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Submitted this by mistake, can't delete, funny how downvoters don't see that.
Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice
111–120 of 223 posts
Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice
#112Earlier 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...
> 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 How does that happen? Do you think they were lying about their github identities?
I can't really explain it. It was a puzzle to all of the interviewers.
The only reasonable hypothesis I have where I assume the candidate was honest is that the quality of the code in his github profile is largely due to help from others.
Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice
#113yeah... there is a big problem with interviews and best practices already. if you are good enough at an interview you can con your employer into giving you lots of money for not very much... can we have a service that goes the other way?
identifying that brilliant junior who is worth 5x his years or the dirty rat who has 30 years of experience working out how to not do his job and get away with it.... that's hard.
interviews are already easy to win for the prospective employee...
Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
The analogy I use is a coding interview is like asking a musician to play a specific song; chances are, a classically trained pianist won't know the chords to a specific pop song, but that isn't any indication of their skill as a musician. The interviews I had with the company I work for now were amazing; they asked me some basic questions to verify my resume wasn't completely BS, then asked me to discuss previous pr…
Better analogy is that classical musician is given sheet music to pop song and is told to play it on his favorite instrument. If he is good musician, he should be able to play it reasonably well even without practicing. There are musician who play extremely well but only after practicing one song for a long time - this type of interview sucks for them but they are minority. Most musicians suck with or without practic…
Agreed; the idea of hiring a musician without hearing them play would be madness. Not handing me a recording, not discussing intricacies of music theory, but actually playing live. And yet, a talented studio musician may suffer from performance anxiety in this situation. What to do?
Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice
#115This is especially useful when you consider that companies that actually interview you absolutely will not tell you why you failed their process, or they will offer diplomatic deceptions instead.
Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice
#116This looks very interesting.
I have been through a lot of interviews in the past, with small and large companies and now being in charge of hiring developers I try to make the experience as friendly and as efficient as possible.
I hate white-board coding interviews because of the pressure of doing it in front of a stranger, and I choose not to have that in our company.
But I do ask technical questions related to the job and I give as much time as the candidate needs to complete a very simple coding test ( fizzbuzz type ) on his/her own in a private office free of distractions and other people.
Unfortunately there are people with amazing cv's who can't solve simple problems or who can't explain what they have done in previous projects.
Interviewing is hard and there are a lot of biases at play but it needs to be done.
Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice
#117This 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…
>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...
I wonder if those people you're talking about just froze in the interview process, like others in this thread have mentioned doing?
Presumably it's possible to distinguish people who interview badly from people who lie on their résumé. The question is "How?" Followed by "How many interviewers know how to do this?"
Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice
#118I'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.
I blew a technical phone screen with Zynga and not only did the interviewer not respond to any of my follow ups, the in house recruiter actually blocked my calls. Radio silence seems to be fairly standard after deciding to reject a candidate.
Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Solving a problem with someone looking over your shoulder and forcing you to talk to explain what you are thinking" is actually how problems are generally solved in most fields. Software engineering is perhaps one of the lone exceptions, and I think the pair programming movement has a bone or two to pick with your premise.
People are very diverse, some are fast and chatty, others are quiet and slow. Usually I perceive the fast and chatty types a bit arrogant. Personality and cultural background is probably an influence. Best teams have a great mix. Often caring about the work is more important than having a genius. (Of course people should be competent).
I do coding interviews exclusively since I find whiteboard interviews even more artificial. I try to match the interview to a persons skill set and ask them to implement things they should know or know how to look up if their resume isn't a lie. I don't care if they talk or not while doing the interview and I take the role of a product designer who doesn't know how to code. If they get interview anxiety I give them the space they need. If they want a keyboard & mouse I would give it to them.
What else can you do that would be an accurate simulation of their job that only takes 1hr?
Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice
#120Dear software professional: if you have been rejected because of a coding interview, don't feel bad or discouraged. It has little to do with how smart you are. Unfortunately, this style of interviews is likely ineffective and leads to hiring people who look alike and have similar skills. Solving a problem with someone looking over your shoulder and forcing you to talk to explain what you are thinking is a skill that…
The analogy I use is a coding interview is like asking a musician to play a specific song; chances are, a classically trained pianist won't know the chords to a specific pop song, but that isn't any indication of their skill as a musician. The interviews I had with the company I work for now were amazing; they asked me some basic questions to verify my resume wasn't completely BS, then asked me to discuss previous pr…
I recently was flown to Austin for an interview. The entire reason I was brought down was because of Python ML projects on Github. The technical interview consisted of nothing, and I mean NOTHING but super advanced SQL questions. (over the phone, I had specifically stated I hadn't used SQL in years) My expectation was that I'd be interviewed using Python and asked to perform ML related tasks.
When I mentioned that I thought that the purpose of me being brought there was to add an ML dimension to the team, which was far too data analysis (using SQL and some R)focused and with no Python expertise, I was given a blank stare.
Then it hit me: the guys interviewing me didn't know how to do any of the stuff I had been brought down (by higher ups who weren't in the room) to do, so they weren't evaluating me on it. They evaluated me on what THEY knew. It's the equivalent of Peyton Manning being asked to evaluate a linebacker, and demanding that the linebacker throw passes downfield.
The highlight was when one of the guys (typical pony-tail neck-beard type) pointed out that an alluvial flow diagram in my portfolio of data visualization projects wasn't "Tufte-esque". (It was a gross misinterpretation of Edward Tufte's commandments on his part, but am I really going to get in an argument with the guy interviewing me?)
It was clear that the guys in the room wanted someone who knew what they did and thought like they did. A brilliant recipe for getting a homogenous team with no diversity in skills.
What an epic fucking waste of time. The best part? The company only has 150 employees, and a recruiter just contacted me for a position on another team that uses Python. She was unaware of the fact that I was there a month ago. I told her that they should have thought about that when they flew me down the first fucking time.