The practice interview point strikes me as odd. In large, because I have never done one. Do folks really typically do that many practice interviews?
I don't even know how to study. I sometimes consider it, but have never spent more than an hour prepping for an interview. :(
It worries me, because I know that interviewing is a skill. But are we not setting folks up to over index on that skill such that they have difficulty with actual job performance?
If anyone knows any literature into that general topic, I'd be very interested in perusing it.
Ideally, no professional should have to practice a skill that has such a low correlation with one's actual job duties as a software engineering interview. It's mostly cargo culting, IMO.
I fully agree with this. As an interviewer, though, I have no doubt that someone that has practiced interviews would do a better job with me than someone that hasn't.
So, as is normal in life, I expect it is complicated.
Companies always take the full time they scheduled for your interview no matter when they've decided you failed. Then a week later they may drop you an email informing you that they've chosen to pass on your candidacy. They then ignore or deny any request for feedback (something about liability).
So, interviewing with most companies may never inform you about why you're getting rejected. Last time I searched for a new position, I did about a dozen interviews, failed each one, still no idea why. That is why I'll consider a practice interview before my next job search.
No. That's not true. Many companies will early exit and we'll give feedback that indicates what broad areas weren't a good fit. We won't say "You should have used a probabilistic data structure here instead of a standard set" but we'll say "We expected a different experience from our whiteboard coding sessions." And then maybe something about the interview process being imperfect but the best that we have available to determine competency. So you'll know that it was whiteboard coding you didn't do well at rather than architecture design or culture fit or anything else.
That's cleared by recruiting, HR, and legal from the SF startup I work at. I did it today.
Oh ouch. That was not the intention but I can be socially awkward at times. Perhaps you can help me understand what I said that was wrong?
Happy to adjust the way I communicate so long as I can express that it was writing out code that didn't work as opposed to architecture and/or technical communication.
For me, it has two problems. The tone has this anodyne corporate PR flavor: whiteboarding isn’t really collaborative (“our”), nor is it an “experience” in the way that, say, hang-gliding is.
It’s also not particularly actionable. Obviously, it implies that you need to brush up on either a) algorithms, b) coding, or c) investigating a problem. However, you could just come out and say that. Some specific feedback on the problems that the applicant “failed” would be incredibly nice but is probably too much work. However, some general suggestions for how to improve would also make this feel more constructive, along with some instructions (if any) on how to reapply. Possibly something like “We felt that your knowledge of data structures was a weakness. Many of our engineers swear by Skiena’s Algorithm Design Manual, or.... If you are still interested in ABC Corp, we would be happy to consider a new application in six months.”
I see. I used to do that but someone told me that telling them about books that were common knowledge just sounded condescending. What I’m trying to express here is also that we just failed to acquire positive signal. We recognize that our process is imperfect (and I say this) so I don’t want to tell them there’s a weakness or anything just a mismatch of expectations.
But point taken and I’ll bias back in that direction. Without any irony, thanks for the feedback ;)
Such feedback, while welcome, in my mind, is so vague as to be unactionable. Unactionable feedback is essentials useless to me as a candidate. If Triplebyte can give good, specific feedback without being afraid of being sued, why can’t employers? As long as the feedback is truthful and only about the technical[0] aspects, there should be no reason others can’t too.
—-
[0]: Granted, there’s always the nebulous “not a culture fit” to deal with, but that’s always going to be a thing.
Because a non-trivial number of people are incapable of accepting feedback (even if only to discard later) and react in anger. That's unpleasant for everyone.
Right. It's a tragedy of the commons type situation. Ultimately, everyone would be better off if companies would tell candidates why they were rejected, but nobody does, because it avoids a slightly unpleasant situation for no immediate benefit. Short-termism at its finest.
Early on in my career I actually did give someone some advice post an interview and what to read up on etc. He sent me an email thanking me. Then six months later he thanked me saying he got a job at what is now a famous startup after studying up on the topics I recommended (algos and data structures in general and the basics in particular - he wasn't a CS major).
