6 ms·

I don't care about getting paid. I don't care if I am doing it at home or in the interviewer's premises. Don't let me connect to internet. I'll also leave my p

I don't care about getting paid. I don't care if I am doing it at home or in the interviewer's premises. Don't let me connect to internet. I'll also leave my phone with you just to make sure I don't have access to the internet. I don't mind taking the time away from current employment to go through the process. BUT PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE THOUGH WHILE I AM AT IT. FOR GOD'S SAKE DON"T SIT NEXT TO ME AND TALK TO ME OR EXPECT ME TO TALK TO YOU WHILE I AM SOLVING THE PROBLEM !!! Let's discuss the solution or the non-solution AFTER I have spent some alone time with the problem. I don't mind getting rejected AFTER I have made a serious attempt at it. It is simply beyond me why people think it's all right for a complete stranger to sit next to a programmer while he is trying to solve a problem under the significant cognitive load of a new environment, new people possibly a laptop/keyboard he has never used. This did sound like a rant :-/ but what I wanted to say was that the process in the article seems fair enough. Interviewees should be given the alone time to solve the problem. Most people are decent and sociable enough that once they are one board and are comfortable and familiar with the rest of the team they will be able to function and be reasonable in pair programming envoirnment or other technical discussions as well. BUT not when they are in an interview. No matter how it is sugar coated, interview is where a programmer is getting JUDGED and that by default leads to pressure.

