The Broken Tech Interview Process
Long ago, I was taking an interview with a fellow colleague and friend. I said, for the right hiring, one needs to follow methods of Sherlock Holmes. We are not only hiring a tech skill, but an entire person, with his/her unique characteristics.
When hiring an architect for your home, you consider work experience, design expertise, past projects, and references. Surprisingly, in the software industry, the hiring process for architects, tech leads, and senior engineers often focuses on irrelevant entrance-exam type questions.
Unlike in architecture, software interviews emphasize programming problems rarely used in real development, irrelevant system design questions, and minimal discussion on past projects.
The emphasis on memorizing programming language constructs and algorithms seems disconnected from the reality of coding professionally.
It would be prudent to ask any senior engineer when and where these coding and system design problems were used in their actual work over the years.
In this era of AI, as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said,
coding is going to be delegated to AI, allowing professionals to focus on higher-value tasks.
The current software interview system raises questions about the value of formal education and struggle to get good all-round education when success can be achieved by memorizing a few system designs and solving programming problems from platforms like Leetcode.
This has given rise to the hosts of interview-cracking courses, similar to IIT coaching centers. And here also, the process has rather become a money making tool for such platforms.
Why put an effort to study from top colleges, understand the fundamentals and get good grades, when after 10 years, you’ll only be evaluated based on your ability to memorize codes and certain patterns?!
Why focus on innovation, help build teams and work on different complex projects, when no one is going to even inquire about it during the interviews?
The discrepancy between the software industry’s hiring practices and the actual requirements of the job highlights the need for a reevaluation of the interview process.
And this is what differentiates between an in-experienced interviewer and an experienced one. While an in-experienced ones will tend to treat everyone as college freshers, experienced ones will deep dive into the projects, domains and tech stacks. They will focus on the comprehensive evaluation of the candidate and see whether the person fits in the organization or not.
