Essentially, the system used to recruit candidates into the Imperial Chinese state bureaucracy was an-ever-more-elaborate progression of less- and less-relevant testing, and more- and more-gamable (and expensive) testing. If you thought getting quizzed about FizzBuzz was bad, imagine getting quizzed about Beowulf with the same degree of seriousness.
"Intense pressure to succeed meant that cheating and corruption were rampant, often outrunning strenuous attempts to prevent or defeat them."
"In the 19th century, critics blamed the imperial system, and in the process its examinations, for China's lack of technical knowledge and its defeat by foreign powers."
This doesn't amount to any huge revelation to many of us when we're seeking jobs, nor any comfort, really.
Maybe a little bit of solace that the coding interview you inexplicably failed, which had the trappings of a serious attempt to gauge your fit, but the actual behind-the-scenes decision-making progress involved the finesse you'd expect from a group of blindfolded monkeys throwing darts, will eventually pay a dividend for all the fat dumb and happy juggernauts in the bay. Amazon may be the Sears of the 21st century, but I strongly suspect it and its cohort will meet the same fate a century later and for the same reasons.
I have worked who are totally passionate and read all the blogs and can talk about all new buzzwords and techniques. Who simultaneously had problem write simple code. That is incomparable to Beowulf.
10 years ago I was asked how to tell if an integer is divisible by two without using division or modulus. What they expected was to bit mask the 1s place in the integer and check for equality with 0. I'd take Fizzbuzz any day.
The only problem is... at some point the tech industry basically started saying to itself, "That worked pretty well! Now if we can just make our tests 50 times harder the must be... 50 times as good!"
Which explains a lot about the situation we're in now.
There is generally little substitute for real world experience. Measuring through proxy only goes that far.
The point of the post was that they were/are optimizing for the wrong things.
Some people watch "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?" and chuckle when they realize they're not.
A smaller subset of people take it to the next level and (would) hire the 5th grader instead of the adult to do an adult's job.
Life's not a game show, but some (most?) of us forget that when we conduct interviews.
Recently interviewed with one of the big ones and they were enamoured with my Swift and iOS dev knowledge but I’m not great with identifying graph questions. After many long internal discussions and even a letter of recommendation they passed/asked me if I was interested in other semi-technical roles at the company. In moments like this my sentiment is ‘take me or leave me’.
When I design system, I don't do it in an interview time frame. I read the problem, and then go and do other stuff. Part of the design will become clearer to me a couple of days later, when I am cooking dinner or cycling to work - that stuff goes on in the background in my head. It's not an area where I find sharp focus useful, more a case of going through the many options at a slower pace is more useful.
Ofc the coding interview is bad, but it's the best of all available (viable) options.
tbh: most people say it's bad because interviewers focus on the optimal solution or something like that. Most of the time that's incorrect as an interview is literally capturing: "Can the candidate solve a difficult problem and transfer his thoughts into code, while being a nice guy to work with"
disclaimer: I'm doing interviews for a faang company.
*citation needed
My gut feeling is that they wouldn't do this at all. If you fail, you fail. Not only that, it seems like a legally shit-situation to put yourself in to hire someone who you think is going to fail and then fire them.
Disclaimer: doing interviews outside of FAANG and not on the west coast - where the majority of developers are working.
I get that it's hard to determine someones skill level, and people aren't prepared to spend multiple hours on practical tests (especially when having multiple interviews), but there must be a better way to interview.
