
Ask HN: Compensating SWE interview candidates with $500? - swehiring
SWE interviews used to be an hour or two. Nowadays they&#x27;re all-day events. This requires candidates to to effectively &quot;work&quot; an entire day for free.<p>It seems to me that we should compensate candidates for their time.<p>From an employer&#x27;s perspective, it seems like it might be a good thing to do regardless of whether it&#x27;s the right thing to do or not<p>The $500 push would hopefully result in more in-demand candidates taking interviews.<p>What does HN think? Is it crazy? Is $500 too much, or too low? Is the risk of non-serious candidates too high?
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heartbeats
Adverse selection.

If they don't get the job, gain is zero. If they do get the job, the gain is
their salary. EV = P(job) * E[salary|job]. Someone who believes there is a low
probability of them getting the job will be drawn to these sorts of
interviews, but the sharp people who want the job are not going to be more
interested.

If you're trying to optimize for amount of good candidates, maybe. If you're
trying to optimize for share of good candidates, absolutely not.

What could be interesting is a simpler test. How about the following?

* On the first of every month, the company publishes a list of random numbers.

* The job interview consists of a written test on how well you've remembered these, and them some code stuff.

Fast, cheap, efficient. Should be a reasonably good selection criteria.

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hitpointdrew
How does memorization of arbitrary numbers help in any capacity in SWE role?
Seems like just an absurd hurdle to jump.

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heartbeats
That's the whole point - you select for people who are interested in jumping
over hurdles to get the job, i.e. passion. It also requires intelligence. So
already there you are selecting for the two most important traits.

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gus_massa
> _i.e. passion._

This smells more like desperation than passion.

> _It also requires intelligence._

I agree, but intelligence is a very wide term and I'm not sure that the
"intelligence" that you need to find patterns and memorize a few numbers is
the same "intelligence" you need to make good programs. I guess it is
positively correlated, anyway.

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heartbeats
> This smells more like desperation than passion.

They are one and the same. If you're a nice company a lot of people want to
work for, those who want to are prepared to go through hurdles in order to do
so.

> I guess it is positively correlated, anyway.

Memory is very strongly correlated with IQ.

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gus_massa
Most intelligent people I know hate memorizing noise. (But I have a few
friends that memorized a few hundred digits of pi. Good luck convincing them
to memorize your random numbers.)

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new_guy
In principle it sounds like a great idea, but you're gonna get flooded with
low quality candidates.

