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I don’t have time for coding challenges

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Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#71

Post by boomfus »

fractionalhare wrote: post #51
wry_discontent wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interview a lot of people for frontend positions. I ask one two-sum question to see if they have some knowledge about data structures and simple algorithms. Then I ask them to build something trivial in React, which is what we use. If you can do those things, you're probably fine. The number of people who can't is truly shocking.

I would argue there are many well-qualified frontend engineers who won't correctly solve the two sum problem on their first time encountering it.

If we're being very charitable I guess the idea of using a HashMap for an optimal solution might slip your mind but even a freshman in CS can just loop twice over an array and solve it.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#72

Post by frequentnapper »

leesec wrote: post #68
frequentnapper wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the FAANG interviews are pretty standardized now - but then that only selects candidates who are well prepped for the interview itself.

They're really not. It becomes a cat and mouse game where the interviewers know which pool of questions people are studying so they try to invent new ones to prevent people just memorizing the answers. The questions thus end up becoming more and more obscure.

yeah but they're variations on the same stuff. it just allows gaming of the whole process where if you solve enough of those types of questions, you have a better chance of getting in.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#73

Post by Viliam1234 »

luckylion wrote: post #23
geebee wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why people do it, no doubt. Keep in mind, a lot of these questions are asked by vastly less desirable companies that ape the hiring practices of FAANG, even though they pay much less. And these companies complain bitterly about a shortage of good developers to hire. So... I'm all onboard with your statement, but I think you only said half of it. Nobody owes me a job, and if I don't like it, I'm free to not get…

Do only those companies complain about a shortage of candidates? Because in the tech centers I know, the market is just empty. Lots of large companies are competing for talent, and if you can't pay bank salaries, you're going to have a hard time. You make it sound like there's plenty of talent around but companies are being snobbish. That's not my experience at all in Germany.

> Lots of large companies are competing for talent, and if you can't pay bank salaries, you're going to have a hard time.

Sounds like Economics 101. The curves of supply and demand meet at some point. Some customers can't buy (enough of) the thing because the price at the intersection of the curves is too high for them. Yes, that's how free market works.

There are things I can't buy, because they are too expensive for me. Or I could buy them, but I would have to sacrifice something else I need more. This is considered normal. When some company can't afford (people like) me, it's the same thing.

They would like to have cheaper developers. Sure, who wouldn't? There are also things I would like to have cheaper. Same problem. Why am I not entitled to get things as cheaply as I want, but my potential employer would be?

In my experience many companies prefer to whine about the shortage of talent, even if they could easily hire another person by increasing the offered salary by 50%. But they won't. Then they make millions of profit, which shows that the money was there, it was just their decision not to spend it on salaries. Okay, fair, it's their money, their decision. But if it's your decision, own it, don't pretend there wasn't an alternative.

Make it known that you offer double of the market salary, and you will be surprised how many people are out there in the "empty market". At least I never heard about a company that offered lots of money and couldn't find a person for the job.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#74

Post by user5994461 »

fractionalhare wrote: post #69
user5994461 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one? https://leetcode.com/problems/two-sum/ >>> Given an array of integers nums and an integer target, return indices of the two numbers such that they add up to target. You may assume that each input would have exactly one solution, and you may not use the same element twice. Seems trivial enough to me... except if the interviewer forgets the hard constraint that there is exactly one solution, then that's a shi…

Does the problem actually have that constraint? If so then yeah it's significantly easier. I thought the reason you'd have to use a clever algorithm is because a brute-force solution to find all index pairs would require n^2 operations, where n is the size of the input array, because you can't stop after you find a single pair.

Yes it does, you can open the leetcode and see for yourself. That also explains the "easy" difficulty rating.

I guess you've been giving candidates a more hardcode version of the problem, not having that constraint?

edit: nevermind, it's the other poster who was giving that problem, not you. No idea how they formulate it in their interviews.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#75

Post by fractionalhare »

boomfus wrote: post #71
fractionalhare wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue there are many well-qualified frontend engineers who won't correctly solve the two sum problem on their first time encountering it.

If we're being very charitable I guess the idea of using a HashMap for an optimal solution might slip your mind but even a freshman in CS can just loop twice over an array and solve it.

I might be misunderstanding the question; how many pairs can there be? You can't just loop over the array twice to find all qualifying pairs of indices, if there are multiple. You'd have to loop over the array n times, where n is the size of the array. Isn't that why the question is difficult? There doesn't seem to be much incentive to using a hash table, complexity wise, if you could just solve it in O(n) time and O(1) space by naively iterating over the array.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#76

Post by jasoneckert »

Hiring a bad developer can be a costly mistake. In addition to the costs for the developer, there are often other costs and productivity lost.

Basically a good coder is not the same as a good developer. Coding is relatively easy - if you can visualize and solve problems using code, then you're a good developer. It's the thought process that makes you a good developer.

Coding challenges are often a good way to test this thought process. I often require candidates walk me through their code and explain their reasoning behind everything to see if they'll be valuable on my team.

However, coding challenges are just one way to ascertain someone's thought process. Watching people work on code during a game jam or hackathon often gives me an idea of their thought process, as does the advice of other people I trust who vouch for them.

So, no - coding challenges aren't always necessary. But unless there is a better way for me to learn whether you're going to be a good developer, then I'll give you one.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#77

Post by fractionalhare »

user5994461 wrote: post #74
fractionalhare wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the problem actually have that constraint? If so then yeah it's significantly easier. I thought the reason you'd have to use a clever algorithm is because a brute-force solution to find all index pairs would require n^2 operations, where n is the size of the input array, because you can't stop after you find a single pair.

Yes it does, you can open the leetcode and see for yourself. That also explains the "easy" difficulty rating. I guess you've been giving candidates a more hardcode version of the problem, not having that constraint? edit: nevermind, it's the other poster who was giving that problem, not you. No idea how they formulate it in their interviews.

I don't ask candidates these kinds of questions in my interviews. For a coding interview, I'd normally ask them to implement something like backend rate limiting logic for an authentication service, and continually ratchet up the complexity on each successful implementation until the end of the interview.

I was asked the two sum problem in an interview once, but I forget if it had this constraint or not. This seems much more reasonable.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#78

Post by jordan801 »

nhooyr wrote: post #45
cosmotic wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is the interviewer is being paid for their time, the interviewee is not.

That's a problem with the company. We at @cdr pay interviewee's $200 for their take home challenges.

This is awesome. I have taken a number of code challenges and walking away with neither, compensation nor explanation is rough.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#79

Post by nogabebop23 »

autarch wrote: post #50

> "I’m writing this as an interviewee, having never been on the other side of the interview table ..." > ... > "Most candidates will have side-projects or work they’ve done for previous employers." As someone who has actually done a lot of interviewing, I can say with great confidence that this is simply wrong. At my current employer, we have a "homework assignment" as part of the interview process. We tell candidate…

We use a coding challenge as well but I like your addition of "auditing" the coding part and using existing open source or side project work. Bonus points if it uses some of the target technologies too!

The author doesn't appear to understand the economics of the hiring company; it's about time & effort to filter and the cost of making a bad hire. I cannot give every application 1-2 hours of review if I get 100+ resumes. I can't give every interviewee a half-day assessment to get the very poor signal/noise ratio answers to questioning methods suggested. I can't hire easy and then fire easy. I can't invest weeks of work from myself and other mentors on non-ideal potentials. I know this means I pass over great candidates and that really sucks and is totally unfair. I'm sure that's happended to me as well. The problem is nothing presented here is a better alternative.

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