Ask HN: What factors laid the foundation for tech interviews as they are today? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What factors laid the foundation for tech interviews as they are today?

9 pointsgdmka5 comments

I am working as a software engineer for a decade. And I've interviewed with a lot of various companies through my career. All the interview preparation books, yet, miss one point — how did the bar was even set and why.

Given current AI trend, live coding sessions are transforming a lot as well. I can see more companies leaning towards virtual sessions with "prepare a blank project with your favorite IDE, share your screen and let's go". This means, that the companies acknowledge that the AI is a little trick a candidate can utilize to make a better impression.

On the other hand, this is just interviewees adapting to a relatively high standard that the industry did set. It was discussed a ton of times, how other jobs don't require a person to present the fitness in such a rigorous manner. When companies treat every other candidate as an impostor.

Not only a candidate should be a jack of many trades but also be humble once they get put into a job that may not necessarily require those algo and system design skills right away or in a year's time.

We all know that. But I'm very curious to learn how it all started, who set the "Olympic team fit" standard.

In my opinion, this progressive arms race in interview difficulty is a direct result of the lack of industry-standard credentialing, the influence of ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy), and exploitative coding bootcamps preying on the "promise of an instant 6-figure income" in just six months.

Either you enforce a minimal level of competency upfront with academic rigor, industry-standard exams, and similar measures, or you push the entire responsibility of vetting prospective applicants downstream to the employer—which is exactly where we are right now.

So how do we go about fixing it? For starters, I think we should bring back the Software Engineering PE Exam.

https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineerin...

EDIT: Just to respond to this: "It was discussed a ton of times, how other jobs don't require a person to present the fitness in such a rigorous manner"

Other occupations 100% DO have high standards - it's just that it's paid up-front.

Want to become a lawyer? - You've got to pass the LSAT, get into law school, and pass the bar.

Want to become a doctor? - You've got to pass the MCAT, get into medical school, and do residency.

Want to become a pilot? - You've got to get your PPL, pass your check ride, do your IFR, multi-engine, commercial rating, ATP.

etc. etc.

I'm sure somebody can provide a more comprehensive history, but I'm pretty sure it started with Microsoft being cargo-culted. Then when Microsoft stopped being as cool, everybody started copying Google and how they did interviews.

Microsoft did brain teasers like "How many ping pong balls fit on a bus?" questions. Then Google copied that to start. Google later realized that performance on these questions didn't predict performance on the job and developed a more data-driven approach that you see today (leetcode style) that other companies copy today.

I'm in the camp that interviewing loops all have tradeoffs, but if you're a smaller company you can't afford to copy how big tech giants interview candidates. Their funnels are much larger, and they can afford to skip on potentially quality candidates.

>>Microsoft did brain teasers like "How many ping pong balls fit on a bus?" questions. Then Google copied that to start. Google later realized that performance on these questions didn't predict performance on the job and developed a more data-driven approach that you see today (leetcode style) that other companies copy today.

I'm curious how did they realize that ping pong bus questions didn't predict performance. Was that just based on negative candidate feedback or they pulled the spreadsheets to realize they are below the hiring quotas.

Direct consequence of programming gold rush of 2010s and esp. 2020Q3-2022. When you have choirs of people whining about how companies are "desperate to find anyone being able to solve Fizzbuzz"... when influencers are making videos about how they supposedly (in some cases - actually) do 1-2 hours of work per day in FAANG campus... when even some technical people honestly believe that average salary of developer is $150k per annum... when completely random people with blue collar backgrounds are looking to get into software development... when bootcamps are making claims about making random people hirable in software in six months there is a problem. The gold rush problem. What we as industry and community were broadcasting for a long time is that making money is easy in software, but that is not true and mostly never was. What the masses are hearing is "six figures in six months". What ends up happening is that for many positions there are large number of juniors, freshers, aspirants, wannabes, bootcamps grads, some opportunistic chancers and even some blatantly fraudulent imposters. Imagine posting a junior dev position and having a flashmob of 100+ people instantly appearing, yet the objective is to hire one person. One way or another, rest of them have to be told off. It's just mathematical reality that is made even worse by end of ZIRP and significant slowdown of VC money.

Huge amount of inflow H-1Bs. I'm just joking.

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