[yodsanklai]

> a decent evaluation of junior engineers without industry experience, but it’s a common complaint among senior engineers that they have to study material that they haven’t used in years to get a job where they won’t use it.

Counterpoint: some engineers with industry experience may have been working on very specific tech that doesn't readily translate to a new position. Actually, I'm sure some companies wouldn't even consider them for that reason.

Big companies need some standardized way of interviewing people if they want to maintain some level of fairness. At least, algorithms and data-structures provide a common denominator.

[a_square_peg]

No. Senior engineers are expected to have different level of skills - project management, leadership, and ability to identify problems that matter, rather than blinding solving problems that are given to them. You're also not going to be able to test their ability to learn by giving tests.

I'm sure most of us would fail high-school trigonometry (or spelling and grammar for that matter) if given one.

[seanmcdirmid]

> I'm sure most of us would fail high-school trigonometry (or spelling and grammar for that matter) if given one.

Not if we had a few weeks of prep time.

[ryanbrunner]

Doesn't it seem like an absurd scenario to you though, that you need to prep for an interview by relearning skills that aren't relevant to the job you're interviewing for?

I've been in coding interviews that matched the work that the company is doing, and I've found those useful - I get something from taking the interview (an idea of what their codebase is like, working with a partner, maybe some interesting code design questions), but I'm never going to do another "code this CS algorithim that 100% of people use a library for nowadays" type questions.

[seanmcdirmid]

It is absurd, but is so easy to counteract by just prepping. I’d be a lot more negative about it if it wasn’t so easy to game.

[a_square_peg]

I think this is the point - that it's so easy to game (albeit a waste of time) and that this doesn't reflect on the quality of the hire coming through this process. Assuming this is the test for senior engineer, the greatest candidacy pool would be second-year CS students.

[seanmcdirmid]

True, but I guess they are also judging our pliability in jumping through hoops, because even us senior engineers have to jump through many. To be honest, I'm probably not jumping through enough of them, cramming for a coding interview is one thing, but jumping in on every welcome!/goodbye! email is something that I really wasn't ready for.

[AnimalMuppet]

But I'm not going to take a few weeks of prep time to prepare for a high-school trig test, either. I have no reason to waste my time in that way.

And I have no reason to waste my time spending a few weeks prepping for a code interview, either. I am who I am. Either you want that, or you don't. I'm not going to try to spend weeks studying so I can pretend to be different than I am.

(Disclaimer: I'm not looking, and I haven't been for a very long time. I've never been desperate while looking. I haven't even been unemployed while looking in over 30 years. If I were unemployed and watching the bills pile up, I might feel a whole lot less smug...)

[seanmcdirmid]

If the trig test was in the way of a $200k/year job I didn’t have yet, I would totally hit the books.

[yodsanklai]

> I have no reason to waste my time in that way.

Preparing for interviews isn't wasted time provided you have some chance of success. The signing bonus alone can be worth the time.

[b20000]

you mean 3 months and then going through 30 cycles of 10 hours each?

[ryanbrunner]

I think it's worthwhile looking at what you're going to accomplish out of an interview. For systems design type stuff, I think it's reasonable to always ask, since it's useful to know how someone approaches problems, and it's not necessarily a given that someone would have needed to deal with architectural / design questions regardless of seniority level.

If you're hiring for a senior position though, and the purpose of your question is "can this person code?", you should be able to get enough evidence from their resume / github / references. If you genuinely can't, then I'd question why you're interviewing them for a senior position in the first place. Strict adherence to standardization leads to absurd scenarios like giving basic "can you code" interviews to the authour of Homebrew like the article states.

[yodsanklai]

> you should be able to get enough evidence from their resume / github / references

The problem is when you get 1000s of such resumes, but only a few positions to fill. Also, not everybody has time to spent on github projects. It can be even more time consuming to work on personal projects than brushing up your algorithmic skills. Not saying these interviews are perfect, but I do believe that they are a good solution for a very big company.

Talking about system design interviews, I had the feeling that they were less useful than algorithm interviews, especially for a senior SWE. You can nail them with only theoretical knowledge, even though you've never worked on the systems they ask you to design.

[b20000]

if I spend 3 months full time building a product, I have something of value, guaranteed. If I spend 3 months on interview prep, then I still have to start going through the cycles, and it will take another 3 months before I might have a job. No guarantees. Anyone can build something in a month, so the idea you have no time to build a side project is just BS. Especially if you can spend months grinding leetcode.

[yodsanklai]

It's a gamble. Most companies don't bother to look at Github page, at least in my experience. On the other hand, the skills you build grinding leetcode can get you a good job (and the next ones).

[b20000]

grinding leetcode guarantees nothing. I does not guarantee you will get a job now, and it won't in the future when you go looking for your next job. Looking back at my recent experience I don't see how it made any sense for me to spend my time on that.

[b20000]

I went through several cycles and did excellent on the SD interviews because of my experience. But none of that stuff mattered, it was all about answering some trick coding questions that were irrelevant for the job. So it seems that all the important stuff like experience is much less important than leetcode.

[tchalla]

> Counterpoint: some engineers with industry experience may have been working on very specific tech that doesn't readily translate to a new position.

Some