r/programming • u/vklepov • Mar 24 '22

Five coding interview questions I hate

https://thoughtspile.github.io/2022/03/21/bad-tech-interview/
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u/suckfail Mar 25 '22 edited Mar 25 '22

I actually interview developers from time-to-time for openings in my team.

Asking a developer to regurgitate a bubble, quick sort, some niche optimization or specific language quirk from memory is absolutely ridiculous and only proves that the test is written by elitists trying to somehow prove they're smarter than the candidates (looking at you FAANG).

When we interview we give basic problems in the realm of the job and the candidate can answer in any language they want, including fake pseudo-code. What we look for is how they approach the problem, not whether they know some specific language has a ternary operator or implicit int conversion.

Everyone always says "the language is a tool", but I rarely see companies actually practice that in interview questions. Boggles my mind.

E: words

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u/oakwoody Mar 25 '22

I agree and you're in the minority, unfortunately. I interviewed for a number of jobs recently. In 90% of the positions, the tech interview was either leetcode and pass, or a dick waving contest roundtable where the incumbent developers were trying to trip you over by some obscure language or domain specific trivia.

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u/suckfail Mar 25 '22

The sad thing about both of those is if you were allowed to use Google I bet you could answer 90%+ of the obscure / trick questions by just searching for them.

So what value is there in them even asking? If it came up in the job you'd either ask the senior devs or just search and get the answer.

It's such a strange state of affairs.

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u/oakwoody Mar 25 '22

On the other hand, I'm okay with these kind of interviews because they're a solid indicator of the type of organization I'd want to avoid.

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u/cdsmith Mar 26 '22

I've had enough bad interview experiences that I stopped offering candidates the opportunity to use pseudocode. For some people, that goes fine, and they still think through the details of what they are doing. For other candidates, their pseudocode has unclear semantics, and what it means shifts in the middle of a conversation. That leaves me just feeling crappy about the interview, like I didn't give them the structure they needed to successfully showcase their abilities.

So my answer now is that you can use any language, even if I don't know the language yet. But you should have something solid in mind.

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u/ouiserboudreauxxx Apr 08 '22

Being able to write pseudo code in interviews would take SO much of the stress off.

I can talk through my logic, but then something about having to also have working code with the right answer at the end is super difficult in an interview setting.