181–190 of 460 posts
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DHH strongly despises HN[1]. [1] https://twitter.com/dhh/status/289669574427820032
He says on twitter. To gain more publicity from HN. Just because he hates that there's some people here who call him on his bullshit, or even if he hated HN for real, that wouldn't mean he doesn't use it for marketing.
If I can have a word on FizzBuzz? There are a few programmers that have a proclivity towards "clean, perfect" solutions, but FizzBuzz is ugly. Making FizzBuzz work at all is just stupidly simple; but the moment you ask yourself about the little details, you notice that you either have to make an if tree, a bunch of if-elseif's, or some other hinky thing that ruins the "purity" of this simple little program. Alot of p…
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I think people are up voting this one based off just the message, rather than the content. The message is important, I guess. Plus a lot of 37signals staffer's and friends use HN - they will likely be up voting this based off a Facebook post or similar. ~10 of the 21 points being users affiliated with 37signals is very likely.
Doesn't this violate the HN etiquette?
>how little it had to do with the actual job.
That doesn't make any sense. How is solving a problem with javascript irrelevant to the job of a front end developer? That's what they do.
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Re: hash table. I've been asking candidates to basically implement HashMap (for java positions) (without simply using Hashtable). It's an ongoing experiment. Although I've been told that this is a common question, I've actually never seen anyone do very well at it, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it gets at some important java concepts: hashCode() and equals() and the relationship between them. D…
I would be surprised if many people knew hashing algorithms at all.
As Cletus wrote in his detailed comment, "this is the issue that will just never die." We discuss company hiring procedures here on Hacker News over and over and over, because most of us have applied for a job at least once in our life, and those of us who are building up a start-up have to think about whom we would hire. The point in the submitted blog post by 37 Signals, "The only reliable gauge I’ve found for futu…
All this teeth-gnashing regarding programming and logic puzzles are simply to cover up the simple fact that most people (even around here) are insecure about their programming skill, and more-so their intelligence. The fact is that these types of questions are indeed backed up by the very research you cite, namely that a work-sample test and general mental ability are the only reliable predictors of job performance.…
No: a programming puzzle is the intersection of a work-sample test with one question from an IQ test. IQ tests get a good handle on your intelligence by testing you over a wide range of near-trivial questions, each known to similarly measure intelligence, and then adding the scores up. By giving you so many opportunities to succeed or fail, they don't fall victim to the "I just couldn't figure this one out" problem. Whereas programming puzzles do that all the time.
Now, if your interview consisted of 200 programming puzzles, each of which should take roughly 20 seconds to solve, then you could say it's getting a fair handle on someone's IQ as measured through the lens of programming. But throwing two 10-minute puzzles into the interview does nothing to help you measure anything. The "scores" you get are black-and-white threshold filters on a set of numbers (IQ) that are almost totally middle-grey.
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Do you think you can elaborate a little more on the exercise that you find interesting?
On one hand I would love to - and on the other hand I don't want to give this companies interview question away out in the open. If you want, you can email me (email is in my profile) and I would be more than happy to share it directly!
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How do you " keep it real " in interviews? Concerning the viability of firing under-performing individuals, how likely is that? Are there any implications with indirect costs such as unemployment benefits? (I ask because I do not know - any insight on this would be greatly appreciated.)
I ask difficult interview questions and require actual code to be written on the spot. If the questions can't be answered I let everyone know it. The viability of firing under-performing people is zero. Managers just want headcount and don't care about ability. They play the political game not the build-and-ship-software game. Are there cost implications? I should think so since the fakers cost lots of money and are…
Unfortunately, this happens far too often. However, I have completely bombed on "difficult interview questions" and "code to be written" - merely due to the pressures felt in the interview(s).
As said elsewhere, identifying the "fakers" is extremely difficult - perhaps that's why people who were referred tend[0] to be more successful? (But how do people outside get in?)
[0] Merely a guesstimate based on casual observations.
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He says on twitter. To gain more publicity from HN. Just because he hates that there's some people here who call him on his bullshit, or even if he hated HN for real, that wouldn't mean he doesn't use it for marketing.
They obviously can't prevent other people from submitting links to their blog, but I don't see them submitting their own content either. http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=37s...