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from the boss-wants-to-see-how-you-handle-pressure? dept.
I recently applied for a job in Silicon Valley.
The recruiter had me take a battery of tests that measured my verbal, mathematical and visual aptitude. I'd guess it was a mini-IQ test; it wasn't a mini-MMPI. As a result of the tests I was invited to interview onsite.
At the end of the interview the manager declared that he wanted me to take some tests.
His tests were brain teasers he had downloaded from a random website. The brain teasers had nothing to do with the work I was interviewing for. He seemed to ignore the battery of sophisticated tests I had been subjected to, and to believe that he could do better.
What is the REAL purpose of using brain teasers during an employment interview?
Is it just to make the candidate feel stupid? Are any of these people qualified to interpret the results? Are any of them industrial psychologists? Or is this all about power and control?
Please advise.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pendorbound on Friday October 05 2018, @04:05PM (14 children)
I don't care if you can figure out how to get a wolf, a sheep, and a bag of grain across a river in one boat... Can't remember a single user facing feature that ever involved livestock & feed management, but perhaps that's just my industry segment.
For phone screens, you write code over Google Docs. For in person, it's the whiteboard. *Very* simple programming problem, use whatever language you consider your most fluent, every day language. I know interview stress is a thing, but given the latitude to use ANY environment that is your go-to, your jam... And we don't particularlly care if you miss a semi-colon or misspell something. If you can't pull FizzBuzz out of your ass under those conditions, it's a short interview, thanks for your time, we're still evaluating lots of other candidates, we'll be in touch.
I think one way we differ from the way a lot of interviews use brain teasers is we get to the code very early. It's not an "out in the lobby homework" kind of thing I've seen other places use. You come in, we make you as comfy as we can. Tell us what you're into, what field-related hobbies you might have, favorite project, etc. Then write code. You do reasonably okay on that, then we start figuring out what you know about specific tech. Some fiddly frequent bug causes in whatever environment we're hiring for (threading, shared variable scope, database design, whatever). Lots of open ended stuff with plenty of invite to show us your extra pieces of flair if you've got them.
But you bomb the whiteboard, and we're out in under 20 minutes, guaranteed...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @04:13PM (7 children)
Whiteboard?!
WTF is standing around writing code by hand on a wall all day long? That's awkward and weird, and automatically takes up brainpower, enhancing the discomfort of being judged by people who are probably not that great themselves.
I don't know. There's something seriously wrong with the programming industry; no other profession involves this kind of ridiculousness—when did you last quiz an HVAC tech before hiring him to fix your furnace, which itself can be a very diagnostic, methodical job that requires real ingenuity both to figure out the problem and to insert the solution (often ad hoc).
Apprenticeships. That's what the programming industry needs. This whole "prove yourself in the moment" mentality is just plain dumb.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @04:26PM (6 children)
Maybe because programmers get paid (currently) much more than other low peons, so corps will care more. And the other peons are an especially critical kind of people, who may also had the displeasure of having a mishire on their team who got through the interview process.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @04:30PM (5 children)
There's a reason why technical trades (including the medical doctoring) ALL involves lengthy apprenticeship, followed by journeymanships, followed by certified mastery.
There's no fucking guessing.
"Man! These programmers are costly; let's find the right guys with.... in-the-moment, gotcha riddles and hand-written code!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @05:45PM (3 children)
Law too.
When will software developers/IT people organize and form a professional association?
It won't happen until we make it happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @06:50PM (2 children)
Software and computer engineering are recognized engineering professions now, and you can take the exam and call yourself an engineer.
However, no employer is requiring such accreditation, so nobody bothers. It also requires jumping through any hoops the State may come up with for engineers, so interest from freelancers is rather subdued (nil?).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @08:12PM (1 child)
How do you think doctors and plumbers achieved what they achieved?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @12:52AM
Lobbying? To do that requires cooperation. Programmers however think that everyone by himself is the true master.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @09:09PM
There's a few reasons for that, on the labor side, having such a program set up to certify potential employees cuts the supply significantly, but it also means that the value that you're bringing forth for a job application is somewhat less of a mystery. Sure, you get dumbass lawyers, teachers, doctors and others, but on the whole, people in these sorts of jobs tend to know what they're doing to at least the level demanded by the profession. You're much less likely to have a professionally trained doctor killing your patients than a random stranger that just shows up to a job interview, but interviews really well.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Friday October 05 2018, @04:18PM (4 children)
User facing or not, solving problems like that one are also known as "writing an algorithm to perform a necessary task" which can be pretty important as far as programming goes.
A candidate that is literate in n programming languages is not necessarily capable in writing something useful in any of them, whereas a candidate that can figure out the significance of the fact that wolves don't eat grain is potentially able to write useful software that solves actual problems.
The problems do not need to involve livestock and feed management because the idea is that problem solving skills are more important than in-depth knowledge of farming to solving the task. Those problem solving skills can come from having a creative mind, or from experience, or both.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @04:33PM (3 children)
Most algorithms of any note are designed slowly, as the concepts and corner cases and percolate through the mind.
You know that such in-your-face, judgmental riddle-solving has ZERO bearing on the kind of work that you as a programmer from day-to-day.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday October 05 2018, @05:01PM (2 children)
I do know that this sort of spring-it-on-you puzzling has very little to do with job performance.
At the same time, I note that had this been part of the interview process when I got my first freelance contract in 1983 (to port software from some CP/M based BASIC on a DEC Rainbow into Applesoft for the Apple II) I might not have got the job, not having the critical thinking and creative skills to envision the solution, whereas now, after decades of (hopefully) improvement, I would probably see the answer to something like that at once--so it might be some sort of indicator after all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @05:06PM (1 child)
That's why software sucks. You guys are tinkerers, not engineers.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday October 05 2018, @05:17PM
No argument there. I lay no claim to being an engineer. After initially declaring an Engineering major, I soon switched to Business and there I graduated.
If you know of a way to enforce engineering first, code second, especially in the wild, where most free software communities do their bad-engineering-code-tinkering, you would be doing the world a great favor.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday October 06 2018, @02:18AM
I'd do the Whiteboard part in block-diagrams, and explain that my favorite language is LabVIEW.