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Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

interviewing.io

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Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#71

Post by cnp »

gearoidoc wrote: post #67
cnp wrote: post #24

I'm absolutely one of these people who melt down. Give me a task and leave the room and I'm on it, but while being watched I loose all ability to think, which I think has a lot to do with the fact that I never went to college and jumped right into the industry directly after high school essentially bypassing a very important skill you learn there: test taking. Two weeks ago the position of my dreams -- literally, exa…

Dude, if you're that passionate about that job you just described then I'd suggest calling the company up and explaining what happened. Having interviewed many people I'd certainly be open to giving someone a second chance if they explained a situation like yours to me.

After the second interview I had an entire email written out that I was going to send to their lead, but honestly, given that the app that they asked me to develop prior to the interview was well done, detailed, commented and modern, complete with a PR flow that me and one of their devs went through via GitHub, I felt that if they were willing to pass due to me obviously locking up on a Skype + Google-Doc shared whiteboard, and on the most basic of JavaScript skills (which were clearly elaborated upon within the project), then it wasn't the right fit anyways.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#72

Post by cnp »

akanet wrote: post #49
cnp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my thinking as well. Dig in, look around, its obvious what I can do, and what I'm capable of learning. Ask me to code a sample app and comment every function with detailed explanations of my thought process. Add me as a collaborator to GitHub and request that I make some pull requests on your product. Live coding interviews are more irrelevant than irrelevant and completely ignore the fact that many people --…

Coding interviews don't ignore any facts - they are simply often the best signal/time tool available. Many people do not have time to root around in your personal repositories or wait for you to commit pull requests. They have a pipeline of people they need to screen, and you can't wait on everyone in a pool of candidates to take their sweet time before deciding on a winner. Technical screens are synchronous and rela…

Your comment is unfortunate but true. Hopefully one day someone will think up a better way to do things.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#74

Post by drak0n1c »

CaveTech wrote: post #29
general_failure wrote: post #25

This looks great. These days I skip all interviews which require me to code in the interview. I have plenty of open source code, if they cannot figure how good I am looking at, then they definitely cannot figure how good I am with a 3 hour coding interview. IMO, coding interviews is like public speaking. Many people get nervous in front of a crowd. It's a skill one has to obtain should it be required. Coding intervie…

For me, even worse than an in person interview is a remote coding interview over the phone. Usually some sort of screen sharing + phone call. I find it incredibly nerve wracking because it gives me that feeling of someone standing over my shoulder without me being able to fully interact with them or read their body language. When you sit down to hammer out a solution you have all the additional pressure of trying to…

With someone else staring at the screen seeing every letter as I type it there have been cases where I become paralyzed and my mind goes blank on problems that I could have easily solved on my own (without resorting to Stack Overflow, of course).

It's a combination of nerves and needing to suppress a part of my natural coding process that occasionally involves a brief frenzy of guess-and-checking and pattern recognition to get my bearings on possible solutions. That part of the process is unconscious and intuitive, kind of like how athletes don't think about what they are doing. If I slow down to consciously relay those early steps of the process it breaks the spell/flow and I go blank.

I think the problem is that I have a habit of letting rapid ad-hoc intuition guide my coding, rather than being a rational agent following a pre-planned 'waterfall'. In-the-moment intuition somehow (surprisingly) produces nicely workable and even readable code much of the time, but also entails some amnesia about the steps I took along the way. I occasionally have doubts - am I built to be an engineer? By nature I am a very logical person, why can't I always conceive of a whole answer (or at least a clear direction) before "putting pen to paper"? Working memory deficiency? ADHD? Lack of practice? However, my doubts about programming potential are quelled when my friends and I look at the code I can write and the problems I have solved.

Practice makes perfect as they say. I really look forward to using this service.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#75

Post by akanet »

1qaz2wsx3edc wrote: post #66
elq wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have plenty of open source code, if they cannot figure how good I am looking at... I've interviewed several people with lots of code on github and what looks like lots of accepted pull requests to many projects who still can't seem to reason through a problem described as "write a function that takes two unsorted lists and returns one sorted list". I think I'll continue asking technical/coding questions...

