Type12: Interview developers in a real production environment

Thanks Hiten for posting this. We made Type12 (https://type12.com) because hiring is broken on so many levels, but it happens to be one those huge, neglected problems. The traditional technical interview process is designed to ferret out a candidate's weaknesses whereas the process should be designed to find a candidate's strengths. No one can possibly master all of the arcana of today's technology landscape, let alone bring that mastery to bear on a problem under pressure and with no tools other than a whiteboard. Under those circumstances, everyone can make anyone look like an idiot. The fundamental problem with the traditional technical interview process is that it is based on a chain of inference that seems reasonable but is in fact deeply flawed. That chain goes something like this: > Writing code is hard. > Because writing code is hard, only smart people can do it. > Therefore we want to hire smart people. > The best way to find smart people is to design a process that filters out dumb people. > The best way to filter out dumb people is to ask them hard questions that we know the answer to and see if they also know (or can figure out) the answer. Hence phone screens, whiteboard coding, puzzles, riddles and all the trivia that we've seens for years in horror interview stories. The most important trait in a software developer is how he/she translates the domain to components, how he contains complexity, and a Whiteboard puzzle will never show that, it just can't. Developing real life software and solving puzzles in a Whiteboard are just two different and independent skills. In today's world, coding has more to do with the ability to look things up, read other people's code and documentation, debugging, and use tools effectively than the ability to solve problems closed-book. Debugging is almost as important a skill as writing the code in the first place, maybe more so. But the traditional process is absolutely horrible at predicting debugging ability, and with good reason: debugging real code means running the code and looking to see what it actually does. That is not possible on a whiteboard. On a whiteboard, you have to mentally compile and "run" the code in your head to see if it works. That is not what coders need to be good at. Running code is what computers are for. We invented them specifically so we wouldn't have to do that sort of work in our heads any more. We made Type12 to let companies go beyond riddles and brain-teasers when testing candidates, but actually putting them in their day-to-day scenarios. How? No better way than simulating their production environment and pair program with them on real world problems. While the ability to solve a coding puzzles tells you almost nothing about the skills the candidate has to solve day-to-day challenges, real scenarios and assignments lets you simulate your day-1 work experience and are - indeed - good predictors. In a bit more technical details, for each interview, Type12 creates a new (docker instance under hood) sandbox fully configured with languages (Python, JS, Ruby, Java, Scala, etc) frameworks (Django, Flask, Ruby on Rails, Node, Spring, etc), databases (MongoDB, Redis, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc) and other technologies (Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB, etc) of your choice.

Pulse

Maker

8yr ago

Crazy Egg

Hunter

Anything that makes recruiting developers easier is a win in my book. Type12 has created a super useful product to help both candidates and companies reduce friction during the interview process. When developers can get closer to the work they'll be doing after being hired, it helps both parties know what they are getting into with each other ahead of time. Type12 has got huge potential and that's why I'm excited to help launch it today. I'll be watching this one closely.

Hmm, interesting tagline at the bottom of your website :] Seems similar to https://www.getpy.com!

@derek_t_lo similar indeed

@derek_t_lo Hi Derek, very similar indeed, even though it's the first time I hear about Py. :) Thanks for letting me know.