Today's Coding Interview Game • Hacker News Board

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#121

Post by grayhairmomma » Sat, Dec 04, 2010, 2:26 AM UTC

aplusbi wrote: post #114

grayhairmomma wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your support. The reason I mention "on a white board, no syntax errors, compilable" is because I've been dinged at the whiteboard for these silly reasons. No shit ! And Gayle Laakmann, author of "Cracking the Coding Interview" actually says it's important to write nearly perfect code at the whiteboard.

How do you know you were dinged for these silly reasons? Did they actually tell you that? I wouldn't be surprised if there are programmers out there who ding candidates for silly reasons like that, but in my experience they are the minority.

Good point. Can't say for certain. Perhaps you're right -- because, no, they didn't actually tell me that. I just assumed...

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#122

Post by grayhairmomma » Sat, Dec 04, 2010, 2:42 AM UTC

jchonphoenix wrote: post #2

I understand where the author is coming from because many interviews questions are unreasonable and test absolutely nothing. However, if someone couldn't code a linked list on a whiteboard, I'd be severely worried. Same goes for a binary tree. If you know what a linked list or binary tree is, you should have no issues figuring out how to represent them with code in 10 minutes. The other trickier problems are there to…

Bill Maher is my hero. Sorry if my swearing offended you, but it's just who I am.

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#123

Post by grayhairmomma » Sat, Dec 04, 2010, 2:58 AM UTC

varjag wrote: post #72

skybrian wrote: post #15

I wonder how he knows what they're downgrading him for? Most interview processes don't give the candidate any feedback - just "hire" or "no hire". From the other side, I certainly don't expect perfect code on a whiteboard, especially if they're typical mistakes that even experienced coders sometimes make.

> I wonder how he knows what they're downgrading him for? She. And yes, probably she knows. One usually has the feeling which part of the interview they fail.

Oh I always know why I'm being downgraded. During whiteboard coding sessions, I often need hints. But given these hints, I get to the answer most of the time. In this economy, everyone is looking for "A" players. My blog post says that. "Today’s interviews seem heavily geared toward software engineers who rarely need to look stuff up. Those who code at an alarmingly rapid rate, who get complex code compiled and running the first time around.". So sorry, but this does not describe me. Nor does it describe the majority of good programmers out there ! But interviews do seem to screen for these whiz kids. Joel Spolsky said it right -- top notch "A" player software engineers don't apply for jobs. They don't need to. Jobs find them. But does this mean that B or B+ players are utterly worthless and unemployable ?

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#124

Post by grayhairmomma » Sat, Dec 04, 2010, 3:07 AM UTC

mmt wrote: post #79

msie wrote: post #30

It's hilarious that some commenters here refer to the author as a guy.

Your amusement seems to me to be based on a false assumption. "He" could be gender-neutral, and perhaps they're encouraging equality by ignoring the sex of the referent. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1795518

Trust me. I'm all girl.

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#125

Post by MetallicCloud » Sat, Dec 04, 2010, 4:50 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #120

MetallicCloud wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the tip guys. Updated.

You now have location there (which turns out to be fairly close to one of our facilities) but no contact information, so I still can't reach out to you. If you're extremely uncomfortable listing an email address (or lisp form that evaluates to one or something similar), you can reach out to me based on my profile, but I'd really urge you to list some contact information in your profile, even if it's a throwaway accou…

Thanks, I had put an email in the email field, I just assumed that was available from accessing someones profile. It's also in the about field now.

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#126

Post by varjag » Sat, Dec 04, 2010, 4:05 PM UTC

grayhairmomma wrote: post #123

varjag wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how he knows what they're downgrading him for? She. And yes, probably she knows. One usually has the feeling which part of the interview they fail.

Oh I always know why I'm being downgraded. During whiteboard coding sessions, I often need hints. But given these hints, I get to the answer most of the time. In this economy, everyone is looking for "A" players. My blog post says that. "Today’s interviews seem heavily geared toward software engineers who rarely need to look stuff up. Those who code at an alarmingly rapid rate, who get complex code compiled and runni…

It doesn't, and am against sorting people into A, B etc buckets at all. Nor am a big fan of interview puzzles in principle. Looking at how my grandparent post sunk though, seems like an opposite came across to a number of people.

Good luck to you with job search.

Re: Today's Coding Interview Game

#127

Post by Lanzaa » Tue, Dec 07, 2010, 5:57 AM UTC

aaronkaplan wrote: post #98

rsl7 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code on the whiteboard is counterproductive at best. Let's hook up your laptop to the projector so I can get a glimpse of how you interact with your computer. I learn more about you by seeing your relationship with your text editor, how you look up information you can't remember, etc. Not watching you sweat with a marker in your hand.

My laptop is for reading email and surfing the web in hotel rooms. Occasionally I program on it when I don't have a choice, but I'm far less productive than on my regular workstation, both because of the ergonomic problems and because I haven't invested the time to set up all my usual software the way I like it. (Am I a dinosaur? Does everyone else have a laptop as his primary machine these days?)

As a college student I have noticed many of my peers have to make the choice between a desktop and a laptop. The laptops often win because of their ability to be carried to classes and to collaborate with peers. Having a whiteboard to collaborate on at school and a computer right there to program on afterwards is very nice.