How will this not simply encourage hiring managers to include more and more ridiculous system design questions? Prior to the popularity of leetcode, it wasn’t expected to solve a leetcode hard
They aren't meant to be but this will definitely force that.
In the past I have generally just had a list of dimensions to help the candidate explore, like separation of concerns, scalability on different system dimensions (concurrent txns, storage, memory, etc), analogies to existing systems/patterns, etc.
I usually have never had a script, merely a problem with a fairly generous solution space and a list of increasingly more difficult to satisfy requirements in order to pressure even the best candidates just a little.
HR has for the last decade tried to completely ignore that and instead try quantify candidates "goodness" with scores, scripts and other bullshit. This has had the rather obvious outcome in missing really good folks that didn't fit into their box and hiring utter trash that gamed their stupid metrics. They keep telling me this is "industry standard" and "how Google does it", but only the latter of that is actually true, the former was forced for no reason whatsover.
They conveniently leave out that the reason Google did this for so long is they completely over-indexed on hiring fresh graduates with no experience, little to no intuition or real world knowledge and as such needed to entirely focus on IQ-test-esque questions to just try filter for the top X% of otherwise indistinguishable candidates. None of which is relevant for small teams hiring 10yr+ industry seniors with relevant domain expertise.
Interviews are meant to be about working out if someone will be successful on your team, that means determining if they have the technical chops, a decent enough communication style and enough experience/intuition to work in unfamiliar problem spaces effectively.
Really all you need is the vibe check, a good collaborative systems design exercise helps explore that vibe and quickly separates the pretenders from people with the required knowledge and intuition.
eunos|8 months ago
jpgvm|8 months ago
In the past I have generally just had a list of dimensions to help the candidate explore, like separation of concerns, scalability on different system dimensions (concurrent txns, storage, memory, etc), analogies to existing systems/patterns, etc.
I usually have never had a script, merely a problem with a fairly generous solution space and a list of increasingly more difficult to satisfy requirements in order to pressure even the best candidates just a little.
HR has for the last decade tried to completely ignore that and instead try quantify candidates "goodness" with scores, scripts and other bullshit. This has had the rather obvious outcome in missing really good folks that didn't fit into their box and hiring utter trash that gamed their stupid metrics. They keep telling me this is "industry standard" and "how Google does it", but only the latter of that is actually true, the former was forced for no reason whatsover. They conveniently leave out that the reason Google did this for so long is they completely over-indexed on hiring fresh graduates with no experience, little to no intuition or real world knowledge and as such needed to entirely focus on IQ-test-esque questions to just try filter for the top X% of otherwise indistinguishable candidates. None of which is relevant for small teams hiring 10yr+ industry seniors with relevant domain expertise.
Interviews are meant to be about working out if someone will be successful on your team, that means determining if they have the technical chops, a decent enough communication style and enough experience/intuition to work in unfamiliar problem spaces effectively.
Really all you need is the vibe check, a good collaborative systems design exercise helps explore that vibe and quickly separates the pretenders from people with the required knowledge and intuition.