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Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

darrenkopp.com

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Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#31

Post by cenamus »

citizen_friend wrote: post #20
teeray wrote: post #10

The coding interview looks different when you view it for what it would be called in other industries: a licensure examination. It looks particularly insane to relicense for every single job you apply to. It also looks supremely unfair to have proctors for this exam with varying expectations and training to actually correctly administer it.

- licensing ensures only a minimum level of quality - people with licenses still do interviews, often just as grueling - licensed careers with high performers (lawyers, doctors, ib, etc) have other forms of filtering which are much more painful, like years of low pay internships Studying for a few weeks to solve fun puzzles to make 400k sounds like a deal to me.

Hearing from people that did internships in other fields for almost nothing, during which CS students make more than most workers really drove that point home for me.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#32

Post by htrp »

leetrout wrote: post #27

I have never heard of the negative base question (I would have never passed that without help): https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/216800/how-i-conver... My worst interview questions that were silly: • number theory for django dev: how many prime numbers are there. • random brain teaser for django dev: infinite lasers pointed in space that turn at each other at the rotational speed of light- does the intersecti…

> I have never heard of the negative base question

In what real world situation would you even use a new base system?

Seti and Aliens are the only one that comes to mind, encode a new numerical system based on some fundamental physical constant like the atomic weight of hydrogen.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#33

Post by SJC_Hacker »

tantalor wrote: post #15
mytailorisrich wrote: post #3

> Q: Assume that you have an infinite stream of data that is coming in from multiple threads in an unordered fashion. Write the stream items to the console in order. If I were the interviewer I would be interested in what clarifying questions the candidate would ask and/or how they would highlight parameters and assumptions needed because the question is vague to the point of being unanswerable otherwise.

As written this problem is impossible to solve. Proof: suppose there is only 1 infinite stream which is always descending. You will never find a lowest value, so you cannot rewrite the stream "in order".

That could be part of the question.

At one job interview I was deliberately given a problem which had no efficient solution. The idea was to find a heuristic which would get close to the optimal solution and run in a reasonable time.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#34

Post by yodon »

I'm a believer in Joel Spolsky's recruiting goal: "Smart and gets things done."[0]

Add "not a jerk" (which I find is part of "gets things done" on an ongoing basis) and everything else is either vanity or decision paralysis on the part of the interviewer.

[0]https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/06/05/smart-and-gets-thi...

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#37

Post by foobarian »

secondcoming wrote: post #22

We scrapped coding tests at our last round of hiring, but the interviewees were so bad they everyone’s time was wasted. We had to bring it back just to filter people out.

We talk about something like this now and then but the thing is, if fizzbuzz is still managing to eliminate more than half the candidates I don't think it's useless.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#39

Post by leetrout »

Scarblac wrote: post #16
cranberryturkey wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nope. tech is so fast moving if you're not at least experimenting with your own code then you're not going to be a good fit. we tend to also hire engineers who have contributed to open source.

I experiment, of course. At work. And if you don't let people experiment during work, but only hire people that do, then that's a bad sign.

I got irrationally angry about this at a previous job. Everyone was all excited management was having us all do a "hackathon" and I am loud and grumpy about how this should just be part of the normal course of business.

We found solutions and tools that better solve problems but to this day have still not been implemented.

Not everything needs a novel solution but not making room for innovation because the company is operating as a feature factory is boring.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#40

Post by roenxi »

teeray wrote: post #10

The coding interview looks different when you view it for what it would be called in other industries: a licensure examination. It looks particularly insane to relicense for every single job you apply to. It also looks supremely unfair to have proctors for this exam with varying expectations and training to actually correctly administer it.

The roughest outline for hiring as far as I can follow it is start with 100 resumes, filter it down to 10 by picking ones that are nicely formatted, then filter down to 1 by interviewing. Each level of filtering should be structured so that it biases towards technical competence.

It isn't really a licensure examination because, as you point out, the industry doesn't bother to put the resources in to make sure anything is systemically analysed. It is a process to balance supply and demand of jobs.

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