Ask HN: What is the point of algorithm-heavy interviews?

Post by groomed » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 11:42 AM UTC

d--b wrote: post #27

The question is: what mistake should the developer not do? A bad developer will not implement properly the separation between infrastructure code and business code. A bad developer does not care about readability, so the code will be laden with functions that have side effects, and things of that nature. A bad developer does not comment their code in a meaningful way. None of these are easy to find out in an intervie…

Post by bradleyjg » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 11:45 AM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #14

patatino wrote: post #5

I once read it is a form of ageism because older people, in general, don't have as much time as young people due to family to study for those interviews. Absolutely no idea if that is true but I think it is an interesting thought.

but someone who is old would have studied this repeatedly if they applied to multiple interviews of the same kind, so they would have internalised knowledge. Also it's sort of timeless knowledge that you can acquire on the job. If anything interviews about the latest hip technology seem more prone to age selection to me.

Post by bradleyjg » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 11:48 AM UTC

EnderMB wrote: post #18

To create a barrier to entry that weeds out over 90% of applicants. IMO, this is the sole purpose of algortihm-heavy interviews. Companies like Google can put out a job ad and receive thousands and thousands of applicants, and the sad truth is that many of them could probably do the job that is required of them. By putting in a loose requirement around what is essentially problem solving via known algorithmic techniq…

Post by booleandilemma » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 11:51 AM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #24

I've interviewed a lot of candidates (~200), and my interview generally looks like: * I describe the problem * They ask questions to figure out parts I didn't specify (which lets me evaluate how they handle resolving ambiguity) * They propose a brute force solution, and I ask them how quickly it runs and how much space it needs (talking in big-O is a fast way for me to tell if they understand their solution) * They p…

Post by duiker101 » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 11:53 AM UTC

11235813213455 wrote: post #15

It evaluates someone's capacity to approach a complex task It's like in school, you learn many things, not necessarily useful in your daily life, but you learn to learn, and that's what they can see when they confront you with a challenge Of course, some people who heavily train for this have maybe an advantage, like in school exams.. Personally I never specifically trained for an interview, I just like algorithms, d…