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After very casually looking at jobs, reading this thread, and starting to read some books and blogs about interviewing questions (and nightmare candidates), I'm very happy to be taking 2 less courses next semester and actually start focusing on becoming a good programmer as opposed to whatever you become from the rear end backwards way programming is taught in a lot of schools.
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Dec 7, 2012 01:48
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Chasiubao posted:My colleagues are funny assholes who told me to, "Make him cry!" when I asked for advice about questions to ask during a phone screen My general script for co-op and new grads is: Open with talking about a programming project they've worked on. Find out what they actually did on the project and get them to explain the design they chose. Ask them about what things went wrong, ask them what they would do differently now, etc. Ask them about a time there was conflict in a team they worked on, what happened, how they resolved it. Get them to explain anything to you in 5 minutes. Ask them what their favorite programming language is and why. The answers to these questions are useful, but they are also pretty easy to answer. This gives the candidate some time to relax and get comfortable. I spend about 10-15 minutes on this, then I move onto technical questions. These depend on the position and the candidate, but I usually cover a bit of data structures, object oriented programming techniques, and a series of increasingly difficult questions about their language of choice, till I hit some resistance. Finally I do some coding questions with https://www.collabedit.com. Usually a question that has some ambiguity in the requirements, a question that requires recursion, and a more complicated question that requires implementing an interface. End with giving them time to ask questions
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Dec 7, 2012 04:18
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I've screened before when not-in person, but in that case I had access to a virtual white board type setup so I could ask actual coding questions, but never a pure phone screen.
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Pie Colony posted:it doesn't take a good programmer to answer the first set of questions. an average one could easily answer them quickly. And thats all you're ever going to get aout of an interview process. I hate it when companies think "We only want to hire the best, so lets come up with a ridiculous hard programming problem, and if the candidate can't solve it over the phone in 5 minutes they're not good enough." The difference between good programmer and an average programmer can't be determined over the phone. Or by a coding challenge that is of appropriate length for an interview. quote:Ask them about a time there was conflict in a team they worked on, what happened, how they resolved it. What kind of answer are you expecting for this question? Conflict occurs constantly in a team environment. Its like asking "Tell me about a time when you noticed your shoes are untied, but couldn't find an appropriate place to prop your foot up, how did you handle this situation?" how!! fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Dec 7, 2012 |
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Dec 7, 2012 06:42
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Honestly we only do a 24 hour coding problem and an on-site. The coding problem usually takes people about 8-10 hours to do (so they say) and is of sufficiently complexity that we can tell if someone is smart or not. After that on site is mostly getting a feel for the person and figuring out what their values are.
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Dec 7, 2012 08:50
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FamDav posted:Honestly we only do a 24 hour coding problem and an on-site. The coding problem usually takes people about 8-10 hours to do (so they say) and is of sufficiently complexity that we can tell if someone is smart or not. After that on site is mostly getting a feel for the person and figuring out what their values are. 24 hours? Really? What industry are you in? how!! posted:What kind of answer are you expecting for this question? Conflict occurs constantly in a team environment. Its like asking "Tell me about a time when you noticed your shoes are untied, but couldn't find an appropriate place to prop your foot up, how did you handle this situation?" It's a good question and it can tell you a lot about the person. For example if they are autistic, or lack any semblance of self-awareness to realize it is an interview and they should say something reasonable, or if they had the forethought to come up with a reasonable answer in advance.
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Dec 7, 2012 12:39
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FamDav posted:Honestly we only do a 24 hour coding problem and an on-site. The coding problem usually takes people about 8-10 hours to do (so they say) and is of sufficiently complexity that we can tell if someone is smart or not. After that on site is mostly getting a feel for the person and figuring out what their values are. What kind of people are you looking to attract that have 8-10 hours free for the first stage of an interview process? Even if you give me advanced notice, I have poo poo to do.
