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Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

blog.interviewing.io

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Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#271

Post by blindhippo »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #254
timr wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You need to ask yourself why you believe the "average coder" should be able to solve that because clearly your beliefs are not founded in reality." Oh, stop. The problem he describes is trivial, and something that you'll encounter as an entry-level web developer on a regular basis. If you can't solve it, you're absolutely not up to the job. In fact, I'll go further: if you literally cannot find an efficient way to f…

Is he talking about this problem (with a filter at the end)? http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/finding-all-subsets-of-a-given-... Because I have never done that. That's different than just running through a list and picking out items that meet a criteria.

That's more advanced then the question I ask typically. Though I might use something like this if I'm interviewing someone with many years of experience (10+).

As I explained above, my question is a warm up - meant to break the ice, calm nerves. But it's surprising to me how effective even a simple list traversal is at identifying weaknesses in a candidates programming ability.

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#272

Post by pbrb »

dibstern wrote: post #105
forrestbrazeal wrote: post #71

The author draws a hard distinction between Udacity/Coursera MOOCs (good) and traditional master's degrees (bad). I'll interject that with Georgia Tech's Online Master's in Computer Science program [0], which is delivered via Udacity and insanely cheap [1], you can get the best of both! (Their "Computability, Complexity and Algorithms" class is one of the top Udacity courses cited in the article.) Keep in mind that a…

I'm studying a 3 year coursework masters that allows people with no background in CS (just had to do an additional semester of courses) to participate and it aims to give a pretty well rounded CS education. Not a common thing, apparently. I completely agree, the motivation and environment that it gives you, the reinforcement that you're actually doing something official and serious as opposed to doing something that…

Is this UChicago's program? I did a masters there without a CS background, and it was amazing. Incredibly hard, but amazing. The beauty of it is that they ramp you up on the mathematics and programming if required with a few additional classes. They also let you test out of either if you already know it. Doing that masters was one of the best things I've ever done.

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#273

Post by blindhippo »

vonmoltke wrote: post #262
timr wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You need to ask yourself why you believe the "average coder" should be able to solve that because clearly your beliefs are not founded in reality." Oh, stop. The problem he describes is trivial, and something that you'll encounter as an entry-level web developer on a regular basis. If you can't solve it, you're absolutely not up to the job. In fact, I'll go further: if you literally cannot find an efficient way to f…

> If you resume screen for "has written code before" I wish that was the resume screen criteria at all the places that ignored my applications. The more I read these threads the more I think resume filtering is part of the problem. It makes some sense; if the bad applicants have to apply to hundreds of jobs to get hired they have likely learned how to game the resume scteen.

Resume filtering is terrible - I tend not to be involved in the process since usually recruiters or hiring managers do this. However, when someone stops by my desk and asks "should we schedule a phone screen with this candidate who lists HTML, CSS, and jQuery, as programming languages" for a senior web developer position, I say no.

A huge problem is people list technologies as keywords on their resumes and rarely indicate they know what those words even mean. This makes screening next to impossible at scale (think 1000's of resumes coming in for a single position).

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#274

Post by sten »

timr wrote: post #258
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he talking about this problem (with a filter at the end)? http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/finding-all-subsets-of-a-given-... Because I have never done that. That's different than just running through a list and picking out items that meet a criteria.

Not that I can see. The OP said: "find the subset in a given collection that matches this specific criteria" So basically, a loop through a single table. That's as simple as it gets. You can make the problem more complicated, of course (e.g. "write a method to find the minimum and maximum ages of the male users" ), but it's still pretty simple stuff. A slightly less trivial "algorithm" question that should be equally…

I'm hard pressed to imagine how this couldn't be done efficiently. Do you have an example which correctly solves the problem but takes too long?

The only thing I can think of is something like the output rewriting an array on update over and over.

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#275

Post by witty_username »

thomasahle wrote: post #249
witty_username wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why can't it voluntary via donations to universities? > By telling parents that they do a great job, that you appreciate what they do for society, but not giving a single cent to them? That would be hypocritical, not solidary. It's not hypocritical if you compliment someone without paying them money.

> So why can't it voluntary via donations to universities? You could say that about any tax founded expense?

For some things like courts and police it's required to stop violence and fraud; i.e. to maintain the rules of the game.

But, yes, I am in favor of a small, limited government.

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#276

Post by witty_username »

kmonad wrote: post #250
witty_username wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why can't it voluntary via donations to universities? > By telling parents that they do a great job, that you appreciate what they do for society, but not giving a single cent to them? That would be hypocritical, not solidary. It's not hypocritical if you compliment someone without paying them money.

Why wouldn't you see an elected government's policy as voluntary, ultimately?

No, only some portion of the population (possibly not even the majority--see the U.S. 2016 election) decides for everybody including those who are against it.

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#277

Post by witty_username »

jkovacs wrote: post #257
witty_username wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's subsidized; so people who aren't getting an education are paying for those who do.

Yes, but so are the trade schools/apprenticeships where people go that don't go to university, so what's your point? Your education is subsidized either way, unless you don't attend either of those options, in which case the individual is probably not going to pay for anything at all.

> individual is probably not going to pay for anything at all.

Source?

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#278

Post by witty_username »

nmat wrote: post #255
witty_username wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's subsidized; so people who aren't getting an education are paying for those who do.

When the government pays for health care (like what happens in most european countries) it means that people that are not sick are paying for people that are sick. Why should they, right?

Good question. For saving someone from dying it may be justified to forcefully extract money from others.

But definitely not for education.

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#279

Post by icefox »

timr wrote: post #258
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he talking about this problem (with a filter at the end)? http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/finding-all-subsets-of-a-given-... Because I have never done that. That's different than just running through a list and picking out items that meet a criteria.

Not that I can see. The OP said: "find the subset in a given collection that matches this specific criteria" So basically, a loop through a single table. That's as simple as it gets. You can make the problem more complicated, of course (e.g. "write a method to find the minimum and maximum ages of the male users" ), but it's still pretty simple stuff. A slightly less trivial "algorithm" question that should be equally…

Depending on the wording it looks like his go to intro problem is actually easier than Fizz-Buzz as it is just filtering. For example say it was "Given a set return a subset where the values are less than 10." (such as set.Where(i => i < 10))

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#280

Post by nojvek »

golergka wrote: post #261
vog wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These numbers still look very high from a European point of view. It seems it makes a huge difference whether a society deeply cares about educating the population, or cares just superficially. For example, in Berlin you spend less than 300€ per semester, a CS master takes 10 semesters regular time. Add two semesters to make the time more realistic, and you end up with 3,600€ which are roughly $3,800. Oh, and it cont…

Curious reasoning about society. For me, american society seems to care about education more, exactly because it's members are willing to pay for it themselves. In your sentence, you juxtapose 'society' and 'population', but those are exactly the same things. May be you meant 'government' instead?

For someone who moved from Australia to US, I don't think America cares about education for all. Only education for the elite rich. Universities should not cost as much as buying a house. The country literally puts a student in debt for life. That's nuts
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