datastore with a processor" idea, or "know enough about the problem to google/SO a fix or solution," so I don't think being honest about the mundane is a bad quality. Honestly, I think it's important enough, to make it at least a few of my questions on any formal interview, something akin to "what was a project that you thought would be simple but turned into something bigger, and how did you handle communication and management of it from that point forward?"
When interviewing you can ask the candidate for details on their MySQL + cron job and investigate how do they think, architect and build a solution and how much bullshit they're talking. Were you given a very detailed task to perform and you just did it? Or did you reach the conclusion that a MySQL DB plus a cron job would achieve the results? Why? What if the cron job failed? Draw a rough flowchart of your script, etc.
On the other hand, you can smell the bullshit of interesting fictions from a long distance when you ask those probing questions.
Now, an interview on basic CS algorithms? The only thing I would know is that you have a good memory and can recall the Cracking the Code Interview book.
It might come down to who is doing the interview: if you're a founder, or a team leader, and have done a lot of project management, you're likely to ask better questions about constraints, considerations, teamwork, etc, and get a better read on a candidate from questions about past experience. OTOH, a programmer giving an interview may not really care that much about those aspects or have a realistic idea of what a reasonable answer sounds like, and will thus tend to just jump through the interview hoops--and be more susceptible to, well, nonsense. On the other hand, they may actually be interested and invested in low-level technical questions.
I've had really good tech interviews that were challenging and even fun, and I don't think I could've faked my way through. I've never had a good experiential interview. But then, I've only ever interviewed for front-line programming jobs at large companies.
1. FizzBuzz, always, unironically; this easily weeds out 99% of the people who can’t program. I don’t even ask for an elegant solution, just a solution that works, in any language they choose.
2. Open question/toy problem that doesn’t involve hardcore technical knowledge, just common sense. The question is framed in a way that the candidate can grasp an actual use case - e.g. “How would you design a database for a public library?” I would explain concepts like PK and FK on the spot if needed. I even let them use the internet to look up whatever they need. The idea is not to see how much stuff they have memorized from leetcode, but to see their thinking process and whether they are resourceful and ask the right questions. Seriously, some people don’t even know what keywords, not even approximate ones, to use to Google stuff.
Resourcefulness and asking the right questions have much higher priorities on my list of things to look for in candidates.
Then why ask it? This is the whole reason for my stance
Fizz buzz is literally a couple IF statements and a loop.
As an interviewer, I need to know that you aren't just completely making everything up.
This is an actual problem. There are actually people who, for some reason or another, made up a bunch of stuff on their resume and literally do not know how to use a loop or IF statement, and there is no way to know this, unless you ask them to do it.
It is not an insult against you. It is just that an interviewer needs some small very easy check, just to make sure that you didn't completely make everything up.
Where is the line drawn?
If there is 20 years of programming experience it could be perceived as an insult in my opinion.
> Where is the line drawn?
The line would be drawn at the place where like 20% of people who interview at places legitimately can't solve fizz buzz.
If I lived in a bizarro universe, where 20% of people that I talk too legitimately can't drink a glass of water, then I might have to test for that as well.
Fortunately, we aren't in that kind of situation yet.
> If there is 20 years of programming experience it could be perceived as an insult in my opinion.
Ok, and what about the people who put 20 years of programming experience on their resume and are just making everything up, and legitimately don't know even the basics of coding?
Thats the problem that exists in the world. That there are people who you have no way of knowing how to actually code at all, and exaggerated to an extreme degree on their resume.
How else would you suggest figuring out if the person that I am talking to basically just completely made everything up, or is instead just such a good talker that they can bluff their way into people thinking that they know what they are doing?
The whole point would be that someone who knows how to program at all, should pass.
Giving a complex problem would defeat the point.
You can just sit and chat like you're friends but that's going to bias the interview process to "people who I like" which is just "people who are like me".
I'm sure there are LeetCode questions that are more & less predictive of success but it does have the benefit of removing much of the bias in the hiring process, at the expense of requiring candidates to do some prep work. If you don't want to do the prep work then there are plenty of other places you can work.
I think one challenge in these conversations is that people talk about what the interview process should or shouldn't look like without talking about what the interview process is trying to optimize for. And each person is going to have different ideas of what they should be optimizing for in an interview so they'll have different interview solutions. Then you argue about the solutions but the reason you disagree is because you're starting with different goals.
while there's a lot of other things I value in coworkers, and I want a diverse mix, I really trust a coworker much more who I know can reason through, can see how the code will execute, and understand what that implies, can find & state the significance.
there's a lot of here & now tests of ability in programming, to understand syntax, language, side effects, &c. but bring able to reason about runtimes, about this then that then that... it's the bigger picture. we have some pretty basic promise questions in our interviews, & it's so remarkable how many people get cut for now being able to understand sequencing, how a little async behavior trips so many up. not quite the classic algorithm test, but to me, they seem extremely similar in that they want the dev to be able to order & comprehend how things work.
