[lmm]

> Are you suggesting that we should have no hiring criteria?

> You did see the part where I would find it perfectly acceptable to show the behavioral traits by working any job?

I'm suggesting that hiring criteria that reflect more directly on the candidate's abilities, and less on what opportunities they've had to date, are fairer. (And, distinctly but relatedly, the more objective the assessment is, the better for those from lower-class backgrounds). For someone who's grown up in a working class household where showing initiative had negative consequences and then gone through public schools where showing initiative had negative consequences through to line-level jobs where showing initiative had negative consequences, a tech interview that focuses primarily on whether they've got the skills, and lets them show it through their fizzbuzz/leetcode/hackerrank/what-have-you, is one of the few ways to make it out.

[scarface_74]

A few issue:

1. People who were too busy to study to learn how to code would definitely be too busy to grind leetcode as well as adults who are already in the industry with families

2. Okay you can reverse a binary tree on the whiteboard. That tells me nothing about whether you are the kind of person that I can assign a task like “a customer has some vague idea of what they want. I need you to figure out the details and come up with a proposal and a design and present it to them and get feedback”. Then if they don’t know the technology, I need them to be able to learn it. This is what I mean by “Customer Obsession”, “Learn and be curious”, “Digging Deep” and dealing with ambiguity. If I need them to lead a project, I need to know they are able to handle items dealing with “scope”.

I want to know if they have a history of “delivering results “.

These are all traits that you were required to show to get a return offer as an intern for a full time job as an L4 consultant working in Professional Services at AWS.

I threw tasks like this at a first year employee who I had mentored as intern and they passed everything I threw at then with flying colors.

At my current job, I’m working with a green field project where everything is ambiguous and I need someone I can throw a poorly defined objective at and they can take the ball and run with it. Leetcode isn’t going to tell me anything.

[lmm]

> 1. People who were too busy to study to learn how to code would definitely be too busy to grind leetcode as well as adults who are already in the industry with families

I think many more people have the opportunity to grind leetcode than have the opportunity to "take the time to learn a new to you technology" that they can then apply to a work project - which requires not just time but also having the right work environment in which they can apply it. Of course you're right that many people don't have the time for either, and a handful of professional-managerial class people who are already in good jobs might be able to do the latter during work hours but not the former.

> whether you are the kind of person that I can assign a task like “a customer has some vague idea of what they want. I need you to figure out the details and come up with a proposal and a design and present it to them and get feedback”.

> I want to know if they have a history of “delivering results “.

Do you think you're measuring something objective about their ability to do the job? To the extent that you are, do you think what you're measuring is something different / better than "has decent general intelligence + has existed in professional-managerial-class spaces (or, more specifically, in jobs like this one) for a while?" Do you have evidence about the answers to either of those questions?

[scarface_74]

> I think many more people have the opportunity to grind leetcode than have the opportunity to "take the time to learn a new to you technology

The difference is that you are an active programmer, you’re actually programming. I graduated in 1996. I had to learn “new to me technology* as part of my job for 25 years on the job. I’ve never had to do anything approaching leetcode on my day to day job.

I’ve learned on the job:

- infrastructure and networking

- C++

- Perl

- JavaScript

- VB6

- C#

- Python

- litterally 3 dozen AWS technologies

- databases (OLAP, OLTP, key/value, document, etc)

- how to manage large projects

And pick up soft skills

> Do you think you're measuring something objective about their ability to do the job?

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. That’s where behavioral question comes from.

> To the extent that you are, do you think what you're measuring is something different / better than "has decent general intelligence

None of the behavioral traits I mention have any correlation to intelligence. I didn’t wake up one morning and learn how to communicate effectively .

[lmm]

> I had to learn “new to me technology* as part of my job for 25 years on the job.

Right, I'm saying that's a rarer privilege than being able to do leetcode or similar (whether during work hours or not).

> None of the behavioral traits I mention have any correlation to intelligence. I didn’t wake up one morning and learn how to communicate effectively .

If you think being able to communicate effectively has nothing to do with intelligence you're crazy. (Of course, it probably has have even more to do with having a common class experience than with intelligence)

[scarface_74]

> Right, I'm saying that's a rarer privilege than being able to do leetcode or similar (whether during work hours or not).

How long have you been working? I doubt very seriously that anyone who works professionally hasn’t had to learn some new technology on the job. Out of the 2.7 million working software developers, I could say that almost all of them had to learn new to them technologies on the job. Also almost none of them did anything approaching leetcode on the job.

> If you think being able to communicate effectively has nothing to do with intelligence you're crazy. (Of course, it probably has have even more to do with having a common class experience than with intelligence)

What exactly point are you trying to make? That if I need someone who can communicate affectingly I should test that by using leetcode?

Yes, you can learn how to be an effective communicator much easier than you can learn how to pass a coding interview.

[lmm]

> I doubt very seriously that anyone who works professionally hasn’t had to learn some new technology on the job. Out of the 2.7 million working software developers, I could say that almost all of them had to learn new to them technologies on the job.

Sure. It's a great way to hire people who already have professional-class jobs, mostly already software developers.

> Yes, you can learn how to be an effective communicator much easier than you can learn how to pass a coding interview.

People from the "wrong" class aren't generally ineffective communicators, they just have a communication style that's adapted to their circumstances. PMC communication styles are easy to learn if you have access to an environment where everyone else is using them, but very hard otherwise. (Also, by your own logic if the communication style is easier to learn wouldn't you want to hire people for the harder skill and teach them the communication style on the job?)