I really wish there was more work done in changing the terrible interview culture in software, instead of doubling-down on bad practices with low signal-to-noise ratios.<p>It's clear that whiteboarding and impromptu coding have little-to-nothing to do with real-life coding capability (let alone with generating real business value), while <i>actual</i> signals (e.g.: GitHub projects, OSS contributions, StackOverflow, take-homes, etc.) are ignored by interviewers. I've interviewed dozens of engineers and it's always been a miserable experience because my hiring manager (or other senior engineers on my team) always insisted on using these kinds of "grilling" methods which were never good signals to begin with.<p>It's a shame how our industry is the only highly-paid professional industry where this kind of sophomoric "intellectual hazing" is not only accepted, but also encouraged. I mean, hell, I have like three books on my bookshelf not about how to write <i>good</i> code, or <i>scalable</i> code, or <i>performant</i> code, but merely about how to pass interviews. Yuck.
This site is amazing. I had a real problem with nerves during interviews, I did about half a dozen practice interviews on the site over about 2 or 3 months, while I was brushing up on algorithms and data structures in my spare time. It was great, if you have issues with interviews I recommend the site.<p>One bit of advice though, don't just jump into a mock, make sure you prep by studying first for a few weeks.
Practicing interviewing always seemed to me like studying the day before the exam: if you're lucky and the things you studied actually helped you to pass the exam, you would be lying to yourself because a couple of days/weeks later you won't remember anything of what you just studied. You didn't deserve to pass the exam, but, hey, nobody knows.<p>Similarly, if you practice an interview and you're lucky enough to being questioned the topics you just practiced and they hire you, what kind of impression are you going to give to your future teammates when some weeks/months later they ask you something related to that topic but you don't remember/know? You just Google it? Well, you can google "how to render a template in Golang", that's fine, but you should not google "what's the difference between a compiled and an interpreted language" because there are some things that you should know before starting to work as a professional software developer.<p>I know that "the tech interview process is broken", but we, as part of that process, should aim to improve it, not to trick the system for our own and personal benefit.
I've used interviewing.io a lot and it has been immensely helpful. Not only did I get a lot better at interviewing, I also got a referral from the practice interviewer which eventually led me to my current job at a FAANG.
As a former interviewer at interviewing.io, the CEO of this company is committing fraud. She has done the following:<p>- Been consistently late in paying out interviewers. Sometimes over 60 days late.
- I am owed over $50k in money for several months earlier this year. She has stopped responding to emails and calls. I am hiring a lawyer to get my money back.<p>This platform is a guise for funneling people through to subpar jobs.
This is awesome! I've really enjoy watching the interviews they publish on Youtube: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNc-Wa_ZNBAGzFkYbAHw9eg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNc-Wa_ZNBAGzFkYbAHw9eg</a>
I find it confusing that the software development industry both rejects any sort of standard certification bar, yet there is a fast growing industry built around helping job seekers pass a standard technical interview loop.<p>Given that this overlaps with the HN community, how does everyone feel about the growth of these types of companies?
The issues being brought up are very similar to the things talked about in PG's "The Lesson to Unlearn" [1], i.e. "hackable" tests in university.<p>IMO, I don't think there is anything wrong with expecting candidates to be knowledgable about basic algo/data structure for a SWE role -- instead, the issues are with the evaluation process. Namely that it's become hackable using these preperation services (resulting in false-positives), it doesn't capture or indicate a candidate's real-world knowledge/experience/abilities, and the typical questions and whiteboard approach is likely outdated when there are probably better alternatives.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html</a>
I understand there is some value in using a technical screen to see if a candidate has the viable expertise and skills required but how do we find that if everyone is doubling down on <i>generic</i> competitive-programming style hiring sites?<p>After crunching through many leetcode problems I see the problems they give have really poor APIs and many posted solutions people share have memory leaks and other problems that you would absolutely want to avoid on a production code base.<p>Competitive programming is <i>fun</i> for sure but where is the data that it has a high correlation to job success? It seems to me like a completely different skill set. Writing fast, sloppy code in order to solve a puzzle is fun but it's quite another when your library brings down a production server because it leaks memory like a sieve.
