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Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

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Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#81

Post by tgflynn »

millerm wrote: post #72
Osiris wrote: post #51

Are algorithm questions really that useful when looking for a candidate? I find myself being really nervous about applying to other jobs because I'm not formally trained in CS. My job and side projects are mostly web sites that require knowledge about how to architecture software but I very rarely write complex algorithms. If something comes up where I need to optimize something I can usually spend some time Googling…

I'm a full stack developer. Currently focusing on iOS. Interview questions should really depend on the expectations of the type of software being developed. I've been to a couple interviews lately and this has been the first time (in my career) that I have been tested (with time constraints too, mind you). I was either pointed to a whiteboard, or sat in a room with nothing but a couple sheets of blank (unruled) paper…

It's not "all your fault".

The problem is that there is a belief in the industry that 15-30 minutes of technical interviewing tells more about a candidate than that person's entire career history. I have seen no actual data to support this belief.

I think someone who has a history of having built successful applications is far more likely to be qualified than someone who happens to have a good memory for algorithmic solutions and performs well under the stress of an interview situation.

This interviewing approach may make sense for entry level candidates who have nothing more to show than what they have learned in their CS classes but applying it to an experienced professional is simply brain-dead.

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#82

Post by eshvk »

Osiris wrote: post #51

Are algorithm questions really that useful when looking for a candidate? I find myself being really nervous about applying to other jobs because I'm not formally trained in CS. My job and side projects are mostly web sites that require knowledge about how to architecture software but I very rarely write complex algorithms. If something comes up where I need to optimize something I can usually spend some time Googling…

> Are algorithm questions really that useful when looking for a candidate?

I go back and forth on this. I do machine learning/backend large scale engineering stuff. I have typically found that very rarely do companies actually really grill me on these things. It is mostly computer science theory (a.k.a algorithms/data structures). It used to annoy me a bit especially many questions have embedded tricks that make them dramatically easier. E.g. checking the validity of a BST is as simple as checking that the invariant left subtree is smaller than the root and right subtree is larger than the root is maintained. How you choose to implement that might trip you up, even if you stumble upon the fact that recursion is necessary and key.

On the other hand, once you intensively go through the process of studying these problems. You become aware of how incredibly rich the field of practical usage is. For example, order statistics can be efficiently organized using a rank tree. These are clever tricks that it is nice to have floating about in memory. Because they help you know what to google for.

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#83

Post by sp4rki »

steven777400 wrote: post #33

We were hiring a non-senior full-stack developer recently and I noticed there were no "frontend" questions on the list, so I added what I thought would be a question that any developer with frontend experience could answer, and would also pave the way for some more interested discussions for an advanced candidate. The question was something to the effect of "In JavaScript, what is the value of 'this' in a method?" I…

I've been in this position also. Same question. I also added what the difference between setTimeout() and setInterval() is, and example usages of both. It's incredible that a question where the primary answer is right there in the function names causes such confusion on people that are supposedly "front end engineers with years of experience".

Off course, disaster is an understatement. All three questions where the demise of 100% of our interviewees. We ended up hiring a sql programmer and teaching him what he needed to know.

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#84

Post by nicholas73 »

dustingetz wrote: post #79
nicholas73 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, should answering this question be expected of a non-senior dev? This kind of knowledge is acquired by running into broken code - that is, by chance. I'd think someone with a couple years experience only could conceivably not, for example, have called a method directly and had this refer to a global object instead. Until then one might just assume Javascript's this works like this in other languages. In f…

!!!! This kind of knowledge is acquired by reading 'Javascript the Good Parts'. It goes without saying that someone who considers themselves a good frontend engineer has read this book. edit: I am a frontend tech lead (not even in SV!!) and my most junior engineer will answer the question correctly. I can't even fathom how one could contribute to a non-toy app without knowing this.

People tend to remember things that they do, not what they read, much less from what they hear in lecture. The odds that I'm right is high because nobody was able to answer the question satisfactorily.

