It depends a lot on what I’m hiring for and what the candidate’s background is. If it’s an ML job, I ask ML programming and design questions, but if I’m hiring someone to do networking, I’ll ask a question about distributed algorithms or something. This is in contrast to how Google hires, because they’re hiring generic SWEs so they don’t care a lot about the particulars.
If I had to hire someone more senior, I would reach out to other more senior people who I trust to ask them for help.
For a small team, generalism can be more important than it seems.
Thanks for the answers, this makes a lot of sense.
Can you be specific about #1? For example, what format of programming tests would you prefer to give to a generalist engineer?
By the way, do you mean something special or “hands on” for ML programming or design questions?
For ML programming, it seems bad to rely on ML or design questions in the sense of a verbal question and answer? I think actually designing/choosing ML scientific knowledge is a tiny part of the job, so I think many ML knowledge questions would be unnatural (rewarding memorization of standard ML books/selecting for “enthusiasts” who read up on recent libraries, and blow out strong talent who solved a lot of hard real world problems).
Yeah I personally find it very hard to do ML interviews for that reason. So far I’m doing a mix of theory/conceptual questions and practical ML coding questions. It helps if the conceptual questions include some unusual setups, or ask about unusal tweaks.
It depends a lot on what I’m hiring for and what the candidate’s background is. If it’s an ML job, I ask ML programming and design questions, but if I’m hiring someone to do networking, I’ll ask a question about distributed algorithms or something. This is in contrast to how Google hires, because they’re hiring generic SWEs so they don’t care a lot about the particulars.
If I had to hire someone more senior, I would reach out to other more senior people who I trust to ask them for help.
For a small team, generalism can be more important than it seems.
Thanks for the answers, this makes a lot of sense.
Can you be specific about #1? For example, what format of programming tests would you prefer to give to a generalist engineer?
By the way, do you mean something special or “hands on” for ML programming or design questions?
For ML programming, it seems bad to rely on ML or design questions in the sense of a verbal question and answer? I think actually designing/choosing ML scientific knowledge is a tiny part of the job, so I think many ML knowledge questions would be unnatural (rewarding memorization of standard ML books/selecting for “enthusiasts” who read up on recent libraries, and blow out strong talent who solved a lot of hard real world problems).
Yeah I personally find it very hard to do ML interviews for that reason. So far I’m doing a mix of theory/conceptual questions and practical ML coding questions. It helps if the conceptual questions include some unusual setups, or ask about unusal tweaks.