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How I Interview

rkoutnik.com

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Re: How I Interview

#71

Post by deathanatos »

koevet wrote: post #62

I have decided that I will no longer take technical interviews. I have 25 years of software development under my belt, I published a book, spoke at various conferences in Europe, have a Github profile (admittedly not very lively), worked for well-established enterprises and have great references. Why shall I still prove myself? If I was a senior lawyer or an architect joining a new studio, I strongly doubt I would ha…

> Why shall I still prove myself?

Because we see candidates claiming that level of experience that cannot construct a simple for loop.

Re: How I Interview

#72

Post by emerongi »

yeukhon wrote: post #55
invalidfunction wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's minesweeper, not an enterprise storage server. Spending 3 hours planning minesweeper would be insane. Heck even planning for more than 20 minutes, in my personal opinion, is overkill. You should be able to at least get started before the 30 minute mark and if you spent half the time planning should be close to being done before the end of the hour. At the end of the hour, just explain what you have left to do.

I don't know how to play minesweeper, so how on earth am I supposed to solve it in 30 minutes? Looking up the rule in 30 minutes? I don't know how to play Sudoku either. DO you know how to play Go? Can you implement that in 30 minuets? Do you know how to play Mofoka? Of course you don't know Mofoka I just made it up. Please think about how ridiculous it is to ask someone to implement a game in an interview.

I'd expect the interviewer to explain the rules beforehand, probably even show the game quickly. That way everyone starts off with the same amount of knowledge about the game and then it's all about programming.

Re: How I Interview

#73

Post by thisone »

krisdol wrote: post #59
Yen wrote: post #32

Am I the only one who, when being interviewed, doesn't mind whiteboard coding? At interviews where I've later been given an offer, it's usually a relatively small algorithmic design challenge, where the specifics don't matter, just the pseudocode. In interviews I've given involving whiteboard programming, I've always emphasized that it doesn't have to be valid or even semi-valid code for any language, just a semi-rig…

> Am I the only one who, when being interviewed, doesn't mind whiteboard coding? I'm sure you're not, but my experience is completely opposite of yours. I'm still relatively early on in my career (I've had 3 software jobs, but have grown up coding since I was 12), but every job I scored was one that didn't use a whiteboard/paper problem during an interview. I got a lot better at whiteboards with practice; but early o…

Whiteboarding is a skill that the vast majority of people will have to work to obtain. It's not the natural way that we work.

Personally, if you know you're going to be interviewing, start practicing for whiteboarding. There are books and online resources available to help you get at least comfortable with it. The resources also help drive home that whiteboarding should be about process, not about perfect solutions.

Algorithms have generally taken years to perfect by PhDs, why should you be expected to perfect an algorithm you haven't memorised in 30 minutes?

Re: How I Interview

#74

Post by NumberCruncher »

ronilan wrote: post #53

So, like, my own personal experience... A couple of years ago I applied for a certain company that this year turned out to be a unicorn. The automated reply said to build a Minesweeper. So I did. It took a several hours to get into a shape that is playable. Then it took several days to polish it into app store quality. You can play here: http://www.ronilan.com/bugsweeper/ Download here: http://www.appstore.com/bugswe…

I like the game!

Re: How I Interview

#75

Post by dvcrn »

imh wrote: post #58
ronilan wrote: post #53

So, like, my own personal experience... A couple of years ago I applied for a certain company that this year turned out to be a unicorn. The automated reply said to build a Minesweeper. So I did. It took a several hours to get into a shape that is playable. Then it took several days to polish it into app store quality. You can play here: http://www.ronilan.com/bugsweeper/ Download here: http://www.appstore.com/bugswe…

Automated response questions are so disrespectful. "We won't take the time to see if we're in any way interested, and won't unless you devote your own time."

Even worse are automated responses from a no-reply emails like jobvite or friends. If I already took the time to interview with you, invested hours of my personal time into you, maybe even took a day off just so I can make your weird schedule, give me at least a personal answer or a chance to ask for questions.

