The Terrible Technical Interview • Hacker News Board

Re: The Terrible Technical Interview

#21

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 21, 2015, 6:25 PM UTC

parennoob wrote: post #15

StevePerkins wrote: post #6

I do almost all of the technical phone screens for my company. The process starts with a "where-do-you-see-yourself-in-5-years" personality screen, with an H.R. drone or outside recruiter. It moves on me, and then on to a brief "homework" coding exercise that we ask people to write and submit. If we like their code sample, then they come in for the panel of "whiteboard-exercise" people who conduct the face to face ro…

As a self-taught person beginning to write software who is not in SF, your description of someone who cannot explain the advantages of the MVC pattern makes me incredibly nervous. I don't really know the MVC pattern in detail, or what its advantages are. I do know about Big O complexity, data structures, loops, registers, as well as logic gates, and the basic structure of computer processors. I can code small program…

[deleted]

Re: The Terrible Technical Interview

#22

Post by fsk » Sat, Mar 21, 2015, 6:26 PM UTC

parennoob wrote: post #15

StevePerkins wrote: post #6

I do almost all of the technical phone screens for my company. The process starts with a "where-do-you-see-yourself-in-5-years" personality screen, with an H.R. drone or outside recruiter. It moves on me, and then on to a brief "homework" coding exercise that we ask people to write and submit. If we like their code sample, then they come in for the panel of "whiteboard-exercise" people who conduct the face to face ro…

As a self-taught person beginning to write software who is not in SF, your description of someone who cannot explain the advantages of the MVC pattern makes me incredibly nervous. I don't really know the MVC pattern in detail, or what its advantages are. I do know about Big O complexity, data structures, loops, registers, as well as logic gates, and the basic structure of computer processors. I can code small program…

>If not, What is the correct answer that will prevent me from getting COMPLETELY EXPOSED (in your words) if you ask me this MVC question in an interview?

Every interviewer has their own pet question that the candidate is COMPLETELY UNQUALIFIED if they don't know.

My short answer to "What is MVC?" is that it's a popular web development trend, but without much substance to back it up. Every MVC project that I've been supporting/maintaining was a nightmare, taking 3x-5x longer to get stuff done than what I consider reasonable.

MVC = Model-View-Controller. It's usually for web development. You structure your code in a way that separates the data logic (Model), the user presentation logic (View), and the glue that holds the bits together (Controller).

There are many popular MVC frameworks that let you churn out a lot of mediocre websites quickly (angular.js, Ruby on Rails, Zend, Django(Python), and many others). The MVC framework does a lot of routine coding for you, but it comes at a price. The code can become a nightmare to maintain, especially if you use the MVC framework incorrectly. If you do something outside what the MVC framework provides, it can become a handicap rather than a help. The MVC framework usually demands you write your whole application in its preferred style, such as spreading out your code in various directories with forced naming conventions. MVC frameworks tend to be poorly documented compared to the underlying language (For example, compare the zend documentation to php.net).

Re: The Terrible Technical Interview

#23

Post by msoad » Sat, Mar 21, 2015, 6:27 PM UTC

I live in Silicon Valley so I have tons of Software Engineer friends. I also have a friend who's a heart surgery researcher at Stanford. When we talk about our hiring process he just laughs and thinks its impossible to do something remotely close what we do in Software in their field. It seems Software is the only field that people have to do some serious work for the interviews.

Re: The Terrible Technical Interview

#24

Post by ExpiredLink » Sat, Mar 21, 2015, 6:28 PM UTC

StevePerkins wrote: post #6

I do almost all of the technical phone screens for my company. The process starts with a "where-do-you-see-yourself-in-5-years" personality screen, with an H.R. drone or outside recruiter. It moves on me, and then on to a brief "homework" coding exercise that we ask people to write and submit. If we like their code sample, then they come in for the panel of "whiteboard-exercise" people who conduct the face to face ro…

From the above article:

"Why do we keep doing whiteboard interviews, even though they tell us little about how good the applicant is at actual software development?"

Re: The Terrible Technical Interview

#25

Post by bzz01 » Sat, Mar 21, 2015, 6:28 PM UTC

parennoob wrote: post #15

StevePerkins wrote: post #6

I do almost all of the technical phone screens for my company. The process starts with a "where-do-you-see-yourself-in-5-years" personality screen, with an H.R. drone or outside recruiter. It moves on me, and then on to a brief "homework" coding exercise that we ask people to write and submit. If we like their code sample, then they come in for the panel of "whiteboard-exercise" people who conduct the face to face ro…

As a self-taught person beginning to write software who is not in SF, your description of someone who cannot explain the advantages of the MVC pattern makes me incredibly nervous. I don't really know the MVC pattern in detail, or what its advantages are. I do know about Big O complexity, data structures, loops, registers, as well as logic gates, and the basic structure of computer processors. I can code small program…

As an engineer with ten years of software dev experience who interviews quite a lot of candidates for my current team, I'd say don't overthink this.

BigO, data structures and having a good idea how computers work, what matters for performance both from theoretical and practical perspective, matters infinitely more to us that knowing how to play object-oriented BS bingo or subversion usage patterns.

If you know what MVC stands for, you're know enough about OO patterns to me.