I agree that a lot of pushback against algorithms is deserved. they are misused as a hiring bar frequently. but there is also things I value a lot, & they help elaborate whether a dev grasps coding situations or no.
As a person with a diverse background and even more diverse interests, who likes to use jobs to learn things I don't know rather than simply apply things I do know, I use interviews as a natural filter. It can be rather unpleasant and frustrating at times, but in the end, it's better I don't work for some place that interviews like they got their process out of some Silicon Valley playbook.
This.
When I see people getting all het up over technical interviews on various moral grounds, one notes that they often forgo reflecting over the possibility that any replacements could be even more bullshit/arbitrary/exclusionary.
> but I know I can get a bit of normie cred by brushing up my algorithms at least...
So I guess the question would be “why do you want normie cred?”, and then the rest of my comment remains the same.
I have a history of self-employment and little formal education in programming per se. It might put potential employers at ease to be able to exhibit some conventional chops, and that kind of interview segment would give me an opportunity to. And algorithm-questions being more or less role-agnostic might mean less preparation rather than more for interviews when one is doing a bunch. OTOH if you want a particular role you should probably better brush up on what's needed for that role and show each application you make some individual love rather than hoping that you can carpet bomb tech company interviews in your city with algorithm-knowhow-powered interviews and get a job out of it.
Given how theoretical this discussion is for me, I feel like I'm slipping into being some kind of devil's advocate role now. I would like to apologise to anyone (basically everyone else here will have more experience with tech interviews than I have) who's reading this rolling their eyes.
My experience has been rough and painful at times, because I tend to be very pragmatically and interest driven in terms of what I learn, outside of being pragmatic about what might be asked in interviews. I also do not have a computer science degree, as I studied mathematics, but I self-study on interests of mine and take interviews as they come. This has made interviews rough at moments, but it's worked out so far, because I would likely be very unhappy at a place that quizzes me on something I could learn over a weekend or two if needed and grades me solely on that. I had one particular interview that wasted an hour and a half on tree questions, then a few more hours on random discussion topics and behavioral questions, and they never once asked me about prior work or side projects. It was a complete waste of time and energy, for both of us, and I have held that interview experience as a prime example of what I have read about Silicon Valley and FAANG-style interviews.
This just proves that you can memorize a cheat sheet. What good is having interviews if they are so predictable that the applicant basically just repeats himself over and over again? That isn't an interview. That is gatekeeping. "Do you know the secret handshake?"
I don't know the entire multiplication table by heart, but I know how to multiply. But that's not what interviewers are testing for. They basically want to see you rattle off a chart from memory as though that's a non-arbitrary universal indicator of capability.
Of course, that doesn't really change the fact that the content of the questions has little to do with the work you'll end up doing. But I've done brainstorming with coworkers, and none of us had any ideas for interview approaches that would work better--except maybe those 2-day take-home projects that everybody hates. I think I remember a paper claiming that random acceptance would work about as well as the current interview process.
Problem is, the percentage of skilled interviewers is likely not much higher than the percentage of skilled candidates.
It’s a string of poor decisions/planning followed by an unproductive rant. I don’t particularly like leet code style interview questions either, Author could take a few months and brush up if they’re a proficient engineer or if they’re really opposed then pre-filter companies based on their interview style. Author could find a corporation outside of FAANG that isn't idealogically abhorrent. Author could look for windows shops. Author could consult (sounds like they’ve been successful with this approach).
I suspect the author just isn’t that great of an entrepreneur and tried to pivot into a high paying engineering role they just aren't really qualified for either.
I agree about the SF observation at the end. If SF culture isn't working for you then explore elsewhere. I wish more people realized this before assuming they need to be in the bay area to be successful. It’s a pretty limiting and potentially damaging assumption and I’ve seen people get super distraught about the idea of being anywhere else because they drank all the VC urban tech hub cool-aid and are just starting to come down.
Feel free to ignore if the answer is no.
Of course, hnewslets who get filtered by such interviews will come downvote in force.
One would think the same topic showing up "over and over again" would make it easier to study for interviews
This really isn't a place for lazy, ad hominem attacks.
I can’t help but feel that people who think otherwise have never worked in literally any other field for any amount of time. Like it or not, you have to narrow down any candidate pool to like 1% of applicants before doing any sort of in person interviewing. Most places do this by only hiring people with degrees. If you’re talking about a job that’s going to pay as much as a software engineer, you can probably get away with only hiring people from elite universities, or who have connections within the company.
Frankly to me the author comes off as arrogant and entitled. He feels he shouldn’t have to prove his worth because... he ran a failed startup? Then when his friends give him a job, literally the definition of nepotism, that still isn’t good enough? What does OP want? A system where only the best jobs are gained by nepotism?
Life is too short to engage in nonsense unnecessarily.
