Ask HN: Which companies interview the best/worst and why?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20569737

by davismwfl • 7 years ago

11 4 7 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I am doing research as I am pretty passionate about how interviews should work. But I also recognize there are differing views from both sides so I am looking for some examples of good and bad with reasoning. I'd prefer knowing which company(s) or at least a hint so I can understand differences in market, size, capital etc that will obviously weigh on how/what they do.

What companies do you feel do the best and/or worst job at interviewing people and why do you like or dislike their methodology?

luhego• 7 years ago

I don't mind doing whiteboard questions. It's a pain in the ass but it is bearable. But I can't stand behavioral questions. They are such a bullshit. In that regard, Amazon is the worst offender. They expect you to learn their 14 leadership principles and apply them retroactively to your past experiences.

davismwfl2• 7 years ago

I didn't realize Amazon did that, seems odd.

I totally agree with Behavioral questions. It seems to be a newer trend in the past 5 years people think they have to ask specific behavioral questions.

rajeshp1986• 7 years ago

+1 on Amazon. The LP behaviour interview is pretty random, weird.

davismwfl2• 7 years ago

So I asked this question because I am trying to understand how people are interviewing and like to be interviewed. I have my own style which was developed in the late 90's during part of the aftermath of the dotcom bust and everyones egos got put in check about the BS questions we were asking. In the dotcom days we did a lot of the same stuff happening now in interviews and eventually most of us figured out what mattered was that people could get the work to market, not if they could recite some algorithm from memory. So it is odd to me that the pendulum swung back.

My methodology is to ask people how they would solve problems, maybe even right out some pseudocode if we are sitting together, but I don't care about perfection or language or asking esoteric questions that have no basis in the work someone will be doing. And I don't use behavioral questions and instead just work through typical work type problems with someone to see if I can work with them. In fact, it isn't rare for me to bring in code or a problem and be like ok, we've been playing with this for the past X hours or days or whatever and just ask for their opinion. And have them walk me through what they might do differently and why, that right there tells me how you think and if you are a good fit because I will learn about your communication, if you ask questions etc. I don't need behavioral questions to answer what is right in front of me if I just ask good questions.

This is also how I train my teams to interview because I feel it is more realistic in our professions. But I just don't understand a lot of the insanity around interviews because if a company is solving mostly CRUD/data based problems, it seems smart to ask CRUD type questions and probe about someone's data capabilities, deduping, querying, conflicts, concurrency etc. But there is no sense asking that person to write a balanced tree from scratch. I might ask what is the most efficient data structure to store a type of data and why, but that is directly related to the work and will tell me if you understand data structures and the choices. I don't need to know if you can recite Big O for every structure, just that you know the differences and where to look when you need to figure out an issue.

Ask HN: Which companies interview the best/worst and why?

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