Comment by screye | Hacker News Reader

Comment by screye | Hacker News Reader

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FAANG-like companies don't usually interview bootcamp candidates. Most times, they're interviewing other ex-Fang-like or top university grads with a relevant CS degree.

Track record and conversational interviews are used for hiring lawyers, doctors, MBA and marketing professional.....why are programmers any different ?

Reality is, todays tech interview questions select for those without a life.

Great professionals solve hard problems. It drains you by night, leaving just enough time for some of workout, sleep, primary hobby, parenting and relationships. Even on a good week, you have to make compromises.

It's one thing to ask leetcode gotchas to fresh grads who've had 2 whole years to do leetcode. But conducting 10 rounds for a senior engineer with zero free time is torture.

Give take home projects. Do 2 hour long debugging sessions. Do system design. Just give me a work item. All good.

30 minute compile-or-die leetcode questions are not it. If you wanna test for IQ, make me rotate some shapes. None of this rote learned monkey business. It's not even that hard. But the prospect of giving up all my weekends for 3 months, just to get 12 days worth of time to be leetcode prim and proper..is untenable.

> Track record and conversational interviews are used for hiring lawyers, doctors, MBA and marketing professional.....why are programmers any different ?

Doctors and lawyers have a nonprofit credentialing body that makes them take an industry respected test that is the equivalent of our tech interviews. We have nothing like that in dev work. Would love to see it.

MBA and marketing people rely very heavily on their networks. Those without these networks are at a severe disadvantage, and their prior work is usually very close to the bottom line of a company. Devs could do this kind of stuff more, but don't largely for cultural and organizational reasons.

IQ test would be great if they weren't illegal.

I'm not doing take-home work unless I'm staring down the barrel of not paying my mortgage, and I don't trust anyone showing me there's didn't ask ChatGPT.

Dev work is sensitive and exacting. I want to see the candidate actually do it in front of my face without phoning a friend or copying from github.

IQ tests are not illegal.

Doctors and lawyers take that credential test once, immediately following their graduation from years of fulltime schooling that has been specifically designed to prepare them for that test.

Software engineers are expected to retake our tech interviews, which you describe as equivalent, over and over and over, every time they change jobs.

I think it's by design. People with no lifes are usually better workers. And those who have lifes, but managed to find time to leetcode really want to work for you.

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