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posted by on Tuesday March 07 2017, @10:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the prove-Fermat's-last-theorem-using-only-a-protractor-and-straight-edge dept.

Saw this discussion on Reddit, and thought it might be of interest here, too (as such things perennially are):

I've been a successful software engineer for 10 years at various startups and small businesses. I do a lot of contracting on the side too. I've recently had cause to start looking for work again.

What the hell is up with these interview questions? They don't really have much to do with the ins and outs of clean code, architecture or collaboration. I had hoped they'd stop with this bullshit already. There's a lot of companies that promise 'No whiteboard interviews' like Triplebyte, only for that to be a complete and total lie.

They're more like annoying riddles I'd find in an Sierra adventure game or D&D. I'm just not very good at these types of 'riddle questions'. I know they always wind up having to do with binary trees, graph algorithms or something like that, but the dress-up and time constraints are unrealistically stressful.

I honestly wasn't very good at these questions when I'd graduated and I'm still not good at them now. How screwed am I? Are companies willing to hire based on projects and seeing live code?

I'm always careful to speak with my employers and convince them to write a 'portfolio' clause in my contract that allows me to keep code for the purpose of seeking further employment.

I really don't want to spend 3 months of my life learning how to solve riddles just to get another job.

I also suck at these kinds of questions, despite having designed and written a lot of software and systems. What say you, Soylentils, are these kinds of interview questions necessary to find good software engineers?


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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 07 2017, @10:56PM (2 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 07 2017, @10:56PM (#476209)

    an exit from this industry

    An exit from employment, to be specific. Thank God this toxic poison hasn't reached contracting. I've never seen a contract with a clause discussing the computational complexity of bubble sorts.

    People who think they know what they're doing, but toxically do not, tend to want to hire employees, whereas people who have little idea of tech tend to hire contractors much as they hire doctors or plumbers, off past history and recommendations and soft skills.

    This programmer hiring BS would be the equivalent of selecting a primary care physician by asking trivia questions about the enzyme kinetics in the Krebs Cycle, when what you want is a guy to set your broken leg or stitch up a laceration.

    My long term plan is if you want me to be your employee, you're buying my entire corporation, which is a whole nother topic.

    My dad basically retired contracting, he never really quit he just took fewer contracts over time. I suspect that is my end game. I'll knock out a lot of year 2038 related contracting and then settle down gradually.

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @01:54AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @01:54AM (#476262)

    they are not trying to hire you. they are marking the box to get a H1-B tell they to stick it. or better have them white board your question fisrt, so you tell if they are worth working for.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 08 2017, @01:31PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 08 2017, @01:31PM (#476419)

      they are marking the box to get a H1-B

      This is a serious problem in the industry, if the ad or interview is as ridiculous as the low pay, its because they're working the H1B train and no one is supposed to pass. It would be a process fail if anyone passed. Whats not mentioned is the young kids who still remember doing red-black tree algos in java from school last week will also be crossed off the list because they have too little real world experience.