Is there any other field that normalizes this type of insane interviews.
They are even applauded by the vast majority in this thread.
Do mathematiticans have to interiview like this? Medical doctors? Police officers?
Rocket scientists? Chemists?
Architects?
I cant think off a single profession apart from the IT domain that does this.
I dont think there is a single profession that gets mocked on their interviewing strategies as much as IT still I see senior devs defending this insanity.
'We' as an industry also seem to be very allergic to any sort of formal certification process, so this is where we end up. On the positive side that means that in theory anyone can show up with no formal training, pass the interview, and get a job (as I'm sure many of us here have). That is literally impossible for all the other jobs you mentioned.
We either have to start requiring the same level of formal certification we require of other engineering professions or we have to deal with these types of interviews.
And let's not pretend there aren't plenty of bozos who don't really know what they're doing in other fields. It's entirely unclear to me whether certification helps.
It's entirely unclear to me whether certification helps.
I've worked a lot in civil engineering, and honestly the worst working civil engineer I've worked with was still a lot better at their job than the worst working programmer I've worked with.
> I cant think off a single profession apart from the IT domain that does this
The dichotomy lies in the fact IT and programming are not professions.
All of the professions you listed, you have to go to school for. For most of them, there is a body overseeing training, qualifications and conduct of the professionals, barring them from practicing for malpractice.
How do you evaluate Bob, a self-taught, remote developer, with no public projects, with 10 years of experience in no-name companies? You give them a real-world task and see how they do.
There's a ton of nuance to it. It's all about context and with what confidence can you derive that a candidate is suitable based on the available context.
Alice might have the qualifications you listed, but never worked in fintech startups and therefore needs additional probing. Bob on the other hand might have none of those qualifications, but has worked exclusively in fintech startups, and would therefore require different evaluation.
This kind of context-appropriate evaluation ofcourse becomes prohibitively expensive when you're filling hundreds of positions per month.
The issue is without it how do weed out the bullshitters and frauds?
I've done loads of interviews of "engineers" who could barely program at all. A short test like this can remove them completely and then you just need one discussion interview for the handful of candidates that remain.
I do agree that this probably has no value for the company. They could implement this easily themselves. Now, if they would give a different arithmetic operation to each applicant...
I think the question is, why don't other fields put this huge emphasis on the fear of bullshitters and frauds?
My take: There's some extreme sampling bias at play. Everyone knows at least one horror story where someone managed to bullshit their way to a position. Now they imagine that this must be a problem, while ignoring the vast majority of devs they've worked with that were legitimate developers.
The field of software engineering is also much more personal and opinionated than traditional engineering. This lowers the threshold for what devs. will classify as "frauds" - not because the people they accuse might actually be frauds, but because they are not up to their standards.
If your goal is to remove the bullshitters wouldn't a 5-10 minute, slightly harder than FizzBuzz, test also remove them just accurately and save everybody a bunch of time.
It's really not at all unusual: Engineering roles in general will often have some technical interview with a problem to solve. If you are interviewing for a role with a particular practical skill (welding, soldering, plastering, etc) involved, it's also not at all unexpected that you will demonstrate it before you are hired. There's this idea that some programmers have that programming is some kind of aberration as a field: there's issues or practices in software you find nowhere else. And generally, this seems to come from a romanticised view of other fields: of the fields I am familiar with, software is not a particular outlier in interviewing, estimation accuracy, or general smoothness of project management.
The difference is that traditional engineering roles will not ask you to solve partial differential equations or show the proof of some equation on the blackboard, but rather ask fundamental "big picture" questions related to your work experience, or the field itself.
Not sure about police officers, but the other professions you named have to complete graduate or post-graduate studies in their field, pass a formal examination, maybe publish a few peer-reviewed papers while architects build a portfolio - this is usually proof enough of their strengths.
Actually, this works in IT as well: if Donald Knuth, Yann LeCun or Zvi Gallil ever decide (however unlikely) to apply to a web shop, they'll probably get waved through on the strength of their credentials. For the self-taught J. Random Hacker, who can't show any of his old code because it's under NDA, there's the interview pipeline.
I have worked with people (well, consultants) hired based on the fact they breathe - I would much rather jump thorough some hoops than to have to work with them ever again.
This could be why programming is seen as arts. Artists have to show a portfolio or a reel, that takes hundreds of hours to create. And then great style, a good story and crisp explanations on top of that.
The awful thing though is that you’re not allowed to show your old employers’ code. And most of it is teamwork.
I can tell you, that coming from a more traditional engineering background (electrical / control), I never - ever - encountered these types of questions.
Even though the real-life work tasks could have catastrophic or extremely expensive consequences. As in shut down production on an oil rig.
I've also worked as an analyst / data scientist, and didn't see too many leetcode-like questions there either.
I think one big reason for this is that other professions have some quality assurance of their candidates through their education or certification. Whereas many companies are open to hire self-taught and similar people...yeah, I'm not 100% convinced about that either, because somehow companies will assume that a CS grad candidate can't code for shit, whereas traditional engineering companies will assume that a engineering grad candidate knows something.
Welders usually do a demonstration weld as part of the interview.
Architects bring a portfolio, and walk through it. And licensed architects have a majorly huge ordeal of a licensing process. After obtaining an accredited degree, you have to get signoff on performing 3,740 work hours in six areas of architecture practice (AXP, architectural experience program). You may need to work at multiple firms to get this experience, since not all firms do all types of architecture work.
You'll also need to take the ARE (Architect Registration Exam) and any state suplemental exams. The ARE is actually 6 separate exams, the shortest is 2 hours 40 minutes; total test time is almost 20 hours, but with breaks you're looking at 24 hours 20 minuted total appointment time. Most candiates prep and take one test at a time, but you've got a 5 year rolling window to pass them all, and the tests change from time to time. I'm not looking up how long the California suplimental exam takes, but I'm guessing it's at least a couple hours.
Some of the test is multiple choice stuff, but there's interview based tests and probably some practical work.
If you're thinking of becoming an architect because interviewing will be more straight forward, let me save you some of your life and say, don't do it. Anyway, most of the fun work is delegated to juniors/interns; if you want to make reasonable money, you've got to get up to partner, and then you're only doing client relations and very little design.
I took a government provided standardized test of computer knowledge to work at a school district in 1997, and it was full of useless questions about early 1980s tech. I can only imagine the depths of forgotten knowledge that would be needed for a Software Developer certification program. How many hours of debugging BASIC or bringing up a 68000 board from scratch would we all have to do in our work experience program? Or formal methods: in my 20+ year career, I've never gotten anything remotely close to a specification that could be used for formal methods, but I bet I'd need to get work hours and study up for the test.
Do mathematiticans have to interiview like this? Medical doctors? Police officers? Rocket scientists? Chemists? Architects? I cant think off a single profession apart from the IT domain that does this.
I dont think there is a single profession that gets mocked on their interviewing strategies as much as IT still I see senior devs defending this insanity.