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Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

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Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#141

Post by leothekim »

onislandtime wrote: post #85

Dear software professional: if you have been rejected because of a coding interview, don't feel bad or discouraged. It has little to do with how smart you are. Unfortunately, this style of interviews is likely ineffective and leads to hiring people who look alike and have similar skills. Solving a problem with someone looking over your shoulder and forcing you to talk to explain what you are thinking is a skill that…

"Solving a problem with someone looking over your shoulder and forcing you to talk to explain what you are thinking is a skill that I've never seen used in the real world."

I'm often in the position to have to explain my reasoning while developing software. Code reviews and pair-programming come to mind. It's about being able to communicate complexity and being more rigorous about the software development process.

That said, this style of coding interview brings up a level of stress that I'm rarely under at work. It's an unfortunate condition of interviewing, but I don't think it's completely avoidable no matter how comfortable you make the interviewee.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#142

Post by gridspy »

elq wrote: post #133
parennoob wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the correct answer to this? Let's try a little experiment.. I've never heard this question before, so I'm in the same boat as a naive interviewer right now. Let me elaborate my thought process. "H'm, this looks a bit like mergesort, where you take two sorted sublists and form a bigger sorted list. So...sort the sublists using mergesort, then call the merging algorithm? (compare the heads of the two lists, and…

We try very hard to NOT ask questions that have only one correct answer, and my team only interviews/hires senior people. So my approach to interviewing might be different than someone who's interviewing a fresh grad. I treat all questions as conversational. The direction the question goes depends on where I (or other prior interviewers) think more evidence is needed. For example: merge sort is an answer that satisfi…

The merge stage of merge sort will only work if the input lists are already sorted. In this case they are unsorted.

I'd ignore the fact that there were initially 2 lists and just concatinate them and sort. I.e sort(unsorted1 + unsorted2)

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#143

Post by FLUX-YOU »

onislandtime wrote: post #102
akanet wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Solving a problem with someone looking over your shoulder and forcing you to talk to explain what you are thinking" is actually how problems are generally solved in most fields. Software engineering is perhaps one of the lone exceptions, and I think the pair programming movement has a bone or two to pick with your premise.

People are very diverse, some are fast and chatty, others are quiet and slow. Usually I perceive the fast and chatty types a bit arrogant. Personality and cultural background is probably an influence. Best teams have a great mix. Often caring about the work is more important than having a genius. (Of course people should be competent).

See, we're having trouble even testing for competency. I passed a pen and paper interview recently (did confidently well on coding, blew the SQL part because I had only used APIs and still thought I should put that on the resume) and still got the position. I'm still scared shitless that I'm going to flub day 1 and I've been cramming and exercising basic knowledge for the past two weeks. I'm worried that the test was just a screen and the real requirements are hidden.

On the other hand, everyone's favorite anecdote: "senior engineers" not passing basic tests like mine.

I still don't feel qualified for entry level (and other peoples' interview experiences don't help!) and that's because entry level and other competency levels are subjective right now. What knowledge should you know from memory? What knowledge are you safe delegating to Google to remember? However, my feelings about my skill could just be nerves.

Lines in the sand would really help the self taught crowd and could be used to bring outdated, lagging CS programs and their graduates, up to speed.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#144

Post by Yunk »

elq wrote: post #112
Estragon wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people with lots of code on github and what looks like > lots of accepted pull requests to many projects who still > can't seem to reason How does that happen? Do you think they were lying about their github identities?

I can't really explain it. It was a puzzle to all of the interviewers. The only reasonable hypothesis I have where I assume the candidate was honest is that the quality of the code in his github profile is largely due to help from others.

The only reason I can do well in one of these interviews is because I recently started writing poor patch code for websites.

In development, who would do design, code and review on only one change in a straight sequence? It is like asking half your brain to shut down and the gods to smite you.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#145

Post by personZ »

benihana wrote: post #139
onislandtime wrote: post #85

Dear software professional: if you have been rejected because of a coding interview, don't feel bad or discouraged. It has little to do with how smart you are. Unfortunately, this style of interviews is likely ineffective and leads to hiring people who look alike and have similar skills. Solving a problem with someone looking over your shoulder and forcing you to talk to explain what you are thinking is a skill that…

> forcing you to talk to explain what you are thinking is a skill that I've never seen used in the real world You've never once explained your thought process to a coworker? Explained how you arrived at a conclusion? Tried to elucidate your reasoning on a piece of code to someone? These are absolutely real world skills and they are absolutely applicable when working on an engineering team with other humans. I underst…

Explaining your thought process to a coworker after you've written the code is ex post facto rationalization -- you are invariably leaving out many side-tracks, many missteps, and get to condense down a long process into a simple, seemingly obvious explanation. You already see the route, and now you're just describing it.

