Companies have no idea how to evaluate engineers
Summary
Most companies rely on data structures and algorithms interviews despite widespread acknowledgment they don't effectively evaluate engineer quality—not because it's the best method, but because companies fundamentally lack better evaluation frameworks and default to what's familiar.
Key Takeaways
- DSA interviews persist due to institutional inertia, not merit—companies continue using them because they have no systematic alternative for assessing hard skills and thinking ability.
- The coding interview format has remained 'surprisingly consistent' despite massive industry evolution, indicating a disconnect between how engineering work has changed and hiring practices.
- Core hiring challenge: distinguishing between hard skills assessment and evaluating thinking ability—current DSA format conflates both poorly.
- Interview methodology is a blind spot for most organizations; they perpetuate existing processes without recognizing the evaluation problem stems from lacking structured hiring criteria.
Related topics
Transcript Excerpt
Coding interviews are still not dead. What is your take on this? >> It gets really funny with how much coding has changed [music] the last few years and especially the last few months. Coding interviews are the one area that have surprisingly stayed pretty consistent. The coding interview format of data structures and algorithms is [music] really really sticky and it's confusing to a lot of people, myself included. It goes back to how do you even evaluate if somebody's a good hire? Do they have the hard skills? Can they think? And DSA interviews were never the best for that. The second reason it stayed sticky is that companies just have no idea how to evaluate and they probably never did.…