8 ms·

Well, general interviewing (unrelated to tech) contains various amounts of "are you lying on your resume" type questions. If someone walks in with a breakdown o

Well, general interviewing (unrelated to tech) contains various amounts of "are you lying on your resume" type questions. If someone walks in with a breakdown of 10 years dev, 5 years management, they should be able to at least comfortably answer system/coding type questions. As in, if you do something every day for 10 years, you don't forget all of it in 5. I had a candidate in a few months ago that was interviewing for Software Development Manager, so he got an initial phone screen and then a face-to-face with myself and another dev on the team he'd be managing. I was impressed with how little he knew about programming. "Name some data structures." "What does MVC stand for?" "Name some design patterns" etc. All of which were unanswerable. Generally when it becomes clear someone was dishonest about their skillset, the ability to get hired for any position becomes impossible.

zeppelin101 10y ago
How can you not know what MVC stands for? It's pretty much a buzzword!
- weaksauce 10y ago
  I mean, yeah, 99% of candidates should know what that means because it is an extremely common initialism. Although, I could see some engineer who worked on networking drivers for 10 years might not be up to date on the design patterns of frontend engineering.
  - vskarine 10y ago
    That's exactly what happened to me. I was stuck in embedded systems world right out of college and then one day took interview with Google, they were asking me questions clearly looking to hear "MVC" in my answer but I just didn't know it back then...
- ctdonath 10y ago
  Not all programming/engineering circles use the same buzzwords. For five years my mobile development groups used the concept without the acronym.
  - delphinius81 10y ago
    Agreed. I interviewed a few QA candidates at a previous company that used a term completely differently than we did. When I rephrased the question from defining the term to "what kind of test would you run in this situation" I got the kind of answers I would expect. It's far more important that a candidate understands the concepts needed to solve a problem, than that they have memorized a term. Hell, someone could be able to define MVC and explain how you would use it, but have no idea how to actually implement something using it for a given programming language.
    - viraptor 10y ago
      Even then it's worth remembering not every MVC is the same. Fat/slim models. Intelligent/simple views. There's lots of approaches to even a well known paradigm.
  - automaticearth 10y ago
    Knowing proper terminology is necessary in order to stay up to date with developments in your professional subject area. If concept X is an established concept in your professional area of expertise, and you don't even know that its name is concept X, then you likely have not read much about concept X, and consequently, are likely not up to date with current developments related to concept X. This isn't just semantics, it's about professional literacy.
- darklajid 10y ago
  Right. Everyone and their mum know what M and V stands for, right? Now .. C? C is tricky. Please don't ask any further questions about C, will you?
  - fourthark 10y ago
    I'm not sure if this is a joke. Model and View are really clear. Controller I usually find munged in with the View and it's not always profitable or clarifying to separate it.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  I'm sure a lot of people know what MVC stands for. I don't think there's anyone on the planet who can be sure they know what it really means.
djsumdog 10y ago
My kick-out questions: "Could you write out what an HTTP request and response looks like on the board?" I'm really surprised at how many people can't do this. If you've spent five years developing web, surely you've had to look at raw requests, either debugging using netcat or with wireshark or just looking at the information in the Chrome/Firefox debugger? "What's the difference between a GET and a POST request?" "What is the difference between a statically typed and a dynamically typed language?" I had one candidate try to tell me Java was dynamically typed and Scala was statically typed. It was for a Scala position. They also said "statistically typed" instead of statically, even after I corrected them. -_-
- GFischer 10y ago
  I believe 90% of my coworkers and former coworkers would be unable to answer the HTTP response question. And 95% haven't used netcat or wireshark. I wouldn't have either, if it wasn't for some particular work related to messaging. They're able to develop reasonable line of business websites in spite of that. I would be extremely worried if they were unable to answer about the difference between GET or POST, or the difference between statically and dynamically typed languages, so I agree with those.
  - empath75 10y ago
    I basically lived in Wire shark for a couple of years working for a voip company and still use stuff like curl all the time and I don't think I could walk through an http request of the top of my head.
    - figgis 10y ago
      But could you describe the general structure? Yeah expecting many people to be able write out a complete http request from memory without a reference to look at. But the general structure of a http request is something so basic to web development that asking what the structure of a http request looks like isn't an unreasonable expectation. Request line (method, uri), header(s), empty, body...
    - 10y ago

zeppelin101 10y ago

How can you not know what MVC stands for? It's pretty much a buzzword!

