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Stanford CS9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview

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Re: Stanford CS9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and their GitHub profile. I have nothing in my GitHub profile. Some toy repos of no particular significance, one contribution to Rust that I've made before realizing it takes too much of my spare time... and that's it. I don't think that should make me un-hireable ... people that have kids tend to not have much spare time besides work, learning new stuff to stay relevant, and taking care of said kids. Not to mentio…

> I have nothing in my GitHub profile. Some toy repos of no particular significance... I don't think that should make me un-hireable... Same thing with me but I don't think it's hard to spend some weekends and write something to express your motivation an illustrate your coding skills. > people that have kids tend to not have much spare time... my company has me going through some bureaucratic process for any sort of…

> what I don't understand is how does it make sense to hire a coder whose code (a real (though not necessarily big) app code, not a 5-minute puzzle code) you have never seen.

Well, let's break this down a bit:

- if you hire a junior, all you care about is smartness & maybe culture fit. You get both of these better through interview than GitHub repo - if you hire a senior, you hire for social/organizational skills, problem-solving skills, diverse expertise etc. GitHub is not particularly relevant

GitHub makes sense when you look for someone with deep specific expertise in a narrow, open-source-related technical area. Which is rare. I think it's more often used to check that "this person has coding style preferences similar to mine", which is IMO not really a great idea.

Re: Stanford CS9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have nothing in my GitHub profile. Some toy repos of no particular significance... I don't think that should make me un-hireable... Same thing with me but I don't think it's hard to spend some weekends and write something to express your motivation an illustrate your coding skills. > people that have kids tend to not have much spare time... my company has me going through some bureaucratic process for any sort of…

> what I don't understand is how does it make sense to hire a coder whose code (a real (though not necessarily big) app code, not a 5-minute puzzle code) you have never seen. Well, let's break this down a bit: - if you hire a junior, all you care about is smartness & maybe culture fit. You get both of these better through interview than GitHub repo - if you hire a senior, you hire for social/organizational skills, pr…

Makes sense, thanks. We are just speaking about different things then. All the times I were looking for coders I was interested in neither juniors (whom I would have to teach) nor seniors (who would lead the team) but middles (who would just write good code given a very specific task and very detailed design).
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