About ten years ago, only one or two interviews were required to get a job, without any tests.
Nowadays, there are 4 to 6 rounds plus 2 technical challenges... Do they think they are Google? But they don't pay like Google.
Nowadays, there are 4 to 6 rounds plus 2 technical challenges... Do they think they are Google? But they don't pay like Google.
If someone asks me to “design twitter” or about a time I disagreed with my coworker one more time…
Seriously considering the woodworking route.
The number of adults with completely dysfunctional conflict-resolution skills is actually mind boggling.
I was recently asked this question, and while I've had some disagreements with coworkers over minor things, I've never had a major disagreement that was noteworthy, so I (to my inevitable detriment) said: "Nothing really comes to mind at the moment but if something like that were to happen, I'd do X, Y, and Z". Given the reaction from the interviewer I doubt I passed. I still have 2 more interviews with this company.
If you don't disagree with your coworkers on some part their technical decisions on a regular basis, then you probably don't review their code
> some disagreements with coworkers over minor things
Handling minor everyday disagreements gracefully is a valuable soft skill
Ah the classic "it's not wrong if everyone's doing it" argument. But to me the op wasn't complaining about the content of the question, just the banality of answering it over and over.
Yes, mediocre people like to select the same.
> Handling minor everyday disagreements
is a skill that does not need to be "prepared for" in an interview. And naturally the mediocrities that think asking the standard question and getting the standard answer back are also in for a surprise.
It's surprising how many candidates will say batshit crazy things not realizing they're bat shit crazy.
It's like fizzbuzz at this point, just cuts out a surprisingly large chunk of the cruft out.
I agree you'd think this is the dumbest question, and most people will make up something minor, but it does weed people out.
When it comes to disagreements not being noteworthy, it could also be that you've internalized "disagree and commit." That's not a failing; that's just moving the fuck on and not dwelling on past decisions, unless they actually bear revisiting.
They don't want to hear actual stories - in real life some people are just unreasonable assholes, and the conflict you have cannot be resolved in some MBA style procedure.
What these questions do is push you into being somewhat sociopathic and twisting the truth to tell them what they want to hear.
You'll end up hiring people that are excellent liars that can "navigate social situations".
I had three coding interviews, and they all involved very practical, challenging problems that I hadn't ever seen before. The system design ones was a good back and forth, it didn't feel confrontational or textobok.
I highly recommend people looking for a job to at least give it a shot there.
That's the biggest thing. Companies want you to lie prostrate in front of them for comparatively mediocre pay.
The people doing the interviews at most companies are often terrible too... so what is all of this ceremony for?
I'm lucky to have a job at the moment, but I have looked around. I can honestly say I was not impressed by any of the big companies I talked too. The startups were in cash holding mode at the time, so I didn't really look in that direction.
And then for tests, you’d want a FizzBuzz (doable in one minute or less) before the phone screen and then something more substantive before the final interview.
2 interviews/2 tests seems to be the minimum.
And, again, it should be something doable in under a minute. The best I've seen is a bonus screen on Indeed that has one of a dozen sample 20-line programs and you just have to point out which line is incorrect in the program.
It's also incredibly difficult to fire poor performers in most modern companies, so managers are very touchy about who they hire.
I've interviewed people who claimed to be practicing engineers for 5+ years, and had big name companies on their resume, but became lost when asked to write a simple (no trick question) program in a language of their choice.
One time, I interviewed while on burnout (general startup stress + workplace bullying). The position was a perfect match, but I was so exhausted that I couldn't write a simple loop. I was rejected.
After a forced health break, I applied at Mozilla, got hired, shipped code and specs that are currently used on most devices on this planet and at least one in orbit.
So, yeah, I'm not a big fan of judging people from their performance in an interview.
Even if we did, hiring someone that burnt out just doesn't seem like a great idea. You were a fundamentally different candidate after your forced health break. What do you think the odds are that, had you actually been hired while burnt out, that you could have succeeded at the job at Mozilla? Without the time off, I'm guessing those odds are low.
I realize people have to make a living. Believe me, I do. And I don't think people ought to be as heavily penalized for needing to take extended amounts of time off work as they are. But, I also don't see what a company in a capitalist economy can do about it while still remaining competitive.
> I've interviewed people who claimed to be practicing engineers for 5+ years, and had big name companies on their resume, but became lost when asked to write a simple (no trick question) program in a language of their choice.
I've failed these tests, sometimes for code I literally exactly have on my GitHub and that I've written from scratch (effort-free).
Live coding with three random strangers staring at you just isn't the same.
Kind of like an English Literature degree shows that you know a great deal about the language and have read many works but tells me nothing about whether you can write a compelling novel.
I always ask people to stand back and consider if this is actually possible.
Someone who has been at a big name company writing code for 5+ years clearly has been writing code. (You can confirm this with the company as HR will issue a statement saying J.Doe worked there from date to date and what job title they had.)
So there's two possibilities. Either they've been writing code at a known company for 5+ years and can't write an if statement. Or, they can but are too stressed by the interview setup they don't even remember their own name.
The latter is about 1000x more likely than the former. If they truly can't write an if statement, they would've been PIP'd out of that large company before 5+ years.
It is true, however, that people don't generally seem to give enough benefit of the doubt in interviews. This could be an illusion sometimes. If interviewers give you the benefit of the doubt and someone else does way better than you or has a better resume (or cheaper pay rate), you won't get the job.
Background checks do, and a company shouldn't (and don't) do that before being ready to extend an offer (actually it's usually done after extending the offer, just a contingency).
However, a simple employment check is easy and quick. (Perhaps even automated by HRIS systems these days, haven't kept track so not sure.)
Why waste ~6 hours of expensive senior engineer and hiring manager time doing rounds of interviews before doing a simple check on whether the resume is correct about employment place/title/duration?
Also, I've seen records from my most recent background check, and one of the companies I worked at simply didn't answer questions, and hardly ever picked up the phone. Almost nobody at any company I worked at had a phone, so it all had to go through HR. And again, if each unemployed worker gets like a dozen interviews, this kind of frivolous checking will generate hundreds of pointless phone calls.
>Why waste ~6 hours of expensive senior engineer and hiring manager time doing rounds of interviews before doing a simple check on whether the resume is correct about employment place/title/duration?
I think it is rare for a faker to make it through to an interview, much less even pass the first 1 hour session. Failing the background check is rare. I think it's safe enough to start with the assumption that a resume is correct and work from there. You should be able to detect most fakes because they will be screwed up in obvious ways.
Most bachelors degrees in CS from accredited schools are exactly this, regardless of all the smack people talk about new grads. It is rare to see a school teaching CS without a significant programming curriculum. Schools take advice from industry to improve outcomes.
If you can't take the word of a long-standing institution that tested an individual for 4 or more years, what kind of certification are you expecting people to get?
>I've interviewed people who claimed to be practicing engineers for 5+ years, and had big name companies on their resume, but became lost when asked to write a simple (no trick question) program in a language of their choice.
People get nervous, can have a bad day, or be intoxicated. And a significant number of people you're talking to might be overtly lying on their resumes. Your "no trick question" might also just be a bad question: too hard or ambiguous, or very different from what the candidate has seen. Some interviewers are overly confident in their ability to ask relevant and comprehensible questions, or else too particular about what they will accept.
And yes, there are many people with CS degrees who can not, even with much help and prompting, FizzBuzz.