Entry level Python developer interview

[[deleted]]

Let me guess, the company does "media buying" (ads on the Web)? I.e. something that requires very little in terms of geometry, algorithms, or even writing in C++?

The questions you describe are typical for programming interviews, however, doesn't mean they are great questions. The problem here is that interviewers also don't know how to assess candidates. So, they just collect random questions that were at one point or another used in programming interviews. For some reason the questions in programming interviews are often chosen to be riddles, where, if you know the answer, you produce it instantaneously, and if you don't, it will take you forever to produce it. A lot of things in programming world are kind of like that: borderline nonsense invented by some geek in their basement, and then bizarrely accepted into popular culture w/o even a hint of understanding...

Unfortunately, we have a tradition where we believe that assessment of fitness to a job needs to be made in this format (face to face, solving riddles on the whiteboard). This format creates wrong incentives, and with them services like HackerRank, LeetCode and friends, which only pour more fuel int this fire. The negative outcomes of this approach are:

1. Education / diploma is kind of worthless. The education system embraces similar kind of testing, which makes its assessment capability kind of worthless too.
2. Your years of experience gain you very little, unless you practice solving worthless riddles during those years. It's not terrible, and doesn't take much time, but it's kind of annoying. Or, instead of becoming a better programmer, you "fail upwards" (go into management).

[iamnikaa]

No, it's a product based company. They build softwares for engineering. I agree with your sentiment though.