51–60 of 120 posts
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Coding test without a chat first is super annoying and something I flat out refuse. If you can't be bothered to invest 30 minutes, don't expect me to put in n hours.
Amazon runs codility tests prior to a phone chat.
They stuck me on one side of a long table with all the other developers in the other side.
They proceeded to grill me on obscure gotchas and had me white board fucking solves for shit like palindromes.
At one point one of the developers stood up and said “look, it’s so easy!” And proceeded to write out his obviously premeditated/optimized one liner on the white board.
I didn’t know enough to respond with something like “I don’t write over optimized one liners because even I won’t remember what the fuck is going on 6 months from now”.
I remember walking back to my car so ashamed and embarrassed.
Interviews are supposed to be a prediction of your fit in the culture and ability to contribute.
In the past 10 years I’ve written lots of code, but more importantly I’ve shown up as a member of my team.
In the end, those interviews are good tests. Tests of culture within the company you’re interviewing...
I am happy for people who has energy, free time, and will to prove their abilities. I don't have the will, or energy for that. I have been working in the area like for the approx. last 2 decades. If anyone wants to validate if I can really code, can put 1 hour of their time and go over my github/gitlab profiles instead of asking 1 hour of my free time to redo what I was doing professionally. This will be counted agai…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But there is tax limit on flat reimbursements that is considerably lower than the actual cost in almost all cases (think €20 for a night in a hotel). Following your advice is actually a criminal offence (tax evasion).
If your accountant cannot tell you how to do this, you need to fire him/her and get a competent one. Hiding behind 'tax evasion' so that you can get away with paying people in 'nice lunches' (lol) is ridiculous.
Something that bothers me: Most of these tests are looking for the same things, so why do I have to take the test for each company I apply for? It strikes me that this is a similar problem to getting into university and for that there are standardized tests. Why can't we introduce a standardized coding skills exam where everyone is given the same problems and the same amount of time to solve them? The whole industry…
Other than that, there is teaching to the test. You can easily argue that's what happens now, and most systems suffer for it. People learn concepts they are required to, but rarely good application of those concepts because they only have 90 minutes to cover a large topic like composition vs inheritance. You get one or two examples about animals barking and cars. Good luck figuring out how to apply that to business topics!
Gave up doing coding interviews long, long ago. Nowadays the only really effective measure of how useful a person is going to be in the work environment is to actually put them in that work environment for a day and let them contribute as best they can. This always filters out the incompetent from the productive. If we can't survive a day with you in our environment, games over. If however, you survive a day in our e…
I am happy for people who has energy, free time, and will to prove their abilities. I don't have the will, or energy for that. I have been working in the area like for the approx. last 2 decades. If anyone wants to validate if I can really code, can put 1 hour of their time and go over my github/gitlab profiles instead of asking 1 hour of my free time to redo what I was doing professionally. This will be counted agai…
Err.. but then how we can select fresh grads and early 20s against old dudes legally?...
I am happy for people who has energy, free time, and will to prove their abilities. I don't have the will, or energy for that. I have been working in the area like for the approx. last 2 decades. If anyone wants to validate if I can really code, can put 1 hour of their time and go over my github/gitlab profiles instead of asking 1 hour of my free time to redo what I was doing professionally. This will be counted agai…
I have over 100,000 LoC in the public domain, in over 30 repos (the ones I'm highlighting). I have architected, deployed and shepherded large-scale hybrid systems that are currently in use daily by thousands of people around the world. I have a decade of checkins and mineable Git data. I have solved every single problem that I've ever encountered; whether technical or human (I was a manager for a long time). I have c…
1. If you can do all these things, then it really won't take that long to freshen up your your white board skills so that you can solve a variety of algorithmic problems easily in code on a whiteboard. If you really want to work for at a FAANG-style place, then just divert your energy for a bit into practicing white boarding. I agree it's stupid and it's probably not worth your time... which leads me to point two.
2. Given your experience and interests, it sounds like working as a cog in a mega-corp is probably not the right career path for you. You're going to do much better in a place where your role is a much bigger part of the company, and your individual skills will have a much bigger impact.
And as far as the "other professions don't have to do this" line. I worked for a while in a career that was not software engineers and to be honest, I wish there was basic, practical proficiency tests as part of interviews in more fields. The number of professionals in my last field of work that could not do the basic requirements of the field correctly was horrifying.
Sure, yes. I don't like coding interviews that focus on super complicated algorithms where you get a massive advantage from already knowing the subject area, or require a sort of "a ha" realization to solve properly. When I ask coding questions they tend to be fairly straightforward. Do some basic transformations on data, handle a couple of edge cases (bonus points if you can see the edges of your own code), that's a…
For example, recently I did a simple algorithmic coding test in JavaScript. The overall logic I wrote was completely correct, but there were two issues: (1) I accidentally missed a function call (which I caught later on after re-reading the code), and (2) I completely forgot about the API `Array#slice(start, end)` so had to recreate it using a loop.
When I'm doing this kind of test, often I get very dizzy and can't think straight. Once I wrote the correct code, but couldn't read the output that was printed. The interviewer remarked that the code was correct, and that's how I knew I'd not made a mistake. That is ridiculous: I was capable of writing the logic, but lost the ability to read. The only other thing which makes me feel this way, is public speaking.
I have a decade of experience, and can generally solve the problem. It's demoralising that despite years of experience, I forget the most trivial APIs/syntax. I've literally done this every day for years of my life. I have no idea how I'm meant to prepare for this, because I've clearly practiced enough, and I am losing fundamental cognitive abilities.
In general, I am much better if: nobody is watching me while I do the test, and I have enough time for my most intense nerves to pass. Or if it is a take-home coding test.
I know sometimes people wish to argue that "you should be able to code under pressure', but I was able to meet crazy deadlines at startups by working fast. There's something different about having only 30 minutes, and somebody watching you screen, judging your every move.
I am happy for people who has energy, free time, and will to prove their abilities. I don't have the will, or energy for that. I have been working in the area like for the approx. last 2 decades. If anyone wants to validate if I can really code, can put 1 hour of their time and go over my github/gitlab profiles instead of asking 1 hour of my free time to redo what I was doing professionally. This will be counted agai…
I have over 100,000 LoC in the public domain, in over 30 repos (the ones I'm highlighting). I have architected, deployed and shepherded large-scale hybrid systems that are currently in use daily by thousands of people around the world. I have a decade of checkins and mineable Git data. I have solved every single problem that I've ever encountered; whether technical or human (I was a manager for a long time). I have c…
Further they never, build these "test" platforms to reflect how we actually do development. I took one of these tests about a month ago just for shits and giggles and I hit the first questions and they where along the lines of what does this code do. My first reaction was, hmm I don't know where is my compiler and debugger that I can set breakpoints, because if I come upon code I have never seen that is literally the first thing I do, step thru it and break it down piece by piece so I can logically map it in my mind. Now granted they where small snippets of code, but the point is, that's not the way I analyze code, I never just look at code and map it out in my mind, I step thru it, add comments and build mentally digestible maps of code. Further just to make sure this test in no way reflects anything near reality the test is timed and counts down on you, no one has ever counted down on my while I am developing like a bomb is going to explode.
And that's the point none of these interview test comes close to reflecting how developers actually do development. probably the closest I came to one that did was for a contracting group who sent me a React project with a single bug, it was completely set up, you just fired it up, started stepping thru it and fixed the bug, you then checked it in, and resolved the ticket assigned to you. It took about 5 minutes, it was literally just a sniff test to see if you could run a project, find and fix a bug. It was the first one I have seen where I thought well that was a well designed test to just see if you pass the sniff test.