Conducting Technical Interviews

Conducting a tech interview is hard. No this is about being on the other side of the table, on interviewing people.

• You don’t want algorithm puzzle lottery ^[1]
• counterpoint: algo puzzles are still a benchmark of if the person is intelligent. (depends on what you’re hiring for, do you want someone who is generally intelligent, or are you looking for experience etc). ie. you can’t fluff through a tech interview
• this model may work better in big tech eg. google where you can afford to have false negatives.
• algo puzzles are IQ tests in disguise
  • trivia: US disallows this

Interview questions:
what constitutes a good question?

• companies like Stripe don’t believe in algorithm puzzles
• debugging / pair programming
• take home assignments
  • companies abuse this

Interview format:

• how many rounds of interviews are required?
  • Why does facebook have their ninja, jedi, pirate formats?
• whiteboarding
  • what is the rationale for whiteboarding?
• code editor
  • candidate can run code
  • no pointless arguments over - “are you sure this will compile / run?; are you sure this does what you think it does”
  • you get to watch candidates debug - this can be very vaulable

References:
1. https://remotesynthesis.com/blog/whats-wrong-with-tech-interviews
1. Accompanying Lobsters discussion: https://lobste.rs/s/hvey8q/what_s_wrong_with_tech_interview_process
2. https://www.lihaoyi.com/post/HowtoconductagoodProgrammingInterview.html