There is a world of other more enjoyable and educational opportunities out there they must compete with. And so the cash shovel must be pulled out.
People vote with their feet, and then a new generation of fresh grads are lured by the pay to fill their role. They’ll grow sick of it in a few years, rinse and repeat.
I know it’s not a good advice in general, but regarding recruiting in particular, it’s a more realistic proposition.
If you know how to program, you have lots of options.
That depends entirely on how you choose to define "fools".
I am not going to disadvantage myself by refusing to participate in this on some questionable principle. While I agree that Leetcode-style interviews are not the overall best, I am yet to come up with an alternative that addresses all those issues without introducing massive new ones. So it is a compromise. And as long as this compromise stands, I am fully intending on getting the most out of it.
Personally I think 6 Leetcode interview loops is better than 6 take homes, but that’s just me.
Ah well, probably goes to show that everybody picks different threads/posts to read
Why would you spend six months preparing for them when you could build and launch an entirely new product in the same amount of time, which has a much higher expected value?
If you land the job, you have a guaranteed, pre-specified income. Probably a high one, depending on the company.
The massive risk of failure with launching a product should dramatically lower the expected value. Especially since most products, even if successful, won't pay as well as the corporate job.
I think that puts a negative tone on people with other degrees than CS, even if they have good software experience, or are older with life commitments. Jobs and interviews in past did not ask this stuff, yet it's now implicitly considered prep. It's biased towards new CS grads and young folks.
Many/most? companies needing devs do not use/need these CS "fundamentals", which do not automatically correspond with tech skills needed to do product development, at least in SaaS world.
Are they? I often read this on HN, but I'm starting to wonder if there's not a selection bias that's even bigger than I expected. Beyond the usual suspects, I've had more coding assignments for instance.
It’s not some arcade high art, it’s quite accessible with lots of great learning guides.
If you choose not to play the game, your pool of potential companies will be quite limited.
I didn’t need to know 4+ years of CS curriculum, which I never would have learned on my own. I just needed to spend some time learning algorithms and data structures, and practice using free resources on the Internet.
A pretty good deal for non-people who didn’t study CS in college.
In fact, someone who studied CS in college might be slightly miffed that they offered a job to an outsider like me just because I practiced data structures problems in my free time.
CS fundamentals have a big impact on the kinds of programs that individuals can write. Asking questions to show that a candidate can write a DFS, leverage multiple data-structures, or do X helps ensure that the individual is capable in this regard. Even for experienced candidates with lengthy portfolios you may find that someone drifted into an operational, management, or product role and has forgotten how to effectively program.
However, the format of the whiteboard interview is awful and if one doesn't practice for it it won't turn out well. I'd love for there to be an alternative, but the other options all have their own cons.
1. Take home tests/projects
- Requires the candidate to invest time which they may not have.
- At scale this process is easily gamed.
- Many candidates don't have time to work on open source
- The median github project has a low code standard, and is usually made for the purpose of learning something new.
- Many candidates hate pair coding, personally if a company mentions that they do this in day to day work I will not work for them.
- Difficult to calibrate.
Sadly, there seems to be very little correlation though. I've known programmers who graduated from a top CS school with extremely strong CS knowledge, who still write barely comprehensible code. And vice versa, people who have never been taught big-O, but who write the most maintainable, well-reasoned code I've seen. Most programmers aren't building e.g. databases, but writing software that provides business value.
Take home tests can be ok, as long as they are limited in time (<2h). I was adverse to pair coding, but found it to be not as bad as I thought, unless it's 100% pairing all the time. Well, whatever the solution, I think anything that's closer to what day-to-day work at a company looks like is going to give richer feedback/signals than whiteboarding.
Ideally I'd want to interview for both skills.
I don't really get why "reversing a binary tree" seem to be used as an example of what's wrong with hiring. I will say, though, that if someone said "how do you reverse a binary tree?" I would have asked the follow up question: "what do you mean by that?". If asking that would be used against me, sure, that's bad hiring.
But if the answer is: "swap all the left and right nodes in a binary tree", then... isn't that pretty basic programming?
I find high end jobs tend to ask some form of problem that can be tackled using dynamic programming techniques. Maybe couple of easier ones in the first interview.
I agree with most people. I never use these skills in the job. I think they're a intelligence test in disguise.
I mostly agree with your impression, though even after adjusting for intelligence I bet there's a positive correlation between knowing how B-trees work and, say, having a good intuition for how to index a database.
But the purpose of the question of course is to be an easy question showing basic competency in recursion and pointer usage.
This attitude is condescending towards those that come from diverse and non-traditional backgrounds, most of whom are perfectly capable of learning and developing an active interest in these subjects.
Mostly HC is a ton of work (eg read 8 full interview packets a week) so if you express an interest and are a decent interviewer you’re likely to get shot at it and you can make a real difference.
On the other hand, reversing a tree and problems like fizz buzz are pretty low bars...