Can’t just be me, can it? Currently 0 for 3 on interviews because I can’t seem to get past the technical interview/test. Usually because of some crazy complicated algorithm question that’s never been relevant to anything I’ve ever had to do on the job in all my years coding.
Also, while I’m ranting: screw the usual non-answer when given feedback.
A few years ago I was in a hiring loop where four interviewers grilled me on a number of subjects, including algorithms and data structures. They asked me all sorts of trivia questions on assimptotic complexity of this and that algorithm, how to implement this and that, how to traverse stuff, etc. As luck would have it, I was hired. I spent a few years working for that company and not a single time did I ever implemented a data structure at all or wrote any sort of iterator. Not once.
I did spend months writing stuff in an internal wiki.
I can’t help but feel that those bullshit leetcode data structures computational complexity trivia are just a convoluted form of ladder-pulling.
My workplace has the opposite problem.
The company has been in dire need of programmers for years, so they hired people (including myself) without tests. However, the work involves lots of custom iterators and the occasional handcrafted parser, which most of the company is incapable of writing. The bright side is that management has their metrics mostly right, so I’m getting lots of raises for solving fun problems.
Ahem, uh, where are they hiring? Asking for, uh, me.
That sounds like a win-win situation. You lucky bugger!
My workplace has the opposite problem.
I don’t see that as a problem. The job description of an engineer includes dealing with new problems and onboarding onto new things. So you never wrote a parser and now you have to. That’s ok, just go ahead and start from the ground up.
What I perceive as a major problem is the utter disconnect between what companies test for, and what companies actually do.
It makes no sense at all to evaluate candidates on obscure trivia questions no one will ever care about or use, let alone reject an applicant because they mixed up O(nlogn) with O(logn). It matters more if you know a good, healthy answer to tabs vs spaces.
I once was a part of an hiring loop where we assessed a candidate, and one other fellow assesser wanted outright to reject the candidate because he failed to answer one of his questions on data structures. Everyone in the meeting voted in favour of that hire, except that one guy. When we asked to reconsider his position, he threw a tantrum because he felt that it was a matter of principle that we had to not hire a candidate that didn’t knew trivia. The hiring manager asked if that info was important, and in case he felt it was whether it could be looked up online in a matter of minutes, but the assesser tried to argue that it was besides the point.
Data structures and algorithms trivia feels like ladder pulling.
It matters more if you know a good, healthy answer to tabs vs spaces.
You had me there, for a second
I always just answer that with “do you want a software engineer, or a text book? If we need that for a project then I’ll go dig out my college notes”
It usually works with other engineers, the issues are usually with the recruiters.
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In my experience, the job that HR excels at is creating and perpetuating the view that the company needs a HR dept. Generally, the most unneccesary people in an office are HR.
This. 100x this.
The problem is that most times HR person is all you’ll get at the first interview and you’ll only get someone marginally tech-versed on the second interview. Even then you risk having some bozo who regrets not being hired by Google so all the questions are hyperbolic in the extreme and not related at all to daily tasks.
I believe algorithm focused technical tests are useful. However, if the interviewing team hasn’t taken the time to understand both the problem and the answer, then they are completely pointless. So you’re exactly right here to challenge their bullshit.
They’ve been pulling leetcode questions designed to take a lot of thought and effort. They then expect people to get them in 10 minutes.
Unfortunately, I never got a degree so even when I can ace those questions, I’m really just there to fill their interview quota for the most part.
Yep. LeetCode medium difficulty puzzles is the de facto / unofficial standard, and even if you’re a pretty good programmer, those are tough to do in a timed 45 minute thing with some stranger watching every character you type :-(
Don’t worry about the algorithm questions… companies asking that are just google-wannabe companies that don’t deserve you. I have always told recruiters “if there’s a time-limited interview test, I’m out”, and I’m doing very well for myself now.
If you’re desperate, unfortunately, you have to pick up a book on algorithms… one of those 600 pages book, and start reading…
Let’s be honest, even if you finish that 600-page book, you might not “crack” the algorithm interview. The inteview requires you to grind the question, or simply a lot of practices.
Astronaut: You mean they’re all too stupid to do the jobs they currently have?
2nd Astronaut: And they always were.
Also - those kinds of interview questions are bullshit. A good tech interviewer can ask about past experience and learn plenty from questions in that context.
