161–170 of 238 posts
Its counter intuitive but whiteboarding is actually more inclusive IMO. Anyone who has 35 bucks can lock themselves in a room for 3 months with a copy of CTCI and a pad of paper and come out with an 80+k salary. You cant do that in any other industry. If we judge candidates purely on work experience that just favors the incumbents who have already broken into the industry and presumably already quite comfortable in l…
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I get your point, but I'll also point out that costs a lot more than $35 to lock yourself in a room for 3 months. Many people don't have guaranteed room and board for that long.
> Many people don't have guaranteed room and board for that long. If a person has been in the industry for more than than three years and doesn't have 3 months cash reserve saved up[1], they are severely mismanaging their finances. _Particularly_ since we're seeing increasing warnings from the financial sector that we're in a bubble already. [1] barring some unexpected catastrophic expense
Whiteboards are useful for conversations about software architecture, but that seems to be the less common application in interviews. Writing pseudocode you've memorized from a book is fundamentally meaningless. You have to realize it isn't really a programming test: it's a filter for whether you're willing to do what's required to fit in. The principle is the same as in classic British private schools where boys wer…
Very interesting topic ... IMHO .. white boarding would be a useful process if it is used to poke into the thought process of the interviewee, independent of the answer being right or wrong ... think most important is to hire guys with good personality .. then motivation .. then ability to reason n learn ... the technical specifics would not be n should not be a major factor if one is hiring for the long term ...
“Never memorize something that you can look up.” -- Albert Einstein
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No, it's just moving those 1-2 hours to home instead of at the interview. If you can take time off for an hours-long interview, you have the time to complete that kind of task.
It's asymmetrical though. A reviewer can yea-or-nay my 1-hour assignment in a minute or two. If I'm desperate for work, sure I'll do it. But my position is in high enough demand that I can choose another position that doesn't require me to do homework. If they made some attempt to get to know me, talk to me, and then give me homework, I might bite. But I'm not going to do hours worth of work just for the chance to ge…
Mostly what I'm going for is:
(1) How does the candidate communicate something they know that others might not.
(2) How good is the candidate at what they claim to be good at, for the purposes of calibrating their resume.
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It's asymmetrical though. A reviewer can yea-or-nay my 1-hour assignment in a minute or two. If I'm desperate for work, sure I'll do it. But my position is in high enough demand that I can choose another position that doesn't require me to do homework. If they made some attempt to get to know me, talk to me, and then give me homework, I might bite. But I'm not going to do hours worth of work just for the chance to ge…
Why would you apply for a job that you don't want? And if you want it, why wouldn't you put at least some effort into getting it? Effort does not only include writing a cover letter that will be appealing for the company you apply to instead of just forwarding HR your resume. It also includes small activities like these. You sound more like a spoiled brat, pardon my French, than an artist looking for new opportunitie…
It's a clever intervew if you expect the answer to be "I would find an appropriate module on cpan". People shouldn't be rewriting these algorithms.