The Machine Learning Software Engineering Interview

Re:The Machine Learning Software Engineering Interview by davnicwil on Thursday October 31, 2019 @07:24PM (#21414828)

I think the trick here is have people talk through what it does, how and why (as in what are the tradeoffs, what other approaches could have been taken, etc).

You can't fake this. Or to put it better, even if the code isn't yours and you can do this well, it doesn't even matter that the code isn't yours as in doing this you by definition have the skills and knowledge to reimplement it anyway.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Machine Learning Software Engineering Interview by pmikesell on Thursday October 31, 2019 @08:36PM (#21415225)

You can absolutely fake this. There’s a huge difference between coming up with and implementing something vs understanding it enough to be convincing.

Have you actually tested this out?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Machine Learning Software Engineering Interview by davnicwil on Friday November 01, 2019 @03:46AM (#21416908)

Yes I've done this both as an interviewer and interviewee, it's a pretty valuable exercise I've found. Not a silver bullet, not the only thing you can do, not appropriate for every situation, but generally good.

Regarding your other point I agree with you, but if the main point is to evaluate understanding then the difference doesn't really matter. If you're testing for ability to invent concepts etc, then this might be more important to you.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Machine Learning Software Engineering Interview by dcolkitt on Friday November 01, 2019 @05:44AM (#21417295)

Okay, but at this point it sounds pretty much the same as a traditional interview where the candidate discusses their prior experience.

[ Parent | on HN ]