Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Today's Coding Interview Game

shubharamani.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 127 posts

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#31

Post by alain94040 »

mikeklaas wrote: post #8

If I found this article by a potential applicant, I'd be much less likely to hire them. Besides the obvious red flag of the sentiment why should I have to code at a programming interview , the knowledge that they have been rejected by many other companies would make me worry.

I didn't have that impression (and I have been a hiring manager for 10 years+). It gave me the impression of someone senior. What I would then try to determine in the interview is whether that person has grown to become a strong developer, or rather has reached a level of incompetency.

But I wouldn't pass judgment either way based on that blog post.

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#32

Post by hackinthebochs »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #6

Coding general solutions should be par for the course. I agree that some interviewers are coming up with contrived examples. But of the 6 data points I have now from hiring people, those who could code on the white board turned out to be good employees (4 of them) and those who could not turned out to be a vast waste of time (2 of them). As jconphoenix was alluding to, I would have rather ended up rejecting more of t…

I don't really understand this mentality. Is is really that hard to get rid of the charlatans that slip through after the fact? Just monitor them fairly closely (but secretly) for a couple of weeks. Have some sort of object measure of performance for that time period. If they don't pass muster, get rid of them. This seems like a better method than spending 6 months to fill a couple of positions.

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#33

Post by timcederman »

aplusbi wrote: post #25

I've interviewed a lot of programmers and I think there are many misconceptions about what an interviewer is looking for or expecting. I don't expect you to be able to code quicksort from memory. I do expect you to be able to code quicksort given the spec for it. Just because I point out an error doesn't mean I'm counting it against you. I'm pointing it out to see how you handle it. I do expect you to ask questions.…

I feel exactly the same. Don't try to make stuff up you don't know, do ask me questions, do just TRY, rather than noodling about and not saying or doing anything.

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#34

Post by blahedo »

sblom wrote: post #9

If you remember what a linked list is, how pointers (or references) work, and have written more than 10k real world lines of code in your favorite programming language, I would fully expect you to be able to write, not memorize, any of the linked list functions that you mention. I certainly understand your frustration, but I really don't think either the tone or the content of this blog post is going to help land a j…

But possibly not error-free the first time at a whiteboard. Talk about unrealistic conditions.

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#35

Post by j_baker »

Evansbee wrote: post #29

I feel bad for this lady, but there's a flaw in this logic (and with the logic of many commenters here). Everyone assumes that the battle is between... Person 1: -Great resume -Relevant work history -Strong sense of corporate citizenship -Can't code on white board and Person 2: -Can code on whiteboard -Smokes crack in the bathroom But the reality is, you're all interviewing for the same job! You're not getting the jo…

Unless I was hiring a professional whiteboard coder, I would find another method.

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#36

Post by phillijw »

rsl7 wrote: post #7
jchonphoenix wrote: post #2

I understand where the author is coming from because many interviews questions are unreasonable and test absolutely nothing. However, if someone couldn't code a linked list on a whiteboard, I'd be severely worried. Same goes for a binary tree. If you know what a linked list or binary tree is, you should have no issues figuring out how to represent them with code in 10 minutes. The other trickier problems are there to…

Code on the whiteboard is counterproductive at best. Let's hook up your laptop to the projector so I can get a glimpse of how you interact with your computer. I learn more about you by seeing your relationship with your text editor, how you look up information you can't remember, etc. Not watching you sweat with a marker in your hand.

I agree. I can type a good chunk of code in a few seconds and have it nicely placed in my head to think about other things. On a whiteboard it may take me a minute just to write something out and by that time I've forgotten what I was doing.

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#37

Post by Evansbee »

j_baker wrote: post #35
Evansbee wrote: post #29

I feel bad for this lady, but there's a flaw in this logic (and with the logic of many commenters here). Everyone assumes that the battle is between... Person 1: -Great resume -Relevant work history -Strong sense of corporate citizenship -Can't code on white board and Person 2: -Can code on whiteboard -Smokes crack in the bathroom But the reality is, you're all interviewing for the same job! You're not getting the jo…

Unless I was hiring a professional whiteboard coder, I would find another method.

I believe that /this/ is short sighted.

I do interviews, I care less about the right answer than I do about the problem solving approach. I interview electrical engineers and I make them do simple transistor problems. If someone gave up and said that they couldn't do it without some sort of SPICE program, I'd cut the interview pretty short. But if the fundamentals are there, even if they don't remember something stupid, knowing how they approach a problem and if they know how to ask for help is more important.

Every time someone says "I didn't get the job b/c I couldn't do a linked list on the whiteboard." I'm fairly certain it was more than that.

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#38

Post by matwood »

jonafato wrote: post #18
jchonphoenix wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If you know what a binary search tree or linked list is, you should be able to code them. If you can't do something this simple, how can you be expected to actually solve a problem that you can't just look up the answer too?

I'll agree with this on one condition: don't hold syntax errors against me. I interviewed for a position about eight months ago. I was rusty with my C (had been doing more java and python around that time), and put "int i = 0" in a for loop on a white board and seemingly had it counted against me. This kind of thing, along with things like missed semicolons, should be ignored by interviewers. Not only is it a simple…

Unless I've needed a specific language, like SQL for example, anytime I've asked a candidate to code on the whiteboard pseudocode has always been fine.

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#39

Post by mech4bg »

I've had some astonishing questions asked in interviews lately. Very esoteric and obscure parts of C++ that if you followed good design you wouldn't even see or need to know about - and if you did, it's a short google query away. Testing esoteric knowledge rather than actual intelligence and programming ability is a complete fallacy imo. But then it goes even further at some places where you have to do a psychometric test to get in...!

At least Google's interview questions (from what I saw) made sense in their challenge. It's not stuff you would know from being an everyday programmer but it's stuff a truly great programmer should know.

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#40

Post by ssp »

rsl7 wrote: post #7
jchonphoenix wrote: post #2

I understand where the author is coming from because many interviews questions are unreasonable and test absolutely nothing. However, if someone couldn't code a linked list on a whiteboard, I'd be severely worried. Same goes for a binary tree. If you know what a linked list or binary tree is, you should have no issues figuring out how to represent them with code in 10 minutes. The other trickier problems are there to…

Code on the whiteboard is counterproductive at best. Let's hook up your laptop to the projector so I can get a glimpse of how you interact with your computer. I learn more about you by seeing your relationship with your text editor, how you look up information you can't remember, etc. Not watching you sweat with a marker in your hand.

I learn more about you by seeing your relationship with your text editor

Are you sure you are not just learning whether the candidate is superficially similar to you?

Post reply on HN