Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp • Hacker News Board

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#21

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 2:33 PM UTC

hknd wrote: post #8

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #3

It is sad to see the huge divergence between skills required for coding interviews and the skills required to be a good software developer/engineer.

Apparently it's still the best indicator for hiring engineers on large scale. It's proven that there is a big correlation between performing good during an coding interview and performing good during your day-to-day job. Ofc the coding interview is bad, but it's the best of all available (viable) options. tbh: most people say it's bad because interviewers focus on the optimal solution or something like that. Most of…

My experience is that people who enjoy the “intellectually interesting” types of problems don’t have the stamina or discipline to get past the 80% mark and are easily distracted by the “ooh shiny”.

Disclaimer: doing interviews outside of FAANG and not on the west coast - where the majority of developers are working.

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#22

Post by bluGill » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 2:36 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #16

mchannon wrote: post #4

Wikipedia has an excellent article on this under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination . Essentially, the system used to recruit candidates into the Imperial Chinese state bureaucracy was an-ever-more-elaborate progression of less- and less-relevant testing, and more- and more-gamable (and expensive) testing. If you thought getting quizzed about FizzBuzz was bad, imagine getting quizzed about Beowulf wit…

FizzBuzz is relevant to job. People complaining about izzBuzz havent had the pleasure of working with someone able to talk about development well while being unable to write simple code. Problem of FizzBUzz is that it is too easy, so folks get insulted. I have worked who are totally passionate and read all the blogs and can talk about all new buzzwords and techniques. Who simultaneously had problem write simple code.…

In the past one of my bosses said he the most valuable thing to asking someone claiming to know C++ was "How do you make a class member that cannot be accessed outside the class". If you know anything about C++ you know the one word answer, yet many so called programmers can't get that far.

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#23

Post by vonmoltke » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 2:36 PM UTC

Kaveren wrote: post #12

hknd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately it's internal. All faang companies spend a lot of time and resources on hiring to make it more fair for everybody and to get signals faster. And nobody internally enjoys doing a lot of coding interviews - it's as frustrating for the interviewer as it is for the candidate. If there would be an easier way then these companies would definitely use it. A candidate usually has 5-7 interviews (if he is not fa…

Just for context it seems the above user works at Google based on previous comments. The idea that Google has internal research indicating this wouldn't be surprising to me.

> The idea that Google has internal research indicating this wouldn't be surprising to me.

The problem with internal research on these matters is the nearly total lack of negative examples. Depending on the quality of the pre-on-site screening the quality of candidates at that point might be so high that random selection might be just as good.

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#24

Post by kamaal » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 2:41 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #16

mchannon wrote: post #4

Wikipedia has an excellent article on this under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination . Essentially, the system used to recruit candidates into the Imperial Chinese state bureaucracy was an-ever-more-elaborate progression of less- and less-relevant testing, and more- and more-gamable (and expensive) testing. If you thought getting quizzed about FizzBuzz was bad, imagine getting quizzed about Beowulf wit…

FizzBuzz is relevant to job. People complaining about izzBuzz havent had the pleasure of working with someone able to talk about development well while being unable to write simple code. Problem of FizzBUzz is that it is too easy, so folks get insulted. I have worked who are totally passionate and read all the blogs and can talk about all new buzzwords and techniques. Who simultaneously had problem write simple code.…

I guess the parent posters point is you could come up with a question bank of FizzBuzz problems, that candidates can study through to ace through your Imperial exam.

There is generally little substitute for real world experience. Measuring through proxy only goes that far.

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#25

Post by someguydave » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 2:41 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #22

watwut wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FizzBuzz is relevant to job. People complaining about izzBuzz havent had the pleasure of working with someone able to talk about development well while being unable to write simple code. Problem of FizzBUzz is that it is too easy, so folks get insulted. I have worked who are totally passionate and read all the blogs and can talk about all new buzzwords and techniques. Who simultaneously had problem write simple code.…

In the past one of my bosses said he the most valuable thing to asking someone claiming to know C++ was "How do you make a class member that cannot be accessed outside the class". If you know anything about C++ you know the one word answer, yet many so called programmers can't get that far.

That’s a good idea. I interview programmers and I’m pretty sure some would fail that question. What I don’t get: why put C++ on your resume if you don’t even know the basics?

