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Coding Interview Cheatsheet

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41–50 of 88 posts

Re: Coding Interview Cheatsheet

#41
post #15

I can’t think of any other field where highly paid adult professionals willingly submit to interviews that treat them like autistic 15-year-olds. Makes sense for the companies, of course.

Is there any other field where the interview has become a field unto itself? A field where a person can walk in with over a decade of experience and then not get past the first interview because he doesn't know topics he hasn't used since college? A field in which because you don't commit yourself to 40 hours of work at work and then an additional 40 hours of work outside, companies won't look at you? Joy of coding!

Is there any other field that is so technical and yet refuses to widely recognize an accreditation body that could establish this in an industry-wide way?

Re: Coding Interview Cheatsheet

#42
post #34
post #15

I can’t think of any other field where highly paid adult professionals willingly submit to interviews that treat them like autistic 15-year-olds. Makes sense for the companies, of course.

I've interviewed a fair number of programmers over the years. There's a surprising number of people who interview well and who have good resumes, but who can't actually code. (By "can't code", I mean, "Can't sum an array of numbers in their favorite programming language.") And checking references is hit-or-miss in the US, where many employers will only confirm title and dates of employment. I know of three possible w…

3. Or who worked a lot for previous employers or took school seriously. GitHub full of contributions is hard if you work 40 hours a week without slacking at work, basically impossible for those who do a lot of overtime. People who spend their out of work time learning (e.g. reading books or other theoretical stuff) are out too.

But really most importantly, it is important for reviewer to be prepared for things like performance anxiety, like shy people who are not good at looking confident, to people cant think out loud (don't hold it against them if they are silent for few minutes for christ sake) and so on and so forth.

But people here throw temper tamtrum over really simple well known questions.

Maybe the companies would to the best if they made their expectations clear and realistic in ad itself. Let people know how interview looks like before hand, let them know what exactly it is you expect and then stick to it.

Re: Coding Interview Cheatsheet

#43

Isn't all this just common sense? It basically says "be a nice person to communicate with". But split up into a huge table of checks and crosses.

Yes, but you’d be surprised how many candidates either get too nervous or are too shy to do most of these.

Phone interviews are hard to begin with but you also have a lot of flexibility so it’s less stressful, but in-person interviews with real programming on a computer can put many into a really stressed state.

Re: Coding Interview Cheatsheet

#44
We do a lot of technical interviews and have seen enough candidates skip on many of these, so in that respect I like that there is a list they can reference. However, doing for the sake of following a list can come off as inexperienced/dishonest (or creepy, like one of the comments suggested).

Having seen those first hand as well I can tell you I really dislike such interviews and that they always make me and whoever else is interviewing with me uncomfortable.

My advice is to go through this list and reflect on your last interview. What did you do, what didn’t you do, why? And try to practice some of the things you didn’t.

Also, keep in mind some of these are double edged swords. Example, speaking with enthusiasm. Don’t do it at all and you’ll be boring everyone, but do it too much and you’ll look like you can’t concentrate.

Practice makes perfect, so work on it.

Re: Coding Interview Cheatsheet

#45
post #34
post #15

I can’t think of any other field where highly paid adult professionals willingly submit to interviews that treat them like autistic 15-year-olds. Makes sense for the companies, of course.

I've interviewed a fair number of programmers over the years. There's a surprising number of people who interview well and who have good resumes, but who can't actually code. (By "can't code", I mean, "Can't sum an array of numbers in their favorite programming language.") And checking references is hit-or-miss in the US, where many employers will only confirm title and dates of employment. I know of three possible w…

After an initial phone screen, we give candidates a short programming exercise that they can complete on their own time. We feel that engineers work best when they have time to think about a problem and work on it at their own pace with their own tools.

If the solution passes some objective criteria that we have, it then forms a significant component of the on site interview where we discuss their solution in depth and have them talk about the decisions they made and opportunities for improvement. Not only does this allow us to ensure that they actually wrote the submitted solution but it gives the candidate the chance to speak from a position of authority on their own code.

