Programming Interviews Turn Normal People into A-Holes
Subtitle: Yet Another Tech Interviewing Post
There are hundreds and hundreds of blogs about how programming interviews suck, how they ask trivia questions or try to ask questions that only fresh graduates would know well (sort binary trees is the classical example).
All these theories are correct, but I have
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Bluntly? If you look at interviews as a pass/fail exam, you're already a terrible person, no matter what side of the desk you sit on. The purpose of programming questions should never be to get trivia questions right. The purpose is only finding out how the candidate approaches and solves problems, ideally under some (not a lot of) stress.
If you, as an interviewer, want to gate-keep the position to people who can already do it under normal conditions, then pay the candidate to work with your team for a day or two, on an actual bug, to get data about "real" conditions. Otherwise, toy problems with arbitrary restrictions are fine, because the goal should be a fast-paced conversation. "I don't know how to do this, off the top of my head, but I'd research these topics to find out" is a much better interview than watching someone flounder on Stack Overflow for half an hour.
I wonder why (big) companies are not doing this already? Since they spend a ton in hiring?
Or does anyone know companies that actually do this?
Some places do, and it's often an enlightening experience for everyone. I'm a fan.
I think it's not as pervasive as we'd like because it costs money, probably more than you'd think, to pull all serious candidates through a paid process. Not only are you paying the candidates, you also need people dedicated to setting that process up and maintaining it for each candidate that comes through. Then you need someone to take time managing the contractor relationship that is necessary to pay them for their time. It's not a trivial process.
While I don't know for sure, I feel like a lot of companies thoroughly believe that it's a "buyer's market." I mean, even in an era where every executive is whining about "quiet quitting" (working assigned hours, then going home) and how "nobody wants to work" (for the offered salary under the offered conditions), they still have the nerve to ask "why do you want to work here," and expect candidates to answer in a way that verifies that they researched the company and have some passionate desire to be their employee.
Less cynically, after a couple of decades in the industry, I've concluded that any company past a certain size can't understand the idea of someone contributing immediately, without weeks of setting up their computer and being trained on unrelated products. When I interview, I actually ask what the position's expectations are for the first day, week, month, and quarter, and most of them don't have an answer before "month," and even that is rarely more than "maybe fix some minor bugs." (At my first job, the largest company that I've worked for, they didn't even have a desk for me, for the first week. And when they finally cleared a desk, it didn't have a computer on it...)
Agreed, the only value I find from these tests is that they can sometimes spot if someone is making very junior mistakes. But, it's so easy to not hire good people if you only trust in the tests.
There have also been studies on this, it's been known for years.
Finally, ChatGPT now provides excellent answers to a lot of common questions.
My takeaway, interviewers should get training.
Yet I never heard of such practice. Proper training to interviewers saves company time and money, AND most importantly, does not let good talents slip away.
Someone should build a business around it.
I found "Programming Interviews" to be an invaluable resource for preparing for coding interviews. This post provided me with a comprehensive overview of the topics I needed to master and gave me practice questions that helped me gain the confidence I needed to succeed. I'm very grateful for the advice and strategies it provided and would highly recommend it to anyone looking to ace their coding interview.
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Exactly. As a developer, I have gone through a number of different coding interviews and I personally think that it contributes unnecessary stress and can even bring up imposter syndrome. A majority of the time I am doing Google searches for solving coding issues/bugs.
This is great. I’ve also been in nearly all three of those scenarios, and there needs to be a higher level of empathy towards people going through a rigorous tech interview.
One thing you don't mention, that I think is important, is that people have formed their opinions after reading resume or within seconds of entering the room. The actual answers to trivia don't really matter, people are held to completely different standards based on the bias of the interviewer.
Yes.. Well written article. After long time, I read an article where purpose is to communicate the message and not SEO.
I liked the line " I'm not hiring them for their memory " ....
I'm not a programmer/developer/engineer, but I can say that after reading this article, so many of these negative points apply to so many other industries too, it isn't just a tech issue. I've found it to be particularly bad in HR - the arrogance is unbelievable.
Yea! I've been on both sides and I agree and don't like it. It's really just a form of snobbery. What I've found is that, at the end of the day, the questions don't matter, it is the personality/disposition/company culture that make a person a good hire and the company a good place to work for. And, can I add, that, by-and-large, interviews are rarely ever effective at predicting performance or success.
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