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Bug squash: An underrated interview question

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Re: Bug squash: An underrated interview question

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find the occasional spark of brilliance someplace where others aren't looking?

That’s it. Not everyone lives a life that leads to a perfect resume.

And for that matter, some people do live that kind of live but still fall through the cracks. Not everyone is lucky enough to graduate during a strong economy, apply to exactly the right jobs at the right time, etc. There's a lot of wasted talent out there that many businesses have little interest in seeking out.

Re: Bug squash: An underrated interview question

#172
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for me cracking the coding interview is stressful i prefer the bug squash question. i have 20 years of experience. i will probably do well. a fresh grad might fail. do i care? no. leetcode has benefited fresh grads and is being used to discriminate against those with anxiety and other disorders and those who are older. i think it is refreshing to try a different interview method, one that benefits those with experien…

I can't speak to anxiety or other disorders but I have a hard time swallowing that leetcode discriminates against the older crowd. I'm not older, but I was in the industry prior to the leetcode style interview. I've never sat down and "grinded" leetcode but I've also never had a problem with those styles of interview once they became common. Neither have my former co-workers. I have a few friends that are still worki…

That is your personal anecdote, n=1. Not that your opinion doesn't matter or carry weight, but it doesn't say much more than the comment you replied to.

Re: Bug squash: An underrated interview question

#173

I've done the equivalent of this by asking them to describe an interesting bug they've encountered in past lives; how it came up, how they hunted it, how they fixed it. By listening to them describe the work, asking questions, and following their thought processes, you can come to a fairly good hire/no from this single walk-through. I know, it's short and humane, so not a good fit for current Sillycon Valley culture.

There’s no chance that I can come up with a good bug story on demand without any preparation.

Ok, but why do you think you should be hired in that place though? :)

Re: Bug squash: An underrated interview question

#174

If you can’t sit down with someone, have a simple tech conversation with them and be able to tell if they know what they are doing… if you need to “give someone a test”… the problem is likely not the candidate.

That sounds like a great way to end up with a dev team full of smooth talkers who you then later discover can't code their way out of a paper bag.

Re: Bug squash: An underrated interview question

#175
post #2

I like this approach far, far more than coding tests! > It’s fun. It’s fun in the same way an escape room is fun. It’s fun because of the dopamine you get when the test suite blinks green. Keep in mind that for lots of people in a job interview setting (even excellent candidates) this is not fun, this is stressful. It may be fun on the job or at home, but the stress of a job interview both eliminates any "fun" aspect…

thanks for pointing this out

Re: Bug squash: An underrated interview question

#176
post #91

My favourite thing to do for "coding" interviews is to give the candidate a piece of absolutely awful python code that a friend of mine came up with for use for interviews. There are code smells, side effects, errors, confusing syntax, a whole slew of things in it. I give them the code, tell them I'll help with every bit of python syntax (and really emphasise that I don't mark people down _at all_ for any lack of fam…

[deleted]

Re: Bug squash: An underrated interview question

#177
post #91

My favourite thing to do for "coding" interviews is to give the candidate a piece of absolutely awful python code that a friend of mine came up with for use for interviews. There are code smells, side effects, errors, confusing syntax, a whole slew of things in it. I give them the code, tell them I'll help with every bit of python syntax (and really emphasise that I don't mark people down _at all_ for any lack of fam…

I wrote some entry-level PHP interview questions years ago and the number of people who couldn't spot simple syntax errors or identify the security hazard of echo $_GET['var'] was staggering.

Re: Bug squash: An underrated interview question

#178
post #83
post #2

I like this approach far, far more than coding tests! > It’s fun. It’s fun in the same way an escape room is fun. It’s fun because of the dopamine you get when the test suite blinks green. Keep in mind that for lots of people in a job interview setting (even excellent candidates) this is not fun, this is stressful. It may be fun on the job or at home, but the stress of a job interview both eliminates any "fun" aspect…

for me cracking the coding interview is stressful i prefer the bug squash question. i have 20 years of experience. i will probably do well. a fresh grad might fail. do i care? no. leetcode has benefited fresh grads and is being used to discriminate against those with anxiety and other disorders and those who are older. i think it is refreshing to try a different interview method, one that benefits those with experien…

[deleted]

Re: Bug squash: An underrated interview question

#179
post #2

I like this approach far, far more than coding tests! > It’s fun. It’s fun in the same way an escape room is fun. It’s fun because of the dopamine you get when the test suite blinks green. Keep in mind that for lots of people in a job interview setting (even excellent candidates) this is not fun, this is stressful. It may be fun on the job or at home, but the stress of a job interview both eliminates any "fun" aspect…

Isn't that what companies would look for, though? They want people who can work under stress. If you had two equal programmers, and one who was stressed and the second who was not, any company would pick the second one without thinking.

Re: Bug squash: An underrated interview question

#180
"Work Sample Test"

Our best received interview question was in this style. Pick something your team fixed or did, distilled down do a 15min thing a teammate could do. Give the candidate 3x the time.

For us, it was a db value not being set as expected during a cron. The candidate got our forged bug reports, cloned a repo, ran the script, verified the unexpected db state, and off to the races

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