101–110 of 315 posts
Hiring Manager Perspective: Everyone lies, sorry. As a candidate, I hate technical interviews. For the reasons above. As the poor schmuck asked to make the hiring decision, however, I've learned that I can't live without them. My technical isn't complicated. A very basic SQL assignment (delivered to an audience which claims to know SQL) that is followed by a few broader database design / data process QA questions. En…
Hiring Manager Perspective: Everyone lies, sorry. As a candidate, I hate technical interviews. For the reasons above. As the poor schmuck asked to make the hiring decision, however, I've learned that I can't live without them. My technical isn't complicated. A very basic SQL assignment (delivered to an audience which claims to know SQL) that is followed by a few broader database design / data process QA questions. En…
Yeah, many of these kinds of blog posts strike me as being out of touch with what hiring is like. So don't ask about algorithms, don't ask to write code, don't ask to use a whiteboard and ignore if the candidate can't handle the pressure of a standard interview? How are you expected to weed out unsuitable candidates?
Hiring Manager Perspective: Everyone lies, sorry. As a candidate, I hate technical interviews. For the reasons above. As the poor schmuck asked to make the hiring decision, however, I've learned that I can't live without them. My technical isn't complicated. A very basic SQL assignment (delivered to an audience which claims to know SQL) that is followed by a few broader database design / data process QA questions. En…
- read that file in
- store it in some sort of data structure
- allow users to run commands to retrieve movie titles based on name, release year, etc.
Command-line was totally fine, you had access to the Internet, and as much time as you wanted.
At least 50% of people couldn't do it. One candidate spent hours staring at the screen before slipping out with a note left behind, "I apologize for wasting your time"
In all honesty, I'm not sure the author did a lot of interviewing. For example, > The famous fizzbuzz test simply asks "are you aware of the modulo operator?" Wait, what? No, it asks "can you write a for loop without breaking a sweat?". There's a rightfully vivid debate going on about the virtue of asking algorithmic questions in interviews, but fizzbuzz is hardly algorithmic. I'd wager that virtually all programmers…
>> The famous fizzbuzz test simply asks "are you aware of the modulo operator?" > Wait, what? No, it asks "can you write a for loop without breaking a sweat?". There are notorious cases where senior engineers with years of actual honest coding experience "fail" fizzbuzz. IMO, That happens in two ways: 1) Not knowing (forgotten?) what a modulus operator is, and trying to code one up from scratch with a for loop. This…
It's surprisingly easy actually.
var remainder = x - Math.floor(x/y)*y
(Math.floor because javascript)
Because as far as I understand it we use that process at Google because we can afford a lot of false negatives because we are inundated with a lot of resumes.
Smaller companies and startups surely are not, and finding candidates must be harder. Unless the job market is saturated with candidates.
Many perfectly good, maybe even excellent, candidates will just falter and fail in a whiteboard coding interview. I do, and many people I've interviewed have. Coding on the spot using pen and paper sucks. I think by coding. Give me Emacs and a REPL, and let me go away and think for a bit, and I'll produce something way better.
Smaller companies should think twice before trying to emulate Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. In a small company social cohesion is very important, so rapport and personality are very important, cultural factors are important, experience in dealing with similar types of environments, familiarity with technical stack.
That's how I used to interview before coming to Google, anyways. It seems like the industry has turned in very large part to this hostile "prove yourself" methodology...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is actually a really great point. Its like hiring a writer based on their grammar. A writer could have perfect grammar but their books are boring as hell. Or even hiring a writer for adhering to the techniques of connoisseurs. The book "Ready Player One" was heavily criticized as amateur work (it was, after all, the author's very first book), but it nonetheless was hugely successful (and even has a movie in the…
Would you hire a writer with bad grammar?
In all honesty, I'm not sure the author did a lot of interviewing. For example, > The famous fizzbuzz test simply asks "are you aware of the modulo operator?" Wait, what? No, it asks "can you write a for loop without breaking a sweat?". There's a rightfully vivid debate going on about the virtue of asking algorithmic questions in interviews, but fizzbuzz is hardly algorithmic. I'd wager that virtually all programmers…
Hiring Manager Perspective: Everyone lies, sorry. As a candidate, I hate technical interviews. For the reasons above. As the poor schmuck asked to make the hiring decision, however, I've learned that I can't live without them. My technical isn't complicated. A very basic SQL assignment (delivered to an audience which claims to know SQL) that is followed by a few broader database design / data process QA questions. En…
> As a candidate, I hate technical interviews. For the reasons above. As the poor schmuck asked to make the hiring decision, however, I've learned that I can't live without them. Yeah, many of these kinds of blog posts strike me as being out of touch with what hiring is like. So don't ask about algorithms, don't ask to write code, don't ask to use a whiteboard and ignore if the candidate can't handle the pressure of…
Hiring Manager Perspective: Everyone lies, sorry. As a candidate, I hate technical interviews. For the reasons above. As the poor schmuck asked to make the hiring decision, however, I've learned that I can't live without them. My technical isn't complicated. A very basic SQL assignment (delivered to an audience which claims to know SQL) that is followed by a few broader database design / data process QA questions. En…
Potential Employee Perspective: they can't be serious!!! A lot of times a job spec contains a minimum of 10-15 skill you need to know. And that's just the modest one. Maybe employers should stop trying to find the non-existing 'developer rock-star' and people would stop lying. The funny thing is that even the developers themselves start to behave like that when they are on the other end of the hiring (Been there, don…