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Comment by leeny | Hacker News Reader

Author here. Yes, the skills are left to the interpretation of the interviewer, but most of our interviewers are senior engineers at FAANG. We've done quite a bit of work internally to make sure your interviewers are well calibrated, and we have a living calibration score for each one (calibration is based on how the interviewees they interview end up doing in real interviews).

The interviews in question are a mix of algorithmic interviews and systems design interviews.

Also, if I ever use "rockstar" or "ninja" in my posts, I hope someone finds me on the street and punches me in the face. I'd deserve it.

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FAANG interviewer here. I've conducted many hundreds of interviews for multiple FAANG companies. The totality of my training in how to interview is about 4 hours (when I combine the training of each company). I have zero confidence in the usefulness of calibrating my answers and expect that neither I nor anyone else who does this would reliably score the same person with the same score most of the time, outside of a small percentage of outlier candidates.

> The totality of my training in how to interview is about 4 hours

Well, FWIW, that's 4 more hours than any of the rest of us...

Props to the honesty

Just to argue against myself, I do think that if enough interviewers interview a candidate, you will get an aggregate score that will give you a pretty good sense of how well that candidate is likely to do on other interviews, and I have found that candidates that do well on these interviews tend to make good employees, although that's based only on the fact that everybody I work with has passed one of these interviews and they've mostly been pretty good employees. I suspect a lot of people who fail these interviews would also make pretty good employees, but I'll never know.

>I suspect a lot of people who fail these interviews would also make pretty good employees, but I'll never know.

Why don't you take a leap of faith once in a while on someone who hasn't done well? Especially if you ever interview interns and have a bunch on that team, that's a near zero-cost gamble for a large corp.

Well, the answer to "why" is "they don't put me in charge of the hiring process."

Related, interns are a fantastic way to hire because you get WAY better information about them. Instead of an hour or two of riddles, you've got a three month work history which a couple of trusted employees have witnessed. That's WAY better signal than any whiteboard interview problem could possibly get you.

I've been in interview rounds where if ONE interviewer doesn't like how you did on the stupid coding test, you're out. So what you are saying is pretty much BS.

I don't think I follow you. Your company has a hiring process where it rejects all candidates who fail any interviews. How does the existence of such a system invalidate anything I said?

no, what I meant is that YOUR company rejects anyone who fails one coding test. You think that failing one doesn’t matter, but it does.

also, what you do with interns, could be done with any developer you hire. you just hire them for a few months and pay them. if you like their work, keep them. otherwise let them go. no need for coding interviews.

Is there any statistical reason I should assume an interviewer at FAANG has some kind of special insight into what good technical and communication skills are? Were any attempts made to adjust for demographic biases? Is it possible, for instance, that Dropbox engineers are disproportionately taller white dudes with nice hair? I know that sounds a bit unserious, but all of those factors would increase the likelihood of a higher score.

I appreciate that you never used "rockstar" or "ninja". That dig was a bit unfair of me.

no, we didn't adjust for demographic biases because, look, we're an anonymous platform. we periodically survey our users to get demographic data, but it's not something we ask in the app because we've never been able to resolve "tell me your race & gender" with "hey we're anonymous, and you'll be judged on your performance and nothing else".

last thing i want is to perpetuate stereotype threat inadvertently. it's possible to do this right, i think, but we haven't gotten there yet.

The point about stereotype threat is valid, although it also means that we're unable to get any insight into a major axis of interview performance.

I think what we have here is an attempt to imply, consciously or not, a causal link between interview success and previous/current employment. But without drilling into the other factors underlying their success, we get a lot of noise and not enough signal. Couple that with the continued mythologizing of FAANG greatness, and you get an article that perpetuates two of the more toxic notions in tech: FAANG is the top of a pyramid and talent is concentrated in a handful of companies. Neither are true, and neither are probably your intent, but that's how this reads.

> Also, if I ever use "rockstar" or "ninja" in my posts, I hope someone finds me on the street and punches me in the face. I'd deserve it.

Are you sure you'll never find yourself blogging about bands' flamboyant frontmen (or frontwomen), or covert agents in feudal Japan?

HAH.

> "but most of our interviewers are senior engineers at FAANG"

Wait, so the result is that "interviewers from FAANG companies rate highly interviewees from FAANG (and FAANG-adjacent) companies"?

Or maybe more causally: "those who have already passed FAANG-style interviews are more likely to pass interviews conducted by FAANG people"?

I appreciate the mission here - but if the idea here is to give people a fair shot even if they don't have the pedigree of FAANG, building FAANG interview styles into the system seems counter to your stated goals. If anything these results are concerning - you can interpret the findings in (at least) two ways:

- these companies hire or produce superior engineers, the results you got are indicative of a broader higher caliber of engineer in those companies.

- the interviewing exercise is optimizing for "people who can pass/have already passed FAANG-style interviews", which rolls in all of the myriad biases of FAANG hiring and perpetuates them.

> senior engineers at FAANG

This means absolutely nothing. It's a well known fact that SV titles hold next to no weight.

> "It's a well known fact that SV titles hold next to no weight."

Except at FAANG; the rewards are so great that the competition is fierce. Whether they gained their levels through engineering ability or savvy politicking, you can be sure they are adept in at least one of the two.

This reads like satire.

If only someone had told all the recruiters who didn't start hitting me up until I had a FAANG on my resume.

Having a FAANG on your resume is a whole different topic from whether the title you had there had "senior" in it.

That's not what I meant.

Ah I see what you meant now. I don't think the GP was referring to titles when they said "senior" - I'm pretty sure they meant experienced engineers.

I suppose Douglas Hofstadter is en route to punch you right now

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