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0 pointsguitarbill9y ago0 comments

> Technical interviews should be more about doing due diligence over someone having the knowledge they say they have... not some sort of game people write books on how to train for it...

Yet they aren't, technical interviews are mostly bullshit CS questions which you barely use in day-to-day programming. And it isn't like CS knowledge is all you need to be a good programmer. Technical interviews are exactly what you say they are, a game.

And every game has rules that can be exploited. This guy's mistake was to try and completely break the game, which would have left Google with no alternative but to invent a different game.

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lobut9y ago

I despise these games and people that pass them get all sorts of confirmation bias when they pass the tests.

I remember going through this process for internships and wondering how I was supposed to figure out all of these weird puzzles on the spot. Then I made a few friends and we all just traded questions with each other. We'd spend weeks on the problem and pretended we just figured it out.

euyyn9y ago

I interview engineering candidates at Google, and the process we have is pretty good at letting us (interviewers) see how the candidate thinks, as well as assess their knowledge about algorithms, data structures, and distributed systems, and their programming hygiene, and software design skills. So I'm pretty happy about it.

Also the interviewers are separate from the people making the hiring decision, which I think is a good thing.

guitarbillOP9y ago

I'm not 100% acquainted with the questions Google asks, but in general "knowledge about algorithms, data structures" favours memorisation strongly. In fact, sometimes it is the only option. I think it would be quite a high bar to expect someone to come up with a complex algorithm from scratch in a 60 minute interview for which researchers have needed decades. (Edit: not to mention way harder and more unreliable that just learning it off by heart).

My programming hygiene and software design skills? You can see that more reliably from my Github work, but then recruiters and interviewers almost never take the time to look at that. Instead, we're stuck relying on a shitty test, not years and years of hard work and data, because it's easier for you to evaluate. Good job everybody.

maverick_iceman9y ago

Who has the time to look at you and other millions of candidates' Github repos? Recruiters wouldn't understand them anyway and engineers have more important work to do.

euyyn9y ago

I mean, I can't even try to convince you that our method is good if you aren't acquainted with it but already found flaws in it :)

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0 pointsguitarbill9y ago0 comments

> Technical interviews should be more about doing due diligence over someone having the knowledge they say they have... not some sort of game people write books on how to train for it...

And every game has rules that can be exploited. This guy's mistake was to try and completely break the game, which would have left Google with no alternative but to invent a different game.

0 comments

lobut9y ago

I despise these games and people that pass them get all sorts of confirmation bias when they pass the tests.

euyyn9y ago

Also the interviewers are separate from the people making the hiring decision, which I think is a good thing.

guitarbillOP9y ago

maverick_iceman9y ago

Who has the time to look at you and other millions of candidates' Github repos? Recruiters wouldn't understand them anyway and engineers have more important work to do.

euyyn9y ago

I mean, I can't even try to convince you that our method is good if you aren't acquainted with it but already found flaws in it :)

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j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse