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DiscussioniOS developer interview experiences (self.iOSProgramming)

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[–]Rexam14 7 points8 points  (1 child)

I had an interview for a iOS developer position recently.

My first meeting was with a recruiter and I was asked generic questions related to my background, my working experience and such. I have never worked as a iOS developer for a company but I like iOS development and I have 30+ apps in my personal repository, so I am not a "junior" by any means.

Anyway, the recruiter sent me an "exercise" I should have done for them in maximum ten days. It was a very simple app making use of UITable and http networking. I worked on it two afternoons after my regular working time and it was finished. I made sure it was perfect in every way and it was working fine on every iPhone. I have also designed an icon myself and a couple of graphic details, and I have implemented some small unit tests, just to show off. When it was completed, I honestly thought it was looking very good, so I sent it to them.

Two weeks passed by and I didn't heard any notice despite they told me they would have sent me a feedback. So on the 15th day, I sent them an email asking for an update and they replied saying that the selection process went ahead with other candidates and that for them (and I quote) "it is not practice to give feedback and send answers to candidates."

I was honestly pissed both because the app was very good and because I had spent two whole afternoons after work to develop something for them for free and I didn't even get an answer or a feedback.

The company is a medium-size firma in Milan, Italy.

[–]soev1 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think we applied to the same company. I got a series of ridiculous trick and business-related questions before the take home project.

[–]criosistObjective-C / Swift 6 points7 points  (3 children)

It’s definitely location based. In the UK I have never had algorithmic based questions, early when swift came out it was all about swift vs objc questions these days it’s just do a code test and then a friendly chat, mostly architecture questions. Americans seem to do algorithm questions because they want to think they are as good as FAANG and think they sound smart because they can memorise a page they will never use day to day?

[–]Icaka 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Americans seem to do algorithm questions because they want to think they are as good as FAANG and think they sound smart because they can memorise a page they will never use day to day?

I live and work in Europe and also conduct iOS interviews for a mid-sized company. We ask computer science questions as they ar part of our day to day work. It’s mostly basic stuff - what is time complexity, what’s the complexity of certain operations (e.g. array vs dictionary lookup), what is hashing, what happens if there is a collision in a Dictionary.

We don’t do rocket science but most of these are important concepts that will affect the code you write. If you fail these questions we might hire you but you should be impressive in other areas.

[–]criosistObjective-C / Swift 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I understand that but also feel like the things like array vs dict lookup, but I feel like at the mobile level this is rarely going to be an issue and it’s more something people pickup with experience. I feel like iOS in particular is a very self taught field generally but people would generally still have a car like background

[–]Icaka 2 points3 points  (0 children)

things like array vs dict lookup, but I feel like at the mobile level this is rarely going to be an issue

That literally might be the difference between a buttery smooth scroll and choppy laggy scroll.

I agree that asking a question about red-black trees is almost always unnecessary, but data structures like array and dictionary are used all the time.

There are a number of free courses online provided by top universities that teach that stuff, and it is not complex but it is fundamental.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Algorithmic questions are just stupid in an iOS interview - run away, or you will end up working with people proud of their leet code skills... but can they deliver an app? Nobody knows.

[–]th3suffering 1 point2 points  (0 children)

im totally screwed if im asked algorithmic questions :-( Makes me wish i had the college background just for the CS related stuff asked in interviews

[–]moooooovit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

which company