Software engineering interview questions • Hacker News Board

Re: Software engineering interview questions

#11

Post by Bahamut » Tue, Dec 23, 2014, 6:46 PM UTC

soperj wrote: post #8

BigChiefSmokem wrote: post #5

Best way is to paid-intern an engineer for a week/month and try them out (if they're willing) and see how they fit and might be able to expand on your current culture. That's really the only good way. Asking questions in an interview, no matter how clever or insightful they may be, has been and will forever be a crap shoot.

Honestly, as someone who would have to quit their current job to go work for another company, why on earth would I agree to that instability?

For me, speaking as a software engineer, I highly agree - if a company tried to pull that on me, that would be a quick way for me to turn down the company. It doesn't make sense if the candidate is working for another company - why would the candidate use up all of his/her vacation for one company if the company isn't serious about bringing the person onboard full-time as a regular employee off the bat?

Re: Software engineering interview questions

#12

Post by 31reasons » Tue, Dec 23, 2014, 6:49 PM UTC

soperj wrote: post #8

BigChiefSmokem wrote: post #5

Best way is to paid-intern an engineer for a week/month and try them out (if they're willing) and see how they fit and might be able to expand on your current culture. That's really the only good way. Asking questions in an interview, no matter how clever or insightful they may be, has been and will forever be a crap shoot.

Honestly, as someone who would have to quit their current job to go work for another company, why on earth would I agree to that instability?

This is exactly why this mode of interviewing is not at all popular. Not to mention you lose your negotiating power because you don't have a job!

Re: Software engineering interview questions

#13

Post by pixeloution » Tue, Dec 23, 2014, 6:52 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #9

I'm surprised at this list of questions. Didn't everyone get the memo that "brainteasers are a complete waste of time?" from a year and a half ago? http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/22/the-technical-interview-is-...

I didn't see much that qualifies as a "Brain Teaser" - most of these are algorithmic questions. Knowing when do implement a depth first search != brain teaser.

Re: Software engineering interview questions

#14

Post by billychasen » Tue, Dec 23, 2014, 6:54 PM UTC

BigChiefSmokem wrote: post #5

Best way is to paid-intern an engineer for a week/month and try them out (if they're willing) and see how they fit and might be able to expand on your current culture. That's really the only good way. Asking questions in an interview, no matter how clever or insightful they may be, has been and will forever be a crap shoot.

This doesn't take into consideration the time to bring someone up to speed and their productivity hit from that. There is also cost and slowdown from the company's perspective to bring someone new up to speed (it usually will slow down others involved too).

You should just be sure you need and want to hire someone before they show up for their first day.

Re: Software engineering interview questions

#15

Post by PublicEnemy111 » Tue, Dec 23, 2014, 6:54 PM UTC

eeeemmm wrote: post #2

I never asked any of these question, a good engineer is not a mathematician.

Reciting CLRS is not useful. Knowing why a greedy algorithm like Dijkstra's is optimal can be both beautiful and insightful. A fundamental understanding of these algorithms and data structures only add tools to an engineers arsenal. Of course, code should be the medium through which the interviewee expresses these to make sure she/he is not simply a mathemetician

Re: Software engineering interview questions

#16

Post by doing_engine » Tue, Dec 23, 2014, 6:54 PM UTC

A good engineer is adaptive enough to grok and keep the business goals a priority. Developing systems is just an implementation detail.

Re: Software engineering interview questions

#17

Post by IndianAstronaut » Tue, Dec 23, 2014, 6:55 PM UTC

daniel-cussen wrote: post #7

BigChiefSmokem wrote: post #5

Best way is to paid-intern an engineer for a week/month and try them out (if they're willing) and see how they fit and might be able to expand on your current culture. That's really the only good way. Asking questions in an interview, no matter how clever or insightful they may be, has been and will forever be a crap shoot.

It's the only really good way for the company , provided that it doesn't filter out good applicants who would have very good reason to decline leaving a full-time position for a chance at full-time somewhere else. I don't see how it's good for the employee though: the company is effectively shunting the risk of a bad hire from someone who is reasonably positioned to take the risk (despite what entrepreneur blogs may…

I could see this working if say the company said, let's try this out but let's do remote for weekends only. This way I don't have to quit my current job and they can try me out for a while before they hire.

Re: Software engineering interview questions

#18

Post by fiachamp » Tue, Dec 23, 2014, 6:55 PM UTC

rcoder wrote: post #10

BigChiefSmokem wrote: post #5

Best way is to paid-intern an engineer for a week/month and try them out (if they're willing) and see how they fit and might be able to expand on your current culture. That's really the only good way. Asking questions in an interview, no matter how clever or insightful they may be, has been and will forever be a crap shoot.

I agree strongly this is the best way to interview a candidate. It's even relatively easy to set up for a new grad or junior candidate who isn't currently working. They should of course also be local or have no family or professional commitments that make a week-long non-work trip difficult. Sadly, many of the best engineers I've worked with do have families, are working, don't live in the same town, and would absolu…

We've found a good middle ground. Giving the candidate a few days to do a test project that involves fixing a bug on the production site. Its something they can do at night after work, gets them resolving a real-life problem, seeing how fast they figure out the codebase.

Re: Software engineering interview questions

#19

Post by IndianAstronaut » Tue, Dec 23, 2014, 6:56 PM UTC

MoOmer wrote: post #6

Sites down; but, I wanted to add that at the peak of Hadoop hype, an unnamed company asked how I'd tally up occurrences of a value in a 1gb flat file, where the job would need to be done recurringly on multiple files, quickly. Without wanting to overthink it, I suggested a simple script iterating over the file, incrementing the key/values as they occur. Apparently the correct answer was a Hadoop job. Now, given that…

I used to use Python/Pandas for up to 9gb files.

Re: Software engineering interview questions

#20

Post by laeus » Tue, Dec 23, 2014, 6:58 PM UTC

Bahamut wrote: post #11

soperj wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, as someone who would have to quit their current job to go work for another company, why on earth would I agree to that instability?

For me, speaking as a software engineer, I highly agree - if a company tried to pull that on me, that would be a quick way for me to turn down the company. It doesn't make sense if the candidate is working for another company - why would the candidate use up all of his/her vacation for one company if the company isn't serious about bringing the person onboard full-time as a regular employee off the bat?

To be honest, having experienced the tremendous damage done by poor hires (and the amazing difficulty of getting rid of them once they're identified as such), I might see this as a pretty substantial benefit of working at a company that uses this method. Given that, I might be willing to participate in this kind of interview process. It would probably have to be a company I already know and admire for some reasons up front, but I really want to find a place to work where everybody is pulling their weight.