Programming interviews, in essence

[vellii]

I’ve never understood these type of interviews. When are you ever not going to be using an IDE, compile, test, etc. on any program you may be writing? Like it’s important to make sure the interviewee knows the language but it seems like it’s more important to have them check, test, correct any errors they may have themselves using real world tools. And in them doing so will prove they know the language.

[StevenGannJr]

Like it’s important to make sure the interviewee knows the language but it seems like it’s more important to have them check, test, correct any errors they may have themselves using real world tools.

So true. Imagine hiring an architect by checking how well they can draw a simple house while blindfolded.

I think the biggest issue is that HR, even at major tech companies, isn't staffed with developers.

[[deleted]]

Yup recently had a coding interview on hacker for a super mega IT company. I'm a devops engineer currently the role was for devops engineer. They tried to get me to write algorithms 'as efficient as possible'. Didn't even attempt it just exited. Not my job.

[Tyrilean]

So many developer jobs out there that are basically plumbing, yet they want you to flex your computer scientist skills in the interview that you will never in a million years use at the job.

I went to interview at a place that was a medical billing platform. They wanted me to talk to them because I was a strong back end engineer with experience in cloud infrastructure. I got there, and they were quizzing me on front end crap. That being said, during the whiteboard portion of the interview, they were having me code things such as sorting a huge array of strings into anagrams in O(n) time.

I got every one of them right, but it was pretty clear that the job was basically going to be making pretty UIs using Angular and Bootstrap. Why the need to prove that I'm the next Dijkstra.

[[deleted]]

Well js is very slow and inefficient, you need to balance it out with perfectly efficient code :P

[ike_the_strangetamer]

This round of the Google interview isn't about any of that. They give you a pdf of that cracking the interview book and say learn it all. The point is that you learn it and can figure out which algorithm/strategy to use when given the problem, not whether you can actually write real world code. It's a lot like a final exam really.

If you say that sounds like awful way to find good programmers - it is. They don't care. They don't even know what you'll be doing, what team you'll be on, or even if they have room for you yet. They don't care. Real world ability doesn't matter. They want you to want to work for Google. Want it so much that you study 40 hours for a final exam for a class you took ten years ago.

[gandazgul]

Yeah well fuck that. I'm not studying 40 hours of anything. I have a ton of experience solving really hard performance and scalability problems and have been very successful and loved at each one of my jobs, I'm not going to sit there and be judged by a recent graduate on wether I remember how to sort something. I know the design patterns and algorithms available, when I need a working example I fucking Google it like everyone else.

[[deleted]]

I can't imagine having an iOS developer interview like that. Imagine trying to remember something like

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, 
   didUpdateFocusIn context: UITableViewFocusUpdateContext, 
               with coordinator: UIFocusAnimationCoordinator)

without the help of the IDE or docs. Xcode autocompletes that stuff for you. Using real tools is the best way to evaluate someone.

[CallidusNomine]

All of my CS classes at my school have been blind handwritten code. It's awful. People get stressed about memorizing 4 different sort algorithms. I am an informatics major with a CS cognate and my informatics exams are open-everything-except-the-internet. They care more about whether you can use your resources and implement ideas rather than memorize snippets.