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I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

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Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#361

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

pault wrote: post #233
sokoloff wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this person doing (valuable) work that would even require hiring a replacement? If not, fire them. If so, lobby to secure a backfill and then fire them.

The crux of the problem is that we've interviewed dozens of applicants and none of them have been able to pass the sniff test. We are setting the bar pretty low, but the average skill level of the people we've had access to is shocking. There just isn't a supply of good developers for companies that aren't FAANGs or unicorns. And before anyone says we aren't paying enough, or we are being unfair, the reason these int…

This question is really tricky, though: depending on your frontend stack, the answer could be in an event handler prop (e.g. onClick). In mapDispatchToProps, in a thunk, in a saga, etc.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#362

Post by pault »

achenatx wrote: post #345
pault wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

ok Im stumped :) Would be interested to read some clarification on this. the try always throws an exception, and if i If continue returns to the beginning of the for loop then I could see that the code is pointless. But if continue resumes execution inside of dosomething the line after the exception was thrown, then it could actually be useful. Is your issue that the code does actually work, but conceptually it is ho…

Sorry, I think there's a couple of confusing things there. I mentioned a try block that always throws, but that was a different bit of code. In the example I posted of the for-loop the try/catch is unrelated to the previous, so we can assume it doesn't throw every time. The only WTF is why are we counting `i` and using `continue` and `break` to control a for loop.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#363

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

mywittyname wrote: post #265
pault wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crux of the problem is that we've interviewed dozens of applicants and none of them have been able to pass the sniff test. We are setting the bar pretty low, but the average skill level of the people we've had access to is shocking. There just isn't a supply of good developers for companies that aren't FAANGs or unicorns. And before anyone says we aren't paying enough, or we are being unfair, the reason these int…

Javascript sucks. I work with lots of really, really good developers who struggle a bit with JS. Most of it is because they come from a totally different background, and the other part is Javascript in general just makes things difficult.

This is just false: there are a bunch of sharp edges in JavaScript, but once you know them, the language itself is one of the more pleasant languages to use: this can be a bit of a problem, since the languages itself doesn’t force a particular structure on your code like Java or Haskell do, but on the other hand, JavaScript is an amazing language for experimenting with new programming paradigms and application architectures.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#364

Post by chimpburger »

ryandrake wrote: post #225
caymanjim wrote: post #85

Interviewing people is hard. Most people suck at it. I've interviewed over 100 people in my life, and I've been interviewed about ten times. I know I still suck at it. The code test is one of the more annoying facets of interviews. On the hiring side, it's an efficient way to screen and vet candidates for basic skills. It's relatively low cost to the employer to have a recruiter issue the test. If you come up with yo…

When you need a doctor or lawyer or pilot, because they are certified, you at least know that they all have at least a bare minimum amount of competence. You may not know if they are elite ninja skilled, but you know they know the basics. Literally anyone can say they know how to program, and there is nothing on the resume that can confirm or deny this. I’ve interviewed Senior Software Engineers with years of experie…

What about github projects? Can't you ask for examples of code they have written?

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#365

Post by pault »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #361
pault wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crux of the problem is that we've interviewed dozens of applicants and none of them have been able to pass the sniff test. We are setting the bar pretty low, but the average skill level of the people we've had access to is shocking. There just isn't a supply of good developers for companies that aren't FAANGs or unicorns. And before anyone says we aren't paying enough, or we are being unfair, the reason these int…

This question is really tricky, though: depending on your frontend stack, the answer could be in an event handler prop (e.g. onClick). In mapDispatchToProps, in a thunk, in a saga, etc.

Correct. Any one of those answers would be acceptable :) (except mapDispatchToProps, that will fire the API request every time an action is dispatched anywhere in your app). Also, the context of the question is very specifically "within redux", and all I'm looking for is an understanding that redux is synchronous by default and asynchronous logic has to be performed in a middleware. If your answer is "put it in literally the only place you aren't allowed to put it", you lose some credibility. Also, so many people in this thread are getting hung up on the fact that we're trying to find people that understand a very common framework that we use, and that the candidates claim to have professional experience with. I wouldn't expect a junior to understand the details of redux, but we need senior people that don't require a year of hand-holding to be productive. If I am hiring a plumber to fix my toilet, and they say they have three years of experience fixing toilets, and they don't know how a toilet works... am I at fault for having unrealistic expectations?