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Dec 7, 2012 16:19
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tk posted:What kind of people are you looking to attract that have 8-10 hours free for the first stage of an interview process? Even if you give me advanced notice, I have poo poo to do. I agree that it's too long for an interview process, but if you can't dedicate 8 hours to get a job how can you dedicate time to a full time job?
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Dec 7, 2012 16:32
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Sab669 posted:I agree that it's too long for an interview process, but if you can't dedicate 8 hours to get a job how can you dedicate time to a full time job? If you're looking to hire unemployed people only, sure - otherwise it's two full time jobs for a day.
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Dec 7, 2012 16:45
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You need to go unfuck yourself because only the most sadistic kind of person can actually defend an 8 hour interview with the sound reasoning of, "if you can't dedicate 8 hours to get a job how can you dedicate time to a full time job?" Read that sentence over and over and over until the fallacy hits you in the face.
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Dec 7, 2012 16:50
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I'm not defending nor promoting it, I even said that in my post. I've been in a three hour interview and a four hour one and those both sucked. I'm simply saying in response to his, "I have poo poo to do" reason. Employer: "Hey, it's a long process so plan to make a day of it." Job Seeker: "Can I confirm this tomorrow? I'll need to request the day off from work."
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Dec 7, 2012 16:56
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Sab669 posted:I agree that it's too long for an interview process, but if you can't dedicate 8 hours to get a job how can you dedicate time to a full time job? I can dedicate 8 hours to get a job if it's spread over a week or two.
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Dec 7, 2012 17:00
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Sab669 posted:I'm not defending nor promoting it, I even said that in my post. I've been in a three hour interview and a four hour one and those both sucked. I'm simply saying in response to his, "I have poo poo to do" reason. I've taken off work for multiple days and flown across the country before for full day on-site interviews. But that was after multiple phone interviews and technical screenings, and it was for positions that I definitely wanted and I was pretty sure I had a good chance at getting. Perhaps I misunderstood the interview process in question, but to me it sounds something like: 1) Somehow get in touch 2) 24 hour coding problem 3) Courtesy on-site meet and greet, make sure person showers (for interviews, at least). In stage 1, you'll have to try pretty hard to convince me that I'm applying for my dream job if you want me to pay attention to stage 2. It's just too much too fast.
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Dec 7, 2012 17:36
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Perhaps I misunderstood too, then. I was thinking it wasn't the interviewee showing up and unexpectedly staying for the entire day. I was thinking it was, as you said yourself, after a few preliminary interviews for a "nontrivial" position (as in not entry-level).
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Dec 7, 2012 18:27
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So to clarify our entire process, we receive your resume and we look it over. If we like the alphabet soup on your resume, we get in contact and have a very informal chat, after which we tell you about your programming problem. You can receive it whenever you like, and the only rule is you get it back to us within 24 hours. It's a pretty good barometer for your algorithmic capabilities and your coding skills. Compared to any other place I've applied, it was far and away the hardest and the most interesting bit of code I had to write. After that, if we're still interested we fly you out for an all day onsite. While we do ask a few algorithms questions here and there, this is primarily to learn more about what you've done, what you know, what you don't know, and how good of a fit you'll be. After you leave, we all sit down and decide if you're hire/no-hire and then you get a call. As for our industry, we work on search-based optimization solutions.