I was proud of that one but man would it have been sensible of me to have asked him to re-apply at that time. I love working with people with that attitude.
Unfortunately, I had my first unpleasant interaction shortly after that and then have never given pointed feedback ever after. Is that really short-termism? I don't see the short-term/long-term implications. I only see that there's a lack of information and no way to prove that one is trustworthy enough to warrant the interaction.
Yes, it absolutely is short-termism. Denying candidates feedback they can use to improve means its harder for them to improve. Granted, not all will use such information to actually get better, but none will if you don’t give them the information to begin with. I think we can agree that having better candidates is, well, better in the long term, right?
Also, people who will react angrily aren’t going to have a favorable impression of the company anyway. Nor are people who are rejected without a real reason likely to. But, if you give someone a reason and they use it to actually get a job, that can stick with them. You can’t even buy that kind of goodwill. I guarantee you could contact that person you helped about a job opportunity in the future, and they would at least seriously consider it, unlike the tens of recruiter spams they probably get monthly.
As for proving one is trustworthy enough to warrant the interaction,” that’s your fundamental problem right there. Employers have all the power in the employment relationship, so they owe a duty to the weaker side, provided there is no material risk.
It takes probably 10 or 20 minutes to give someone who’s given you at least an entire day of their irreplaceable time a detailed feedback note. The candidate has invested far more time than any individual at the company. A couple of temporarily bruised egos and some hurt feelings is not a material risk. To anyone who reacts angrily, cut them off, block them from contacting you, and move on; you don’t want those people as candidates in the future, anyway. In other words, suck it up, buttercup.
I went through a phase where I interviewed for fun. When there's nothing on the line and you're treating it like a TV gameshow, the innate absurdity of the whole process is laugh-out-loud funny and a generally good time to be had.
I got offers I didn't expect at all and many of the ones I fully expected never materialized. It was random!
The moral of the story? Don't take it personally. It has little to do with you! Once you have enough skill to "roll the dice", you just have to roll until your number comes up.
I've been successfully employed the valley for over a decade (and other tech work before that). I've never done a practice interview, I don't worry about my GitHub. I agree with the cargo culting comment.
Work on your network. Apply for jobs that interest you. Interview. Get job.
Can't agree with you more! Not sure why you're getting downvoted.
Interviews are subjective, and what I've seen recently is the expectation is that you solve Leetcode questions within 10-15 mins with the optimum solution (yes, this was told to me my several recruiters). Sure, so basically you're asking me to memorize as many Leetcode optimum solutions as I can.
No thanks, if you want to hire Leetcode monkeys go ahead and see how that works out. On top of this, when you add concious and unconcious bias what are your chances of being hired?
I didn't say NOT to do it, I just think people focus too much on it. And not even the practice interview itself. I think this mindset that everyone has to have an amazing GitHub and be a rockstar 10x engineer and do tons of practice interviews in itself keeps people from applying for newer and better positions, and improving themselves on the job.
That is to say, it's a kind of meta imposter's syndrome. "I'm not even doing the right things to make myself good enough to put myself in a position to get a better job!" Which keeps people from even trying.
So, to those points, I'm pretty sure I agree with you. Curious if this is some sort of survivor bias, though. In particular, how normal are we? If we are the outliers through luck or some other factor, I'd kind of like to know.
That's not easy. I work remote, and live in a place where there just isn't a network available. That would leave online and I usually just hang out on HN.
Same here. I've found nearly all of my jobs through my network, but now that I work remotely from a place where it's hard to have a network... I really don't know how I'm going to address the issue in future.
