I deny that hiring Python is hard beyond “hiring is hard”.
> You think you're getting a good programmer, because they know all the leetcode tricks,
Unless I want someone for a role that is very much like reproducing leetcode tricks, I don't think I would think someone is good for it because they are good at those. In fact, leetcode is mercilessly mocked as being almost completely irrelevant as a positive signal for hiring, though it may be useful as a filtering tool to reduce an overwhelming volume of applicants to a manageable one where high rates of both false negatives and false positives, but some slight advantage over just randomly discarding applicants, is tolerable.
That's...a complete topic switch and irrelevant. The discussion I was responding to is about the challenges facing whoever does have control.
All I'm saying is that signal to noise for the common tests you give for 'problem solving aptitude and conceptual fundamentals', is much lower when you are hiring for a python position. You think you're hiring for those things, but you're actually hiring for leetcode-optimizers.
I mean, I'm not trying to do hire like that, and I think I have an interview that tries to test that effectively, but I have had to deal with the downstream effects of people who are doing hiring like this, and that has been a real problem for me.
If you instead hire for "engineering" positions, without caring about what languages the candidate knows, you can interview for their ability to solve practical programming exercises [1] in whatever language they are most familiar/comfortable with. Maybe this only works at FAANG-level hiring, but in these contexts, top tier candidates can get things done in any language, and that's really what matters, no? But more to your point, I've generally found candidates that pick Python (or Ruby/Perl/etc) can actually accomplish more–and therefore prove their capabilities–in the space of an interview simply because they're picking a more expressive language. Bad candidates will prove they are bad candidates no matter what language they choose.
1: Eg, reading/manipulating files, merging/filtering/sorting data, generating and processing multi-dimensional data structures, etc.
