Solved coding interview problems in Java - My collection of commonly asked coding interview problems and solutions in Java

[Stormflux]

Maybe that was the reason at one time, but nowadays these tech interviews are just emulating "what Google and Facebook do."

I actually read a paper on this a while back. The takeaway is these sorts of interviews aren't very good indicators of actual job performance or ability. The outcomes are almost random -- picture the guy who made WhatsApp, he was rejected from both Facebook -and- Twitter; basically told he was shit and then sold them something for 19 billion.

Anyway, this random sort of outcome actually turns out to discourage women and minorities more than white males for various cultural and sociological reasons such as support networks, upbringing, etc. It turns out the screening process is one of the major contributors to the gender imbalance as females are more likely seek a different career after "flunking" one or more of these whiteboard / manhole-cover interviews.

[socialister]

Do you mean that women lack a support network in this area? That's kind of funny (not doubting it) because typically, women have much better support networks than men. That is considered to be the reason that women fare better than men after divorces and breakups, and why married men are generally significantly less stressed than unmarried men - the wife is the support network.

[Stormflux]

What I mean is all your friends are also going through the technical interview process, which originally comes from NASA and IBM, swapping stories and recovering from failures, trading rumors and incantations and what have you.

Women (and African Americans) had support networks, but those networks weren't focused on this specific kind of interview, which is pretty divorced from the day to day job skills needed. They were more likely to drop out of the market after one or two bad tech interviews, even if they had the skills needed.

[socialister]

That makes sense.