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Code Interviews

alaiacano.github.io

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Re: Code Interviews

#21

Post by [deleted] »

___luigi wrote: post #17
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #14

I won't bother with coding interviews. I consider them to be "hazing rituals"; not actual qualification assessment. I am very, very fortunate, in that I don't have to deal with them. I am not looking for work, and plan to never look for work, ever again. I have a giant portfolio[0]. It has links to 40 or so repos, with tens of thousands of lines of code, spanning decades. Just about every project can be cloned, built…

GREAT work! I can understand why big companies use LC type of questions to assess coding skills of those who graduated recently or didn't enough experience to show their work, but I struggle to understand why many Startups adopted such way of evaluating engineers. I see many startups nowadays asking to candidates to reverse a tree, a task that doesn't reflect the daily work in a startup (where people change gears fre…

[deleted]

Re: Code Interviews

#22

Post by seanmcdirmid »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #20
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure most of us would fail high-school trigonometry (or spelling and grammar for that matter) if given one. Not if we had a few weeks of prep time.

But I'm not going to take a few weeks of prep time to prepare for a high-school trig test, either. I have no reason to waste my time in that way. And I have no reason to waste my time spending a few weeks prepping for a code interview, either. I am who I am. Either you want that, or you don't. I'm not going to try to spend weeks studying so I can pretend to be different than I am. (Disclaimer: I'm not looking, and I…

If the trig test was in the way of a $200k/year job I didn’t have yet, I would totally hit the books.

Re: Code Interviews

#23

Post by ryanbrunner »

yodsanklai wrote: post #6

> a decent evaluation of junior engineers without industry experience, but it’s a common complaint among senior engineers that they have to study material that they haven’t used in years to get a job where they won’t use it. Counterpoint: some engineers with industry experience may have been working on very specific tech that doesn't readily translate to a new position. Actually, I'm sure some companies wouldn't even…

I think it's worthwhile looking at what you're going to accomplish out of an interview. For systems design type stuff, I think it's reasonable to always ask, since it's useful to know how someone approaches problems, and it's not necessarily a given that someone would have needed to deal with architectural / design questions regardless of seniority level.

If you're hiring for a senior position though, and the purpose of your question is "can this person code?", you should be able to get enough evidence from their resume / github / references. If you genuinely can't, then I'd question why you're interviewing them for a senior position in the first place. Strict adherence to standardization leads to absurd scenarios like giving basic "can you code" interviews to the authour of Homebrew like the article states.

Re: Code Interviews

#24

Post by ryanbrunner »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #12
a_square_peg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Senior engineers are expected to have different level of skills - project management, leadership, and ability to identify problems that matter, rather than blinding solving problems that are given to them. You're also not going to be able to test their ability to learn by giving tests. I'm sure most of us would fail high-school trigonometry (or spelling and grammar for that matter) if given one.

> I'm sure most of us would fail high-school trigonometry (or spelling and grammar for that matter) if given one. Not if we had a few weeks of prep time.

Doesn't it seem like an absurd scenario to you though, that you need to prep for an interview by relearning skills that aren't relevant to the job you're interviewing for?

I've been in coding interviews that matched the work that the company is doing, and I've found those useful - I get something from taking the interview (an idea of what their codebase is like, working with a partner, maybe some interesting code design questions), but I'm never going to do another "code this CS algorithim that 100% of people use a library for nowadays" type questions.

Re: Code Interviews

#25

Post by yodsanklai »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #20
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure most of us would fail high-school trigonometry (or spelling and grammar for that matter) if given one. Not if we had a few weeks of prep time.

But I'm not going to take a few weeks of prep time to prepare for a high-school trig test, either. I have no reason to waste my time in that way. And I have no reason to waste my time spending a few weeks prepping for a code interview, either. I am who I am. Either you want that, or you don't. I'm not going to try to spend weeks studying so I can pretend to be different than I am. (Disclaimer: I'm not looking, and I…

> I have no reason to waste my time in that way.

Preparing for interviews isn't wasted time provided you have some chance of success. The signing bonus alone can be worth the time.

Re: Code Interviews

#26

Post by falcor84 »

IshKebab wrote: post #18
gallamine wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“He actually did well” - how would he know that? He also wasn’t hired.

It's possible they told him but given that he admits he didn't know what a binary tree is it seems unlikely he did well at a Google coding interview, where I assume 90% of people know. > But ultimately, should Google have hired me? Yes, absolutely yes. I am often a dick, I am often difficult, I often don’t know computer science, but. BUT. I make really good things, maybe they aren't perfect, but people really like th…

I would hire Brian Fox, if I could afford him.

Re: Code Interviews

#27

Post by yodsanklai »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #23
yodsanklai wrote: post #6

> a decent evaluation of junior engineers without industry experience, but it’s a common complaint among senior engineers that they have to study material that they haven’t used in years to get a job where they won’t use it. Counterpoint: some engineers with industry experience may have been working on very specific tech that doesn't readily translate to a new position. Actually, I'm sure some companies wouldn't even…

I think it's worthwhile looking at what you're going to accomplish out of an interview. For systems design type stuff, I think it's reasonable to always ask, since it's useful to know how someone approaches problems, and it's not necessarily a given that someone would have needed to deal with architectural / design questions regardless of seniority level. If you're hiring for a senior position though, and the purpose…

> you should be able to get enough evidence from their resume / github / references

The problem is when you get 1000s of such resumes, but only a few positions to fill. Also, not everybody has time to spent on github projects. It can be even more time consuming to work on personal projects than brushing up your algorithmic skills. Not saying these interviews are perfect, but I do believe that they are a good solution for a very big company.

Talking about system design interviews, I had the feeling that they were less useful than algorithm interviews, especially for a senior SWE. You can nail them with only theoretical knowledge, even though you've never worked on the systems they ask you to design.

Re: Code Interviews

#28

Post by lumost »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #14

I won't bother with coding interviews. I consider them to be "hazing rituals"; not actual qualification assessment. I am very, very fortunate, in that I don't have to deal with them. I am not looking for work, and plan to never look for work, ever again. I have a giant portfolio[0]. It has links to 40 or so repos, with tens of thousands of lines of code, spanning decades. Just about every project can be cloned, built…

As an experienced engineer Apple I'm sure that you've noticed a few trends such as.

1) There are those who are unfamiliar with core comp sci concepts, and are still very productive in many kinds of engineering work.

2) It can be difficult for a team that codes frequently and sometimes does need to deal with algorithms and other items to onboard a new team member who's not very good at the act of coding or very familiar with when to use what or how to make something that does one thing do another.

3) Very experienced and skilled people sometimes forget how to do the basics but with a little practice do fine.

4) Those who are experts at the fundamentals tend to learn any new product area relatively quickly, which is a much better approach to hiring than looking for Go + AWS engineers with 20 years of experience ;)

As an interviewer/hiring company hiring many engineers you then have to decide whether you should have a different process for hiring experienced engineers compared to junior engineers or otherwise deal with the awkward circumstance that an experienced candidate maybe isn't just rusty but doesn't have the knowledge or execution ability to code. When hiring an internal transfer it's fairly easy to vet the latter criteria, but when hiring externally it's substantially harder.

Re: Code Interviews

#30

Post by adxl »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #14

I won't bother with coding interviews. I consider them to be "hazing rituals"; not actual qualification assessment. I am very, very fortunate, in that I don't have to deal with them. I am not looking for work, and plan to never look for work, ever again. I have a giant portfolio[0]. It has links to 40 or so repos, with tens of thousands of lines of code, spanning decades. Just about every project can be cloned, built…

You sound angry maybe you should see a therapist.
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