> There is near-universal consensus that technical hiring is atrocious

I hear this a lot on Hacker News, but not inside any companies. And when asked why people think it's atrocious, I rarely get a set of answers that agree on the specifics. I'd love to hear more about what metrics show evidence that hiring is atrocious, as well as what is making it atrocious for you. What does that mean in the pre-coronavirus context? Are companies not finding people, and are people not getting jobs? I'm asking honestly and seriously, so I can improve my own hiring practices. I don't doubt there's a problem, I just don't have a handle on exactly what it is, and the reports here on HN aren't matching my own experience. I admit I don't match the profile of the average web developer, so I may be ignorant of what's happening in the broader tech world today, especially regarding recent hires from school.

In my own experience interviewing at and hiring for multiple companies over the last 20 years, what I've seen and done matches some of your ideas. We are getting and giving real world interview questions. The interviews are at least somewhat standardized. There are dedicated onboarding resources.

I haven't seen names redacted anywhere, and that's a good idea to normalize cultural or gender biases, but problematic if you want people to review your online portfolio, or if you know someone in the company who can vouch for you, both of which many candidates do want.

It is my experience that internal referrals have significantly higher chance of success, pay for the candidate is likely to be higher than for external candidates, and referrers are typically rewarded financially for the referral. Many people complain that the referral system is part of the problem under the logic that it can encourage nepotism and echo chamber behavior. I don't fully agree, but I don't think this is as obvious of a win as you suggest either, or that the majority of people would agree with it.

It's atrocious but most companies won't reveal specifics because _those_ people were hired via the same process. So it plays into survivorship bias. And nothing will change.

Could you elaborate on why you think it’s atrocious?

I’m not sure I agree that the processes are hidden, every company I’ve ever worked for (several large corps you’ve heard of + several startups) talks about hiring practices publicly. Glassdoor and other sites, including HN, have all kinds of information & stories about what happens during interviews.

I'll give my limited perspective.

Software engineering is a field that is both requires breadth and depth at a very high bar for acceptance. From the interviewing side and the many interviews I've been through, it often feels impossible to overcome. The breadth that the field requires leaves gaps in knowledge, where anecdotally I've been asked what's a language I'm an expert in, or to detail the deep particulars of react app development, or to solve X problem with the greatest efficiency with ease and have lots of input on your thought process. I don't mean to paint a picture where you're not allowed to test anyone on anything, but as an average dev, it feels like stabs in the dark compounded with not having a clear path to improving, because everyone's interviews are different. You can improve on the fundamentals, but that only helps so much.

To me, communication and problem solving skills are the biggest factors of what makes a good SWE. I find that most technical interviews don't look for talent that's acceptable, but what's exceptional; not for who's capable, but for who's accomplished.

My firm belief is that many devs who struggle getting a job now, could have walked into any company pre 2010 and gotten a job with the skills they have now.

This is all with the caveat of the knowledge that high salary commands high talent, but my opinion is that the bar is set ridiculously high without regard for how arduous the process is.

I have had a few very fair, but challenging interviews, and I do think that's a step in the right direction.

Seems totally reasonable, thanks for sharing your perspective. I’d agree that a lot of interviews can range from hard to insane. I’m really curious what that means in terms of measurable outcomes... like how many fresh CS graduates are completely failing to land a job? How many companies are failing to find candidates? Stuff like that...

FWIW, I warn people I’m going to ask questions they don’t know, and I ramp the questions up until people can’t answer them. I know it can be uncomfortable, but I also like finding the bounds of what people know. I do ask a lot of easy questions, and the majority of the interview isn’t knowledge questions at all, it’s open-ended conversation, usually about experience. I don’t have a sense for whether asking a few questions that are too hard for the candidate puts my interviews in the category you’re describing, or whether you’re talking about an entirely different level of arduous.

You sound reasonable from your comment :) hahaha

I think it's great to challenge people, and honestly a candidates reaction to a hard question is probably one of the best indicators.

Where I work hr won't let us ask any question that isn't scientificly proven to make a difference. It makes it hard to ask technical questions.

Oh that's fascinating! Can you talk about what questions are scientifically proven to make a difference, and/or the methodology of proving it? I've read bits and pieces here and there, but not seriously followed such research. I imagine that style, specific words, amount of follow-up, and even mood in the room can play important factors here in the "success rates" of certain interview questions...?

