> And we could interview like adults, instead of like teenagers pledging a frat.
I think you're viewing the "good old days" of interviewing through the lens of nostalgia. Old school interviewing from decades ago or even more recently was significantly more similar to pledging to a frat than modern interviews.
> people who are genuinely enthusiastic
This seems absurdly difficult to measure well and gameable in its own way.
The flip side of "ad hoc" interviewing as you put it was an enormous amount of capriciousness. Being personable could count for a lot (being personable in front of programmers is definitely a different flavor of personable in front of frat bros, but it's just a different flavor is all). Pressure interviews were fairly common, where you would intentionally put the candidate in a stressful situation. Interview rubrics could be nonexistent. For all the cognitive biases present in today's interview process, older interviews were rife with much more.
If you try to systematize the interview process and make it more rigorous you inevitably make a system that is amenable to pre-interview preparation. If you forgo that you end up with a wildly capricious interview system.
If course you rarely have absolutes. Even the most rigorous modern interview systems often still have capriciousness in them and there was still some measure of rigor to old interview styles.
But let's not forget all the pain and problems of the old style of interviews.
> I think you're viewing the "good old days" of interviewing through the lens of nostalgia. Old school interviewing from decades ago or even more recently was significantly more similar to pledging to a frat than modern interviews.
Yeah, no, not at all. Interviewing in the 90s was just a cool chat between hackers. What interesting stuff have you built, let's talk about it. None of the confrontational leetcode nonsense of later years.
I still refuse to participate in that nonsense, so I'll never make people go through such interviews. I've only hired two awesome people this year, so less than a drop in the bucket, but I'll continue to do what I can to keep some sanity in the interviewing in this industry.
> > people who are genuinely enthusiastic
> This seems absurdly difficult to measure well and gameable in its own way.
True, and it is gamed currently (some prep books tell you to feign enthusiasm).
But let's whimsically say that the hypothetical of software development no longer being the go-to easy lots-of-money career meant that the gaming people would go to some other field instead, leaving you with only the people who really want to do this job.
Absolutely.
The amount of times I’ve seen a “do you want to have a beer with them?” test in lieu of a simple programming exam is horrifying. (And it showed in the level of talent they hired.)
Fortunately, most of those have been left by the wayside, roadkill of history.
Because that is really the alternative if we don’t have rigorous, systematic technical interviews: cognitive bias and gut-feel decisions. Both of which are antithetical to high performing environments.
False choice.
The reality of these "rigorous, systematic technical interviews" is that we have a ton of companies doing nonsense theatre that isn't actually about "fundamentals", is also easily biased (as even some purported Google interviewers have admitted on HN), and have almost nothing to do with how effective a software engineer will be (as even Google's own stats show).
There is no alternative.
So you may not think they’re predictive of success, but you should see how much less predictive everything else is.
Hiring is always a risk. It will never be a perfect science.
That’s why it’s important to have a quick off-ramp for those who aren’t working out.
Edit: BTW, where did you see Google saying their interview process doesn’t work? Other than some a few anonymous devs venting on HN, the company still uses coding interviews as critical to their process. You will always find a few complainers, but the fact that one of the world’s top software shops still uses it says what needs to be said.
I've been doing this awhile, and I've seen hiring work really well without the LeetCode grilling.
And I've almost always seen the LeetCode grilling be administered by someone who doesn't know what they're doing (and often also tainted with ego, despite the strange claim of some that a LeetCode grilling is objective).
That said, if you're sourcing random people, good luck, it's a flood of LeetCode gamers to wade through, and too much of your staff interviewing them might also be LeetCode gamers with no experience doing non-LeetCode interviews.
> Edit: BTW, where did you see Google saying their interview process doesn’t work?
I have a bunch of notes on Google hiring I'd have to dig through, but the first link quick at hand is this retrospective by a hiring committee person who left (and I have a note about 8m50s being a funny story of the hiring committee realizing that they would've rejected their own packets): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8RxkpUvxK0 (IIRC, I don't agree with all the beliefs he still holds, but he calls out a lot of problems they found.)
Being personable does count for a lot in any role that involves teamwork. Certain teams can maybe accommodate one member whose technical skills make up for bad interpersonal skills as a special exception, but one is the limit.