Re:What's Wrong with Tech Hiring
by sangnoir on Thursday September 16, 2021 @12:50PM
(#28554125)
> Fizzbuzz is one thing. Balancing binary trees, is another
The thing is, companies don't want to employ any random person who can code and meets the minimum bar, they want The Best™ - and that's when things get competitive, and arbitrary.
This is the other side of the coin to a recent HN thread (on pay transparency/whether tech workers are interchangeable[1]). My thesis is if you agree that some are many times more productive, the so-called 10x - and you want to hire those: then you need to test for that in the interview process, hence the exploration of the less-visited areas of Data Structures & Algorithms. If any engineer who meets the minimum requirements will do (i.e. fully interchangeable), then anyone who can pass FizzBuzz and is familiar with the tech will do. Most companies are in the latter group, but tell themselves they are in the former, resulting in the current explosion of "Change this unsorted linked list into a balanced tree with the least time complexity" questions.
> If a candidate has a portfolio, you'd be absolute idiots to ignore that portfolio.
I'm guessing only a minority of candidates have a portfolio before applying for a job. Most of SDE output belongs to their past employers, so expecting portfolios will also filter out a whole lot of people who can do the work, and I'd rather grind HackerRank than hastily build a portfolio just to apply for a job.
The thing is, companies don't want to employ any random person who can code and meets the minimum bar, they want The Best™ - and that's when things get competitive, and arbitrary.
This is the other side of the coin to a recent HN thread (on pay transparency/whether tech workers are interchangeable[1]). My thesis is if you agree that some are many times more productive, the so-called 10x - and you want to hire those: then you need to test for that in the interview process, hence the exploration of the less-visited areas of Data Structures & Algorithms. If any engineer who meets the minimum requirements will do (i.e. fully interchangeable), then anyone who can pass FizzBuzz and is familiar with the tech will do. Most companies are in the latter group, but tell themselves they are in the former, resulting in the current explosion of "Change this unsorted linked list into a balanced tree with the least time complexity" questions.
> If a candidate has a portfolio, you'd be absolute idiots to ignore that portfolio.
I'm guessing only a minority of candidates have a portfolio before applying for a job. Most of SDE output belongs to their past employers, so expecting portfolios will also filter out a whole lot of people who can do the work, and I'd rather grind HackerRank than hastily build a portfolio just to apply for a job.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28536084