Not going to argue that we got it right way(tm), just wanted to give you another perspective.

Re: The Terrible Technical Interview

#26

Post by ExpiredLink » Sat, Mar 21, 2015, 6:32 PM UTC

fsk wrote: post #22

parennoob wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a self-taught person beginning to write software who is not in SF, your description of someone who cannot explain the advantages of the MVC pattern makes me incredibly nervous. I don't really know the MVC pattern in detail, or what its advantages are. I do know about Big O complexity, data structures, loops, registers, as well as logic gates, and the basic structure of computer processors. I can code small program…

>If not, What is the correct answer that will prevent me from getting COMPLETELY EXPOSED (in your words) if you ask me this MVC question in an interview? Every interviewer has their own pet question that the candidate is COMPLETELY UNQUALIFIED if they don't know. My short answer to "What is MVC?" is that it's a popular web development trend, but without much substance to back it up. Every MVC project that I've been s…

BTW, there isn't just one MVC pattern.

Re: The Terrible Technical Interview

#27

Post by suyash » Sat, Mar 21, 2015, 6:32 PM UTC

RogerL wrote: post #3

nperez wrote: post #2

If your only goal is to measure the ability to code, then doing a whiteboard interview isn't the best way to do that IMO. But what about positions where you will be expected to give presentations, do pair-programming, or mentor junior developers? I think whiteboard interviews can be a measure of your ability to take technical concepts and illustrate/explain them clearly to a team. I used to really hate whiteboards, b…

If you want to measure giving a public presentation....have them give a public presentation. If you want to measure their ability to pair program ... pair program with them. If you want to measure their ability to mentor ... have them teach you something they know. I want to know how you do X, and measuring X is easy, so please do Y as a proxy is never a good approach. I have never, in my 25+ year career, ever had to…

Excellent answer Roger. Whiteboard is not a silver bullet. It really depends on what the interview really trying to asses and use a better tool to do that, I would personally prefer to write code in a developer environment (IDE etc) as that is the most natural place for me to write quality code.

White-boarding is good for high level design and architecture but not for actual code.

Re: The Terrible Technical Interview

#28

Post by fsk » Sat, Mar 21, 2015, 6:37 PM UTC

ExpiredLink wrote: post #26

fsk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If not, What is the correct answer that will prevent me from getting COMPLETELY EXPOSED (in your words) if you ask me this MVC question in an interview? Every interviewer has their own pet question that the candidate is COMPLETELY UNQUALIFIED if they don't know. My short answer to "What is MVC?" is that it's a popular web development trend, but without much substance to back it up. Every MVC project that I've been s…

BTW, there isn't just one MVC pattern.

Yeah, I know, angular.js is MVVM and not MVC. It still sucked. The boss chose angular because he wanted to pad his resume with angular.js experience, and not because it was the right tool. That startup is still stumbling along, but wasn't as successful as it should have been.

(In angular, when you edit data in the view, the model is immediately updated, which is why it's MVVM and not MVC.)

Re: The Terrible Technical Interview

#29

Post by sacheendra » Sat, Mar 21, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

parennoob wrote: post #15

StevePerkins wrote: post #6

I do almost all of the technical phone screens for my company. The process starts with a "where-do-you-see-yourself-in-5-years" personality screen, with an H.R. drone or outside recruiter. It moves on me, and then on to a brief "homework" coding exercise that we ask people to write and submit. If we like their code sample, then they come in for the panel of "whiteboard-exercise" people who conduct the face to face ro…

As a self-taught person beginning to write software who is not in SF, your description of someone who cannot explain the advantages of the MVC pattern makes me incredibly nervous. I don't really know the MVC pattern in detail, or what its advantages are. I do know about Big O complexity, data structures, loops, registers, as well as logic gates, and the basic structure of computer processors. I can code small program…

The MVC question is probably for candidates who have some experience in developing software. Not knowing it does not mean you are unfit for developing software. But, even if you have a little experience, you should probably know about MVC, even if you have never used it. This shows that you have familiarity with current technology. Not being familiar with current technology is definitely bad. If you are applying for a beginner position, not knowing about MVC should not be a big minus. You will only be tested on algorithms and data structures. If you don't know the answer, it is better to inform the interviewer of that and inform them of the topics you know about.

Re: The Terrible Technical Interview

#30

Post by guelo » Sat, Mar 21, 2015, 6:39 PM UTC

philbo wrote: post #12

StevePerkins wrote: post #6

I do almost all of the technical phone screens for my company. The process starts with a "where-do-you-see-yourself-in-5-years" personality screen, with an H.R. drone or outside recruiter. It moves on me, and then on to a brief "homework" coding exercise that we ask people to write and submit. If we like their code sample, then they come in for the panel of "whiteboard-exercise" people who conduct the face to face ro…

Although I believe everything you say, I'd like to provide a counterpoint. I think I'm a pretty good programmer and I've got a reasonable body of work on GitHub to back it up, but I've often failed technical interviews because I go to pieces under the pressure and my brain just stops working. I've been a dev for > 15 years but if anything I've got worse at interviewing over time. I only apply for positions that I gen…

You should spend time improving your live performance skills. It comes in handy for more than just job interviews.