I had a less angry title in my first draft, but this one is more fun and click-baity

_posts/2023-01-27-coding-interviews-are-bad.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "I think coding interviews categorically suck"
+tags:
+- software
+- leadership
+- management
+- opinion
+---
+
+I recently had a good discussion with another engineering leader about the
+merits of coding interviews. They have long been a trusted part of the tech
+company interview process, but I have been mostly hiring _without_ them over
+the last 5 years. Below I wanted to share some of the thoughts that I sent my
+colleague:
+
+---
+
+(_in response to a concern about hiring somebody that can't actually build software_)
+
+I have also made one or two hires who didn't end up being able to really build
+and implement things. No interview process is going to be 100%, sometimes a dud
+gets through. :)
+
+Many coding interviews necessarily need to fit in the time allotted and
+therefore are merely puzzles or computer science questions. The internet is
+littered with tools on how to practice your way into passing a coding
+interview, in fact, I have even seen a book or two at my library on the
+subject. For the most part, a coding interview tells you how well somebody can
+pass a coding interview, it doesn't actually tell you that they can build
+software. [SOME VENDOR] claims to alleviate some of that, but software
+development is a team sport and there's a lot _around_ the programming that is
+expected of software engineers, especially more senior ones.
+
+My second main concern is that it has always come across to me as almost
+disrespectful of people's time. FAANG companies are awful about this. Many
+interview processes are already requesting substantial time commitment from
+people, and to see companies then ask people to do a "take home assignment" or
+a test boggles the mind. [Automatic](https://artiss.blog/2019/03/the-automattic-hiring-process/) does an interesting twist on this in that
+they basically pay people up front and take them on in a contracting capacity
+before hiring.
+
+As a hiring manager, my objective is to determine whether somebody can build
+software. I will typically try to find a way without some form of coding
+exercise that's tailored to each candidate, for example:
+
+* If they're on GitHub and have activity, I'll look at open source  
+  contributions. In some cases that's sufficient, because I can see how they  
+  respond to code review, interact with others, and structure their code in a  
+  real world scenario (commit messages too!). I enjoy discussing pull request
+  reviews with these candidates too.
+
+* If they don't have public activity, I will look at their resume for items  
+  which mention "design and implementation" and then we'll do more of a "code  
+  architecture" interview where I discuss that system with them and ask  
+  questions about how they structure their code, create modules, test, etc.
+
+* If they are simply too junior or for whatever reason they don't have anything
+  above, then what I'll do is a "debugging interview" rather than a coding  
+  interview. Where we start with something pre-existing and debug it to make it
+  work, refactoring along the way. In these interviews I'm typically using a
+  bit of our production code, rather than something that's contrived.
+
+---
+
+Interviewing is _hard_ and imprecise to say the least. Writing code is an
+important part of a software engineering role, but we rarely do it as
+performance art, making the coding interview an awkward and flawed means of
+assessing skill.
+
+
+An HR leader I once worked with told my team and I to "find reasons to hire
+[the candidate]" rather than finding reasons they weren't good enough. That
+dramatically changed my approach to hiring. Coding interviews, like any "tests"
+during the interview process are finding reasons to bounce the candidate from
+the funnel. By taking a more personalized approach to each candidate, I believe
+an organization can still make really strong hires with a more respectful and
+collaborative interview process that results in better outcomes for everybody
+involved.