[coconut_crab]

> There is a cottage industry springing up around passing interviews

This, a million times.

I was told to practice solving dynamic programming problems to prepare for the interview[1]. Looking around the web I found out that people spending months solving thousands of dynamic programming problems, just for getting a job. This strongly reminds me of the rote learning I had to do in order to get into university, which includes thousands and thousands of integration, derivatives, series, lense placements etc... A nightmare I thought that ended decades ago.[2]

Now dp is all nice and cool, but I think most jobs don't involve solving dp problems on a daily basis. Just like most mechanics don't need to solve Lagrangian mechanics problems or civil engineer with continuous girder (the interview for those those two don't have those either)[3].

There must be a better way to measure problem solving ability of a candidate, isn't there? Something thay requires more dedication from the company instead of blindly followingbthe practices of Google.

[1] The position is EM at a offshore branch of a medium sized non IT company, way below the likes of Google.

[2] Typical Asian problem.

[3] I started as a mechanics, and then doing some civil engineering job, building bridge and such.

[jedberg]

I mean, there has been a not-so-cottage industry around getting into college for decades now.

I suppose we could agree that college admissions are as broken as tech interviewing though...

[hogFeast]

Just speculation but I think a big part of this is that it is often quite difficult to lay off staff.

The issue isn't that you assess employees poorly...it is very hard to be right based on knowing someone for a couple of hours...but that it is so hard to get rid of someone if you are wrong. Would you marry someone after meeting for as long as the interview? That is the decision for a lot of companies.

I think that is why you see places like Denmark and Sweden, that make it easy to fire employees, do well and places like Japan and France do relatively poorly (the latter is particularly odd, they had a big lead in engineering...tech is miles behind)...ofc, it is hard to fire people in California...so not every example fits.

[jonex]

It's not easy to fire people in Sweden. You are not allowed to fire just because of lack in skill. Typically they would have to be severely negligent (like basically intentionally sabotaging) or there has to be a lack of work for that role. (In the latter case, they would have precedence for the job if you try to hire a replacement)

But for people just out of university it's common to hire people with a probationary period of a few month, during which you are allowed to terminate the employment without any specific reason. This probably helps some people, who don't have the right experience, to get a job.

I'd say that it's not very common that the opportunity for termination is actually used though, so I wouldn't credit it for any perceived success of Swedish tech.

[wojciii]

To fire people in DK is possible but I would not call it easy. It takes money - for example if the person worked at the same company for 3 years, it takes 4 months salary if the person was hired using a standard contract which follows a law called "funktionærloven" written to create rules between company and employees.

[hogFeast]

Yes...and DK has the most job flexibility in the world.