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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

#181

Post by cnp »

ansimionescu wrote: post #152
eric_bullington wrote: post #86

I find code interviewing so nerve-wracking that I'm delaying my transition from another profession into a much-desired full-time programming job. I'm 40 and always aced interviews before I did my first coding interview last year. In my prior career, I literally never had an interview that failed to result in an offer. But I blew my first coding interview both in the interview itself -- in which I repeatedly blanked o…

Here's some stuff to get you started, hope it helps: https://github.com/andreis/interview

Whoa, thank you!

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#182

Post by sgeisenh »

elq wrote: post #47
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…

>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'm curious, what kind of a solution are you looking for with that problem? The trivial solution of concatenating the lists and then using a library sort (or cobbling together quicksort) is about as good as it gets for small lists.

For large lists, the best you can do is copy the lists into an array, use a parallel n * log n array sort, then fix the pointers.

The problem doesn't seem to require any real thought. It is difficult to make optimizations because the problem isn't especially well defined and the optimal asymptotic performance is obvious the moment the word "sorted" is uttered.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#184

Post by minusSeven »

Any ideas how the whole thing will be implemented. The site only contains very generic information about it.

How are the interviews going to be conducted ? What will be the different forms of interviews (as most companies have different forms and phases of interviews) ? How will the feedbacks be given ?

Hope this just doesn't turn out to be just meeting place for anonymous interviewers and interviewees .

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#185

Post by eli_gottlieb »

onislandtime wrote: post #85

Dear 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…

Of course it's total bullshit. You still have to pass it. You can't demand that everyone else be at least as wise as you, especially since you could well still be wrong.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#187

Post by claus1860 »

lazyant wrote: post #11

S

This is a very interesting discussion. Would love to hear your thoughts on our London based startup www.Prehash.com which is going in a similar direction. Companies can host organization specific coding challenges on our website and developers apply by solving them. There is no time limit for developers and no one is looking over your shoulder. The only thing is that each time you run the test we take a snapshot in a github repo. Any feedback is welcome! Cheers.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#188

Post by learc83 »

None of my engineer friends have ever had a Google style technical interview. What makes software so different?

You don't ask an electrical engineer to layout a complicated PCB on a whiteboard, you don't have a civil engineer build a bridge out of popsicle sticks.

Surely hiring an incompetent electrical engineer is just as bad as hiring an incompetent software engineer, but from talking to the EEs I know, they just get asked basic questions or go over past projects--nothing nearly as stressful as a coding interview.

If other industries can get by without them, whiteboard technical interviews must not be as necessary as they're made out to be. It seems to me they are just a damaging fad. I think the high stress technical interview could even be one of the factors contributing to the software monoculture.

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#189

Post by nileshtrivedi »

eru wrote: post #158
banjomonster wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an audition, musicians are usually asked to play a mix of prepared and sight-read pieces (though sometimes the sight reading is from standard repertoire, so they may have encountered before). Both are helpful in discerning how qualified the musician is. And sight-reading is incredibly important for most jobs musicians get hired for - in most freelance situations, they'd get a 3 hour rehearsal, or essentially a gui…

That would be an interesting way to apply something like re-captcha: ask them to fix two bugs in open source applications. One bug that you've actually already fixed, so you know how hard it should be and can calibrate; the second bug is open.

How about just asking them to code something - anything - in say, a couple of hours?

Re: Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

#190

Post by personZ »

pekk wrote: post #179
personZ wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explaining your thought process to a coworker after you've written the code is ex post facto rationalization -- you are invariably leaving out many side-tracks, many missteps, and get to condense down a long process into a simple, seemingly obvious explanation. You already see the route, and now you're just describing it. Trying to do the same while you're trying to solve the problem, with a judgmental crowd scoring…

As someone who is very annoyed about interview process in general, I'm not sure what you think offends some people about giving them a realistic environment and time to work. What is annoying is when a false equivalence is drawn between stress and difficulty on some ad hoc interviewing task and "even a basic knowledge of skills".

I'm speaking more to the viciously anti-technical-interview sentiment that is so commonly seen on technology sites. While there are a lot of shops that do the whole process in a ridiculous fashion, similarly there are a lot of frauds among us: we have experienced such a number of people who claimed skills that they didn't begin to have, even when warned well in advance that they were going to be tested, told how they would be tested, and given a full ability to leverage the internet. Whenever those interviews ended, awkwardly, I always imagine them heading to Reddit or wherever to tell everyone how technical interviews are so much bullshit, and can't people just hire them on their resume, etc.
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