I just ask the prepared questions... That is a good question but I force myself to concentrate on other interesting questions.

They have said that if we want a new question added to the list we need a good link controlled experiment : ask a random sample of candidates, don't use the answer, and then evaluate after 6 months if there is a difference between the two groups performance on the job.

If HR is dictating how to conduct interviews for engineering staff, your company has some deep problems.

Care to back that up with any reasons? Engineers are absolutely not immune to cultural and gender biases, the evidence may be pointing the other way, that we currently have greater than average biases in tech. Isn’t oversight likely to make it better, not worse? While it may be a problem to not be able to ask some kinds of technical questions, like the GP comment alluded to, what is wrong with the idea of trying to limit questions to those that are proven to be relevant to candidate performance? This seems similar to how I heard that graduate school performance and success in the sciences doesn’t correlate with GRE math & science scores anywhere near as much as it correlates with the language & writing tests... I wouldn’t be surprised if technical interview questions do not do a good job of identifying who you should hire...

Some technical questions are really sink or swim. [0]

I've seen interviews get totally derailed by a simple FizzBuzz question. [1]

I wonder if the GRE situation doesn't have more to do with selection bias, ie applications with a score lower than a certain threshold aren't considered at all or that folks that aren't convinced of their ability in math & science simply won't apply to graduate school.

[0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22338415

I’d completely agree that asking some technical questions is pretty important, and my experience is that they don’t have to be particularly difficult at all, you can filter a lot of people with very basic questions. I have several first hand stories that match the one you heard about the FizzBuzz question. People who refuse to answer easy technical questions and/or get angry about being asked them are a HUGE red flag. Sometimes you have to do mundane tasks at work, and anyone who thinks they’re above it doesn’t deserve the job. Getting angry about easy questions is short-sighted, I mean they’re easy. It’s a sign the person doesn’t enjoy coding or work.

Anyway, you could be right, but I don’t think the GRE thing is selection bias, I looked this up a while back but I can’t find the study now - I’ll add a link if I can find it. Choices and scores were controlled for, and the takeaway was that people who are good at language truly did perform better in grad school. I think it’s plausible since success in grad school and primary output in grad school is papers & writing & a thesis. The same is true for working at a company, the majority of very successful people aren’t the coders (with some exceptions) but they are more often people who are good at communication, writing, planning, strategizing, and rallying others to work together.

> It’s a sign the person doesn’t enjoy coding or work.

Or most likely can't.

> I think it’s plausible since success in grad school and primary output in grad school is papers & writing & a thesis

That's true. What's missing from the picture is that a great communicator who isn't a chemist will never apply to a PhD program in chemistry.

> The same is true for working at a company, the majority of very successful people aren’t the coders

That's not really going to help fill technical positions.

> Or most likely can't.

I wouldn't jump to that conclusion. It might be true sometimes, but there are people who can code but get offended by such tests. I'm saying it doesn't matter if they can code or not, because getting angry about easy questions is a good reason to reject the candidate, aside from their technical skills. It's demonstrating a lack of willingness. They might be an amazing coder, but not a team player. They might be unfriendly. They might be defensive about their skills, or assuming a golden resume should exempt them from coding tests. They might not be able to code. No matter what the cause is, I have a reason to avoid hiring that person.

> What's missing from the picture is that a great communicator who isn't a chemist will never apply to a PhD program in chemistry.

While true, I'm not sure why that matters? PhD applicants do have a wide range of scores on their GREs, and you can still control for those scores and adjust, as well as being able to look at all science fields and not just chemsitry. If the correlation between outcomes and writing scores is higher than the correlation between outcomes and math/science scores, it doesn't really matter that you haven't measured people who weren't interested, does it?

BTW, googling around currently gets me a metric ton of results and studies concluding that GREs don't predict graduate school success beyond the first year. I'm not finding much on the subject tests vs math vs language, but it looks like the current consensus is that GREs are bad predictors and cause some gender/race/class bias problems.

> That's not really going to help fill technical positions.

I'm saying the successful coders are the ones who are better at communication, among the coders -- counting only coders who already have the job. And the successful grad students are the ones who are better writers, counting only grad students who are already enrolled in a science PhD. That's what I meant about controlling for the bias. Being able to communicate and write well is a major skill needed in technical positions, and the technical people who excel are the ones who are better at explaining, communicating, writing, publishing, etc.