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Dec 7, 2012 18:59
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Long interview challenges aren't necessarily a bad thing. The only problem is when a company gives a long challenge to an applicant, and only gives them enough time to get it done if they work in a turbo charged manner. Once I was given a problem where I had to basically make a simple CRUD app in Django. It would normally be a walk in the park problem, the only issue was I was only given 3 hours to do it. As soon as something like your dog pooping on the floor, or the fire alarm going of, or even your postgres instance refuses to run, you're hosed. My suggestion is that if you want to give long problems, its fine, as long as you give them enough time to do it at a leisurely pace. I don't want to work for a company thats going to make me do complex tasks under extreme time allotments that are measured in minutes. Read this: http://programming-gibberish.tumblr.com/post/37246383728/micro-and-macro-challenges-coding-during-interviews unixbeard posted:It's a good question and it can tell you a lot about the person. For example if they are autistic, or lack any semblance of self-awareness to realize it is an interview and they should say something reasonable, or if they had the forethought to come up with a reasonable answer in advance. That doesn't answer my question. What would you say if an interviewer asked you this question? Its just as worthless as the "what are your strengths", "what are your weaknesses" questions*. *my strengths are that I'm a perfectionist and am really passionate about my job. My weakness is that I'm a perfectionist and I sometimes work too hard and get too passionate about my job. job offer plz. how!! fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Dec 7, 2012 |
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Dec 7, 2012 19:32
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how!! posted:Once I was given a problem where I had to basically make a simple CRUD app in Django. Yeah our questions are more like "Write an AI for Yahtzee". EDIT: I also don't think we're giving you a several restricted timetable with this problem, either. Can you afford to give up a Saturday afternoon to work on this? Great. If not, well too bad. We aren't really in need of a ton of new people coming in every year. FamDav fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Dec 7, 2012 |
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Dec 7, 2012 19:45
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FamDav posted:Yeah our questions are more like "Write an AI for Yahtzee". problem solved: https://github.com/dastbe/Yahtzee-AI took me about 20 seconds
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Dec 7, 2012 19:53
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how!! posted:problem solved: https://github.com/dastbe/Yahtzee-AI It took me about 20 seconds to find out you plagiarized your answer. Also, if you can't generate a reasonable solution to an optimization problem like this on your own then I don't know maybe you should just stick to writing CRUD apps.
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Dec 7, 2012 20:01
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FamDav posted:It took me about 20 seconds to find out you plagiarized your answer. Also, if you can't generate a reasonable solution to an optimization problem like this on your own then I don't know maybe you should just stick to writing CRUD apps. Its not "plagiarism", its called "problem solving". This is the problem with interview coding problems. They are either terribly tedious, or result in forced re-invention of the wheel. The guy who write that Yahtzee AI I linked to spent way more than 24 hours working on it. Even the worlds most talented developer isn't going to come up with anything other than a half-assed barely working Yahtzee AI solution in 24 hours time.
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Dec 7, 2012 20:06
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how!! posted:Its not "plagiarism", its called "problem solving". I don't understand why you keep posting in these threads. The point of the exercise isn't to get a perfect, 100% working solution in a day, it's to see how they approach solving a complex problem.
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Dec 7, 2012 20:15
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Ithaqua posted:I don't understand why you keep posting in these threads. I solve complex problems by finding an already existing solution, and leveraging that. If a company wants to call that "plagiarism", then gently caress 'em.
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Dec 7, 2012 20:17
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There's a difference from your average day to day assignments and a test to see if you actually know what you're doing, though. Any time you have to write any code what so ever, do you just go to Google until you find exactly what you need?
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Dec 7, 2012 20:21
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Sab669 posted:There's a difference from your average day to day assignments and a test to see if you actually know what you're doing, though. That describes the level I'm at. I've openly stated I learn by plagiarism. How long until I get beyond this level we'll have to wait and see.
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Dec 7, 2012 20:27
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I wanted to thank everyone for the ideas for interviewing over the phone. stypi.com was a really good idea. Unfortunately the candidate wasn't suited, but I learned a lot 
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Dec 7, 2012 20:27
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how!! posted:I solve complex problems by finding an already existing solution, and leveraging that. If a company wants to call that "plagiarism", then gently caress 'em. So if you take that solution, understand what it does, rewrite, send it in and then later explain what you actually did (algorithmically) and defend your choices then go for it. You would've found a similar solution in a few white papers that are freely available online, along with an optimal solution for Yahtzee that would've conveniently fit into our constraints. Also lol if you think that guy spent more than a few hours researching and then maybe 10 or so hours implementing.
