This is exactly what I said in my retweet to PG's essay. Having hackable bad tests in the very tech industry proves the point that artificial tests are still the way of thinking for many and something we collectively need to unlearn. The question is how.
When I see a company conducting these kinds of tests during interviews, it's a signal to me that they are probably not a very forward-thinking company, and probably not a good fit for someone like me who tends to think outside the box. If it's another cog in their machine that they want, these kinds of interview tests are probably pretty good. But if they're an innovative company trying to change the world, they'd be much better off with a different, more pragmatic approach designed to attract the independent thinkers.
Beyond that, in my opinion, nearly anyone with average programming experience can hack a typical programming/whiteboard interview, so these kinds of interviews are definitely not the best way to find the best fit for particular roles. It's a good way to filter out the inexperienced, for sure, but it's a pretty low bar to set, especially if it's a company looking for top tier engineers, people with the ability to see the bigger picture.
It's also likely that a great engineer would pass the test with ease, but because their skillset and abilities have been inaccurately assessed due to the poor interview process, the company could have initially assigned them a much more effective role where both the company and the employee could have benefited to a much greater extent, but didn't. Overall, relatively speaking, the "hackable test" approach wastes time and hurts everyone in the long run, both employers and employees. A little investment up front with more personalized, specific interviews can go a long way.
I think we should start refusing these impractical interview processes, or at the very least, from an interviewee standpoint, turn down jobs (if you can) and let the potential employer know that their interview process is the reason.
> Beyond that, in my opinion, nearly anyone with average programming experience can hack a typical programming/whiteboard interview
I agree with your conclusion that all it does is filter out inexperienced/incompetent candidates. This is valuable, but to me it's the "first question" - can they code?
I don't think there's really much value between an "Amazing coder" and a "can get the job done" coder. Very rapidly you're trying to answer much softer questions like "does this person work well others?" or "how fast can they learn new systems?" and there isn't a good way to do that.
The interview question I usually give is algorithmically very simple. There's no linked lists, no graph theory, none of that. What I actually look for is mostly how they interact with me and how they go about solving it.
There's a pretty straightforward gotcha that more or less everyone hits. If the candidate hits the gotcha and then keeps piling on special cases without ever taking a step back, that's a big minus. If they keep doing it even after I suggest there's a simpler solution, that's worse still. I much prefer somebody who takes a step back but can't quite figure it out without a little more help than one who just remains confident in their solution no matter what.
Yeah it's inherently shitty that I have 45 minutes to figure out if this person will benefit the org for years to come, but there's a lot more signal there than just "Did they open their CS 201 algorithms textbook in the last few week?"
>When I see a company conducting these kinds of tests during interviews, it's a signal to me that they are probably not a very forward-thinking company,
Can you list all 'forward thinking' companies for the benefit of all of us?
I agree with all you said. However, 99% of major tech companies employ exactly the same process of hiring software engineers. I've been on hundreds of interview loops and unfortunately just one bad interview in a loop of 5-6 could make the candidate look like a "bad" fit and thus receive no offer. That particular candidate might be in fact great fit, but the way he was tested could not reveal that.
I don't know the solution to this problem. Eliminating tests whatsoever and just talking with the candidate about his experience and probing his knowledge on different topics is not efficient either. There are a lot of talking heads around who when given a simple task fail miserably.
We as a tech community need to come up with better ways to assess other people's competency while also making sure those people fit within our company's culture, work efficiently with others and after all create value. This is a hard problem. So, we try to simplify the problem by imposing the "proven" way of finding such people -- give them arbitrary tests and hope they pass them.
