Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 44 posts

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#31

Post by quietbritishjim »

ricardoreis wrote: post #20
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.…

FizzBuzz is just an icon, of course. And by itself not such a bad filter - even if it's just basically a test of memorization (a lot people actually can't remember a simple trick like that, or can't be bothered to see the importance of it). The only problem is... at some point the tech industry basically started saying to itself, "That worked pretty well! Now if we can just make our tests 50 times harder the must be.…

> ... can't remember a simple trick like that

What "simple trick"? The original point of FizzBuzz is not to check that the interviewee produces hyper-efficient code that avoids repeating the divisibility checks (or, for that matter, to check that they repeat the divisibility checks and are able to defend why that's simpler). It's to check that they can write down any solution at all (within reason [1]). Doing that doesn't require any tricks; you literally just need to write down the requirements in the form of code. Unless you count for loops as tricks! I know the guy who came up with FizzBuzz [2], and he did so to root people who couldn't code at all, not those who weren't good at coming up with (or memorising) coding tricks. Or, if the "trick" you're talking about is memorising, verbatim, a simple for loop solution to FizzBuzz without understanding it, then that can be countered with small variations of the problem.

I agree that some interviewers pose questions that are too hard, which ending up testing ability to perform in an unrealistic situation more than actual programming competence. Of course this happened before FizzBuzz existed. Similarly some probably set a straightforward FizzBuzz and overanalyse details rather than worrying about whether it works (or worry about silly syntax mistakes, which are perfectly reasonable on a whiteboard).

[1] http://joelgrus.com/2016/05/23/fizz-buzz-in-tensorflow/

[2] https://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-de...

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#33

Post by hknd »

ergothus wrote: post #19
Kaveren wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And yet, googles previous public comments on the topic are somewhat the reverse - all their interview question except for questions on previous work/experiences were not correlated with "success". Scare quotes used because knowing how to define success is an even more hairy question that we (industry, humans) dont have a good grasp on either. So any criteria you use might be wrong or a subset of the right (where "wro…

success criteria is the rating the people get during their performance review which happens twice a year.

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#34

Post by hknd »

vonmoltke wrote: post #23
Kaveren wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A negative example would be someone who scored good within the interview process, but then performs bad on the job (bad performance rating). Such examples get discussed internally by the hiring committee (senior people doing the last hiring decision for every candidate).

I think the biggest issue with the current approach among faang interviews is that a lot of really good people get filtered out (false negative) - but faang get so many applications that they are ok with this.

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#35

Post by hknd »

raxxorrax wrote: post #15
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…

Either that or performance reviews have similar problems. 5-7 interviews seems insane to me. Is competition that high to justify that number? As a candidate I would give you 3 at most. But that would require me to be in the near vicinity. 5-7 interviews? That is more than many people need to form a marriage...

I also saw people having 10 interviews, and then get rejected :,(

8-15 years ago fb/google had 20+ interviews - and reduced the number based on research that after 4 they can predict it really good.

They mention 4 in the article, but that actually means 4 on-site. Before that a candidate usually has to pass a simple recruiter phone screen and a simple coding phone screen.

https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/google-rule-of-four/

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#37

Post by ashwinaj »

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…

> And nobody internally enjoys doing a lot of coding interviews

That's true, I recently had an interview and the interviewer was on the phone all the time totally uninterested, barring the first 5 minutes. How do you account for that?

Everybody knows (and as stated in the article) the system can be gamed (by memorizing Leetcode solutions) and I choose not to. If you don't believe me have a look here:

https://www.1point3acres.com/bbs/thread-191077-1-1.html (translate it to English)

(there are a ton of interview experiences and detailed questions and strategies on this site)

There are people who are freaking memorizing behavioral questions!! Surely, the FAANG companies are aware of this?

This what I see happening these days: 1. You have an interview candidate solving questions without memorization

2. You have an interview candidate solving questions with memorization

How are you distinguishing between the two and how do you prevent bias? Bias in all forms, not just the stereotype: white guy hiring another white guy.

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#38

Post by nobleach »

someguydave wrote: post #25
bluGill wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If I had to guess, it's the "I'll figure it out" mentality. The problem here is, with C++, you probably will NOT figure it out!

I did the bare minimum C++ in my classes. I can write trivial little "code challenge" type things with it. (mostly imperative style, very basic OO) But, ask me anything about Templates, etc, and I'll quickly admit you've gone beyond my knowledge. I'm intrigued at the answer to this question though....

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#39

Post by 0x00000000 »

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.

I don't get why they don't do something like give you a computer with a terminal, a buggy program, and an internet connection and tell you to make it compile (or whatever the equivalent is for your domain) using whatever resources you want. Even knowing what to search for or what an error means or how to locate the source is actually like 95% of what most companies are even looking for but they're too much of cargo cult kool aid drinkers to realize it.

Re: Coding Interview Preparation Bootcamp

#40

Post by bluGill »

nobleach wrote: post #38
someguydave wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If I had to guess, it's the "I'll figure it out" mentality. The problem here is, with C++, you probably will NOT figure it out! I did the bare minimum C++ in my classes. I can write trivial little "code challenge" type things with it. (mostly imperative style, very basic OO) But, ask me anything about Templates, etc, and I'll quickly admit you've gone beyond my knowledge. I'm intrigued at the answer to this question…

Actually a great programmer will figure C++ out fast enough for most purposes. Templates are weird and hard, but a great programmer can figure them out. However if you don't have a several years of experience you will make mistakes, so I can't hire you as the next go-to expert in the difficult corner cases of C++ that sometimes we can't avoid (though as we move to modern c++14 there are a lot less of them)

If you lie on your resume and I catch you that is an important red flag because I no longer no what else I can trust you on.

Post reply on HN