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#85

Post by eshvk »

tgflynn wrote: post #81
millerm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a full stack developer. Currently focusing on iOS. Interview questions should really depend on the expectations of the type of software being developed. I've been to a couple interviews lately and this has been the first time (in my career) that I have been tested (with time constraints too, mind you). I was either pointed to a whiteboard, or sat in a room with nothing but a couple sheets of blank (unruled) paper…

It's not "all your fault". The problem is that there is a belief in the industry that 15-30 minutes of technical interviewing tells more about a candidate than that person's entire career history. I have seen no actual data to support this belief. I think someone who has a history of having built successful applications is far more likely to be qualified than someone who happens to have a good memory for algorithmic…

> The problem is that there is a belief in the industry that 15-30 minutes of technical interviewing tells more about a candidate than that person's entire career history. I have seen no actual data to support this belief.

Actually, this is only true when there is no social proof. Once you have people who can vouch for your successful application building prowess in some form or the other, you will find interviewing to be dramatically easier.

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#86

Post by mcintyre1994 »

I know it's a bit off-topic, but I'm a student so anything about interviews interests me a lot. For the Bacon Number question, I'm struggling a bit to get my head around a good way to do it.

My immediate idea is to derive a graph where nodes are actors and an edge between 2 actors means they've been in 1 or more films together. I believe the shortest path between them and Bacon could then be found by breadth-first search.

It looks like that graph would be quite slow to derive though - my naive pseudocode being something like:

    for bucket in hashtable:
        for actor in bucket:
            if actor not in graph, add a node for actor
            for other_actor in bucket (up to actor):
               add an edge between other_actor and actor
That looks pretty slow without deriving a running time, so I'm guessing there's some optimisation that can be made from the current structure of the hashtable. Could anybody give me a pointer in the right direction please?

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#87

Post by necolas »

Hey. I work at Twitter. I think that at certain companies the "front-end" role is not as specialized as assumed, and you tend to interview for a specific team that has an opening, rather than for a generic position among a hoard of similar developers.

Having said that, I'm surprised there was only one CSS question, and the suggestion to combine questions with front-end specific knowledge might be a good way to ease into the interview.

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#88

Post by scrabble »

nicholas73 wrote: post #73
steven777400 wrote: post #33

We were hiring a non-senior full-stack developer recently and I noticed there were no "frontend" questions on the list, so I added what I thought would be a question that any developer with frontend experience could answer, and would also pave the way for some more interested discussions for an advanced candidate. The question was something to the effect of "In JavaScript, what is the value of 'this' in a method?" I…

I'm curious, should answering this question be expected of a non-senior dev? This kind of knowledge is acquired by running into broken code - that is, by chance. I'd think someone with a couple years experience only could conceivably not, for example, have called a method directly and had this refer to a global object instead. Until then one might just assume Javascript's this works like this in other languages. In f…

This kind of knowledge is super basic, so yes, I'd expect anyone interviewing for a front-end position to know the meaning of 'this.'

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#89

Post by scrabble »

vikas5678 wrote: post #40
steven777400 wrote: post #33

We were hiring a non-senior full-stack developer recently and I noticed there were no "frontend" questions on the list, so I added what I thought would be a question that any developer with frontend experience could answer, and would also pave the way for some more interested discussions for an advanced candidate. The question was something to the effect of "In JavaScript, what is the value of 'this' in a method?" I…

Yes, interviewing developers for front-end positions has been a nightmare for me too. I interviewed about 40 developers to fill 3 new positions. Yikes. "This is how its done in JQuery" is not a acceptable answer! I expect atleast some basic knowledge of DOM manipulation without using a library.

I wonder how many front-end people out there currently believe that JavaScript is jQuery and don't have a solid grasp of the language, instead focusing on use of a single library.

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#90

Post by flipside »

Osiris wrote: post #51

Are algorithm questions really that useful when looking for a candidate? I find myself being really nervous about applying to other jobs because I'm not formally trained in CS. My job and side projects are mostly web sites that require knowledge about how to architecture software but I very rarely write complex algorithms. If something comes up where I need to optimize something I can usually spend some time Googling…

Does anybody conduct "open book" interviews? I'd be more curious how someone goes about finding the answer than if they knew it on the spot.
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