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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?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @05:01AM
I have been doing this for a few months.
I am seeing several different types.
The 'where will you be in 5 years' types. They know what they want actually. They have 0 problems in 'I will train you'. These are actually fairly rare. But you see it here and there in the upper level interviews. I had 2 of them today and a technical interview. There will be screwups in their org as they do not filter them. They do mostly contract to hire. So if you dont work out they just dont renew.
The 'test takers'. They know they do not want a screw up. They are usually unsure of their actual business. But a screw up they do not want. They will use tests that rate you at 90% or better to only get the job. When one question about some nuance of a language that you forgot about years ago can knock you by 3-5%. Had one guy say 'I want you to crank out this project in a week'. It was *easy* a 2-3 month project. Having done a few in my time I knew this. I looked at him and said 'that would be quite the trick'. Didnt get a call back on that one. Course the recruiter said he has not call back at all for anything so maybe he is flaky. That was a month ago.
The impossibles. They ignore you. Anything you do they ignore. It is a black box. Call them? Straight to voice mail. Email? Ignored. Suddenly you are closed out with no reason given. You find out you are closed out because the job is just 'gone'. No 'thank you but no' Just nothing. I suspect these are being farmed out to H1Bs but can not prove it. They just had to post to fulfill some internal requirement.
The emailers. They don't ignore you. They just reject you. But at least they can make their job software communicate. You just did not happen to fill out their acronym soup properly.
Then you get the 'puzzle' guys. These guys... I swear. They want to pretend they are the best of the best and googles engineering org is beneath them. I have worked with that type. They do not act this way. I have one coming up that they want me to take an actual IQ test (not a programming test). Another one I applied for and went through his tests actually said he wants 'Mozart and not Salieri' in the summary of the job. These are the sorts of people who think you should have been working with C++17 already for 2 years. This book is the best for these sorts https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/dp/0984782850 [amazon.com] . She also has a set of videos on youtube that go through her problems nicely. It is a good refresher of all that junk you have forgot about in CS. The stuff you only use once and awhile as by this point most of it has been burred into the SDKs and libraries.
Above all I have noticed one quality. These people are flakes. I honestly think one of my recruiters is on coke. Two of them have no idea how to use the phone. One works her ass off and has found me 3 different places. One of them seems to *love* email he sends a position almost every other day, no interviews out of it. Many will ignore you if that 1 single job didnt work out.
Another thing I have noticed? In the past 6 months jobs have dried up. Oh there is plenty of action on the boards from a handful of companies. But nothing seems to be filled. A couple of cities I have been trying to move to went from 40+ places hiring to 4-5 large companies only with jobs. I have also noticed many of these companies are being ultra picky. They can afford to be. Many of the ones where it is tracked I see 100+ applications to one position. I am also getting 2-3 recruiters calling me on the same position. When I press on other positions they ghost on me.