41–50 of 123 posts
or in a phone interview just google for an answer to the question they're being asked! oh wait that's exactly what they did do...
How is using google to find an answer to a question okay and knowing the answers before hand not? crazy.
Do kids still learn C in college? It's been my experience that new grads are primarily taught in Java... That said, we do all our interviewing in the langage I expect them to be developing in - namely Ruby, JavaScript, and/or SQL. Is that the norm or do people still interview candidates using, say C or Java, for Ruby/Python/JS positions? I suppose if we were interviewing someone who didn't know Ruby but knew Java, we…
I really wish we'd have more ML/Haskell but they are only used in a couple of graduate courses as far as I can tell.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Learning programming languages is easy. I did all my Google interviews in Perl. Now I write all my code in Java. The skills transfer easily. I personally would prefer someone who is good at multiple programming languages. People that spend all their time in Java ignore subtle things about how computers work that C programmers are intimately aware of. People that never use scripting languages assume they are "toys" an…
I'm not saying being a polyglot is bad - it's certainly very awesome and desirable; but if your interview process is all in C, you're gonna turn away folks that can't do it. That seems suboptimal to me, although if you're FogCreek I guess you get so many people applying you can make C literacy a requirement. I learned C++ back in, oh, 1996. I haven't coded in it much since about 2001. I'd fail virtually any C++ exam…
" Simultaneously, I quickly Googled ‘how to use bitwise operators in C’ and found this wonderful code snippet on StackOverflow that made the problem easy to solve. I wrote a solution with time to spare, and the interviewer seemed content with my answer." Wow. NB to all interviewers: this guy's a cheat.
I would have to disagree that what I did was "cheating". Software engineers are given problems to solve, and their job is to solve these problems efficiently. You don't always have the solution to every problem off of the top of your head. That's why programmers use Google, StackOverflow, and documentation as resources. The primary skill employers are looking for is learning how to learn new things quickly. And I bel…
If I asked you a question about manipulating Unicode, I am so obviously not looking to find out how quickly you learn things, and you know perfectly well I'm not. I'm finding out what you know about character encoding and string manipulation!
(Regarding your addendum, if you're actually honest about it in the interview I don't really take any issue with it. But I hope you would be honest about it before an interviewer has to ask you whether you cheated.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looking up bit manipulation on Google isn't cheating. Sorry.
It's absolutely cheating if you don't tell the interviewer. If a candidate doesn't know X, then just tell me, and I'll explain X! That's quicker than Googling and they'll get a better answer. But the whole point is to figure out which Xs they know, for many values of X.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me add why this makes me sad. Most companies want to hire the best people, and employees want to work with the same. Why doesn't work experience or education count for anything in our field? Yes ... I've met idiots with CS degrees who can't code FizBuzz to save their life. I've also met idiots who have aced interviews at Microsoft, Google and Amazon by cramming on algorithms books for 2 weeks. We've really gone o…
I do web development, so arbitrary algorithms questions seem to me to be not applicable to what I do 99% of the time. The other 1% I can easily look up the answer, or at least look up the details I need to find the answer.
Other companies do the opposite, so there's plenty of jobs for either type of person.
"Hi, I'm Sean Haufler, rising senior at Yale [...] Position: Software Engineer Intern [...] I didn’t have much experience manipulating individual bits" Sometimes I want to cry for what the world has become. At least I can be content knowing I have job security. (To be fair: the ability to google the answer quickly and implement it is exactly the skill that kind of test is supposed to screen for. Still, three years at…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me add why this makes me sad. Most companies want to hire the best people, and employees want to work with the same. Why doesn't work experience or education count for anything in our field? Yes ... I've met idiots with CS degrees who can't code FizBuzz to save their life. I've also met idiots who have aced interviews at Microsoft, Google and Amazon by cramming on algorithms books for 2 weeks. We've really gone o…
Work experience and degrees very much do count. You need those, and you need to prove you know what someone with that experience and degree should know. Nothing wrong with that. (Some programs don't cover algorithms in enough detail. Some people forget them after not using them for five years. Experience does not imply growth in all areas.) I wish enough of us would tell prospective employers that we won't submit to…
You know what I'd like to do at my own company? Hire people based on their unique experience and personality. Pay them fairly and assume employees have lives outside of work. Heh .. engineers can dream, can't they :-)
> A mediocre programmer could memorize the examples given in Programming Interviews Exposed and do very well in a Bloomberg interview. or in a phone interview just google for an answer to the question they're being asked! oh wait that's exactly what they did do... How is using google to find an answer to a question okay and knowing the answers before hand not? crazy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Work experience and degrees very much do count. You need those, and you need to prove you know what someone with that experience and degree should know. Nothing wrong with that. (Some programs don't cover algorithms in enough detail. Some people forget them after not using them for five years. Experience does not imply growth in all areas.) I wish enough of us would tell prospective employers that we won't submit to…
Back when I was in undergrad, Microsoft was the most desired company to work for, and their interview process was legend. Google raised the bar (in terms of comprehensiveness and IMHO annoyance) but I wonder if that process is truly better vs wasted effort. You can't really say ... oh look how successful Google is. This reminds of the urban legend study that darts pick stocks as well as many of the top investment man…
The hiring strategy may or may not make Google money, but it does make my life there pretty pleasant, and I think the other 30,000 employees would mostly agree.