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Comment by mcguire | Hacker News Reader

And yet, those companies seem to be more successful than others with "more relevant" bars.

Or you could look at it as those companies have so much money and fame that they have tens of thousands of candidates pounding at their door so they can afford to arbitrarily reject approximately everyone.

But if you're running a startup (target audience of ycombinator), you'd do well to play a smarter game since you can't outspend or out-fame the FAANGs. A big part of that is to have better interviewing practices than they do.

Leet code interviews only showed up late in these companies trajectories. Internally it’s no longer about what the company wants so much as what people inside the company want which presents huge conflicts of interest. Google for example has done significant research and found such practices wasteful, but internal culture is what it is.

In practical terms the FAANG companies internal processes are horrible and they can’t seem to innovate at all, but as long as they continue to print money there is zero reason to risk change.

Google actually admitted their 'elite' leet code interview process didn't actually help the outcomes... This is the first link I dug up about it:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/google-...

That isn't about the leetcode interviewing.

That's about the microsoft-era actual riddles, like "if you were reduced to the size of an ant and put in a blender, how would you get out?"

eh - I wouldn't be surprised to see the same article about the leetcode stuff.

Maybe using methods that have nothing to do with the job, just don't lead to good results ?

So let me get this straight, you cited a random "first link you dug up", unrelated to your point, and claim it as evidence because you "wouldn't be surprised" if some other article (that doesn't exist) supported your view?

I didn't cite it, and I didn't say some other article existed..

What I said was basically "google admitted their old method didn't work, here's a link if your interested. I wouldn't be surprised if the new method doesn't work either, and we see articles about that in a few years"

The I "wouldn't be surprised" part comes from both methods actually having very little to do with the job at hand, and therefore I think they would BOTH be bad predictors of performance at that job..

// What I said was basically "google admitted their old method didn't work, here's a link

No. Your previous post said they admitted their "leet code" interviews didn't work. leetcode means something specific.

Also I'd draw the opposite conclusion. Sounds like Google is "on it" in terms of evaluating what works and what doesn't. They threw out brainteasers because they didn't work. That suggests whatever they kept does work.

Fair enough.

Can't say I agree with your 'on it' conclusion, but I guess time will tell. It took them about 15 years to get rid of the brain teasers (1998 to 2013ish from what I can tell), so if they're consistent we should hear one way or the other in 2028ish :-)

"It took [Google] about 15 years to get rid of the brain teasers (1998 to 2013ish from what I can tell),..."

During which time the company grew from what to what?

(Actually, when I interviewed in ~2003, I didn't get any brain teasers. All of the questions where either fundamental computer science knowledge or related to the (SRE) position---although they would all be considered "leetcode" by someone without the background. I was pretty impressed.)

They grew phenomenally...

what does that have to do with trying to guess when the next paper might come out? I was just guessing what the publishing timeline might be :-P

Google's opinions on anything are overrated

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