Trying to do the same while you're trying to solve the problem, with a judgmental crowd scoring your comments, however, is an absolutely and completely different matter. Even thinking about how I would narrate my thought process as writing this reply ("maybe I'll talk about how I'd narrate the writing of this reply") is confusing enough.

I don't disagree with the concept of technical interviews, especially given that there are countless people who hold none of the skills they claim they have mastered. A process I implemented requires developers to come in for a coding test, where they are equipped with a development machine with full internet connectivity and a full toolset, and given a problem within their skillset to solve, alone in a closed office and for as much times they need. After the test we do talk through their "thought process" and their implementation choices.

I know this offends some people, among whom I'm sure are the people who completely failed to demonstrate even a basic knowledge of skills they claimed an expert level of competency at.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#146

Post by zopppo »

elq wrote: post #56
benhoyt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This satisfies your problem description: def function(unsorted1, unsorted2): return [1, 2, 3] ;-)

indeed! Yet, in the interview I'm thinking of, he didn't even get this far. poorly specified questions are very important to ask IMHO :)

I'm curious what language was he using?

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#147

Post by runamok »

eric_bullington wrote: post #86

I find code interviewing so nerve-wracking that I'm delaying my transition from another profession into a much-desired full-time programming job. I'm 40 and always aced interviews before I did my first coding interview last year. In my prior career, I literally never had an interview that failed to result in an offer. But I blew my first coding interview both in the interview itself -- in which I repeatedly blanked o…

It can be all that you described. Very humbling.

My strategy was to start interviewing a lot. Don't go to your "first pick" companies first. Just go to any that look at all interesting as practice. That will take quite a bit of pressure off too. Over the course of 2 or 3 weeks I did phone screens at 20 or so companies and progressed to a code interview on most of those and then about 6 in person interviews which led to 2 offers. I never did get around to trying for my first pick companies because they are famous for dragging their feet and I was currently unemployed.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#148

Post by cnp »

lazerwalker wrote: post #134
akanet wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Solving a problem with someone looking over your shoulder and forcing you to talk to explain what you are thinking" is actually how problems are generally solved in most fields. Software engineering is perhaps one of the lone exceptions, and I think the pair programming movement has a bone or two to pick with your premise.

There's a big difference between someone looking over your shoulder and forcing you to explain what you're thinking, and someone working with you to collaboratively solve problems. In the latter case, you can ask lots of questions and throw out lots of dumb half-baked ideas, and actually get a meaningful, useful response from your partner/pair in response. If you're whiteboard interviewing, good luck getting your int…

THIS right here is the dream interviewing scenario and in my opinion the singularly best way to test a candidates competence, aptitude and personality. Solving problems together exercises all of these key things in harmony.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#149

Post by jbcurtin2 »

> Hi, my name is Aline. I used to code for a living. Now I hire engineers. One of the things I've done that I'm most proud of is Lessons from a year's worth of hiring data, where I showed that, in an engineering resume, pedigree isn't a particularly valuable signal (whereas typos and grammatical errors are)

So what happens if you're lystdexic?

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#150

Post by kilbasa »

sgustard wrote: post #114
smm2000 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better analogy is that classical musician is given sheet music to pop song and is told to play it on his favorite instrument. If he is good musician, he should be able to play it reasonably well even without practicing. There are musician who play extremely well but only after practicing one song for a long time - this type of interview sucks for them but they are minority. Most musicians suck with or without practic…

Agreed; the idea of hiring a musician without hearing them play would be madness. Not handing me a recording, not discussing intricacies of music theory, but actually playing live. And yet, a talented studio musician may suffer from performance anxiety in this situation. What to do?

I think the best thing is to ask them to warm up with something basic like a scale, and let them work their way up as their comfort level increases. I knew some people who were particularly pleasant and easy going, so they were able to relax people suffering from performance anxiety.

There are interviewers who treat coding interviews as a high pressure, adversarial exercise, though. On the other hand, those sorts of people are rarely a joy to work with.

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