u/0QwtxBQHAFOSr7AD wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Do you think how companies interview needs improvements? What would you replace it with if you had the opportunity?
u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
I don't think the interview processes are broken. There's a saying, 'they are broken but they are less broken than the alternative'.
Anyone criticizing them should try to understand why they are the way they are first before making assumptions.
It's not stupidity and it's not gatekeeping.
DS&A problem solving interviews:
1. abstract away thousands of tech stacks to give everyone an equal footing
2. can be repeated consistently so thousands of candidates can have consistent interview processes
3. allow engineers to demonstrate the problem solving they want to see on the job in a problem that CAN be solved in 25 minutes (what real world problem can be solved that fast).
At Meta, the cost of doing just 1 interview was so high they looked for any reason to shorten interviews. It's why their DS&A are only 45 minutes and not an hour!
**It's all about reducing false positives for the most efficient cost possible!**
So if you want to say 'well doing a 1 week work trial would be better!' - it would be, but HOW MUCH BETTER and HOW MUCH WOULD IT COST.
If it costs 10X more engineering time to evaluate and do this trial week, and tons of HR overhead and tons of Legal and IP issues, and it results in only 5% fewer false positives, the stupid thing would be to change to this process.
And it's why we end up with the process we have.
The biggest problem we have is "factory farming" these interviews: poorly trained interviewers checking off boxes instead of running these interviews the way they were meant to be - to evaluate the problem solving process properly.
With AI, were seeing increased emphasis on having WELL TRAINED INTERVIEWS conduct PROPER INTERVIEWS. So memorizing LeetCode won't cut it anymore and actually being a good engineer with a good problem solving process is what will be needed.