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They don't even know the fundamentals

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Re: They don't even know the fundamentals

#301

Post by doctor_eval »

fabian2k wrote: post #48
doctor_eval wrote: post #22

If you’re writing database applications in a commercial environment then knowing what ACID means is part of your job. If you don’t know that, for example, debiting one account and crediting another needs to be done inside a transaction - or the converse, what you need to do if you don’t have access to transactions - then you shouldn’t be anywhere near a database. Fundamentals are actually important. You don’t have to…

The important part you need to know in that case isn't the definition of ACID, but the actual transactional properties of the database you're working with. And even among developers working with databases, it varies how well you actually need to understand transactions. And I would guess that many developers working with relational databases don't actually understand the more subtle differences between transaction is…

I agree to a point. But ACID is part of the nomenclature for relational databases. I feel that if I ask a developer what ACID means, it doesn’t matter to me if they know the specific meaning of each letter in the acronym, but it does matter that they’ve heard of the term and can explain the implications of it.

The point of jargon is to allow concise communication between experts. Knowing the jargon is part of the job.

Re: They don't even know the fundamentals

#302

Post by stjohnswarts »

I have gotten to where is someone asks me to do a linked list or recursive tree search I just end the interview right there. Ask me their strengths or why a balanced tree is useful, awesome. It's fine I hope they have find the right candidate, but as an embedded person I haven't had to write those in decades and if I need to I'll look it up. Sorry I don't have everything a CS grad has fresh in his mind or something that you write daily but most of us don't

Re: They don't even know the fundamentals

#303

Post by einpoklum »

hnlmorg wrote: post #140

I've found bad interview questions fall into one of three camps: 1. The interviewers aren't subject matter experts themselves but are hiring managers, so they've taken their questions from someone else. 2. The company gets far more good candidates apply than they can hire, so the process is less about removing bad candidates and more about having some arbitrary way of whittling down good candidates. 3. The interviewe…

Adding to that list:

4. Interviewer did not have time set aside to prepare for the interview, and sort of has to wing it. I was surprised to realize how often this happens.

Re: They don't even know the fundamentals

#304

Post by humen99 »

what_is_orcas wrote: post #259
gameswithgo wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who make this comment, I generally don't believe you, or don't believe you have done any programming. If I put a gun to your head and give you an hour, you can't make a node that points to two other nodes of the same type? If you really can't, you should get familiar with how data can point to other data, it is fundamental and done all the time.

> If I put a gun to your head and give you an hour, you can't make a node that points to two other nodes of the same type? It's easy to make an imbalanced binary tree. I once decided that building a binary tree based only on a friend's explanation of how they worked; it seemed like it would be a good learning exercise for myself (I don't have a CS degree). It was like 10 minutes of coding to get it minimally working…

Binary search tree is more difficult than a binary tree. A BST is a BT but a BT is not a BST. So making a normal BT is just pointing nodes.

Re: They don't even know the fundamentals

#305

Post by magicalhippo »

tchalla wrote: post #296
smallerfish wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they'd be really good at other engineer positions, but if they can't get to a binary tree algorithm reasonably fast I wouldn't hire them for backend positions that require CS reasoning.

> Maybe they'd be really good at other engineer positions, but if they can't get to a binary tree algorithm reasonably fast I wouldn't hire them for backend positions that require CS reasoning. You not hiring for backend positions doesn't mean they are not good at the positions. It just means they aren't good at your signals.

For me it's a strong signal, but it shouldn't be the only signal. And I do think it's good to have a diverse team.

Some of my coworkers are not nearly as strong as me when it comes to "CS details" like data structures or programming languages, but they have other attributes which complement me and which are good for the team.

Having a bunch of me's (or any of the others) would be a disaster.

Re: They don't even know the fundamentals

#306

Post by lolinder »

goto11 wrote: post #295
LamboJ wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not OP, but I imagine the concern is doing work for the company (i.e. fixing a bug in their codebase) without getting paid at least minimum wage for it.

Ah, I assumed it was just a realistic looking exercise. If they actually used code written by the applicant, I can definitely see all kinds of problems!

If I were designing this question I would probably use a real bug that we recently fixed. We'd already have a sense for how hard of a problem it was, and there's no worry about unpaid work.

Re: They don't even know the fundamentals

#307

Post by confidantlake »

akudha wrote: post #236
ramraj07 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did something similar and loved it but a friend pointed out That he will fall over with an anxiety attack in such a situation. I always thought the best case would be to offer a choice to the candidate among 2 or 3 different ways to do the interview.

I don't understand why this would give someone anxiety attack - it would suck if the interviewer sat next to me and watched my every keystroke, it wasn't that in my case. He just set me up and left to do his job. I was on my own, until I finished and called him over to show the bugfix. I have anxiety issues when an interviewer asks me some obscure syntax option for grep command or some b-tree stuff that I learned in…

I don't understand why that grep stuff would give you anxiety. It is a dumb trivia question, just say you don't know.

But I don't understand because I am not you. Different things give different people anxiety. Anxiety isn't something you reason your way into or out of.

Re: They don't even know the fundamentals

#310

Post by marcosdumay »

CheezeIt wrote: post #277
marcosdumay wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you didn't even think about asking if it's balanced or not, and just went into declaring stupid everyone that considers the problem hard is annoying. I wouldn't want to have an interview with you, or you selecting people for a team I'm on.

Why would it be balanced. Nobody said it was a search tree.

Just the fact that somebody is talking about "implementing" it implies there's further complication than defining a recursive type.

People in general do not communicate on the cleanest ambiguosity-free way;

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