If someone asks me to code/problem solve in an interview these days, I don't even bother to try, I just pretend to try and answer the question to see their reaction, because by that point I've already lost interest in the position. It's the equivalent of a shit-test, so I like to turn the tables around and see how they react instead. I do this for many reasons, one of which, is they obviously weren't interested enoug…

I do not think your attitude or position are indicative of the majority of developers. They also require a huge time investment up front by the interviewer. Even if your individual Github profile (or whatever) is organized, comprehensible, and relevant, it doesn't say anything about the vast majority of developers whose profiles are largely scattered, obtuse, and frankly not even representative of their own work.

If you are a recognized leader in a particular field your situation is obviously different, but you can't expect me as a interviewer looking for a web developer making a mostly standard CRUD app to have the time to delve into your personal history and divine your technical expertise without asking you about it.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#76

Post by autokad »

pyfish wrote: post #57
benhoyt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This satisfies your problem description: def function(unsorted1, unsorted2): return [1, 2, 3] ;-)

That is awesome. I like; "That problem has been solved so I'd Google it". Your answer is faster.

-In elementary school when you were learning to do algebra did you say...

Chill, he said 'so'. i think he was just saying he looked up the answer but that persons answer was faster

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#77

Post by TrainedMonkey »

cnp wrote: post #71
gearoidoc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, if you're that passionate about that job you just described then I'd suggest calling the company up and explaining what happened. Having interviewed many people I'd certainly be open to giving someone a second chance if they explained a situation like yours to me.

After the second interview I had an entire email written out that I was going to send to their lead, but honestly, given that the app that they asked me to develop prior to the interview was well done, detailed, commented and modern, complete with a PR flow that me and one of their devs went through via GitHub, I felt that if they were willing to pass due to me obviously locking up on a Skype + Google-Doc shared whit…

"I felt that if they were willing to pass due to me obviously locking up on a Skype + Google-Doc shared whiteboard, and on the most basic of JavaScript skills (which were clearly elaborated upon within the project)"

Or it could be a simple miscommunication, or they thought somebody else done the app given your performance on the interview. Reaching out and asking will cost you little compared to potential windfall.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#78

Post by dl8 »

cnp wrote: post #24

I'm absolutely one of these people who melt down. Give me a task and leave the room and I'm on it, but while being watched I loose all ability to think, which I think has a lot to do with the fact that I never went to college and jumped right into the industry directly after high school essentially bypassing a very important skill you learn there: test taking. Two weeks ago the position of my dreams -- literally, exa…

Pretty much the same thing happened to me a year ago, I was at an onsite interview, did really well 4 out of the 5 rounds, but 1 round I just completely choked some basic linked list question and looked like an idiot.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#79

Post by nmrm »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #43

I've been using https://www.interviewcake.com and highly recommend it. It's just a series of problems you work through combined with advice.

There's a lot to an interview besides just coding questions. Interacting with an actual interviewer lets you get all of the human interactions, talk in-between problems, using problems to showcase talent, etc... all this stuff I'm told I should do but have no idea how to actually do, basically.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#80

Post by autokad »

1qaz2wsx3edc wrote: post #66
elq wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have plenty of open source code, if they cannot figure how good I am looking at... I've interviewed several people with lots of code on github and what looks like lots of accepted pull requests to many projects who still can't seem to reason through a problem described as "write a function that takes two unsorted lists and returns one sorted list". I think I'll continue asking technical/coding questions...

If someone asks me to code/problem solve in an interview these days, I don't even bother to try, I just pretend to try and answer the question to see their reaction, because by that point I've already lost interest in the position. It's the equivalent of a shit-test, so I like to turn the tables around and see how they react instead. I do this for many reasons, one of which, is they obviously weren't interested enoug…

if you want to work for one of the large major companies, thats not an option from what I have seen.

i do agree though interviews should be more focused on soft skills and not technical, even for technical jobs.

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