Instead of literature go read some of the top posts at /r/cscareerquestions . Students are expected to put in tons of hours "grinding" study sessions for interviews. Recently there was a post about a new grad who felt he wasn't doing very well at his job because he spent to much time practicing for interviews
People should really stop using that place as a credible source of information. The very nature of Reddit skews the posts that show up in favor of either over-the-top success or major depression. You never hear about the middle ground (the guy/gal that gets a so-so job in CS but still has time to spend with his/her kids on the weekends).
As for the student thing, this is industry's fault. It's an evolution of "no one got fired for buying IBM". In this case, they're buying the interview techniques of the big players (Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc) since they are perceived as bringing in top performers. So someone at or near entry level is going to have to deal with bullshit HackerRank tests until the industry changes its hiring practices.
> Students are expected to put in tons of hours "grinding" study sessions for interviews.
You should never study for interviews. If the company isn't asking questions relevant to the work or you can't answer those types of questions then it's best to not work there.
General interview skills are different than studying CS problems.
> If the company isn't asking questions relevant to the work or you can't answer those types of questions then it's best to not work there.
Tell that to every company in the Seattle area. They all seem to think that Hackerrank-ing everyone is a good way to hire because the bigger companies do it. It's an evolution of "nobody got fired for buying IBM" but instead they're buying the interview methods that Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are using.
In a perfect world, where my bills got paid and there was food on my table regardless of whether I passed someone’s arbitrary screening questions, I would never study for an interview. It’s stupid and encourages companies to design bad interviews. But that’s not the world we live in.
Are you making a distinction between studying interviewing skills and preparing for specific interviews? I think studying the company you want to work for is a key part of making a good impression.
Do folks really typically do that
many practice interviews?
I didn't do any practice interviews intentionally but I did get rejected from the first two places I interviewed out of college, so the effect was the same.
If for some reason a person absolutely couldn't risk being rejected by a few places, practising some other way might be a sensible move :)
The point of a "practice interview" is that you can actually get feedback, as opposed to going and doing a "real" interview for practice.
As for not being able to risk rejection, what is there to risk besides time? I've heard of people practicing for 3+ months. In that same time period, one could probably get 10 onsite interviews and a lot more phone screens in. The fundamental problem is the lack of feedback on rejection (although it's possible to get randomly hired while doing this type of "practice").
As for not being able to risk rejection,
what is there to risk besides time?
Hypothetically, if you interview at employers in preference order, bungling the first two interviews would mean missing out on your first two preferences.
And if you avoided that by applying to your twentieth-preference company first for practice, some people would feel bad or insincere.
> The practice interview point strikes me as odd. In large, because I have never done one. Do folks really typically do that many practice interviews?
I only did practice interviews for my college internships and my first job because my resume was so light and my experience in the industry was nonexistent. When you have so little to talk about, it's smart to come prepared with a handful of questions.
Once you have 5 years or so of experience, other than light prep, practice interviews are not necessary. You know what to expect in interviews and you have tons of work experience to talk about and industry experience to ask pertinent questions to the interviewer.
But that's just my own personal experience. Also, after my 1st job, I've never had to take "technical or IQ tests" either. The interview process was more center around my projects and work experience rather than technical know-how.
Just out of curiosity, what kind of places have you been interviewing? I'm at about 5 years, and I'm still getting mostly the same old "write down the solution to these leetcode problems" type interviews. I would say 75% is leetcode bullshit, maybe 25% more applied type interviews.
Literally anywhere that doesn’t think of itself as a “tech compan.” or the job as a “tech” job.
I’m on the line between neuroscience and machine learning. Interviews for “neuro jobs”, even ones where my major responsibility would be coding, usually involve talking about things I’ve done and how I would tackle new problems. Put a similar position in an org that thinks of itself as “tech” and suddenly I’m traversing graphs and drawing trees.
I don't even know how to study. I sometimes consider it, but have never spent more than an hour prepping for an interview. :(
It worries me, because I know that interviewing is a skill. But are we not setting folks up to over index on that skill such that they have difficulty with actual job performance?
If anyone knows any literature into that general topic, I'd be very interested in perusing it.