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0 pointsumvi6y ago0 comments

> No, they hire Competitive Programmers

More specifically, programmers who spend a lot of time learning how to solve algorithm puzzles. This heavily favors single people who have lots of time to devote to studying such things and disadvantages time-constrained people such as developers with a family life at home.

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zerr6y ago

Yes, ageism is one of the consequences (or reason) of such interview practice.

username906y ago

Is there any evidence that older engineers are worse at these interviews than younger ones?

umviOP6y ago

It's not that older engineers are worse at them (from an intelligence standpoint), it's that younger engineers have more time to study for them.

Take a standardized test like the LSAT. Young single people can spend 4-5 hours a day taking practice LSAT exams. Older married people with small children barely have 2 spare hours after work let alone 4 (without neglecting their spouse/kids).

Assuming both the older and younger devs in this scenario have identical IQs, who is likely to do better come LSAT test day? It's a war of time attrition.

p_l6y ago

Having gone through some of their algorithmic questions, about the only thing consistent between competition programming and their questions was that N was large, often larger than resources of single machine. A very practical issue, compared to many competition problems.

The first stage of the question might be very competition-like, though.

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