Tech Interview Torture Chamber

Post by meowlicious » Sat, Mar 11, 2017, 6:06 PM UTC

bit_logic wrote: post #44

As a senior engineer who already has a good job, here's how I've adapted to the stupid tech interview and plan on doing for future jobs: - Stay at my job longer and push for more raises/promotions. So far this has worked well. I may not get more in raw $ amount vs job hopping, but when risk adjusted (the risks of any new job such as bad manager, etc.) it's worked out ok so far. I think some job hopping is still good…

I am in the same boat, I have over a decade of experience doing all sort of thing. But I was recently rejected by netflix because I used java 7 instead of java 8 in their coding interview because 'it shows them that I don't keep up with latest tech'.

Full details of the ridiculous charade here https://medium.com/@meowlicious99/my-software-engineer-inter...

Post by throwaway9475 » Tue, Mar 14, 2017, 12:22 PM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #202

throwaway9475 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often do you waltz into work and write list/tree/graph algorithms on a daily basis?

But its not about the list/tree/graph algorithms, its about having the mental flexibility to code the algorithms on the fly. If you can't do a depth-first search on a tree after being given the definition and time to think about it then you may lack the mental flexibility to do arbitrary algorithms in any domain. Intelligence is unspecific to domain, and so showing intelligence in one domain correlates with outcomes…

> If you can't do a depth-first search on a tree after being given the definition and time to think about it then you may lack the mental flexibility to do arbitrary algorithms in any domain.

It's this condescending attitude that ensures that companies only hire recent grads instead of people with actual software development experience. I will write you a depth-first search (assuming that, god forbid, my libraries don't have that functionality for some reason) if it's not a contrived example in an interview. But I have to say, so far, 99% of my pure algorithms code have been contrived interview questions.

If you can't do depth-first search in a stressful interview situation that you sneaked away from your actual job for, you might just be a human being. But either way, if your interview process is only interested in testing my knowledge of trivia, instead of my actual development skills (like how I manage complexity or design systems) then I think I'd rather work for more competent people.

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber