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Data Structures for Coding Interviews

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Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#71

Post by bastijn »

curiousDog wrote: post #66
ng12 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I could have answered the question easily but what for? To show that you're not a complete diva who's willing to put in some work even if it's unpleasant? The question I ask is not real, either. It's entirely contrived. But I ask it because it's the best way I know to identify candidates who: 1. Can think critically about a data structure. 2. Can communicate with me about how to solve non-trivial problems. 3. Can t…

Non-trivial is a subjective thing though. I see people asking the edit-distance problem for example, that was an award winning research paper a few years ago! Also, how do you differentiate between candidates who've seen your question before vs others seeing it for the first time? Most interviewers calibrate on one question. I think the scales these days have tipped on the side of luck. If you've practiced a shit ton…

Don't forget companies the size and status of Google run these questions to quickly reduce the number of applicants. They accept a large number of false negatives in favor of a false positive. They have that luxury but if you don't realize you loose a lot of good candidates because of it.

Also, I think the better alternative is to ask questions you currently struggle with in your daily work. Just ask around in your department(s). There are always good interview questions to be answered that are close to today's issues.

Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#72

Post by leeny »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #70
leeny wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I'm the founder of interviewing.io. We're coming out of private beta soon, which means we'll be sending out invites to folks on the waiting list shortly. A year is a long time though, and I'm sorry you had to wait that long, so I figured least I could do was kick you an invite (check your email). Thanks for being patient with us while we figured things out.

I guess it's a nice gesture, but this does nothing to address my point that, as far as I can tell, recommending interviewing.io to anyone is wildly inappropriate, and I can't see how it happens at all. (Not that you're the proper person to address that; it's more of a question for gameguy43 et al.) Are the people giving interviewing advice not actually even attempting to do the things they're recommending?

IIRC, folks who've recommended us on HN have used it (we get notified when people post about us bc it's obviously something we care about a lot). Sorry again about the delay, and I hope you like the product.

Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#73

Post by drewrv »

narak wrote: post #49
Mutinix wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he's being hyperbolic, maybe not. But that's entirely besides the point. I'm absolutely certain that there are many, many engineers who failed interviews because they couldn't write a zig-zag string and could yet come up with good solutions to problems at a real company. > what do you expect a programmer who can't reinvent a half-decent bubble sort to do But interviews aren't testing for that. The guy who inven…

Good CS fundamentals are important because they are transferable skill to a wide array of problems a startup may face. Just because someone wrote an impressive framework or library doesn't mean given a complex problem outside of their known domain (web framework design or package management tool), they would be have the necessary background to solve it. With strong math and CS knowledge, you can reason through almost…

> Good CS fundamentals are important because they are transferable skill to a wide array of problems a startup may face

I'm really skeptical of this claim. Nothing about CS fundamentals prepares you for debugging mobile browser performance, or machine learning, or setting up a sharded database. Maybe the big companies have a reason for asking these questions, but few startups benefit from these types of questions.

Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#74

Post by savanaly »

pavlov wrote: post #62

Hiring engineers based on data structure trivia is like hiring a marketing department based on spelling bee scores.

In that one wouldn't want to hire someone as a marketer who couldn't spell "cat"?

Not because it's necessary to be able to spell "cat", even, but because the inability to do so might indicate in a bayesian sense that the person is not likely equipped to do the job.

Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#75

Post by soham »

throwawaybbq1 wrote: post #3
gameguy43 wrote: post #2

Original Author here. Happy to answer questions about this piece or coding interviews in general! And eager to receive any feedback. Thanks for the post!

You've got a cool site and I appreciate all the hard work creating high quality content (I've looked at the free questions and considered subscribing a few times in the past). I think your business model/pricing could use work. Unless I'm mistaken and things are going well .. in that case, I'll withdraw to my cave :-p My suggestion would be to have a slightly cheaper tier (probably no more than a hundred bucks). This…

We are definitely on to tackling the prep thing. Been around for 3 years actually: http://interviewkickstart.com

Looks like Kaplan is not going to be interested in these things after the recent shutdown of DBC.

Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#76

Post by cakedoggie »

bastijn wrote: post #65
ng12 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I could have answered the question easily but what for? To show that you're not a complete diva who's willing to put in some work even if it's unpleasant? The question I ask is not real, either. It's entirely contrived. But I ask it because it's the best way I know to identify candidates who: 1. Can think critically about a data structure. 2. Can communicate with me about how to solve non-trivial problems. 3. Can t…

First, if he would have given that answer instead of saying others did it I would have answered the question. However, his answer indicated they asked just because of asking. Second, even when you have those reasons ask questions on actual situations that would occur on the job. You run a large C# code base that struggles with its size and configuration complexity vs flexibility? Ask questions on how he would design…

Isn't that answer obvious they?

They need to know if you are skilled enough, and this is the quickest way to find that info out.

Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#77

Post by bastijn »

ng12 wrote: post #69
bastijn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, if he would have given that answer instead of saying others did it I would have answered the question. However, his answer indicated they asked just because of asking. Second, even when you have those reasons ask questions on actual situations that would occur on the job. You run a large C# code base that struggles with its size and configuration complexity vs flexibility? Ask questions on how he would design…

I think that's putting the cart before the horse. Every company I've worked for has had a hard enough time just finding people with basic coding literacy. Finding somebody with good problem solving, communication, and programming skills is the hard part -- wondering if that person is the guy to architect a specific aspect of our platform is secondary. I can't speak for that job in particular but if half of your promi…

It was meant as an example. If I would interview for an architect I would probably ask such a thing as I need to know if s/he would be capable of thinking ahead and outside of the direct requirements.

For an engineer I would ask different questions. However, if I interview them for a job that does not focus on performance or scalability I would rather ask questions based on situations they run into than data structures. Data structures would be a last resort if I had no other options for questions. For most knowing when to use a certain data type is sufficient for me. Like math, I don't need them to give me the full proof of the theorem as long as they know it exists and can apply it in their daily work.

That doesn't mean I wouldn't like a candidate who has it all of course. But those are scarce here, and probably everywhere as you mentioned. I am already happy with a person who can do the job s/he was hired for and hopefully more.

Again, if you have valid reasons to ask what you ask, do. If not, think again if there are better alternatives is all I advocate.

Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#78

Post by drewrv »

pavlov wrote: post #62

Hiring engineers based on data structure trivia is like hiring a marketing department based on spelling bee scores.

I think these types of questions are a good filter for the big tech companies, just in a different way than most suspect. What these types of interviews filter for is...

- People fresh out of college and therefore relatively young. It would be illegal to make this an explicit policy.

- People who really really really want the job. All employers want to filter by this criteria.

- People who will accept the status quo and tolerate absurd bureaucracy.

Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#79

Post by cakedoggie »

Mutinix wrote: post #45
smnscu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the perennial apologetics of weaponized mediocrity. If you can't write a simple recursive algorithm that swaps two values (Max Howell), two nested for loops (DHH), or show me that you used Python at least once (uhh length? yes, there is this builtin, I forgot its name...), why would I want to hire you over someone who has seen a computer before? And to avoid being called hypocritical, here's off the top of my hea…

> why would I want to hire you over someone who has seen a computer before? Because, you know, they invented Ruby on Rails and Homebrew? Incredible, really. You were so adamant on being hostile that you managed to put yourself over Max Howell and DHH in a couple of sentences. These people have made valuable contributions to the tech industry as it stands today. This is a fact and not an opinion. They invented Homebre…

Not everybody can say that though.

Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#80

Post by NTDF9 »

drewrv wrote: post #73
narak wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good CS fundamentals are important because they are transferable skill to a wide array of problems a startup may face. Just because someone wrote an impressive framework or library doesn't mean given a complex problem outside of their known domain (web framework design or package management tool), they would be have the necessary background to solve it. With strong math and CS knowledge, you can reason through almost…

> Good CS fundamentals are important because they are transferable skill to a wide array of problems a startup may face I'm really skeptical of this claim. Nothing about CS fundamentals prepares you for debugging mobile browser performance, or machine learning, or setting up a sharded database. Maybe the big companies have a reason for asking these questions, but few startups benefit from these types of questions.

>>I'm really skeptical of this claim. Nothing about CS fundamentals prepares you for debugging mobile browser performance, or machine learning, or setting up a sharded database. Maybe the big companies have a reason for asking these questions, but few startups benefit from these types of questions.

To summarize this statement, there's a reason why algos and datastructs is taught only for 1 semester out of 8 in college.

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