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#26

Post by bluGill » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 2:42 PM UTC

hknd wrote: post #10

inasring wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's proven that there is a big correlation between performing good during an coding interview and performing good during your day-to-day job"* *citation needed

Unfortunately it's internal. All faang companies spend a lot of time and resources on hiring to make it more fair for everybody and to get signals faster. And nobody internally enjoys doing a lot of coding interviews - it's as frustrating for the interviewer as it is for the candidate. If there would be an easier way then these companies would definitely use it. A candidate usually has 5-7 interviews (if he is not fa…

Someone who didn't get the job should sue just because if these valuable they will have the data to prove it and then the rest of us can look it up in the court records.

My boss asked HR about this and they said if we want to ask coding questions we need to first give the coding interview and score the results - but not use that to decide to hire or not. Then after two years look at their performance and compare to how they did on the interview.

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#27

Post by brookhaven_dude » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

mchannon wrote: post #4

Wikipedia has an excellent article on this under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination . Essentially, the system used to recruit candidates into the Imperial Chinese state bureaucracy was an-ever-more-elaborate progression of less- and less-relevant testing, and more- and more-gamable (and expensive) testing. If you thought getting quizzed about FizzBuzz was bad, imagine getting quizzed about Beowulf wit…

Perhaps employers not only want the best coders, but also look for traits that enable some to game the system - like having the willpower and discipline to practice and get good at these types of questions.

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#28

Post by ricardoreis » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 2:47 PM UTC

throwaway2016a wrote: post #18

watwut wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FizzBuzz is relevant to job. People complaining about izzBuzz havent had the pleasure of working with someone able to talk about development well while being unable to write simple code. Problem of FizzBUzz is that it is too easy, so folks get insulted. I have worked who are totally passionate and read all the blogs and can talk about all new buzzwords and techniques. Who simultaneously had problem write simple code.…

I agree completely on Fizzbuzz. It has saved us from making so many bad hires. It takes 15 minutes during the interview and you learn so much about a candidate. Not only if they can do basic coding but also how they react when they encounter something that don't know or conversely how they react when they think something is "easy" or "beneath them". 10 years ago I was asked how to tell if an integer is divisible by t…

10 years ago I was asked how to tell if an integer is divisible by two without using division or modulus. What they expected was to bit mask the 1s place in the integer and check for equality with 0.

Wait, it gets better. I was asked the "divisible by two" question and gave the standard bitmasking technique in response. But then my interviewer said that wasn't "allowed" either, because apparently this programming environment they do their daily work in (this was an old-school web development shop basically) doesn't support basic math operations of any kind except equality, plus and minus.

He then pressed me for something "even simpler", "perhaps using function calls". Then I figured out what the "right" answer was -- he wanted be to test for odd- or even-ness recursively by, well, you know how.

So after reminding him about the obvious performance drawbacks of such an approach, I asked him -- "So do you actually write code like this in production?"

To which his answer was: "No, but I do during interviews".

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#29

Post by khalilravanna » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 2:50 PM UTC

hknd wrote: post #8

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #3

It is sad to see the huge divergence between skills required for coding interviews and the skills required to be a good software developer/engineer.

Apparently it's still the best indicator for hiring engineers on large scale. It's proven that there is a big correlation between performing good during an coding interview and performing good during your day-to-day job. Ofc the coding interview is bad, but it's the best of all available (viable) options. tbh: most people say it's bad because interviewers focus on the optimal solution or something like that. Most of…

In order for there to be a big correlation wouldn't they have to have a ton of negative examples? So that would mean they're hiring a bunch of people who "fail" the interviews to see how their performance matches up to someone who passed the interview. I mean, they could do that. That is assuming they hid the results from whoever those failing candidates go to work for or I imagine there'd be a psychological self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts where people always see that person as a "interview-failer" and view all their results in a negative light. Can you speak to whether this is the case at all?

My gut feeling is that they wouldn't do this at all. If you fail, you fail. Not only that, it seems like a legally shit-situation to put yourself in to hire someone who you think is going to fail and then fire them.

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#30

Post by mchannon » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

brookhaven_dude wrote: post #27

mchannon wrote: post #4

Wikipedia has an excellent article on this under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination . Essentially, the system used to recruit candidates into the Imperial Chinese state bureaucracy was an-ever-more-elaborate progression of less- and less-relevant testing, and more- and more-gamable (and expensive) testing. If you thought getting quizzed about FizzBuzz was bad, imagine getting quizzed about Beowulf wit…

Perhaps employers not only want the best coders, but also look for traits that enable some to game the system - like having the willpower and discipline to practice and get good at these types of questions.

Doy.

The point of the post was that they were/are optimizing for the wrong things.

Some people watch "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?" and chuckle when they realize they're not.

A smaller subset of people take it to the next level and (would) hire the 5th grader instead of the adult to do an adult's job.

Life's not a game show, but some (most?) of us forget that when we conduct interviews.