With regards to interviews, there is no free lunch. Interviewees don't want to do at least one of the following:<p>1. Data structures and algorithm questions - they don't want to study for months<p>2. Take home exercises - they don't want to spend hours unpaid without knowing whether they got the job<p>3. GitHub / Stack Overflow / Open source contributions - they don't want to code outside of work<p>One last one, paid interviews about the work itself, may be untenable for employers to pay every single interviewee.
visited the site - read somewhere - anonymous interview practise - clicked on give it a try - and signup/login screen opened - doubted, if it is really anonymous!
I've been in this industry for a few years and I still don't get it. It seems like people in this industry constantly do things against their own interests to me.<p>In terms of interviews:<p>A lot of these practices are designed and driven by <i>other developers</i>, not PMs or business people. And yet most devs won't work for FAANG, and will likely have a much lower salary. And yet the <i>ask</i> from these dev interviewers is something like this:<p>- "You don't know language A and/or framework B that are very similar to language X and framework Y that you know very well? Sorry we can't hire you. We expect good devs to spend day and night reading up on the latest fashionable library, framework and language and have no life."<p>- "Can you spend several hours every day for the next few months studying leetcode? I hope you don't have performance anxiety, try Valium sometime. No, we won't expect you to solve arbitrary puzzles in front of a semi-hostile interviewer grilling you as your day job, it's just for kicks really."<p>- "Can you spend 4 hours doing this coding assignment as part of the interview?"<p><pre><code> "We want you to do your best and include x,y,z and the kitchen sink and not just solve the problem (add 4-8+ hours)."
"Let's review your work -- you displayed exceptional skills and a deep understanding of our core competency. However, you didn't include our favorite coding style that you didn't happen to guess we would use --that you totally would've just adopted from day one during onboarding-- so we can't hire you."
"We didn't see X in your code. No we can't schedule a 15 minute interview for you to explain your 4-14 hour coding project, why you did what you did, and that X is actually in there on L56 -- we're busy and decided to review your code only for 5 minutes after a heavy lunch and already passed on you for someone else. Sorry. We will keep your resume on file to wipe our *sses with."
OR
(interviewer disappears like a ghost after dropping a 20+ hour coding project for you to do and never follows up after)
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- "Can you build a full-stack app for us from scratch as the coding project? Oh no, you won't be building a full-stack app from scratch when you start with us, but we want someone who can do it in 5 minutes for the exactly 0-1 times we'll ever need it"<p>- "You haven't learned fancy new library/framework/language X yet? Are you a dinosaur?"
...4 months later...<p><pre><code> "Fancy new library/framework/language X sucks, it turned out to be a fad. It turned out it doesn't do anything better than dinosaur library/framework/language D and is actually really buggy or complicated. What you _really_ need to know is fancy new library/framework/language Y, that's where it's at. We only want people who keep up with the industry."
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<i>Me now doing the mental math of how I completely fcked myself over going into this industry</i><p>The math:<p>Average expected time doing the job after leetcode, coding project interviews, open source, stack overflow, learning fancy library/framework/language/whatever:<p>60+ hours/week.<p>No you can't reduce that to a normal 40 hours/week unless you want to be a generic Java/Javascript code monkey, sir/madam.<p>Average salary: Not even near enough to justify that, considering the salaries of other engineering and STEM fields. Unless you count FAANG, which you probably won't be working for.<p>What did I get myself into?
I don't think practicing interviewing should be encouraged even though I know this has been done for years and years. If you want to end up working on something you actually love in a place you like, you should just learn what is interesting to you. Your "dream" job at a FAANG might be more unpleasant and boring than you've been expecting.