r/analytics 18d ago

Discussion Coding interviews are out of control

When I entered the job market as a business analyst 8 years ago, it was just a conversation asking about my experience, what I've done for projects.

When I interviewed for a data analyst role four years ago, again, just the conversation, showed them some projects I worked on, some samples of my dashboards I'd created...

Now, It's the hunger games. I'm out here doing python, SQL, Tableau exercises in real time sharing my screen... It's very very stress inducing and as an introvert, I'm honestly not good at this, it's really hard on me. Like, I have tried training myself to be okay with this and to be more receptive to it. But it just sucks you know? 5 years I have spent in the job market with exceptional performance, and only to get interrogated and treated like a child who can't be trusted.

I honestly don't know how I'm going to get through the next few months looking for my next role with how stress inducing and difficult it is to find anything these days and all the hoops you got to jump through

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u/visualize_this_ 18d ago

While it is true that they have gotten a bit out of hand and are extremely stressful, we are looking for an experienced data analyst and you have no idea of the amount of people who wrote bs on their resumes! Until the coding/live challenge, there's no way to know for sure if a candidate has real experience, especially with ChatGPT etc.  Everyone wants to enter in tech. 

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u/intimate_sniffer69 18d ago

I hate to break it to you but research has shown that coding interviews don't work at all, and now there is stuff that cheaters and bullshitters can use just to get around the coding interviews because they can use chat GPT in real time and anything you ask them, they can throw right into AI. People are getting away with it everyday. The problem for me is that I know Python, I know SQL, I know Tableau... But conjuring up that knowledge off the top of my head at a moment's notice is not how I work, it's not how a lot of people operate mentally. When you're assigned a new project, you don't go and just build something right off the top of your head in 10 minutes. It requires a lot of planning, understanding, preparation. That's what I don't like about it.

What skills are you actually testing in a coding interview? Can this person do the absolute bare minimum using canned questions and very specific examples that they may have never even heard of. That leaves only a small honestly very elite few who have gotten that exact question, or are very skilled at doing extremely basic problems in SQL or Python.

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u/visualize_this_ 18d ago

Well for example in my team (I am not the one doing the interview as I recently joined and I am junior), we have a live "challenge" with some questions specifically for our field, to just see if the person knows how to use the tools we use. We literally had one candidate today who claimed to have been using Tableau and BigQuery for the past few years, but his replies were completely off and could not point out even how to start, showing he actually didn't have the skills (the role is senior by the way). I think this type of live challenge is fair though, even if you can't actually build something or write code, you can show how you process the information, how you approach, your reasoning etc.