Selecting Against Experience - Do Employers Know?

IBitOBear asks: "A couple days ago I did 'the interview loop' at that leading online retailer. Over the course of six hours I was repeatedly introduced to a guy in his early twenties, who would then ask me to write out code on a white-board for a problem that you might find in the study guide for a 200-level computer science class. I have 20 years of experience in programming and systems design. And in several cases the interviewers were vague, semantically incorrect, or self-contradictory. Interviewer blunders included not understanding that non-normal forms in databases -can be- more correct or efficient when the domain of a data is extremely limited; or choosing a leader among N candidates -is- a byzantine agreement problem. In short, the loop would have been perfect to weed out some guy getting his first job fresh out of school, but it definitely exerted selection pressure towards excluding experienced candidates. So employers, what are you doing to make sure that you are not culling out candidates with the low-ball? Job seekers, what do you do when you find yourself trapped in a sophomore study group?"

Comments

Walk away.

[Spazmania]

Job seekers, what do you do when you find yourself trapped in a sophomore study group?

Walk away. An interview is a two-way street: they're evaluating your ability to do the job but you're also evaluating their ability to provide a worthwhile work environment. If they fail your test, walk away.

20 years? So what?

[zer0man]

20 years experience doesn't mean much. I have heard/seen candidates bullying interviewers with their credintials (I've got a PhD in Computer Science) or experience (I've been coding since you were in diapers) and yet still fail to reverse a linked list in-place, or fail to explain the basic idea of hashing.

It bothers me, as an engineer with some experience, to be subjected to the humiliation of 'the interview loop', yet having been involved in hiring I absoluately see why it is needed -- people, well, inflate their credentials when it comes to looking for work. So companies essentially ignore past work experience and ask questions relating to specific engineering problems to try to see what kind of developer you are. Sometimes the interviewer is bad, but that's why it's a "loop" there are at least 4 of them, and one of them should be a more 'senior' interviewer who holds more sway (that is if i'm guessing correctly at your 'leading online retailer').

True, the system isn't perfect. You could be a brilliant engineer, but can't reverse a string. But with the amount of money that is invested into an engineer by the company as high as it is, they company doesn't want to be wrong.

Re:20 years? So what?

[tgd]

The problem with the position you described in your reply is that its not really applicable to software development.

An engineer with 20 years experience knows a few things:

1) He hasn't had to reverse a linked list in 23 years.
2) There are framework functions to reverse a linked list. Who cares how they work.

Questions like that are VERY age-biased. Because only someone right out of school, or someone with their head so buried in the code would remember that on the spot. Experienced engineers will tell you how to manage the development process, how to write code that is engineered to be testable, can actually explain software architecture and will do a FAR better job solving real world problems.

Why? Even if you DO need to reverse a linked list in a situation where you can't use framework functions to do it, an experienced engineer can pretty easily punch in a few google keywords.

No amount of googling will give a kid out of school an understanding of how you really engineer software in the real world.

The only time I would consider asking questions like that to an experienced engineer (and I ripped off a similar one I got asked at Microsoft way back when during an interview today) is if I've already decided someone isn't a fit for some totally unrelated reason and I need a quick way to quantify that.

Re:As an employer ...

[IBitOBear]

Actually, I showed no disdain at all. I carefully and cheerfully complied. I even kept the mood up and remained positive through the entire process. It was the odd post-interview feedback that got my goat a little bit. 8-)

I actually like working with younger people as a general rule as it keeps the mind sharp and provides a continuous influx of fresh eyes to stave off the dogmatic ossification I often encounter in my peers.

There is nothing wrong with going back to first principles. I just found the failure to transcend first principles (and the fact that a couple of the guys got all grumpy when they didn't understand my solutions to their problems as stated and as revised) to be something of a warning flag.

The "ask a question of sublime simplicity" approach can only prove effective if the questioner can understand an answer of sublime subtlety.