fsk

Yeah, it's insulting to give that test for a programmer position. I've seen it a couple of times and it was always a bad job for other reasons also.

Just to give you an idea, this is the exact same test they give to NFL players during the combine.

You can save yourself some time and decline the interview.

They intentionally designed the test so that you can't finish it in the allotted time.

You lost me at "12 hour unpaid coding homework project". There's no way I would do that, and it's disrespectful of the candidate's time.

Actually, some of these "weird" things are due to the fact the he isn't using a bignum library, or not using it correctly, or doing insufficient iterations.

He's really seeing floating point artifacts. For example, the main antenna IS straight, due to the fact that the Mandelbrot set is symmetric around the real axis. The non-straightness is due to floating point artifacts in his Mandelbrot generator.

Yeah, that approach has issues also. I wouldn't want to spend a week of free time on something unless it was a much higher rate than my regular job or an amazing opportunity.

If you're expecting me to put in a lot of time BEFORE I meet you, I'll just pass. After I meet your team, it'll be easier for me to decide if I want to put in more time jumping through hoops.

One advantage of giving people homework is that it DOES filter out a lot of candidates! Does it filter out the good ones or the bad ones?

They expect you to study and be an expert in their niche before applying, which rules out people who don't already know their specialty, or aren't too desperate to spend weeks preparing for one interview.

That's my issue with studying new things to further my career. There are SO MANY things. What should I pick? Also, most HR and headhunters say "Only on-the-job experience counts. If you learned it on your own, we don't value it."

After a few weeks, you'd get better at it. Unfortunately, employers want someone who's already an expert. They aren't comfortable letting someone learn on the job, even if searching for their purple squirrel means the position is open for longer.

I got something done in a couple of hours with the "old-fashined" style, when it probably would have taken me weeks to learn a framework for a simple task.

For a personal project, the plain style is fine.

Most of these MVC frameworks are poorly documented and poorly written. I've used several that I didn't like. I wouldn't use an MVC framework for my own projects.

To find a job, they expect you to already be an expert in whatever they are using. The only way to expand your skillset seems to be: Pick something you want to learn, and use it for a project at work, even if it isn't the right choice for your current employer's needs.

For now, just learn the basics (simple html, simple DOM manipulation, simple jQuery, simple CSS, simple Javascript).

Those fancy frameworks are all going to be obsolete in 2 years anyway (i.e. angular 1.0). Besides, you need to know the basics in order to use the fancy frameworks CORRECTLY.

Unfortunately, most employers want you to be an expert already in whatever tools they are using. I know people will object and say they hire for talent and not resume keywords, but that hasn't been my experience as a candidate.

The reason employers want full-stack instead of back-end is that it cuts down on the communication overhead. You can do it all yourself, rather than handing off the front-end bit to other people. I'd rather hand off tricky front-end work to someone who knows it better.

My experience is mostly back-end, but recently I've been doing some simple front-end work. It makes more sense to have separate back-end and front-end specialists, but that isn't the way things are done anymore.

I wrote a video poker practice game in Javascript/jQuery/PHP/C++. It works, and my father is playing it, and he likes it. It isn't fancy modern web style, but it runs and gets the job done. (Javascript/jQuery on the client, with simple CSS. PHP with a shell_exec to C++ to do the calculation of the optimal strategy. The client does an AJAX call to get the next hand.)

Try writing something like minesweeper or a sudoku game in Javascript/CSS for practice.

They missed one of my favorite (least-abusive) tactics, the paid trial project.

I.e., pick a real project that will take 10-40 hours. Pay them to do it as a contracting/interview project. That even works for someone who already has a job, because they can do it in the evening/weekends.

Asking me to do a 5 hour homework project is an insult, but a paid short-term contract is fair. (However, some people have employment contracts that forbid side work.)

However, even that is abusable, because the person might find a more-qualified friend to help them on the trial project, who wouldn't be helping out for real projects.

I read another interesting post by someone else (I think it was the Monsanto guy), who said "Don't filter people out at the phone interview stage, unless they really fail the phone interview." His reasoning is that you're selecting for people who sound good over the phone.

That's only corporate bonds. Federal Reserve transactions are not publicly disclosed, which is one of the issues.

The reason you have problems with markers is that, when a marker is out of ink, people put it back on the whiteboard instead of throwing it in the trash.

A bank borrows at the Fed Funds Rate (say 0.1%) and buys one year Treasuries (currently 0.26%). On Treasury trades, banks can do leverage of 100x or more. So the bank's profit is 0.16 times 100 or 16%.

