Stop Hiring for Theater
The Hacker News community recently reignited the debate on tech hiring practices, shining a spotlight on how disconnected they are from the realities of software engineering. The discussion broadened my perspective, reinforcing the sentiment that we need to rethink how we assess candidates to reflect the actual demands of the job.
Legacy Code: The Real Test of an Engineer
When was the last time your job required solving a LeetCode problem? Likely never. But debugging a 10-year-old undocumented codebase? That’s daily life for many engineers. And yet, our hiring systems rarely evaluate the skills needed to untangle someone else’s spaghetti code and make it functional.
Hiring managers tout these challenges as "filters," but they rarely filter for skills that matter. Anyone who’s ever resurrected a failing system with zero support knows the truth: this is the work that separates mediocre engineers from great ones—not solving yet another binary tree problem.
LeetCode & System Design Interviews: The Theater of Hiring
LeetCode-style coding tests are bad enough, filtering out anyone who hasn’t spent countless hours grinding irrelevant puzzles. But system design interviews? They’re a scripted performance masquerading as assessment. These exercises reward candidates who can memorize architectural patterns, not those with actual experience building systems.
And let’s be honest: most hiring managers don’t care if you’ve designed a large-scale system before. They want you to regurgitate a template answer that fits their narrow definition of “correct.” It’s not a test of skill; it’s a test of compliance.
Offer a Fixed Fee for Challenges
One practical way to fix this broken system is to offer candidates a fixed fee for completing interview challenges. Coding exercises, debugging tasks, and even system design problems demand significant time and effort, and compensating candidates respects that investment.
Here’s why it works:
- Respect Candidates’ Time: A fixed fee shows that companies value the effort candidates put into interviews, even if they aren’t hired.
- Encourage Fairness: Paying for challenges levels the playing field, making it easier for candidates with financial constraints to participate.
- Shift Focus from Free Labor: Candidates shouldn’t feel exploited. Compensation ensures they approach challenges with confidence, knowing their time is valued.
For example, a 4-hour coding challenge could warrant 300, while a more intensive debugging exercise or system design task might be compensated at $500. It’s a small price for companies to pay to foster trust, attract diverse talent, and elevate the interview experience.
The Solution: Hire for Reality, Not Theater
The best engineers don’t shine in a sterile, high-pressure interview—they shine in the chaos of real-world systems. Instead of focusing on theoretical challenges, we should:
- Evaluate candidates by reviewing their actual work—codebases, contributions, and projects.
- Test collaboration and problem-solving in team environments.
- Focus on debugging and maintaining code, because that’s 90% of the job.
- Compensate candidates for their time to reflect fairness and respect.
Let’s Build a Better System
The current interview process isn’t just inefficient; it’s actively harmful, filtering out talented, experienced engineers in favor of well-rehearsed performers. If we want the best talent, we need to stop forcing candidates into artificial molds and start evaluating them for the skills that truly matter.
It’s time to stop hiring for theater and start hiring for reality.