I wonder if tech is unique in having an implicit mistrust for everything on the resume. I've worked at several large companies where people don't even bother looking at them before interviews.
I blame the FizzBuzz blogpost (https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/) for making everyone deathly afraid of imposters. It's a masterpiece in ego-stroking - of course you can write FizzBuzz, look at all these sorry suckers who can't. Resumes are lies, only a 45 minute brainteaser on CoderPad can reveal the truth (ignore existence of Leetcode).
In reality if I'm considering a senior candidate from FAANG (like, actually senior, not 4 years out of school), simply talking about past experience is perfectly fine. The work is the fucking same, everyone is migrating from legacy system X to a distributed system with zookeeper and kafka, they'll fit right in. It would take a truly psychopathic liar to fake their way through all the mundane details you could ask about a project like this. And if one slips through the cracks, they'd probably make a great PM anyway. (As long as they're on your side.)
>I wonder if tech is unique in having an implicit mistrust for everything on the resume. I've worked at several large companies where people don't even bother looking at them before interviews.
I blame the FizzBuzz blogpost (https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/) for making everyone deathly afraid of imposters. It's a masterpiece in ego-stroking - of course you can write FizzBuzz, look at all these sorry suckers who can't. Resumes are lies, only a 45 minute brainteaser on CoderPad can reveal the truth (ignore existence of Leetcode).
While I agree with you on the whole, I have had interviewed candidates who couldn't code.
One of them basically said that they would learn (CS degree but 4 years as a PM), which was fine but not what we were looking for.
Another simply refused help and proceeded to bat their head against the brick wall of simply syntax. Didn't show signs of nervousness, panic, etc ... just seemed not to be able to code.
In short, I think they exist (programmers that can't program) but they are the exception not the rule.
>In reality if I'm considering a senior candidate from FAANG (like, actually senior, not 4 years out of school), simply talking about past experience is perfectly fine. The work is the fucking same, everyone is migrating from legacy system X to a distributed system with zookeeper and kafka, they'll fit right in. It would take a truly psychopathic liar to fake their way through all the mundane details you could ask about a project like this. And if one slips through the cracks, they'd probably make a great PM anyway. (As long as they're on your side.)
I agree with you that an interview probing the experience of the candidate by getting them to talk about what they've done seems like a far better proposition. You will get a better idea of what the candidate knows, doesn't know.
Degree doesn't say much, not even intelligence does.
If you want an experienced developer that can start right away, it must be someone that worked an extended time period with the specific technologies required, there is no alternative. Especially in software that could be anything.
The company I work for mainly just hires people for a month and then management gets feedback from the engineers before committing to someone. I think this process is quite nice and people seem to like it (they get paid of course). Applicants are subjected to the whims of engineers though, so you "need to be a fit" too. Advantages and disadvantages.
Fizz buzz is an easy example, but that is basically checking that someone knows the modulo operator. A lot of devs also lack basic "tricks" with bit operations. Ideally a developer is able to do that, but companies must be aware to offer resources to train people.
If they can't code just make them manage and bullshit everyone else in process. And hope they are smart enough to let people they manage to make important decisions.
I blame the FizzBuzz blogpost (https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/) for making everyone deathly afraid of imposters. It's a masterpiece in ego-stroking - of course you can write FizzBuzz, look at all these sorry suckers who can't. Resumes are lies, only a 45 minute brainteaser on CoderPad can reveal the truth (ignore existence of Leetcode).
In reality if I'm considering a senior candidate from FAANG (like, actually senior, not 4 years out of school), simply talking about past experience is perfectly fine. The work is the fucking same, everyone is migrating from legacy system X to a distributed system with zookeeper and kafka, they'll fit right in. It would take a truly psychopathic liar to fake their way through all the mundane details you could ask about a project like this. And if one slips through the cracks, they'd probably make a great PM anyway. (As long as they're on your side.)