If the Federal Reserve raised the Fed Funds Rate to 1%, then the bank would be borrowing at 1% and lending at .26%, and they'd be .74% in the hole per bond, 74% accounting for 100x leverage. Big banks are comfortable doing this trade right now, because they know the Federal Reserve isn't going to raise interest rates. (It is more accurate to say that the Federal Reserve is owned by the big banks, rather than acting independently.)

Instead of buying Treasuries, they could invest in stocks, futures, corporate bonds, mortgages, houses, whatever. The bank borrows at zero and buys stuff that yields (on average) greater than zero. The bank can lend money to hedge funds who in turn invest in VC funds or startups. (ZIRP indirectly causes a startup valuation bubble.)

Most of the time, the banks make huge profits (borrowing low and lending high).

Every 20 years, there's a severe recession, and the big banks get a bailout.

When interest rates are lowered, that's an indirect bank bailout. Suppose the bank owns a 5 year duration bond, uses 10x leverage, and interest rates go down 1%. The bond prices go up 5*1 = 5%. With 10x leverage, that's 50% profit.

The problem is that banks are leveraged to the hilt.

If you have 30x leverage in 5 year duration bonds, and interest rates go up 1%, you lose 150%!

ZIRP (0% interest rates) is a wealth transfer to big banks, a backdoor bailout.

Those people were never going to buy anyway. There (hopefully) are enough people who want good games and are sick of the freemium garbage, that they'll pay for a game.

I.e., 100k paid sales and 10M "unauthorized copies" is still enough for an indie dev to make a living.

Eventually, the pendulum will swing the other way. People will get sick of freemium games, and go back to games where you pay $1-$10 once.

Some people made a lot of money with freemium, so everyone is copying them.

I can't stand wait timers, energy systems, and all the other tricks they use to balance freemium games.

Many freemium games require an Internet connection to play, which is bad for me because my prime gaming time is on the subway while commuting.

Another bad part about freemium is that, when they someday shut down the servers, you won't be able to play the game AT ALL anymore. I can still play Super Mario Bros. even if Nintendo goes bankrupt and decides they don't care about the game anymore.

If you have 20% downside protection in a nearly even odds game, you can figure out the optimal strategy. Also, he was betting $100k a hand, so he didn't have to play too many hands before deciding to stop as a winner or take his 20% loss rebate. (If you have the 20% loss protection, the optimal strategy is to bet big.)

For example, his downside protection was 20% of a loss of at least $500k. If he was at -400k, he had no reason to quit; he should keep playing until he was ahead or at -500k.

Also, casinos previously negotiated 20% loss rebates on a LIFETIME basis. He negotiated the 20% loss rebate on a PER-TRIP basic, correctly pointing out that if he was ahead at a casino, he had no reason to return if another casino also offered the rebate.

The lt;dr summary is: He didn't cheat or count cards. The 20% loss rebate combined with blackjack being a nearly even game gave him an edge.

You could do the same thing at craps. At craps, there's an obscure rule that lets you make a bet at true odds after establishing a point, sometimes for 10x or more of your original bet. If you're playing at a place that offers the 10x backup bet and the 20% loss rebate, you could do the same thing at craps.

1. Lots of unicorn corpses. They either get down rounds, fold completely, or get bought for much less than their last round's valuation.

2. It would be harder for new startups to raise money. The big losses in the unicorns would then lead to smaller B/A/angel rounds.

3. Lots of unemployed people who formerly worked at startups, scrambling to get jobs and the handful of large survivors.

4. With money drying up, it would be a good time for bootstrappers or people who don't need much financing.

If people are competing against their coworkers, management is doing it wrong.

If you're a web programmer, then the easiest way is to do an HTML5/Javascript games. That's the closest to what you already know.

Get him some books on html5 and javascript, or good web-based resources.

Make a simple game with him, like minesweeper or Tetris.

Also, if you make an HTML5/Javascript game, you can use something like PhoneGap/Cordova to compile it to a mobile app.

The original slogan "It is better to reject a good candidate than hire a bad candidate." specifically says to make that fallacy.

As long as good candidates are rare, and bad candidates have a small-but-nonzero chance of tricking you into hiring them, it's very expensive to pass on a good candidate.

Even if you pass on 50% of the good candidates (no matter how many bad ones trick you), you're doubling the amount of time you're spending interviewing.

The only way to be sure about how many "good" candidates your are missing is to hire some random percentage of the people who fail your interview. Only a large tech company would have the resources to do that, and I'm not sure if it would be ethical, or even get the employer in legal trouble.

NO employer knows how many good candidates they miss out on, which makes this analysis very difficult.

Also, I question the ability of most employers to evaluate employees AFTER they are hired, so any analysis of post-interview performance might just be reinforcing whatever biases are present.

