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How to Pass a Programming Interview

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Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#531

Post by nsxwolf »

rurban wrote: post #482
blakecaldwell wrote: post #394

Earlier 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.

This is frustrating for the many engineers who have no open source work. You're shutting out a massive amount of talent that has only worked on proprietary software.

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#532

Post by SonicSoul »

smalltimeboss wrote: post #484
SonicSoul wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gotten a take home test that took all Saturday. I finally finished it happy with myself and with my work and emailed it in. The response was "thanks, are you ready for the next exercise?" i was like.. um.. I really need to get on with my weekend. This was deferred to the big boss who said "It's ok just do it whenever you have time next" .. ook so that was my next Saturday. Worst part is that after turning that i…

As somebody who regularly employs developers, and being a developer myself, may I suggest you put your Saturdays' effort into an open source github repo or something similar? Sure, this takes time too, but afterwards you can just point your prospective employer to your superbly styled and documented code on github. Both parties win: you don't have to spend time on stupid exercises anymore, they can get a very decent…

I was thinking about posting some of the solutions to past problems on github. The problem is that new employer has no way of knowing it was me alone that provided the solution and how long it took, so I couldn't blame them for not just accepting my public repo as proof of my ability.

For example I had one interview where I struggled to complete a WPF test project simply because it was coded in a way i've never done before using controls I've never used and the test was estimated to take 10 min. Meanwhile in my bag on my laptop I had a complex WPF solution i've been working on in my free time for months as a possible product to market and sell which more than showed my competence in the platform. People in my interview didn't even want to see it on pretext that they have no way of knowing it's my code.

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#533

Post by oriolid »

braythwayt wrote: post #486
sratner wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet it is certainly false that if you are able to get CS basics right, you will be any good at deep engineering.

I hope you mean that: It is certainly false that if you are able to get CS basics right, you will NECESSARILY be any good at deep engineering. There are people who get the basics right and are good at deep engineering. The question is whether one predicts the other.

Just out of curiosity, can you give examples of people who have done so-called deep software engineering but stumble at the basic CS concepts?

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#534

Post by oriolid »

eiopa wrote: post #214
oriolid wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is widely believed that if you are able to do deep engineering you should also be able to get the basics right. It takes a lot of time evaluate a real world project and most of applicants would not agree to do one anyway, so basic CS is the easy approximation.

What makes implementing qsort/bsearch/etc "the basics"? It seems rather arbitrary, and it mostly measures how well you are able to recite from CS books.

They are the stuff you should understand anyway if you build software and are easy enough to figure out in an interview session if you have any analytical skill.

On the other hand, many so-called real world questions measure only how well you are able to recite from API documentation of interviewer's favourite framework or at best the language specification.

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#535

Post by autarch »

kafkaesq wrote: post #523
autarch wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, I think this whole fear of candidates pervasively lying about time-to-completion is something of a red herring. (1) It may seem counterintuitive to some, but my own general policy is, when it comes to little stuff ("how long did it take you to do X"), you just have to trust people, to a certain extent. Sure, some people may blatantly or grossly lie. But most likely these people will reveal their slipperines…

I think the concern is that the homework task could be too large and because people have an incentive to appear competent, they might lie about that to make themselves look bad. That means that we're giving too hard a task but we'll never find out.

As to how likely it is that people will lie, given that we've hired several people who did this homework and they've proven to be as competent as we believed, there's at least some anecdotal evidence that some people have not lied.

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#536

Post by autarch »

collyw wrote: post #464
autarch wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would prefer that we pay people to do this, but unfortunately that's not my call. That said, no one seems to complain so bitterly about the all day interviews that places like Google do (and insist you fly out for in person). Isn't asking people to fly out for 6-8 hours of interviews (which effectively takes 3 days minimum out of your life) a much greater burden than spending 2-3 hours on some coding which you can…

Are you paying as much as Google? Is your job going to give the same prestige as having "worked for Google" on your CV? I am not saying that you are wrong, but applying to Google does sound like it will have many benefits above your average company.

Google is hardly the only company to do in-person all day interviews. I've had several in my career, none of them with Google. IIRC, they were with Shopzilla and Grant Street Group, and Livetext (not exactly Google-famous companies). I wasn't thrilled about flying out for 6 hours of interviews, but at the time I thought it was reasonable for them to ask for this. I'm not sure I'd do it again unless I was incredibly excited about the position in question, but I'm older and more jaded now.

As to how much we pay ... Our pay is very good, and all but one of the positions for which we've had the homework requirement have been telecommuting as well. It's actually a pretty desirable place to work if you like good pay, telecommuting, working at a small company, a low pressure environment (we've been profitable for many years), and various other perks (training budget, flexible hours, blah blah blah).

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#537

Post by pascalo »

antoniuschan99 wrote: post #495
SonicSoul wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gotten a take home test that took all Saturday. I finally finished it happy with myself and with my work and emailed it in. The response was "thanks, are you ready for the next exercise?" i was like.. um.. I really need to get on with my weekend. This was deferred to the big boss who said "It's ok just do it whenever you have time next" .. ook so that was my next Saturday. Worst part is that after turning that i…

It's just that with the programming tasks that you bring home, the hiring manager isn't wasting the that time with you. With programming tasks that you do during the interview, they are at least wasting the time with you.

Or, like when I interviewed once at a very large broadcasting org, they put you in a meeting room with a laptop (windows 7 which I never used before, bad keyboard, bad editor, no internet or reference), give you some half arsed questions and piss off for 30 minutes without you being able to ask what they actually want. Then 10 minutes later someone else comes in and asks you what the hell you're doing in that meeting room, you have no way to contact your interview partner, no idea where he went, they hassle you for about 10 minutes about it, and when your interviewer comes back you haven't been able to even get into the task, let alone write some code ...

Waste of time also, especially if you factor in a 2 hour commute each way.

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#538

Post by quarktasche »

collyw wrote: post #518
quarktasche wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the question about the moving average be a good one though? It should be quite obvious that you can calculate a moving average without remembering more than the current average and the window size. Given that, time and space complexity should be obvious. I think it would be a fine question to see if the interviewee has any idea what complexity means. Or was it a more complicated moving average case (exponent…

How many jobs will it be relevant to?

Which part?

Figuring out how to efficiently calculate a moving average seems like a good question for basic maths skills to me.

About complexity theory, there is already a lot of discussion about it's relevancy in the comments. My point was meant more along the line that, if you value a basic understanding of complexity theory, the question asked of the GP seems reasonable.

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#539

Post by kafkaesq »

popmystack wrote: post #494
autarch wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are begging for people to lie to you.

If that's the way you think people are... then those are the kind of people you'll attract.

It's how the universe works, basically.

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#540

Post by kafkaesq »

pjmlp wrote: post #520
kafkaesq wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devise a inode search algorithm for unlimited hard disk sizes with a specific set of hardware and search time constraints? Curious -- was this problem reasonably related to the kind of work you'd be doing in the role you were applying for? Or did they just want to find out if, you know.... you had that "spark"?

It was a position related to compiler development.

Weird... what were they thinking?

But thanks. Another data point added to what others have been saying about their hiring process.

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