weaksauce 10y ago
I mean, yeah, 99% of candidates should know what that means because it is an extremely common initialism. Although, I could see some engineer who worked on networking drivers for 10 years might not be up to date on the design patterns of frontend engineering.
- vskarine 10y ago
  That's exactly what happened to me. I was stuck in embedded systems world right out of college and then one day took interview with Google, they were asking me questions clearly looking to hear "MVC" in my answer but I just didn't know it back then...
ctdonath 10y ago
Not all programming/engineering circles use the same buzzwords. For five years my mobile development groups used the concept without the acronym.
- delphinius81 10y ago
  Agreed. I interviewed a few QA candidates at a previous company that used a term completely differently than we did. When I rephrased the question from defining the term to "what kind of test would you run in this situation" I got the kind of answers I would expect. It's far more important that a candidate understands the concepts needed to solve a problem, than that they have memorized a term. Hell, someone could be able to define MVC and explain how you would use it, but have no idea how to actually implement something using it for a given programming language.
  - viraptor 10y ago
    Even then it's worth remembering not every MVC is the same. Fat/slim models. Intelligent/simple views. There's lots of approaches to even a well known paradigm.
- automaticearth 10y ago
  Knowing proper terminology is necessary in order to stay up to date with developments in your professional subject area. If concept X is an established concept in your professional area of expertise, and you don't even know that its name is concept X, then you likely have not read much about concept X, and consequently, are likely not up to date with current developments related to concept X. This isn't just semantics, it's about professional literacy.
darklajid 10y ago
Right. Everyone and their mum know what M and V stands for, right? Now .. C? C is tricky. Please don't ask any further questions about C, will you?
- fourthark 10y ago
  I'm not sure if this is a joke. Model and View are really clear. Controller I usually find munged in with the View and it's not always profitable or clarifying to separate it.
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
I'm sure a lot of people know what MVC stands for. I don't think there's anyone on the planet who can be sure they know what it really means.

djsumdog 10y ago

My kick-out questions: "Could you write out what an HTTP request and response looks like on the board?" I'm really surprised at how many people can't do this. If you've spent five years developing web, surely you've had to look at raw requests, either debugging using netcat or with wireshark or just looking at the information in the Chrome/Firefox debugger? "What's the difference between a GET and a POST request?" "What is the difference between a statically typed and a dynamically typed language?" I had one candidate try to tell me Java was dynamically typed and Scala was statically typed. It was for a Scala position. They also said "statistically typed" instead of statically, even after I corrected them. -_-

GFischer 10y ago
I believe 90% of my coworkers and former coworkers would be unable to answer the HTTP response question. And 95% haven't used netcat or wireshark. I wouldn't have either, if it wasn't for some particular work related to messaging. They're able to develop reasonable line of business websites in spite of that. I would be extremely worried if they were unable to answer about the difference between GET or POST, or the difference between statically and dynamically typed languages, so I agree with those.
- empath75 10y ago
  I basically lived in Wire shark for a couple of years working for a voip company and still use stuff like curl all the time and I don't think I could walk through an http request of the top of my head.
  - figgis 10y ago
    But could you describe the general structure? Yeah expecting many people to be able write out a complete http request from memory without a reference to look at. But the general structure of a http request is something so basic to web development that asking what the structure of a http request looks like isn't an unreasonable expectation. Request line (method, uri), header(s), empty, body...
  - 10y ago