Also, candidates fall into THREE groups: great, mediocre, and toxic. The catch is that the toxic ones are most likely to trick you into thinking they're great. That makes it even more expensive to pass on a good candidate.

I haven't worked or interviewed at many places where management was competent enough to prevent that from happening.

Example: I was working somewhere as an employee. They had a contractor, who was probably billing 3x as much hourly, who wasn't as talented. He was the team lead, so he took every opportunity to trash my reputation. If his bosses realized I was more productive than him, he might lose his gravy train. There was nothing I could do. By the time I realized what was happening, all the management thought I was useless.

>Rationally speaking, the only people who should prefer interviewing to other things are the people that benefit from hiring talented people, which primarily is equity holders of the company.

I've actually been burned by this one a couple of times. Some people on the interview team recommended against hiring me. That wasn't because they thought I was a bad programmer. Actually, they were concerned that I was too good of a programmer, and they didn't want the competition.

Feedback from hiring manager: "I thought you were great, but some people on my team had doubts. Therefore, no hire."

If the interviews are conducted one-on-one in private, nothing prevents the interviewer from falsely saying that you bombed the interview.

That's one reason "Only hire if everyone on the interview team says yes." is a bad idea. Some people will say no to good candidates, precisely because they don't want competition. Only someone with meaningful equity in the business wouldn't have that incentive.

The slogan represents the opposite. You hire only 10% of the good candidates but the odds of hiring a bad candidate are cut to only 0.5%.

It's already been discussed, which is why I'm at the "very annoyed" point right now.

Why would anyone who has a job waste a vacation day to interview at a place that previously rejected him?

If your flawed process rejected a good candidate the first time around, what makes you think the same flawed process won't reject them a second time?

Idiot: We don't want to make any bad hires! Therefore, we reject a lot of good candidates!

FSK: If you pass on many good candidates, and you have a small chance of hiring any given bad candidate, then each good candidate you reject actually INCREASES your odds of making a bad hire.

Idiot: We made a bad hire once! Never again! Now we reject lots of good candidates to avoid that repeat disaster!

FSK: But, if you want to minimize your bad hire rate, you also have to minimize the number of good candidates you reject.

Idiot: NO! NO! NO! The way you make sure you hire no bad candidates is to be so strict that you reject lots of good ones! That's what everyone told me so it must be right!

In one ear and out the other. Why do people who don't understand statistics get to be managers? If you don't understand this statistics argument I made, you're unqualified to work in any sort of technical area.

This has got to be the biggest hiring fallacy I've ever heard. "It's better to reject a good candidate than hire a bad candidate."

That's completely false, and anyone who says that is completely ignorant of Bayesian logic.

Here are some simple numbers.

Suppose that a "good" candidate is a 1-in-100 find. Suppose that a "bad" candidate has a 1% chance of tricking you into hiring them anyway.

Every time you pass on a "good" candidate, that is greater opportunity for a "bad" candidate to trick you into hiring them!

Counterintuitively, if you pass on too many of the "good" candidates, in your overzealousness to reject bad candidates, you're actually INCREASING THE ODDS OF A BAD HIRE.

This is management porn. "It's better to reject a good candidate than hire a bad candidate." It makes the manager feel good. "Wow! That candidate seemed smart, but I rejected him anyway! I'm such a great leader! I make the tough decisions!"

tl;dr summary

Because "good" candidates are rare, every time you pass on a good candidate that increases your odds of making a bad hire! This is simple Bayesian reasoning!

I'd rather spend a year learning Python or Go or whatever, instead of spending a year practicing interview questions.

I never realized that some people put as much effort into practicing interview questions as I put into learning how to actually write software.

Does this mean technical interviews, even a structured interview, are completely useless? I.e., if you follow an interview script, eventually candidates find out about your script, and then it's useless.

One of my coworkers listens to music on headphones all day, so loud I can hear it. It gets old fast. He also frequently smells like marijuana, a very strong smell. It is very annoying, I'm almost ready to walk out over it.

He is the boss' favorite, so I can't do anything.

It's an IRS rule. Otherwise, the contractor could argue they were an employee and sue for back benefits. I think Microsoft got burned by this.

When a late-stage investor gets to invest with a liquidation preference, that can ruin the value of the common shareholders (i.e., early employees) if the startup is not eventually sold for an even bigger valuation.

I.e., the early employees do a great job. The business has a value of $100M and their non-liquid shares are worth $0.5M. The business raises $100M with a 1x liquidation preference. The startup fails, and eventually sells for $50M. Instead of getting $0.1M-$0.25M, those early employees get nothing.