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by rvzΒ·7y agoΒ·view on hn β†—
While this is very good to study before a technical interview, over time however I can see that this alone is going to make it 40x harder to differentiate say 100 candidates that are all perfect at interviews in general, that we are going to start asking ridiculous Oxbridge-style interview questions and expect perfect scores to advance 'good' candidates.

Perhaps companies will start asking candidates to construct mathematical proofs of data structures, algorithms, formulas and common equations from university-level entrance examinations just to do a mobile app or a web dev job.

As soon as that happens, the 'ideal candidate' companies will be expecting to interview would be a very prodigious candidate, former math Olympiad champion and decorated with titles and research papers in their name.

You guessed it: π”œπ”’ 𝔬𝔩𝔑𝔒 𝔩𝔒𝔀𝔒𝔫𝔑 𝔬𝔣 𝔢𝔒 10𝔡 𝔑𝔒𝔳𝔒𝔩𝔬𝔭𝔒𝔯.

2 comments
Yes, basically Goodhart’s law generalizes to standardized tech interviews.
> Perhaps companies will start asking candidates to construct mathematical proofs of data structures, algorithms

Perhaps we’d produce better software if people prioritised correctness like this in practice!

Perhaps so. Those sort of questions would benefit a company working at the scale of FAANG or Microsoft and actually tackling or researching real computer science problems.

Now would this make sense for a graduate entry level role for a web / mobile app developer position? Interviewers looking for such candidates need to lower their expectations a bit in for positions like that.