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Python coding interview challenges

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Re: Python coding interview challenges

#61

Post by hashkb »

cauterized wrote: post #27

I see these challenges as a great way for excellent experienced developers to weed out incompetent companies. I'm a kick-ass get-things-done full-stack web engineer. I've never had to deal with one of these sorts of problems in my day to day work; and if I did, I'd just find an existing, tested, stable library that already handled them. A company that needs someone to solve these sorts of problems doesn't want me on…

> I'm a kick-ass get-things-done full-stack web engineer.

And modest, too. If an engineer gave me your answer ("I never learned the principle because I never had to") I would know they aren't a fit for my team.

Re: Python coding interview challenges

#62

Post by recursive »

jacquesm wrote: post #56
septimus111 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that these interviews are often just an annoying rite of passage, and they exclude many very talented programmers, but dismissing companies that use them as 'incompetent' seems like a stretch to me. Learning basic data structures & algorithms is an immensely useful thing for a programmer, and completely essential in many cases. The best of these puzzles are based on problems which people have had to solve in…

It's just laziness incarnate. This pushes all the investment of the first phase of interviewing someone onto an automated process and denies the candidate the opportunity to vet the company which is just as important as the reverse. Well, actually they do allow the candidate to vet the company: the message they send is we don't care about you at all until you do a bunch of busywork and if you're very lucky we might a…

> It's just laziness incarnate

You could be describing software in general.

Re: Python coding interview challenges

#63

Post by collyw »

stuaxo wrote: post #32
sparkling wrote: post #17

Semi off-topic, but i am curious. How much of CS fundamentals do you expect a backend (or fullstack) developer to recite in an job interview? I did all CS theory stuff many years ago at university, but i could not pass a interview test full with these CS basics. Isn't it far more important to know how to design a modern, maintainable, scalable web application? Know how an when to cache stuff. How to design a API. How…

As a fullstack developer most of these things are not needed. Having a good understanding of what is optimal is good, but you shouldn't have to be able to recite all the big O notation. Funnily enough none of the tests I've had ever talk about relevant things like data normalisation / de-normalisation or anything that will be used in the project.

Often if you get your database designed well, then there is no need for lots of code and fancy algorithms.

Re: Python coding interview challenges

#64

Post by gpderetta »

cauterized wrote: post #27

I see these challenges as a great way for excellent experienced developers to weed out incompetent companies. I'm a kick-ass get-things-done full-stack web engineer. I've never had to deal with one of these sorts of problems in my day to day work; and if I did, I'd just find an existing, tested, stable library that already handled them. A company that needs someone to solve these sorts of problems doesn't want me on…

I'm a lowly c++ software engineer. You might not have to deal with that stuff, but for me it was Tuesday.

Kidding aside, someone has to build those tested, stable libraries that handle those problem (or even untested bleeding-edge if you are breaking new ground).

Re: Python coding interview challenges

#65

Post by jacquesm »

recursive wrote: post #62
jacquesm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just laziness incarnate. This pushes all the investment of the first phase of interviewing someone onto an automated process and denies the candidate the opportunity to vet the company which is just as important as the reverse. Well, actually they do allow the candidate to vet the company: the message they send is we don't care about you at all until you do a bunch of busywork and if you're very lucky we might a…

> It's just laziness incarnate You could be describing software in general.

Not really. Quite a bit of software is like a powertool and I certainly would not want to label the users of powertools as 'lazy'.

But these companies are not using software as a powertool, they are using software in a way that attempts to deny their counterparty a mutual investment in the relationship. And that to me is lazy.

Re: Python coding interview challenges

#66

Post by cauterized »

hashkb wrote: post #61
cauterized wrote: post #27

I see these challenges as a great way for excellent experienced developers to weed out incompetent companies. I'm a kick-ass get-things-done full-stack web engineer. I've never had to deal with one of these sorts of problems in my day to day work; and if I did, I'd just find an existing, tested, stable library that already handled them. A company that needs someone to solve these sorts of problems doesn't want me on…

> I'm a kick-ass get-things-done full-stack web engineer. And modest, too. If an engineer gave me your answer ("I never learned the principle because I never had to") I would know they aren't a fit for my team.

But I did learn the principle, back in school. I've just never needed to use it.

Re: Python coding interview challenges

#67

Post by recursive »

wpietri wrote: post #47
andrepd wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about actually having to implement these algorithms in your practical, day-to-day work. It's a challenge to test your reasoning and problem-solving ability in abstract, that you can administer in 15 minutes. You can't really test a candidate with real-world workloads, can you.

You absolutely can test a candidate with real-world workloads. It takes longer than 15 minutes, though. I have no idea why anybody cares about the 15-minute thing. Each person you hire adds thousands of hours to your available labor. So even if I spend 100 hours finding the right candidate, I'm still way ahead. And the better my working environment is, the lower my turnover, in which case I can spend even more.

And how many candidates do you have to consider to find the right one? And what proportion of the interviewer's time is spent on the live coding interview vs setting it up and arranging it? I've been in this boat recently. It doesn't really take much to get to double or even triple digit hours if you don't automate something.

Re: Python coding interview challenges

#68

Post by swalsh »

cauterized wrote: post #27

I see these challenges as a great way for excellent experienced developers to weed out incompetent companies. I'm a kick-ass get-things-done full-stack web engineer. I've never had to deal with one of these sorts of problems in my day to day work; and if I did, I'd just find an existing, tested, stable library that already handled them. A company that needs someone to solve these sorts of problems doesn't want me on…

I was going to agree with you, 98% of my career has been "google for a library, then use or tweak". It's RARE we ever actually do anything "new". However there ARE companies that do, and every once in a while YOU may have to do something new. In those cases it's good to make sure you have a foundation to build on.

I have 4 books in the "The art of computer programming" series on my desk. They've been more or less decoration for several years, until I ran into a problem I couldn't google. Since I read them, I had an idea of where to start, and I used it as inspiration to craft a new solution tweaked from one of these foundational algorithms.

That said, not everyone is strong in algorithm development, and you can be a kick ass programmer without that skill. I'd only ask these questions if I needed someone with that skill on my team.

Re: Python coding interview challenges

#69

Post by [deleted] »

cauterized wrote: post #27

I see these challenges as a great way for excellent experienced developers to weed out incompetent companies. I'm a kick-ass get-things-done full-stack web engineer. I've never had to deal with one of these sorts of problems in my day to day work; and if I did, I'd just find an existing, tested, stable library that already handled them. A company that needs someone to solve these sorts of problems doesn't want me on…

[deleted]

Re: Python coding interview challenges

#70

Post by user5994461 »

bogomipz wrote: post #34
nickpeterson wrote: post #4

"Before we hire you, we first need you to outwit this burmese python..."

Indeed. A couple of weeks ago I had a recruiter from Atlassian send me an email saying they were interested an could I complete these 6 problems on Hacker Rank and each challenge has a time limit. Its not enough to outwit a Burmese Python but you need to do it while a clock is ticking. We all know the best performance and indicator of skill always comes from coding with an egg timer or stop watch. Oh and did I mentio…

> Oh and did I mention the Hacker Rank challenge was being asked before even speaking to a human being about the job?

I prefer that a lot more than scheduling a 1 hour phone interview during my workday, to do the same stupid questions over the phone, with someone who can describe neither the job nor the company.

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