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Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

businessinsider.fr

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Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#131

Post by m0zg »

smsm42 wrote: post #114
smsm42 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How partially? I could probably do a very simple one, without backtracking (though they'd need a big whiteboard if they want full code there) but if it's something like PCRE then I don't think Facebook headquarters have enough whiteboards to fit the code :)

Though I just realized "regex parser" can mean either "parsing some text using regex" or "code that compiles regex syntax into some kind of data structure but does not actually do anything else". The latter obviously is a much easier task.

It's neither. There's a DP solution for this problem and a recursive solution without memoization (with exponential complexity). The shortest solution I have seen was 18 lines of code.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#132

Post by lazyasciiart »

DerpyBaby123 wrote: post #128
lazyasciiart wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even just having the interviewer pair with the candidate on random leetcode problems would be pretty revolutionary.

Why do you think so? I know many companies that pair for interviews, Thoughtworks, and Pivotal Labs for example

I know those two, but they’re definitely outliers in many ways. I’ve never seen it done for a non-consulting company.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#133

Post by [deleted] »

smsm42 wrote: post #114
smsm42 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How partially? I could probably do a very simple one, without backtracking (though they'd need a big whiteboard if they want full code there) but if it's something like PCRE then I don't think Facebook headquarters have enough whiteboards to fit the code :)

Though I just realized "regex parser" can mean either "parsing some text using regex" or "code that compiles regex syntax into some kind of data structure but does not actually do anything else". The latter obviously is a much easier task.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#134

Post by lazyasciiart »

smsm42 wrote: post #114
smsm42 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How partially? I could probably do a very simple one, without backtracking (though they'd need a big whiteboard if they want full code there) but if it's something like PCRE then I don't think Facebook headquarters have enough whiteboards to fit the code :)

Though I just realized "regex parser" can mean either "parsing some text using regex" or "code that compiles regex syntax into some kind of data structure but does not actually do anything else". The latter obviously is a much easier task.

The question was: Write a method that can take in a regex and a string and return whether the string matches it, with the regex limited to the characters . * ? (And backtracking is definitely where I started coming unstuck)

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#135

Post by lazyasciiart »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #115
lazyasciiart wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tech screened at Facebook and the whiteboard question was to partially implement a regex parser.

A simple one isn't that hard to put together in an Hour. I've gotten this and thought it to be mildly interesting.

You don’t even have an hour in an initial tech screen.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#136

Post by YorkshireSeason »

Jach wrote: post #112
izacus wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fundamentally: Why are you having the "Can you code your way out of a wet paper bag" conversation instead of the "How much value can you add to this company" conversation? Because people lie. It's that simple. Referrals lie, CVs lie, friends lie to get friends in a position. Do understand that there's a fundamentally different set of problem a 40.000 FTE company has to deal with in comparison to a 30 person startup…

Being on the technical interviewer side of the table it was a bit disconcerting to see people get to me who really should have been filtered out at an earlier stage. Still, for the type of lies that are most damaging, I still ask the question "what's the easiest way to uncover the lie?" Hence, FizzBuzz and FizzBuzz style questions work just fine if the lie is "can program". Why stress people out with trivia quizzes o…

   too-strong fear of a 
   lying false positive
You might be a bit optimistic here: it's not always easy to deal with "lying false positives". Depending on the legislation it may be difficult to fire somebody, and involve going to court, sometimes going on over several years. Vindictive personalities may engage in sabotaging the company, the team, their (former) co-workers, as a retaliation for being fired. (Anecdote: I have witnessed all of the above in my work.)

Summary: the cost of a false positive almost always outweighs the cost of a false negative.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#137

Post by iends »

lordnacho wrote: post #102
pkaye wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 years ago I was interviewing for an engineering job and the VP of engineering at a company asked this question. I happened to have heard this question previously so spouted off a bunch of answers and impressed the heck out of the VP. And that is the real problem with this kind of questions. They largely depend on if you heard the question before or not.

I got into Oxford like that. Basically the interviews are a bunch of interesting questions like "How could I take the log of -1?" or "How is e defined?". If you already know the answer, your main problem is acting like you're thinking it through.

When I interviewed for MIT I didn't get crazy puzzle questions. Is this pretty standard for Oxford?

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#138

Post by avisser »

whack wrote: post #65

Here's what they are doing, from the linked blog post: > Our dev teams had taken to working with candidates to solve a bug or feature as part of the interview process. It was a collaborative effort with the candidate and the team working together to solve a real problem. Sounds like a great idea. Except it's so variable. What if you get lucky and you get a easy bug, whereas someone else gets something much harder. Le…

> taken to working with candidates to solve a bug or feature as part of the interview process

This is unethical. How is this anything other than unpaid labor?

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#139

Post by [deleted] »

kronin wrote: post #124
mancerayder wrote: post #39

Great, now can Netflix, Google and Facebook do this, too? Not because I want to work in these places, but because they influence everyone else and as a senior engineer in the systems space I feel I shouldn't need to study days or weeks for fizzbuzz sorting algorithms questions that are designed to test comp sci recent grads. I have a proven career, and was never suddenly stumped in a project due to not being able to.…

I've interviewed and been interviewing for over a decade. I have had the displeasure of interviewing many people who have very impressive resumes yet when asked how they would judge their skillset in an area, and being told from them that they would say "expert", being shown exactly the opposite when it came time to answer some questions in that area. One data point... Senior engineer that founded the local java user…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#140

Post by pgeorgi »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #121
smsm42 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interviewed at Facebook and the tech part was completely sane and appropriate, the technical task was a bit fizzbuzzy but not something you'd need to spend nights digging into obscure algorithms book, but rather simple task which required some thinking, but not too much of it. No experience with Google or Netflix. As of looking at CV, I've seen people with great CVs that proved utterly useless and of course the opp…

The issue with that is that if my CV is incredibly specialized in one area that happens to match the job I’m going for (eg compilers), why test my knowledge in designing things like a distributed system and in how great I do dynamic programming (that is not useful in my area)??? It feels like there is no verification at all of what my CV claims, nor does it give me a chance to show off the skills I’ve been working on…

In larger corporations it may not be 100% finalized where you would end up.

Knowing that yes, you master compilers (that's usually quickly determined, potentially fast enough for you not to notice it since you live and breath compilers), have basic knowledge in smashing together enough html tags to build a simple dashboard but you never had to deal with processes that spanned multiple computers, allows more flexible allocation:

Ideally, they'll give you a compiler related task, but if they find someone even more suited for that one open position in compiler internals, they might offer you a job in the adjacent compiler-as-a-service team where you'd start out doing dashboards and then move to whatever more complex task needs work.

But they won't need to bother offering you the distributed systems position that scales up the compiler-as-a-service product across the whole world without sending you to some training first.

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