Ask HN: Measuring the long-term benefit of interview code tests?

Re:Ask HN: Measuring the long-term benefit of interview code... by 908B64B197 on Friday November 05, 2021 @02:16PM (#29122875)

The problem with keeping these stats is that it only tracks engineers that were hired. I don't think coding interviews are a good predictor of performance, and that's not why I use them.

The point of a coding interview is to eliminate, as fast as possible, people who simply can't code. I'm being completely serious here. They can even have a CS degree (or will claim to but if you look closely they were in an easier program to get into and took CS electives) but cannot write a simple program on the board in an hour.

It's also why I don't like take-homes. First it's trivial to cheat (I don't mean lookup stuff online, just flat out have someone else do the work) and because of that the final stage would still have to be in-person whiteboard (or pair programming over Slack but still have an engineer spend 40+ minutes with the candidate).

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Re:Ask HN: Measuring the long-term benefit of interview code... by gcheong on Sunday November 07, 2021 @07:47PM (#29145096)

That was the purpose of the original fizzbuzz but for whatever reason it seems to have morphed into “spend all your spare time on leetcode so that you can answer whatever arbitrary problem is thrown at you” and they have the audacity to call that a meritocracy.

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Re:Ask HN: Measuring the long-term benefit of interview code... by singron on Saturday November 06, 2021 @11:05AM (#29130808)

We used the same takehome for years, and eventually there were a few solutions online that were easy to find. But for some reason, they all sucked, so we never had to worry about unqualified candidates copying them.

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