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#366

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

pault wrote: post #365
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This question is really tricky, though: depending on your frontend stack, the answer could be in an event handler prop (e.g. onClick). In mapDispatchToProps, in a thunk, in a saga, etc.

Correct. Any one of those answers would be acceptable :) (except mapDispatchToProps, that will fire the API request every time an action is dispatched anywhere in your app). Also, the context of the question is very specifically "within redux", and all I'm looking for is an understanding that redux is synchronous by default and asynchronous logic has to be performed in a middleware. If your answer is "put it in liter…

I mean in the functions in the object returned by mapDispatchToProps, something like `onClick: v => fetchJson(‘/foo’).then(w => dispatch(fooAction(w))`

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#367

Post by geebee »

pault wrote: post #205
caymanjim wrote: post #85

Interviewing people is hard. Most people suck at it. I've interviewed over 100 people in my life, and I've been interviewed about ten times. I know I still suck at it. The code test is one of the more annoying facets of interviews. On the hiring side, it's an efficient way to screen and vet candidates for basic skills. It's relatively low cost to the employer to have a recruiter issue the test. If you come up with yo…

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

Wow. That's a hell of a loop.

That said, this does seem like another reiteration of the "senior engineer couldn't write fizz buzz" story, though this particular example is amusing.

I can write fizz buzz. Hell, I've interviewed enough that I can print all permutations of a string (or all permutations of a set and/or subsets of that set). I used to be able to implement merge sort in 45 minutes at the whiteboard, but I can't now, and I never want to be able to do this at 45 minutes at the whiteboard again. I could certainly detect a cycle in a linked list, and I could do DFS and BFS on a binary tree. I might be able to reason through how to find the last common ancestor of two nodes, or find all matching subtrees in a binary tree if I could hack around for a while, but at the whiteboard, in 45 min? Nah. So, no-hire.

It's time to stop pretending these tests are about weeding out people who lack very basic coding skills. Tech interviews are one of the reasons I'm not enthusiastic about recommending a career as a software developer.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#368

Post by pmikesell »

ubershmekel wrote: post #274
pault wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

> This person is so convinced that they are a good developer that they refuse to take direction or ask questions While I agree a coding exercise is valuable - this is the actual problem. The way I test for that humility is by asking "tell me about a time you personally did a poor job." I then follow up by asking for a time they identified a failure of a colleague. I look to see if they're empathetical, open to being…

I don’t think this is a great approach. You’re selecting for good talkers. There are many great engineers and coworkers who don’t do well on these types of verbal psychological games.

Folks are given all sorts of interview advice about leading to claim things like “my greatest weakness is that I work too hard”.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#369

Post by [deleted] »

pault wrote: post #362
achenatx wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok Im stumped :) Would be interested to read some clarification on this. the try always throws an exception, and if i If continue returns to the beginning of the for loop then I could see that the code is pointless. But if continue resumes execution inside of dosomething the line after the exception was thrown, then it could actually be useful. Is your issue that the code does actually work, but conceptually it is ho…

Sorry, I think there's a couple of confusing things there. I mentioned a try block that always throws, but that was a different bit of code. In the example I posted of the for-loop the try/catch is unrelated to the previous, so we can assume it doesn't throw every time. The only WTF is why are we counting `i` and using `continue` and `break` to control a for loop.

[deleted]

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#370

Post by Scarblac »

achenatx wrote: post #345
pault wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

ok Im stumped :) Would be interested to read some clarification on this. the try always throws an exception, and if i If continue returns to the beginning of the for loop then I could see that the code is pointless. But if continue resumes execution inside of dosomething the line after the exception was thrown, then it could actually be useful. Is your issue that the code does actually work, but conceptually it is ho…

The part in the except: does exactly what the for loop already does, it's completely superfluous. It also has nothing to do with handling the thrown exception.
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