Ask HN: What's the most interesting technical screening you've encountered?
Debate continues over effective candidate assessment methods, with concerns about traditional practices like algorithm challenges and unpaid take-home projects. Alternatives like Praetorian's Tech Challenges are being explored for better evaluations.
There is ongoing debate regarding the most effective methods for assessing candidates' technical skills during the hiring process. Common practices such as algorithm challenges on platforms like LeetCode and Hackerrank, as well as whiteboarding sessions, are often scrutinized for their relevance to actual job performance and the potential for candidates to prepare specifically for these tests. Concerns have also been raised about take-home projects that demand extensive unpaid work, which some view as exploitative. In light of these issues, there is interest in exploring alternative assessment methods that may provide a more accurate reflection of a candidate's abilities. Notable examples of such alternatives include Praetorian's Tech Challenges and Fly.io's Gossip Glomers, which aim to offer more practical and engaging ways to evaluate technical skills without the drawbacks associated with traditional methods.
6 commentsStart with icebreaker questions, what kind of games do you like and why? Go into slightly harder questions - a common request is adding seeds to plants in Rimworld, yes or no?
Then go into the hard technical question - how would you know which part on the screen the caravan should stop at? How would you determine where civilization is on a map? The smart answer is akin to a Monte Carlo simulation, first time I learned of it. Just throw darts (aka sample random points) on the map, give it some civilization rating, then triangulate from there. There's a further optimization where you can search around doors.
It's great because these questions are directly related to the work itself, and you can make a good judgement of someone's abilities in a few hours without needing several sessions of interviews.
For something like banking, I'd ask 1) How do you send a PIN securely from an app? 2) Ok, but how do you do biometrics when the API requires a PIN login? 3) Now let's say we allow users to KYC from an app. How do you detect that someone isn't AI generating their images? You can force users to only send images taken through the app, but an attacker will be able to spoof the app and directly send their image to the API bypassing the app.
Only bad experience with that was patreons ctf, the containers didn’t work so I spent the hour interview trying to get it to run. Horrible experience.