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Dec 7, 2012 20:36
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tk posted:What kind of people are you looking to attract that have 8-10 hours free for the first stage of an interview process? Even if you give me advanced notice, I have poo poo to do. My coding problems/interviews are essentially just hazing the poo poo out of the new people. If they made it in front of me they probably already have the job. I'll do four questions, they pass if they can answer question one, if they can answer 2/3/4 then I have a really drat smart person on my hands - if they can't answer question one or walk out the door because they can't answer the other questions or break down in tears then I've exposed a problem early on.
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Dec 7, 2012 20:58
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FamDav posted:Honestly we only do a 24 hour coding problem and an on-site. The coding problem usually takes people about 8-10 hours to do That seems like a good way to discriminate against any candidate that has a family.
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Dec 7, 2012 21:26
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Sab669 posted:Any time you have to write any code what so ever, do you just go to Google until you find exactly what you need? Pretty much. But I've gotten so good at it over the years, I rarely have to "write my own code". 99.9% of software problems have already been solved in one way or another.
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Dec 7, 2012 21:27
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More companies should just outsource their work to Google search results.
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Dec 7, 2012 21:30
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FamDav posted:Can you afford to give up a Saturday afternoon to work on this? Great. If not, well too bad. We aren't really in need of a ton of new people coming in every year. I guess I don't have any experience running a business, but this seems like a good attitude to have if you have no desire to attract talent.
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Dec 7, 2012 21:38
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how!! posted:Pretty much. But I've gotten so good at it over the years, I rarely have to "write my own code". 99.9% of software problems have already been solved in one way or another. How long have you been working for your current employer?
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Dec 7, 2012 21:39
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how!! posted:I solve complex problems by finding an already existing solution, and leveraging that. If a company wants to call that "plagiarism", then gently caress 'em. Congratulations, you can almost compete with every offshore outsourced resource out there. There's money to be made doing this, but don't expect it to be lucrative. Also if your business isn't solving any new problems at all, chances are they aren't a great business.
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Dec 7, 2012 22:26
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shrughes posted:That seems like a good way to discriminate against any candidate that has a family. I would've thought that, but we've had a fair amount of people who have families that have done it and succeeded. We actually are pretty old if you took the average ages of employees here. shrughes posted:How long have you been working for your current employer? Isn't this the guy who goes to a job, hates everything about their codebase, asks that they perform a complete rewrite, then leaves/is fired when they don't comply with his latent autism? You'd think he'd be really anal about writing his own code. tk posted:I guess I don't have any experience running a business, but this seems like a good attitude to have if you have no desire to attract talent. Well like I said, at the moment we really don't need to hire more people. Sure we always want to hire more smart people so we can do new things, but it's not a pressing priority. Also, we've found that the people who do well (here, elsewhere, everywhere) like the challenge aspect of it. Personally, I was impressed because it asked more of me than "Can you breath and type for 20-30 minutes?". As an example, a friend asked me if I wanted to interview at the startup he's working at; their "hardcore math problem" was basically a prime number sieve with a check in a loop for a particular condition. If you're setting the bar that low for getting my resume "to the top of the stack" then I don't really want to talk to you. FamDav fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Dec 7, 2012 |
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Dec 7, 2012 23:01
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Yea, after Ithaqua's posted I remembered he's the guy who was insistent on one thing being 100% maximum efficiency perfect code rather than spending the same time and getting multiple things up to working speed basically.
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Dec 7, 2012 23:04
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how!! posted:That doesn't answer my question. What would you say if an interviewer asked you this question? Its just as worthless as the "what are your strengths", "what are your weaknesses" questions*. Does the question let me peer into their souls? No. But it takes 2 minutes and gives me an idea of how they work with other people. I've had plenty of people fail that question, so I keep it. how!! posted:What kind of answer are you expecting for this question? Conflict occurs constantly in a team environment. Its like asking "Tell me about a time when you noticed your shoes are untied, but couldn't find an appropriate place to prop your foot up, how did you handle this situation?" You would be surprised by the number of people who answer with "Well I just threw my shoes away because clearly they don't know how to be shoes" or "I just tripped a lot". I'm not looking for people who have never encountered conflict (and if someone says that is the case its a pretty big red flag), I'm looking for people who have had a bad experience and either dealt with it appropriately and/or learned from the experience. Also, did you miss the part where I said these are easy to answer questions designed to get the candidate comfortable? Phone interviews SUCK as the interviewee, it is awkward as hell, this helps diffuse some of their nervousness.
