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Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's cheating (even if it just assures you that your answer is correct)
Is it? The page implies it's allowed, but they want people who think running it is "more of a hassle".
I don't know then. I can open up a terminal with a python and paste it really fast, faster than run it in my head.
Peeking at the source, it's just a zero-width div, which is not accomodating of people with disabilities. This might open you up to litigation if you disqualify a blind person on the grounds he gave the wrong answer 'using AI', when he might have just been answering the question his screen reader read out.
How about don't let them copy it at all. Show them the problem on a shared screen and they should speak the answer in 15 or 30 seconds. If someone is visually impaired, it's short enough you can just read the problem text to them.
I'm pretty sure the intent is to weed people out well before they get to a point where you could share a screen with them. He mentioned a few people "resubmitted the application", so sure this is probably an initial step.
What most interviews get wrong is that there are usually just a few "bullet points" that if you see them, you instantly know that the the candidate at least has the technical chops. Instead of creating a test that specifically aims for those bullet points, many technical assessments end up with convoluted scaffolding when actually, only those key bullet points really matter. Like the OP, I can usually tell if a candi…
I’d love for you to elaborate :) But along that thought, I’ve always held that a human conversation is the best filter. I’ll ask you what do you work on recently, what did you learn, what did you mess up, what did you hate about the tool / language / framework. I strongly believe your ability to articulate your situation corresponds with your ability to do the job.
Can you re-frame your process or the prompt to only elicit those specific responses?
So instead of a whole exercise of building a React app or a whole backend API, for example, what would really "wow" you if you saw the candidate do it in the submission for a project? Could you re-frame your whole process so you only target those specific responses and elicit specific outputs?
Now that you've taken what was previously a 2 hour coding exercise (for example) and distilled down to 3-4 key questions, you can seek the same outputs in 15-30 minutes instead.
There are several advantages to this:
1) Many times, candidates know the answer but they actually can't figure out what you're looking for when there's a lot of cruft around the question/problem being solved. You can end up losing candidates that know how to solve the problem the way you want, but because of the way the question was posed, the objective is opaque.
2) It saves a lot of time for both sides. Interviewer doesn't have to review a big submission, candidate doesn't have to waste time doing a long project.
3) By condensing the cycle, you can evaluate more candidates and you can hopefully select a top candidate before they get another opportunity. You shorten the cycle time because the candidate doesn't have to find free time to do a project or sit down for long interviews, you don't need to have people review the code submissions, etc.
The only correct answer is... both answers (1 and -11). That is, if you're really interested in pursuing the position. Not only are you willing to take their tests, but you go beyond what is required, for your own benefit and edification. That's why, when presented with the URL during the interview, you immediately load it, and right-click View Source into another tab, while simultaneously making small talk with the…
somewhat off-topic: I had an interview for an Engineering Manager position with the Head of Engineering. They had some leet code problem prepared and I tried solving it and failed. During the challenge, I used some python string operand (:-1) (and maybe some other stuff) that they didn't knew. In the end, I failed the challenge as I didn't do it in the O(n) way... These kind of stupid challenges exemplify what's wron…
Were they a python engineer? I interview folks all the time in languages I don’t understand, and I ask dumb questions throughout the interview. I’ve been a professional (non-python) programmer for over a decade now and I don’t really know what :-1 means, I can guess it’s something like slicing until the last character but idk for sure.
Just to be clear: the main problem is not that they did not know what `:-1` was - there are many weird syntax additions with every version - understandable.
IMHO the problem is that there's usually a single interviewer that decides go/no go.
We all have biases, so leaving such an important decision (like hiring an EM) to one person is, (again IMHO) ...stupid .
Earlier quoted context omitted.
_How_ can you be a good hire for a _software engineering_ position, if you can’t get that one correct though?
It depends why they didn't get it "correct" (asked ChatGPT bad, used Python REPL not so bad, used screen reader very not bad) and what "correct" even means for this problem. There's a bizarro version of this guy who rejects people who do it in their head because they weren't told to not use an interpreter and he values them using the tools available to solve a problem. In his mind, the = is definitely part of the cod…
That does change it. In that I can see how false negatives may arise. Though, when hiring you generally care a lot more about false positives than negatives.
Wouldn't the correct answer be 5? result = result + x // 5 0 5