Hacker News Reader

Comment by kcartlidge | Hacker News Reader

> My warm-up questions are usually something like "reverse a singly-linked-list" or "check if a string is a palindrome"

I've written sites, apps, ORMs, enterprise tools, code generators, FAAS platforms from scratch, exporters for DOCX and EPUB, etc etc for decades. I've been junior, mid, senior, lead of two teams. I've transitioned companies to cloud, created data warehouses, built BI universes. All sorts of stuff over the years.

Sounds like your hiring techniques would pass on me, as those whiteboard exercises would have me saying no thanks and ending the interview. Utterly pointless.

(and FYI that's from experience on both sides of the table as I've also been the recruiter interviewing from junior devs to team leads)

View on HN

> those whiteboard exercises would have me saying no thanks and ending the interview

Then I saved 45 minutes of my life, great. The point is, if you want to join the company I work for (and many people want to), you have to jump through the hoops of this company.

You should re-read the start of my comment, because I don't think those whiteboard questions are a great way to hire people. I just don't think there's a way that's more respectful of the candidate while being time efficient and providing good data points.

The truth is that the achievements that you claim can have been done by others. I'm in a top 1% company, and yet I see many people that are just utterly shit at being software engineers. There are parasites like this everywhere and they can just coast and claim the achievements of others for themselves (especially when applying to another company that has no way to verify their claims), so whiteboarding exercises and others crap is 100% necessary, no matter your level.

Totally get that you can't just believe the claims. I just disagree that whiteboards are in any way a good solution.

But fair enough, if it works for you it works for you.

Those are pretty basic algorithmic questions, even if somebody's never heard of a linked list or a palindrome, anyone with even a minimal understanding of algorithms should be able to describe in pseudo code how to solve them.

They're not guaranteeing that an applicant is necessarily right for the job, but they do separate the chaff from the wheat proverbially speaking.

> they do separate the chaff from the wheat

This is where we differ. What they separate isn’t chaff from wheat, but those who can do a specific type of interview from those who can’t. The latter aren’t chaff and the former aren’t wheat.

The only time these kinds of questions/tasks are suitable is if they genuinely represent the work being hired for.

Our opinions on this differ, and that’s fine, so whatever works for you.

This is the problem with this interviews and FANGs shit. They separate nothing. But because ppl in these companies did this doing interviews, and they have such a fucking high opinnion of themselves, they think the only good people are the ones that are like them. `I can do this and I'm the greatest (their own opinion reinforced by other idiots in the company) so anyone that can't aren't worthy of my time/welcomed here`.

But then you work with these idiots that can reverse a linked list in other companies and they can't organize code to save their lives. They use patterns and shit they used in facebook everywhere, even when they shouldn't because they always so smart and right.

(yes, after cleaning up code for shitty ex facebookers and ex netflixers, my opinion of the 'wheat' boils down to they may be wheat, but they infested with parasites and bugs and rotten at the core, but hey, what do I know, just been doing sw development for 25+ years, published author and worked on stuff that most here use daily, I'm just chaf because I don't want to work for FANGs)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com