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Dec 7, 2012 23:24
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programming gibberish tumblr posted:The only problem is when these micro challenges start getting more complex and convoluted. I recently was doing a set of micro challenges and the interviewer had me do a problem that went something like this: “Given a string, return the minimum number of characters that need to be added to this string in order to make it a palindrome”. When they asked me this question, I immediately said to them “I have no idea how to solve this”. I’ve never done anything like this before. It would require me to think. Once a little bit of thinking is required, the micro challenge format becomes not ideal. Real world problems are hardly ever this complicated. And when they are, you always have time on your side to ponder, google, and experiment. I do my best thinking when I’m pedaling my bike through the bike path near my house, not when I’m in the stressful environment of a job interview. I'm disappointed that this blog post doesn't detail what happened next with the palindrome problem. It seems pretty easy. Blurting out "I don't know how to do this" could be either an okay idea or a really bad one depending on if you end up solving the problem or not.
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Dec 7, 2012 23:48
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lmao zebong posted:I have talked to a couple recruiters, but since my resume shows I worked on a successful mobile game they all want to pair me with companies in the gaming industry which I'm not 100% sure I want to do.
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Dec 7, 2012 23:59
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A few years ago I interviewed at one place that had quite the process. Initial contact after submitting my resume was a very introductory phone screen where I was asked simple things like 'What sorts of projects have you worked on?', 'Tell me about a time where something went wrong/well', etc. Nothing technical involved. They contacted me a few days later to tell me that they wanted me to go into the next phase, which meant coming into the headquarters. I was taken by the receptionist into a cold, tiny room with two very old and dirty computer terminals and told to follow a booklet of instructions waiting for me. I ended up taking an online personality test, and then a test designed around some of the equipment they manufacture that would at most weed out people who were unable to flip a set of switches in a particular order. Test completed, I met no one else and left. Another call a week later, next phase: Take-home programming test. Simple sorting stuff in a console program, with a few extra bells and whistles on top. I submit it to them online. A week later, another call: "Hey you did great on the last assignment, now come back to headquarters for the second programming test that you can spend a total of two 8-hour sessions on." Back to headquarters I go, where I am taken to the same small room. The Development Director greets me and hands me the assignment packet. Simple stuff, basically a linked list with a menu and a variety of things to perform on it. While I am busy programming this, I am greeted by the receptionist who hands me an IQ test to complete as well. I do the IQ test, finish the programming test, and maybe 4 hours has passed. After he checks my work and approves, I have an actual sit-down with the Development Director. He asks me basically the same stuff as the initial phone screen, although it is a little more technical. He tells me the position I applied for (embedded) actually isn't needed, but they could put me somewhere else doing web development. He takes me to meet some other people in the department, culminating with a one-on-one with the CEO. He has a pretty sweet office but we don't discuss much of value. I'm told I'll hear back from them and I leave. Soon afterwards I accept an offer from a different company. Please don't do this to people.
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Dec 8, 2012 00:33
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Ranma posted:Phone interviews SUCK as the interviewee, it is awkward as hell, this helps diffuse some of their nervousness. I know this is sort of outside the context of this discussion, but your comment reminded me of a phone "interview" I had a while back. It consisted of "Hi I'm the head of IT and we're conferenced in with the development head. You have 15 minutes to tell us about yourself and why you're a good candidate for this position. Go." Cue me talking into Absolutely. Dead. Air. for about 12 minutes. 
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Dec 8, 2012 01:21
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Opulent Ceremony posted:Please don't do this to people.
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Dec 8, 2012 02:52
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