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0 pointscaiobegotti6y ago0 comments

There are N other separations I could think of besides the ones you pointed out:

- someone who gets anxious and blanks out given hardcore requirements these kind of interviews have, smart people can also go bad at tests

- someone who's having a tough day and would fare better taking the challenge home with quiet relaxing time like they would expect to have at work if they need to code complex algorithms

- no interest in past code written that could potentially show other traits of the candidate a quick coding quiz can't

- etc (no need to be extra creative here, just be humble and imagine what the candidate might be going through to get a dream job)

The simple fact an apparently smart young person joining the industry gets burned out like that due to stupidly arrogant hiring processes like these is a sign HR are failing miserably in the computer industry, and it's not something that started last month. Simplifying the burden of such process for actual people looking for a job to show how they are worth is dehumanizing.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

berdon6y ago· 3 in thread

False negatives waste far less time (dollars) than false positives. It’s unfair but worth it to not force a team to have to work with an unqualified candidate for a year or maybe more.

Apocryphon6y ago

The problem with an unyielding, fairly uniform obsession with interview problems unrelated to actual day-to-day development is that you're institutionalizing Goodhart's Law. Eventually the interviews will encourage false positives as candidates grind on CTCI and LeetCode and pass interviews without actually being able to excel at actual work responsibilities.

berdon6y ago

I don’t think so. That’s why you’ll have candidates passing the questions but not the interview. We’re not looking got rote answers, we’re looking for comprehension, problem solving, and discussion.

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falcolas6y ago

This right here, I don’t get. Why TF would a manager make you work with unqualified people for a year+? Between evaluation periods and at-will employment, there’s no reason this should happen.

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