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We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

interviewdb.io

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Re: We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

#71

Post by kyawzazaw »

nsxwolf wrote: post #60
kyawzazaw wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely reused again. And there are definitely question banks. I saw my team go through (the company recommended lists) in a meeting and we selected some questions

Yes, question banks exist. I'm talking about the company I work for and in fact all the companies I have ever worked for. We did not use question banks.

Your claim was most companies though but to be fair, you are more accurate. Most of The big tech companies that are viewed heavily on levels.fyi definitely has question banks.

Re: We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

#72

Post by scrapcode »

moregrist wrote: post #44
scrapcode wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had two "Online Assessments," as they're called, in the past couple of weeks and they're even weirder than that now. The request access to my desktop, webcam, microphone, akin to a proctored exam. They don't let you use your own editor, or even leave the window. There is no one there to interact with, ask clarifying questions, etc. It then plays everything back with keystrokes sync'd to video/audio for the revie…

I think that would be a hard pass for me. Why would I allow some rando company’s corporate spyware onto my personal computer? If you’re that worried about me using AI, maybe the interview should be on-site. And maybe it should be relevant to the work I’d be doing, not solving a bunch of leetcode questions. Or maybe the dystopian future of tech interviews just involves a burner laptop tethered to a burner cell plan. T…

If I had that leverage, I certainly would hard-pass, but the market just isn't there right now. I have hands-on dev experience (and the education) in different roles, but none of those roles are solely as a "software developer," so just getting the opportunity to do these goofy things is almost necessary just to get a seat at the table so to speak to begin talking about my background and KSAs. One thing to note is it is all perms given through the browser.

The most recent example for me was even worse- the position was for a web dev asking for experience in C#/.NET. The integrated IDE had all of the usual spyware did not actually compile anything or run any example checks. Then it proceeded, without any brief at all, to ask 7 more 'optional' gotcha-like questions on C pointers and nuances.

It's a terrible time to want to pivot into dev full-time, from the lense of being in the job market anyways.

Re: We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

#73

Post by swiftcoder »

TheBigSalad wrote: post #66
swiftcoder wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was an engineer at Amazon, we all just made up our own questions, or passed fun ones around the office. I assume the Bar Raisers probably had an actual rubric, but the rest of us didn't (and we all had interviewing quotas to meet)

How long ago?

I left a while back, but folks still there tell me not much has changed (except they do a lot less hiring these days, so quotas aren't as big a part of the promo package)

Re: We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

#74

Post by AnimalMuppet »

windward wrote: post #25
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be. If the interview tests for what you crammed for, it doesn't test for what you'll remember a month onto the job. That's a sub-optimal strategy for the interviewer.

Devil's advocate: there exists a corpus of questions solvable with a small number of techniques after a few weeks of decicated study. When someone has the right brain, these questions are the barrier to a 99th percentile income. What does it say about an interviewee that doesn't bother?

That they're unwilling to jump through random arbitrary hoops that are unrelated to their actual work. If a potential employer considers that a negative, what does it say about the employer?

Re: We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

#75

Post by Bluescreenbuddy »

Etherlord87 wrote: post #42
TheBigSalad wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree but I companies like Meta/Apple/Amazon hire so much that they probably have full time statisticians just to analyze interview process and map that back to performance. So you have to assume this maps to real world success. Even if you are just testing an employee's preparation, maybe that means something.

The "Big corporation analyzes everything thoroughly and arrives at the most optimal solution" is a ridiculous myth, and I don't think I even need to give examples. Maybe not Apple, but Amazon surely has a lot of embarrassing failures.

>Maybe not Apple, but Amazon surely has a lot of embarrassing failures.

Like pushing a total RTO and not having space or desks for employees then having to delay the RTO.

Re: We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

#76

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

INTPenis wrote: post #4

Kinda sad that it has come to this. Maybe I'm naive but I think an interview should be an honest exchange of what you actually know, not what you crammed for before the interview.

When you're interviewing junior developers, you have no standard measure, they don't have enough actual experience to speak to. So before a leetcode and CTCI, you'd either have junior developers who went to a good university and were able to get an internship via that network, or they made some great open source contribution or project on the side as a student

Re: We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

#77

Post by nsxwolf »

GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #65
nsxwolf wrote: post #11

For those who work in the dark matter of the industry, there are no real resources because most places don't even have "question banks". When an interview request pops up on my calendar, I just go out and find a random question - it's totally disposable and unlikely to be used again, and we don't interview enough for someone to compile enough information on us. None of the places I've interviewed at in the last 5 yea…

> For those who work in the dark matter of the industry Can you be more specific about what this means?

Most software engineers work at companies with names the average person wouldn't recognize. Like, some random B2B company in Ohio that manages corporate gift cards, with 100 total employees. Multiply that by a million. These companies may come up on Glassdoor, but there won't be enough posts to get any kind of consistent pattern on how they run their interviews.

Re: We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

#79

Post by penguin_booze »

INTPenis wrote: post #4

Kinda sad that it has come to this. Maybe I'm naive but I think an interview should be an honest exchange of what you actually know, not what you crammed for before the interview.

Indeed. This has turned into a show about nothing. Recreational and competitive programming sites incentivize candidates for speed and one-upping. With such a group in the candidate set, companies rose up to the challenge of defeating them at their game by picking even harder questions. With the rise of AI, candidates don't even have to know or read the question.

And eye for eye leaves the whole world blind. I don't think there are any winners in this war.

Re: We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

#80

Post by windward »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #74
windward wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devil's advocate: there exists a corpus of questions solvable with a small number of techniques after a few weeks of decicated study. When someone has the right brain, these questions are the barrier to a 99th percentile income. What does it say about an interviewee that doesn't bother?

That they're unwilling to jump through random arbitrary hoops that are unrelated to their actual work. If a potential employer considers that a negative, what does it say about the employer?

Work is full of arbitrary hoops
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