Show HN: We got sick of technical interviews, so we’ve built Pramp | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: We got sick of technical interviews, so we’ve built Pramp

pramp.com

40 pointsRafiZ32 comments

It's a mistake to try to promote your work on HN by soliciting upvotes and comments or by making fake accounts. Three things happen: HN software will penalize your post, HN moderators will penalize your post, and/or HN users will do it by flagging and by complaining in the thread. #1 and #3 happened in this case.

UM.. waaay too many fresh accounts commenting here. with names that include numbers.

Fishy.

Hey, good catch, thanks! I had actually been interested by the idea for the other side (having my team practice interviews before talking to real candidates). But I saw your comment, looked at all those one-line spam comments and now don't want to give it a try.

bletch.

Hey there, I assure you that there is nothing fishy about Pramp.com. I'm one the guys who built it and the reason I did that is because as an engineer myself, I experienced first hand the pains in getting a good practice before important job interviews. Some of the folks you see here with fresh accounts are my friends who simply wanted to upvote my post.

They wanted to upvote their friend's post and ask their friend questions on the HN thread, sometimes several times from different accounts?

Not at all fishy. Please see my comment below.

I think it's a good tool for interviewing prep. When I was preparing for interviews in my last job search, I had to find friends who were willing to help me with Skype or in person mock interviews..which wasn't so easy. This would provide a good alternative.

Seems the reports of the death of the technical interview have been greatly exaggerated. I remember reading a post on TechCrunch that announced the death of coding interviews as a way to assess candidates. The premise of the article was that since the whole purpose of an interview was to serve as a proxy for actual performance, due to the lack of the tools and infrastructure to easily observe and measure the latter, but now that we do, “it is the height of cargo-cult stupidity not to use them”.

Forget it. Technical interviews should have stopped years ago. Getting a candidate to solve interview problems on a whiteboard gives you nothing about his/her abilities as an engineer. Time to flush all of that garbage away.

The point of the interviews is seeing the value of a SW developer as a thinker and try to see their thinking process. Up to that point, I agree. However, not-so-complicated questions can be enough, and if interviewers try to make interviews more sophisticated, the interview degrades, in my opinion. Interviewers can ask an engineer for a way to find loops in a list, hoping that they find Floyd's "Tortoise and Hare" algorithm. Well, you either know the algorithm or you don't, but for sure you don't come up with it in 20 minutes (I believe Floyd himself didn't either). So are we measuring how the engineer thinks or how much they have prepared for the interview?

I hate these interviews. I really do. However, I have to admit that there is a lot to learn about a candidate from interviewing her, as long as you try to grasp how a person think and avoid sticking to stupid details. Technical interviews are as good as the method and person conducting them.

I'm in my junior year of college for my CS degree and have so far failed any technical interview for software engineering internship. I don't solve interview questions well and I always get stuck. I've tried studying for these as best I can but it doesn't ever seem to help. I'm at a loss as to what I should do. If I can't even get an internship then I have no idea how am I going to get a real job some day.

I remember that when I was in college, career services used to hook us up with some CS alum to do practice. The problem was that we could do only 1 or 2 practice interview max and that never felt enough. Fortunately, I no longer need to go through these stupid tech interview rounds, but I can most certainly understand the need for this type of product.

Exactly. I was able to get one interview thro my career services last semester. The alum was nice and helpful, but basically told me that I have a lot to work on. That was good to know but one interview didn't help with that... Will sure give this a try!

To increase credibility: 1. You should add an "About" page and tell us about your background and what makes you best suited for providing this service 2. Give 2-3 examples of questions+answers (for 2-3 roles) to set expectations / give a taste of the type of practice one would get by signing up for the service

Thanks for the great feedback. Totally makes sense and I plan to add the "About" page very soon.

I like the name because it captures the essence of this platform - practice makes perfect. It's been a while since I interviewed for software development roles but I sure wish I had a tool like this back then - it would have saved me from a lot of stress during interviews and made my job search so much easier. Kudos!

I like it! Great idea. I see more and more services built on top of that. Good luck!

Fnally, something more interactive than "Cracking the Coding Interview"

Seems like a great tool for interview prep, but how professional can an interview of two candidates be? What if I'll learn mistakes from my peer? I think I need a more professional interviewer to practice with

People don't get that technical skills are not enough to get good at technical interviews. It even sounds funny because these are TECHNICAL interviews. But Interviewing is a skill by itself: how to communicate, how to walk another person through your thoughts when you haven't reached an answer yet or might be lost, how to address non-obvious challenges while explaining your solution strategy and how to do all of that under pressure. All of this goes above and beyond knowing the answer... Practicing is key. Many of my friends with strong backgrounds failed on most of their interviews, but after learning how to do interviewing they were able to land almost every job they wanted.

LOVE IT! Such a great idea and execution. Keep up the good work

As a recruiter I can find this platform relevant in so many ways. There is a big added value. Kudos!

Very interesting. I would use it!

Awesome! Thank you for sharing!

Wow, what a great idea.

Love the concept!

Definitelyn something I could use

AMAZING!

hey, i like this service, but when do you guys go live?

We are planning to launch next week.

I LOVE IT!!!

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