---
pretty_name: Software Engineering Interview Practices (2005–2026)
license: other
tags:
- software-engineering
- survey
- reproducibility
configs:
- config_name: survey_responses
  data_files: data/survey_responses_deidentified.csv
  default: true
- config_name: interview_question_benchmark
  data_files: data/interview_question_benchmark_raw.csv
---

# Replication Package: Yesterday's Interviews for Today's Engineers

This repository contains the de-identified analytical data and the Python
reproduction script for:

> Vitalii Romaniuk. "Yesterday's Interviews for Today's Engineers:
> Retrospective Perceptions and a Work-Aligned Hiring Framework (2005–2026)."
> arXiv:2609.14046, 2026.

Paper: <https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.14046>

## Contents

- `data/survey_responses_deidentified.csv` contains the 911 retained survey
  records used in the analysis. It contains coded responses and arbitrary
  respondent identifiers; it does not contain names, contact details,
  employers, geography, demographic attributes, or original collection
  timestamps.
- `data/interview_question_benchmark_raw.csv` contains the 1,001 input rows
  for the interview-question benchmark. The reproduction script normalizes
  prompt labels case-insensitively, removes repeated prompts, and excludes
  prompt groups with conflicting scores. This produces the 945 consistently
  scored unique prompts analyzed in the paper.
- `scripts/reproduce_results.py` reproduces the reported descriptive
  statistics, repeated-measures tests, sensitivity checks, and benchmark
  counts using only the Python standard library.

The original form export, working notes, drafts, and collection timestamps are
not part of this public package.

## Reproduction

Python 3.9 or newer is recommended. No third-party packages are required.

From the repository root, run:

```sh
python3 scripts/reproduce_results.py
```

## Survey data dictionary

The four prefixes represent Era I (`P3`, 2005–2010), Era II (`P4`,
2011–2017), Era III (`P5`, 2018–2022), and Era IV (`P6`, 2023–2026).

- `Respondent_ID`: arbitrary sequential identifier with no identity mapping in
  this package.
- `Role`: `1` = software engineer/candidate; `2` = engineering manager.
- `*_Duration`: `1` = under 1 hour; `2` = 1–2 hours; `3` = 3–4 hours;
  `4` = 5–6 hours; `5` = 7 or more hours. The analysis uses midpoints 0.5,
  1.5, 3.5, 5.5, and 7.5 hours.
- `*_Rounds`: `1` = 1–2 rounds; `2` = 3–4 rounds; `3` = 5 or more rounds.
  The analysis codes these as 2, 4, and 5.
- `*_Alignment`: interview–work disconnect on a 1–5 scale, where `1` means
  no disconnect/perfect alignment and `5` means extreme disconnect/completely
  irrelevant.
- `*_Toll`: combined psychological and time burden on a 1–10 scale.
- `Submitted`: retained-record marker; all released rows are `True`.

The survey was voluntary, anonymous, and uncompensated. Recruitment used
public software-engineering communities on Reddit and LinkedIn. The sample is
self-selected and is not a probability sample of the software-engineering
profession. The article's methodology, appendix, and threats-to-validity
sections provide the authoritative description of collection, cleaning, and
interpretation.

## Question benchmark

The benchmark columns are:

- `Interview Question`: a short prompt or topic label.
- `Real Work Job Analogue`: the closest plausible professional analogue used
  in the content audit.
- `Difference`: a score from `1` (closely matches routine engineering work) to
  `5` (primarily academic, specialized, or interview-oriented).

The source pool comprised openly accessible interview-preparation material,
including LeetCode, HackerRank, public GitHub repositories, public Reddit
discussions, and other public preparation resources. It is not
frequency-weighted. Item-level source URLs were not retained, so the exact
provenance of individual prompt labels cannot be reconstructed. Public access
does not imply public-domain status. See `DATA_RIGHTS.md` before redistributing
the benchmark.

## Licensing and citation

The reproduction script is licensed under the MIT License; see `LICENSE`.
Dataset rights and third-party exclusions are described in
`DATA_RIGHTS.md`. Please cite the paper when using this package.

```bibtex
@article{romaniuk2026yesterdays,
  title         = {Yesterday's Interviews for Today's Engineers: Retrospective
                   Perceptions and a Work-Aligned Hiring Framework (2005--2026)},
  author        = {Romaniuk, Vitalii},
  year          = {2026},
  eprint        = {2609.14046},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  primaryClass  = {cs.SE}
}
```