interview != quiz
How to Pass a Programming Interview
501–510 of 570 posts
Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview
#502Being a good programmer has a surprisingly small role in passing programming interviews. And that just says it all, doesn't it? I agree that interviews should test candidates on certain basic skills, including (time/space) complexity analysis. But do you really learn anything by asking the candidate if they can recite the time complexity of a moving window average algorithm (as I was asked to do by an interviewer yes…
My favorite sorts of interviews are ones where you're expected, either by pairing with an employee on your own, to fix a bug in an open-source project you use. Has all of the benefits of a take-home project over whiteboarding, but the end result is you have something tangible to show for your efforts even if you don't get the job.
Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview
#503Being a good programmer has a surprisingly small role in passing programming interviews. And that just says it all, doesn't it? I agree that interviews should test candidates on certain basic skills, including (time/space) complexity analysis. But do you really learn anything by asking the candidate if they can recite the time complexity of a moving window average algorithm (as I was asked to do by an interviewer yes…
I personally also prefer take-home projects over being grilled on my ability to solve obscure algorithms problems under pressure. However, this second route also comes with a number of issues. The most annoying of which in my experience is the amount of time investment each interview requires from the candidate. At least in the traditional technical interview, interviewers and candidates tend to be roughly equally in…
I got one that was just: "write a web application". That's literally all they gave me for parameters. I decided not to be a dick and send them 5 lines of code returning http 200 so I set off and started a side project I'd been wanting to do for a while. Low and behold I wasn't even close to done after the weekend was over so I emailed them and said "sorry, but I need more time if you want the application I'm working on". I got an email inviting me in for an in person interview after I talked to an engineer for about 20min, so problem solved I guess.
Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
Coding interviews are very stressful, and churn through a lot of really awesome potential hires. I imagine there are tons of false negatives, but it's nearly impossible for a terrible programmer to get through a gauntlet of programming interviews. However, I agree. They don't give a full picture of a developer's abilities. As a developer, I prefer take-home projects. As an interviewer, I prefer a few coding interview…
As an interviewer I only look at the resume and published open source projects the candidate did. Everything else just a random impression, nothing serious to bother. The questions are for something else.
I like this approach the most. Evaluate code that they've already written, maybe make sure that they can solve a similar problem to make sure they actually understand what they did and didn't pay someone else to do it, and then a personality fit. Chances are if they really wanted to be hired to learn how to program they're aware of the importance of contributing to open source.
Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview
#505> candidates who have worked at a top company or studied at a top school go on to pass interviews at a 30% higher rate than programmers who don’t have these credentials (for a given level of performance on our credential-blind screen). Welcome to Silicon Valley meritocracy. And it's much worse for founders seeking investment, where there are no hard skills to test at all. It's almost purely about being the same class…
You're assuming that the interview is measuring skill correctly in a few hours, but the candidate's several hundred hours of course project work and exams at the forefront of his life over several years are irrelevant. This seems like a big assumption. Why do you think your whiteboard regime measures skill better than a well-designed set of CS classes?
Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview
#506> candidates who have worked at a top company or studied at a top school go on to pass interviews at a 30% higher rate than programmers who don’t have these credentials (for a given level of performance on our credential-blind screen). Welcome to Silicon Valley meritocracy. And it's much worse for founders seeking investment, where there are no hard skills to test at all. It's almost purely about being the same class…
We flat-out ignore credentials in hiring decisions. If an elite school is intended to signal competence and brilliance in someone, then those qualities should shine through in a candidate without us having to know where they attended college. Simply stated: we're hiring you, not your certificate.
[deleted]
Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't that support the fact that it is a meritocracy? Is it not reasonable to expect that top companies and top schools are more likely to employ people who have more applicable talent and skill? At the end of the day, going to a top university or working at an impressive company is always going to be a huge and relevant signal. It's difficult to see a problem with that.
No, because > for a given level of performance on our credential-blind screen
While we're in the business of doubting things that measure performance, why do you trust the credential-blind screen?
Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview
#508> This situation is not ideal. Preparing for interviews is work, and forcing programmers to learn skills other than building great software wastes everyone’s time. Companies should improve their interview processes to be less biased by academic CS, memorized facts, and rehearsed interview processes. This is what we’re doing at Triplebyte. Thank you! This is a good write up and just like it concludes it's far from ide…
Not to excuse your case but a company I work for just got funded and posted a job ad on AngelList, it's been a week and there are 50+ applications sitting in the mailbox. We produce and sell a physical product so one of the founders keeps the operations going, other does biz dev and I do tech. This year alone we need to hire about 10 more people. It's overwhelming. Especially so when hiring the first key employees for roles you don't have experience with.
Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you do the test blind? i.e. Did someone give you the problem without you knowing/hearing it before? If you wrote the problem, or even heard it before you had to solve it, you had a big leg up on someone who's never heard it.
Fair points. FWIW, we've asked people how long the problem took and they all said it took a few hours, so I think it's the right scope. It really is a fairly easy piece of work.
As others have pointed out, your interviewees have little to no incentive to give you an accurate time estimate.
Beyond that, I think "a few hours" is a bit too much to ask for, especially since you are presumably following up with an in person interview centered around the assignment. That's a big time commitment, and the commitment on the assignment especially is very asymmetric.
I'm not a big fan of assignments for this reason. They are just so asymmetric. I've been given interview homework that was supposed to take "about an hour" and it was more like 4 to 5 in reality. It felt like an unreasonable time request. I did the assignment, and did in fact tell them it took considerably longer than their resonates. I was invited for an on-site after all that, but declined for other reasons.
Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview
#510Being a good programmer has a surprisingly small role in passing programming interviews. And that just says it all, doesn't it? I agree that interviews should test candidates on certain basic skills, including (time/space) complexity analysis. But do you really learn anything by asking the candidate if they can recite the time complexity of a moving window average algorithm (as I was asked to do by an interviewer yes…
> including (time/space) complexity analysis. I think this is one of the most inane things to be asked during an interview. personally, I've never found myself in a situation where I truly needed to choose between a vector/map/list/hashmap. Or had to find the O(x^n) and replace it with O(x^2) Obviously it depends on the application, but many jobs are simply maintenance coding: find bug, fix bug, test fix. Often times…
Exactly. Performance issues happen. Most of them can be solved by re-indexing a database or adding caching. If I really need speed at the algorithm level I can look it up.