Re: Coding Interview Cheatsheet

#46
As far as a general behavior checklist, this one is fairly accurate in my interviewer experience. It is surprising how often candidates do many of the "Don'ts" in the list.

In the end, I'm looking for candidates I can see myself working with. If we were to pair up on a task or project, I want to be reasonably sure I'm not going to dread the event; I should look forward to it.

One example was a candidate from one of the Big 4. He was having trouble in Java (his preferred language) handling 400 and 500 level errors in an HTTP request that was part of the interview problem. I told him at the beginning that he can use whatever resources he wants, etc. I also told him that I am not a Java person but would help him where I could (we are not a Java shop). While he was reading documentation, I googled how to handle the errors, and said something along the lines of, "it looks like you should be able to do such-n-such with whatever class's method." He just said, "no." A few minutes later, still stuck, I suggested that he give it a try. "That's not how that works." We had to eventually skip the error handling to get back on track.

What I got out of that part of our interaction was that he wouldn't likely be pleasant to work with. He could have said why my proposal would not work or anything beyond simply dismissing my attempt to help. I got the distinct feeling of, "this guy is kind of a jerk." He was applying for a senior developer position. Part of that role would be mentorship and leveling up your team (this was explained early on in the process, before the on site). With our limited time together, he did not convey anything of the sort.

Post interview, he mentioned to our interview organizer / in-house recruiter that it was apparent I did not understand Java development. Post interview, I also took his submitted code and implemented my suggestion and it worked.

In short, I think much of the post's checklist is accurate. Behavior during an interview counts. It is not just technical aptitude.

Re: Coding Interview Cheatsheet

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any other field where the interview has become a field unto itself? A field where a person can walk in with over a decade of experience and then not get past the first interview because he doesn't know topics he hasn't used since college? A field in which because you don't commit yourself to 40 hours of work at work and then an additional 40 hours of work outside, companies won't look at you? Joy of coding!

Is there any other field that is so technical and yet refuses to widely recognize an accreditation body that could establish this in an industry-wide way?

Speaking as a programmer who is also a licensed attorney, accreditation is not a solution.

Re: Coding Interview Cheatsheet

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect part of the cause is the prevalence of asperger-like personalities in the IT-field. No emotionally mature adult would conduct an interview like that, unless forced to. It would be completely unacceptable in any other professional field.

I have to conduct these interviews and it kills me inside every time. I hated it as a candidate, but a year or two ago when I interviewed the questions were a bit easier and expectations were slightly lower. Now with the rise of Top Coder, Leetcode, etc. many candidates have practiced problems to death and can recite almost entirely from memory complex problems. The bar is raising all the time as a result. It's not e…

>The bar is raising all the time as a result.

I don't get why it would be that way. Your work's complexity isn't moving as fast as Top Coder, Leetcode, etc., so why is the interview's difficulty pinned to the difficulty on those websites?

If you guys are taking on new practices and doing more difficult things, then that makes more sense.

Re: Coding Interview Cheatsheet

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to conduct these interviews and it kills me inside every time. I hated it as a candidate, but a year or two ago when I interviewed the questions were a bit easier and expectations were slightly lower. Now with the rise of Top Coder, Leetcode, etc. many candidates have practiced problems to death and can recite almost entirely from memory complex problems. The bar is raising all the time as a result. It's not e…

>The bar is raising all the time as a result. I don't get why it would be that way. Your work's complexity isn't moving as fast as Top Coder, Leetcode, etc., so why is the interview's difficulty pinned to the difficulty on those websites? If you guys are taking on new practices and doing more difficult things, then that makes more sense.

The problem is simply filtering, it sounds like. It's like grade inflation: the better grades all around don't necessarily indicate smarter students overall, but now you have to select them at a higher bar.

Re: Coding Interview Cheatsheet

#50
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any other field that is so technical and yet refuses to widely recognize an accreditation body that could establish this in an industry-wide way?

Speaking as a programmer who is also a licensed attorney, accreditation is not a solution.

Can you elaborate on the interview practices for attorneys which you think are just as bad?
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