I agree a code test is necessary. I’ve seen several panels neglect to do a code test, the candidate was hired, then within a month fired because it was clear they couldn’t do anything (other than, well, argue).

I’ve been in a panel where I was the only person who asked a code question, the candidate flunked, and then the VP of Engineering went over my complaints and hired the guy anyways. He had been a Professor of Software Engineering and had a graduate degree from Princeton. Within three weeks, the VP of Engineering had to fire him because he couldn’t make it through a simple code review.

BUT the extremely negative sentiment here towards the technical interview process is very well-deserved.

Assessment of code (and the selection of problems) is most often no less subjective than any non-technical assessment. Sometimes the interviewer doing the grading is flat out wrong. Several times I’ve been asked the famous “given an array of stock prices, find the optimal buy and sell indices for the biggest profit.” One interviewer was not aware of the linear time solution to this problem, and didn’t believe me when I wrote and tried to explain it to him.

But sometimes, the interviewer doesn’t even want you to do well. Once time I was interviewing with an injury that prevented me from typing efficiently. I had a doctor’s note and the injury was quite conspicuous. Nevertheless, three start-ups made me solve problems by typing on a keyboard, which guaranteed an excessively long completion time. Those companies held those results against me. (An it’s not like there is anybody to hold those panels accountable).

And then there are those who just don’t care. I had a phone interview with Airbnb that was literally as bad as the stories on Glassdoor: the guy answered the phone in a noisy office (not a conference room), gave no introduction, then simply stated the problem and dumped me into Coderpad. I literally thought it was a prank, since I had met with people at Airbnb face-to-face prior to the call. But the recruiters confirmed the guy was a real employee.

The root problem here is there is no feedback loop back to interviewers. The candidates get “feedback,” but people asking code questions, especially new grads, typically get zero assessment on how well they are doing as interviewers. What’s worse is that recruiters and hiring managers both have incentives to deprive ICs of such feedback, since it would invariably make ICs more aware of opportunities outside the company.

Until the incentive structure of technical interviewing changes dramatically, we’re stuck with Leetcode and hope for the best. People like Gayle Laakmann are helpful (especially when Facebook gives candidates a live hour-long session with her for free), but these people are ultimately invested in their own income and not the task of fundamentally fixing this broken process.