I love to learn new things and actually really want to learn about the mistakes I made. Giving me a "no thank you" from a noreply after all that time is like a big middle finger in the face.

Re: How I Interview

#76

Post by vijayr »

vdnkh wrote: post #5

I had an interview like this recently. A "live coding" exercise after (in their words) two excellent phone screens. The test was to implement a class which would be run through a bunch of unit tests. Simple right? It turned out to be a disaster. First was the choice of language. They offered to take it in JS, Ruby, Python, or Java. I'm a .NET developer whose competent with JS, but I really could be better at it. I as…

I've had interviews where they told me to code on paper, with full syntax (no missing semicolons). This included drawing out db tables and their relations etc.

At one place - they gave me a very old computer and their actual code base and told me to fix a bug. No other information provided (that was actually a fun exercise).

Different places do it differently - but all I can say is that none of these are enjoyable to the interviewee, and I think in most cases they are not enjoyable to the interviewers either.

But the absolute worst thing is dealing with recruiters - starting with asking candidates to fill out forms so long that would put gov bureaucrats to shame. They also have a list of tech questions given to them to "screen" candidates and you can guess how that goes ("No not Linux, have you worked with LAMP?", "I am not talking about Javascript, I'm talking about jQuery, could you rate yourself on jQuery?")

Re: How I Interview

#77

Post by maccard »

phamilton wrote: post #42
lilcarlyung wrote: post #6

Would be funny to come into an interview as the candidate and give the employer pre-packaged tasks to complete to evaluate them on, to decide if I as the candidate actually want to work there.

I've been toying with the idea of asking for a reverse interview. I get to ask about the challenges they've solved in great detail and how they dealt with potential and actual issues. They get to answer and decide to I know what I'm talking about.

Is this not the whole point of the interview for you now anyway? For me, if I go in somewhere and get grilled for X hours and they deprive me of a chance to ask about certain aspects of the company, you can guarantee u won't take the job.

Re: How I Interview

#78

Post by maindrive »

I somehow think that the interviewer should also be interviewed at the same time. If you have that kind of experience under your belt, one might definitely be interested in knowing if the person he/she would work under is really capable or not ? Working with/under someone lesser than you n same person is taking your interview, its kind of a insult to be honest.

Re: How I Interview

#79

Post by koevet »

dasboth wrote: post #70
koevet wrote: post #62

I have decided that I will no longer take technical interviews. I have 25 years of software development under my belt, I published a book, spoke at various conferences in Europe, have a Github profile (admittedly not very lively), worked for well-established enterprises and have great references. Why shall I still prove myself? If I was a senior lawyer or an architect joining a new studio, I strongly doubt I would ha…

That sounds like a sensible way to work as a freelancer. Have you already had success with it or is it just a plan for the future for now? I'd be interested in hearing how it pans/panned out.

Well, yes and no. For around 3 years, I have been running my own consulting company with a friend. We were doing pretty much what I do as a 'solo' consultant, except that we were fronted by a company. This automatically removed the need for interviews. As soon as I sold my company and got back to solo consulting, I had to re-enter into this ridiculous circus which are technical interviews.

So, to answer your question, I will apply this approach from 2016.

Re: How I Interview

#80

Post by koevet »

deathanatos wrote: post #71
koevet wrote: post #62

I have decided that I will no longer take technical interviews. I have 25 years of software development under my belt, I published a book, spoke at various conferences in Europe, have a Github profile (admittedly not very lively), worked for well-established enterprises and have great references. Why shall I still prove myself? If I was a senior lawyer or an architect joining a new studio, I strongly doubt I would ha…

> Why shall I still prove myself? Because we see candidates claiming that level of experience that cannot construct a simple for loop.

Well claiming is a very far galaxy from "demonstrating". What about references? What about networking? What about published books and papers. This stuff is very hard to make up, especially references.
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