Stanford CS9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview

As part of the application, I was instructed to provide 2-3 paragraphs on each of half a dozen questions that covered various aspects of software engineering. The in person interview asked a predefined set of questions about the material that I had provided. That part was more of a "demonstrate that you have the mastery of the material claimed in the written portion and that it wasn't produced by someone else or some other source". This also tested communication skills.

No weight was given to GitHub contributions, hacker rank, leetecode rank or whatnot. There was no whiteboard.

While this isn't a fabulous job at a tech company, it is one where good engineers can and do find themselves at without needing to have the proper shibboleth to get into one of those tech companies.

For another job application that was more of a sysadmin/programmer bend, a simple backup script was the assignment (took about 1h to get all of the edge cases). A portion of the interview was a demonstration and review of the code (in which I had to answer questions about the code that I had written).

While mock interviews can be helpful in the communication skills department and reducing anxiety, there are many other ways to test the person rather than use a proxy such as contributions to a public repository or foo rank websites... and also without resorting to whiteboard for various algorithmic tricks that you either know or don't know.

This is simply wrong. I suppose if you've spent your whole life as a developer, it may seem like it would be done likewise other industries, but it's not the case.

Typically, how you might "prepare" for interviews in other industries is...learning about your potential employer. And maybe reviewing your accomplishments. That's it. And most people don't even do those things. None of this hours and hours reviewing textbooks from your college classes, since you've been in the same job for 5 or 7 years and have forgotten algorithms that you never use in your job. It's simply perverse.

Software development is the only industry I'm aware in which technical preparation for job interviews is not only advisable, but increasingly necessary for interviews at all levels of the career hierarchy.

Even in other engineering disciplines, this kind of bullshit is unheard of for any interviews except maybe your first interview out of college. And in industries like law, medicine, etc., if a potential employer asked you to perform some random task from a highly technical and complex subject from med school or law school, it would be very unusual.

That you think interviews and exams are interchangeable concepts illustrates the problem. Nothing wrong with a rigorous filter at the gates of the profession, but lawyers don’t need to spend months studying for each company’s half-assed version of the bar exam each time they change jobs. Our industry is dysfunctional because, unlike law and medicine, no one trusts the credentialing mechanisms.

That being said, to prep is better than to not prep.. just like the SAT. The problem is that these things favor those who make the time.

You can do both the content and the prep, as I am sure is the case with Stanford CS.

While it's unique to have a course specifically named for this and am sad to see it as well, I don't think this is as big as people are making it out to be, nor is it a canary in the coal mine for higher education. To me, this only signifies the growing shift in education, as it becomes more available to all, being about preparing for your career as much as learning itself. The simple fact is that most attending college today are not doing so just out of the desire to learn alone, but also want to, well, have a nice career in their respective industry. To be able to make a living.

While I would also agree with cautioning about education for career alone, I think it's important that modern education focuses on both. It's the reality of an increasingly college educated world.