You have a 2^n marbles and a scale…
If they ask a tech test question, it’s time to leave. When they act surprised, tell them you don’t believe in wasting your time with bullshit.
Why? Tech tests are fine, absurd complex tests for shitty jobs are not
If you find some that are reasonable then I consider you lucky. I have not. They’ve only ever proven to be an absurd waste of time in my experience.
I only got quite simple tests tbf, but I don’t look for senior positions. Main thing is to just get the problem solved writing decent code (if it’s a home assignment) or to walk them through your reasonings
The only time I got a leetcode waste of time it was a Dijsktra/A* problem (which I failed)
another problem with tech tests is how broad of scope they cover - like everything you’ve learned when pursuing your degree.
Most other professional engineering disciplines have licensing obtained using FE and PE exams. Those exams are effectively “tech tests” equivalents but after passing them you get a license that you have to maintain. I can appreciate this approach since you can take CEU (continuing education) to maintain your license instead of taking the entire test all over again.
I never though software engineers would need a license but I would MUCH rather prefer grind to obtain a license ONCE which then I can use to fulfill tech test requirements and maintain the license with much less effort throughout the year.
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thanks for sharing, didn’t know they got rid of it - makes sense though
from the same article:
if the boards aren’t regulating the [software engineering profession], it’s tough to get people to take the exam
Now middle managers and HR are regulating the software engineering profession -_-
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But if people want to complain about the irrelevance of reversing a list or describing two different approaches to balanced trees… they’d probably complain more about being tested on generators and RC frequency response in low pass filters even if you only have to take it once.
LOL! absolutely.
I think the skills tested on tech interviews are important, though; At least fundamentals. I don’t encounter many people that consider time and space complexity of a unit of code (big O notation) and that’s unfortunate.
Data structs and their method for language built-ins are already optimized so I get that most people just use them but man, I see so many developers not even choose the correct structures. That includes me until I started leetcoding for a new job after 4 years of professionally work.
But of course, this needs to stay in reason. Asking Brainteasers and optimizations like dynamic programming are dick moves. I don’t want my team to prematurely optimize and make our code base complex just cause.
I was so lucky in the interview for my current job: I’m working on a product with a big networking component, and I was asked to write an echo server with low level components. That was maybe the second time I had a test related to the job.
Never had issues in the past, I actually did the tests for few friends, just for fun. But most of the time they are overkill. Now that I have more experience I realize it takes few very basic questions to understand if one is technically fit for the job.
I don’t know if I would appreciate a complex test now if I was looking for a new position. It feels a bit disrespectful.
I currently struggle accepting all the psychological and hr tests for management positions… They are hr bs. I do them, but they are imho much worse than technical test, because completely useless and arbitrary. Those are really offensive and intrusive
Sometimes those positions are meant for promoting internal candidates, who obviously sat in, conducting the same interviews in the past. So the difficulty is dialed up to “I am Death incarnate!” levels and they then have scoring data to support their selection of the internal candidate. At a friend’s workplace, they’d opened up a 2-3yr exp position to convert a great intern, and had some great 10+yr exp people apply. My friend said that was a little awkward. Even if Mark Russinovich or Linus Torvalds applied for that job, they still had no chance at getting it. I joked that I might put a resume in his manager’s pile for the creator of the tech stack they were interviewing for, just to hear how that reaction was.
That’s probably not representing even… 5% of these gauntlets, but it might make you feel better. Sometimes, it’s the hiring manager fulfilling the letter but not the spirit of some process, but it means they are frustratingly hard on candidates in the process.
And perhaps, ultimately, you have dodged some bullets.
For a lot of these you need to study/practice on sites like HackerRank for a while first. Some companies go overboard and expect you to build some crazy recursive dynamic programming implementation in 15 mins without an IDE, others are more realistic and just want to see if you know things like algorithm complexity, can pick appropriate data structures, and write logical and clean code. And yes, very little of it applies to what most of us do day to day. Anyways, HackerRank is great for interview practice, you can Google for pretty much any solution to their questions.
We ask algorithm questions and I feel bad about it. But a nontrivial portion of the job really is adapting these algorithms to novel scenarios. Not most of the job, but maybe the hardest part.
You guys are getting interviews?
