Tech Job Interviews Are Out of Control
Tech Job Interviews Are Out of Control
Tech companies are famous for coddling their workers but after mass layoffs the industry's culture has shifted. Engineers say that getting hired can require days of work on unpaid assignments.
That graphic sums up my entire educational experience. https://archive.is/hvZ5q
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I do a lot of dev interviews. We do require a BS in computer science.. it's just a good way of filtering out the hordes of terrible candidates. Beyond that, the most important thing we look for is honest representations on the resume, and the ability to clearly show competency in the required areas. Ramblers, people who make shit up and can't say "I don't know" are filtered out quick. We do a 1hr tech screen, after which I make a recommendation and if good, the candidate is brought in for a second interview that is pretty much a formality.
We do require a BS in computer science
That's wild that people are still pushing the paper ceiling like this. I've been working in my industry for 11+ years, progressing from engineer to tech lead to architect, with several (very) large-scale, public projects successfully under my belt.
I don't have any degree.
Requiring a comp sci degree is a terrific way to filter out people who had to actually learn their shit and prove their worth, instead of relying on a name on a piece of paper to get them a job interview.
I'm facing this as well across the board, not just where a CS degree is expected. I started off in CS, then a year in discovered I liked working at my school paper enough to drop out after hitting managing ed and having no one left to learn from because the J-school had been gutted in the '80s ... in 2000.
So, no degree. Which now means no job. Not even interviews. I never had any pure development titles that AI would pick up on, so the coding I've done also doesn't count. Your basic bottom-of-the-barrel "and then we were able to lay off half the team" automation that then got me pushed out for providing a useful but unrequested solution that made me a threat.
I determine my needs and then choose my tools, so sure, I'll get back up to speed in Python for a visualization project, but I'm not going to spend a couple of weeks trying to retain things with zero goal.
I saw a job posting for Senior Software Engineer position at a large tech company (not Big Tech, but high profile and widely known) which required candidates to have “an excellent academic track record, including in high school.” A lot of these requirements feel deliberately arbitrary, and like an effort to thin the herd rather than filter for good candidates.
Don't like hiring pregnant women? "Your academic track record doesn't reflect the standards of excellence that we expect our candidates to display."
Don't like hiring minorities? "Your academic track record doesn't reflect the standards of excellence that we expect our candidates to display."
Don't like hiring people with natural hairstyles, religious garb, or other 'unprofessional' but protected appearances? "Your academic track record doesn't reflect the standards of excellence that we expect our candidates to display."
We do require a BS in computer science.. it's just a good way of filtering out the hordes of terrible candidates.
Elitist nonsense.
I have a bachelor's of computer science, but some of the best coders I met just did a 2 year community college diploma.
I don't think that spending lots of money on education is really a great litmus test, it's just one minor indicator.
It's not a litmus test, it's just a basic filter. You don't understand the time wasted (for both parties) when recruiters present "self starters" and "driven" and "passionate" candidates. It's not our goal to give people a chance, it's our goal to find a great fit for the position.
Let me rephrase, to make myself crystal clear, because you didn't get the tactful approach: that's a shitty filter. By excluding people without a degree, you're saying that ability to afford university for 4 years is more important than skill, experience, or knowledge.
It shows that you're ignorant. It shows that your company has a toxic workplace.
It's probably one of the dumbest flexes I've ever seen.
Wow I bet you're fun at parties
No, you're right. Being fun at a party of techbros is totally a sign of superiority and not at all a sign of sociopathy 🤮
Tbf you're probably not a terrible person, but that is a bad take. Rejecting someone based entirely on education, and not allowing for other factors (as is implied), is just bad for both your company and society.
We do require a BS in computer science
The only scenarios where I'd think I wouldn't require one are
- I want cheaper labor
- I am really desperate to fill a position
- The skills I need in a candidate are incredibly niche, thus I want to widen the applicant pool.
#1 and #2 are indicative of other problems in your company. I get that you can be a good dev without a degree, but from an employer perspective, it seems like an easy way to save time and money on hiring. I am convinced that a lot of money is wasted on recruiters who throw everyone under the sun into the hiring process just so they can justify their existence.
it seems like an easy way to save time and money on hiring
If you are seeing this change based on whether you exclude people without comp sci degrees, what you're really seeing is your recruitment firm/ team's lack of effort or expertise. It's literally the job of recruiters to separate the wheat from the chaff. If you're doing it yourselves by putting hard restrictions on the recruitment team to remove the bad results they are letting go through, you should be taking a hard look at that company or team.
It's even more evil: they're shifting their recruitment firm/team's job, to the candidates themselves, requiring them to pay to prove their worth at a third party (college).
No wonder it "saves [them] time and money".
Wouldn't you argue that putting hard restrictions would have the benefit of shrinkjng your recruitment team? To be clear, I'm coming from an extremely anecdotal point of view, but to me it seems like tech is full of imposters jumping from job to job, playing up their experience. Recruiters cannot spot these people, because they know all the jargon despite having none of the skills. This is why these technical interviews exist, but now those are even being gamed by people by studying leetcode. I'd be really curious what a high quality tech recruiter does vs the average.
the benefit of shrinking your ... team
I'm not sure I agree with this premise at all, but if I'm roleplaying some bloodsucking shareholder who cares more about my own money than the livelihoods of people, or their work/life balance, etc, then I would say that shrinking the recruitment team should only happen once you have senior-level recruiters who know the products, tech stack, teams, and roles well enough that they can quickly and accurately assess resumes against what the company needs, just as fast as a larger but less-experienced team of recruiters could.
it seems like tech is full of imposters jumping from job to job, playing up their experience.
This is played up, in my opinion. I've done a decent amount of interviews in the past 5 years (more than 40 candidates, less than 100, but don't have an exact number), and only one of them I would say gave me 'impostor' vibes. There are plenty of candidates who talk up their game, but that is more the fault of companies listing every position as needing far more experience than the roles actually do. People are just optimizing to metrics.
Recruiters cannot spot these people, because they know all the jargon despite having none of the skills. This is why these technical interviews exist, but now those are even being gamed by people by studying leetcode.
This sounds more like someone who "knows enough to be dangerous", as it were. Forgive my ignorance of leetcode, but a quick glance makes it seem like it's a Learn to Code website? Is studying coding really gaming an interview, or just studying for the role? Unless your tech interviewers are asking questions directly off of there, doesn't a candidate answering the questions correctly just mean they learned how to do it? If the questions are about things unrelated to your actual work (like asking people to write a linked list, or a recursive function, etc etc), and people are able to answer those questions but not do the actual work, you should probably stop asking those kind of questions.
There is never going to be a way around having technical interviews; they're not even primarily there to weed out liars, they're there to make sure the skills the candidate does have are the right ones for the role. Even if every candidate was 100% honest, you'd still need technical interviews, because 2 completely legit and very skilled backend devs can have vastly different skills or specialties within that realm.
I’d be really curious what a high quality tech recruiter does vs the average.
First and foremost, they work directly with the hiring manager to understand the role, the tech stack, etc. They know the company and their "culture", and they do their own early vetting of candidates before things reach the interview phase, but after they have reached out to the candidates; asking about salary expectations (or ideally sharing the range for the role), asking candidates how many years of experience they have in 'x' maybe top-3 technologies for the role, etc.
FYI, leetcode is not a "learn to code" website it is a "practice problems that will be asked at tech interviews" site. A lot of these problems are inspired by (or maybe are even literally from) interviews at "top companies" like Google, Facebook, etc. They are almost completely algorithmic or data structure problems, i.e. "unrelated to your actual work" (well, most of your actual work for most people).