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Tech Interview Torture Chamber

mattfriz.com

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Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#61

Post by adrianggg »

> Mildly ill; interminably coughs, sniffs, or sneezes

YES! One of my pet peeves. The worst, doing a phone screen/interview with someone who sniffs constantly while you're trying to problem solve.

There is a strong correlation between self awareness and intelligence, (I'd google for the white papers for those who will no doubt disagree).

Anyone who chronically sniffs is not very smart and not someone I want to work closely with or at all. How about that as a key indicator, lacks self awareness or consideration of others.

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#62

Post by [deleted] »

jakebasile wrote: post #55
king_magic wrote: post #27

I read through maybe 10 paragraphs, but the author's toxic style was just too much for me. Spoiler alert: this person sounds like someone I would never hire on attitude alone, which reeks of "entitled, sarcastic brat".

It's plainly satire. It's in the style of a The Onion piece but with more depth, and probably personal experience.

[deleted]

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#63

Post by komali2 »

amorphid wrote: post #54
zachsnow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> go after normal business hours Realistically you will be asked to work after normal business hours now and then (and, in our industry, many times a year), so you'd think they wouldn't mind scheduling the one interview you'll do with them whenever the hell you can fit it in!

If you're working with a recruiter, those pre-interview references are also business leads for that recruiter. Source: I'm a former recruiter

I got mad props when I wrote a simple scraper for one of the resume sites we were using that pulled reference info off resumes (oil and gas engineers like to put who they know on their resume) and stuck it into a spreadsheet. Happily, solving problems in that manner made me realize I love programming and led to me switching careers from that nightmare :)

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#64

Post by akhilcacharya »

VladKovac wrote: post #30

One thing I found out from interviewing a lot (for junior-ish positions) was that dynamic programming questions are actually your friend. Since it's a "hard topic" they give you a relatively easy one that can be solved using brute force recursion with memoization slapped on top so it takes like 5-10 mins and looks super impressive.

But for which companies?

For some reason I doubt that would work for the Big4+Unicorn interviews - then again, I've never gotten a DP problem from those companies.

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#65

Post by king_magic »

peferron wrote: post #40
king_magic wrote: post #27

I read through maybe 10 paragraphs, but the author's toxic style was just too much for me. Spoiler alert: this person sounds like someone I would never hire on attitude alone, which reeks of "entitled, sarcastic brat".

Are you also making a joke here? I'm genuinely unsure.

No, I am dead serious.

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#66

Post by komali2 »

adrianggg wrote: post #61

> Mildly ill; interminably coughs, sniffs, or sneezes YES! One of my pet peeves. The worst, doing a phone screen/interview with someone who sniffs constantly while you're trying to problem solve. There is a strong correlation between self awareness and intelligence, (I'd google for the white papers for those who will no doubt disagree). Anyone who chronically sniffs is not very smart and not someone I want to work cl…

I swear I saw a paper on here a couple months back about some weird negative correlation between intelligence and tendency to breath through the mouth rather than nostrils. Like, somebody had managed to provide evidence that mouth-breathers are stupid.

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#67

Post by ryandrake »

ng12 wrote: post #6

> Speaks with an accent so thick you could spread it on toast Oh god, this is giving me flashbacks. In college I phone screened twice with a certain Seattle megacorp and both times the interviewer was completely unintelligible. This was before the popularity of codepair so the interview was completely verbal. I specifically remember that during one interview it took at least 5 minutes for me to tease out that the int…

I remember a phone screen where it sounded like the interviewer was calling from their hands-free headset in a moving convertible car. I pretty much could not understand a word of what was said. Asked if this was a good time, but he wanted to continue. It was a senior exec-y guy so cruising down the 101 was probably the only chance he had to talk. Company not interested after that call.

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#68

Post by komali2 »

jakebasile wrote: post #47
watwut wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That favours people with high charizma and pleasant personality (not same as pleasant to work with) regardless of skills or work ethics. Compared to those, whiteboard or live coding is improvement.

Why have only one option that caters to those that can memorize algorithms? Have multiple types of interviews instead of forcing everyone to take the same type.

You can tailor the whiteboard problems to be something more than just memorizing algorithms. My company I'm at now whiteboarded with me bugs they found on my personal website.

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#69

Post by rguzman »

CriticalSection wrote: post #11

Surprised I don't see my main pet peeve - early reference check. Before I even talk to anyone I'm asked to provide three phone numbers of three former managers. So I have to call them up, make sure the number is still working, and ask for the favor that they can give me a reference in case anyone reads my application. All of these other things are on me. References I have to call two or three (or at one company, six)…

> Surprised I don't see my main pet peeve - early reference check.

the right way seems to be to give a heads up, early on, that references will be needed and be explicit about when they will be contacted. this ensures that the process doesn't block for a couple of days on the candidate contacting their references.

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#70

Post by joeskyyy »

> Purge the room of erasers. This forces the candidate to erase with their hands, reminding them that mistakes will be smeared all over them.

I actually had to laugh out loud at my desk at this. My office is absolutely guilty of terrible markers and lack of erasers.

All in good fun folks. All in good fun.

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