blowski 10y ago
Sounds like I'm completely the opposite of you! I'm fine with someone sitting next to me - I love pair programming. But cutting off internet access means no StackOverflow, no online documentation. The test should be very similar to normal working conditions.
- stillworks 10y ago
  Interesting to note how different people are indeed. I am fine with white board type situations, don't worry about writing code without IDEs etc (in my very first job vi editor was the only thing we had to write code so I still have instinctive memory to be resourceful without an IDE but I love IntelliJ for most things). Happy to discuss/draw out ideas/solutions on whiteboards. But find it very seriously annoying talking or being expected to talk while I am writing code ! I think the internet-access requirement depends on the problem. If I am expected to solve a problem by first-principles on a core CS topic then I guess internet is of no use ? Online Java Docs for e.g. may not serve a purpose here. If the problem requires using many different tools/APIs for the solution then I guess you are right, internet access adds value.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Indeed interesting how different people are. Here, I'm like you. But it carries over to normal job - I work best when left alone. Especially when I have a tough problem to solve, just having people sitting close to me makes me frustrated, and if they're talking, then I won't be able to concentrate at all. It takes a lot of energy for me to be able to work in the presence of other people.
    - stillworks 10y ago
      I understand where you are coming from... I think somehow the world was agreeable enough to drink the Pair-Programming KoolAid. The consulting companies or body shops were happy since they could bill 2x the number of heads for the same amount of time. The "buy-side" of Pair Programming were happy because the KoolAid evidently worked. Don't get me wrong, I am all in favor of getting my code eye-balled by anybody because I know I don't write perfect code 100% of the times and always open to critique and learning. Here's a thought experiment. Have two teams A and B. A are pair programmers i.e. |A| = 2*|B|. Now make team A don't do any unit testing, let them purely rely on pairing to ensure quality. Enforce team B to do TDD to the best of their efforts. I would be personally very interested in knowing where the consumer of the code and writers of the code have more confidence on code quality and functional completeness. Open-plan offices are hip and in Europe maybe even a requirement due to space constraints but I'd personally choose a cubicle over higher pay.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        I'd love to see that experiment, as I'm actually more inclined to believe in (occasional) pair programming (by the virtue of enforcing some focus) than in TDD. > Open-plan offices are hip and in Europe maybe even a requirement due to space constraints but I'd personally choose a cubicle over higher pay. Yeah. When I was still a high-schooler and later a university student, I used to laugh at cubicles. Oh, the corporate culture, oh, the rat race, etc. Now that I spent some time in this career, I would voluntarily go to cubicle and even take a pay cut. I now understand that cubicles were a good idea of solving the space/cost constraints. Hell, every now and then I think about building my own cubicle out of pizza boxes, but I'm pretty sure the management wouldn't be happy about it. Over-the-ear headphones suffice for eliminating sound for now, but I still can't focus when I have people walking behind my back.
- mobiuscog 10y ago
  Why would you need Stack Overflow ? Seriously, is the ability to copy/query from Stack Overflow expected from 'programmers' these days ?!
  - coldnebo 10y ago
    That's a bit rough. I think you are missing the other value proposition for SO: in a world of poorly documented interfaces, it gives cogent, vetted examples of what works. And you still need to have expertise to know which solutions are crap vs gold. In the 'old days' you had maybe one or two languages and the language was the thing (not vast libraries like Java or .NET .. oh excuse me, the guys who used to get teased for the size of the CMS VAX reference are barely a man page in comparison to modern libraries) -- and now we have a proliferation of languages. Any web dev these days has to know at least 5, maybe more. Any old-timer has had to learn dozens during their career. So no, I'm not going to use my precious grey-storage to remember an arcane Perl invocation when I can find it easily on SO. Perhaps I don't meet your definition of 'programmer', but I've seen many junior devs get trapped in SO 'solutions' and wonder how I can possibly glance through 30 solutions and categorize them: "crap, crap, doesn't know what they are talking about, cargo cult, ... ah, there it is.. that's what we should try." Benefit of experience?
    - mobiuscog 10y ago
      I just wouldn't expect to be applying for something / trying to do a test task, where I didn't already have the knowledge. Then again, I don't really use SO anyway - I know somepeople use it daily.
      - wst_ 10y ago
        What does it mean "to have knowledge"? How much information qualifies you to be a knowledgeable? Plenty of us have a knowledge. Until, for one of your project you have to use Spring Boot and Hadoop at the same time. You know them well, you work with them already. But then you put both libs into one project and something throws an exception somewhere deep down in the unknown code. This is unexpected and does not come from your code. Good luck with searching for solution by yourself. Not that it's impossible, and you would learn something, sure, but troubleshooting takes a lot of time, you'd have to keep your current tasks aside and probability is quite high that someone had that problem before you. IMHO, what makes you a good software engineer is not an encyclopedic facts in your head but general knowledge about principles, algorithms, patterns, etc. You don't have to remember all methods of all classes of standard library, for details you can check the web or use IDE. But if someone asks you about thread safe objects you have to know what does it mean. What may go wrong if you fail to make it so? Why properties must be immutable? And what the hell immutability is in the first place? All other things you should be able find in the online documentation / language reference. What makes you a good software engineer is the ability to ask a meaningful questions. We have a powerful tools at our hands these days. Why wouldn't we use them for our benefit? You don't have to remember everything. It is there, within a hand's reach. Sometimes I have a feeling that asking Google the right question to solve your problem should be another skill tested during interviews. What makes you a good software engineer is the ability to switch the tools and adapt quickly to new environment. Give him Internet, give him StackOverflow and ask him to solve a problem in new language, new framework. If he got the concept well, if he knows principles, that should be more than enough to jump in. Don't get me wrong here. I not going to underestimate guys with years of experience. I am not saying he will write flawless code. But he will solve the problem - that's a good start, isn't it?
- posterboy 10y ago
  'normal conditions' vary widely, normalisation to a lowest common denominator allows for easier comparison. The other extreme end is the young students assumption, "you don't need to know everything, just where you can find it", but the ammount of stuff I have to look up repeatedly increases exponentially with, eg, every wiki-page I read and that just takes too long to the point of impossibility.
  - blowski 10y ago
    For any software development position, normal working conditions probably includes an internet connection.
    - posterboy 10y ago
      like, directly plugged into the hypothalamus?
- flurdy 10y ago
  Agree. Pairing up during the onsite follow up interview whilst you describe and extend your sample app is essential part of my recruitment preferences. That is how I expect people to work once they are hired so I expect candidates to be comfortable with it. Many are not, including me 10 years ago. But most are these days. I don't expect them to solve the problem perfectly during that time, or even at all. The important bit is to test how they try to solve it, and how they communicate during it. Using Dash, google, SO, etc if fine, asking for help is fine. Essentially portray how they would work if hired. Many times this has quickly highlighted complete blaggers, or cowboys that should be rejected, or people caught like rabbit in head lights that are not right for us now (but maybe later). Adding a requirement that completely blows most people's initial domain model is good way to see how people respond, even if the requirement is essentially impossible.
  - stillworks 10y ago
    > Agree. Pairing up during the onsite follow up interview > whilst you describe and extend your sample app is > essential part of my recruitment preferences. When you say "describe and extend your sample app", where does this sample app come from ? Do you give the candidate a chance to work or go through the sample app on his own for some time before you pair ? If that is the case then yes, I guess that is probably the correct way to do it. However of late what I have experienced in general is that I have to go in, meet up people for the very first time in my life, they give me a problem and a laptop/computer/pairing station and a written description of the problem which I get maybe five minutes to assess and understand and then... have a go at it, while the strange (sometimes grumpy) developer sits next to me. If I go quiet for 5 minutes I get the "what are you thinking ?" question and then I have to talk while I write code at the same time ! Maybe it works for some or most of the people out there. Not for me.
- ar15saveslives 10y ago
  Pair programming is not the same as writing code on an interview.
  - ebrenes 10y ago
    It's completely different in my opinion, the only similarity is that you have two people and one computer. In pair programming you're both working together, complementing each other to tackle a particular problem or issue. In a good pair programming session we'll both work together to surpass an obstacle. In an interview, one person is observing, testing and ultimately judging the other person, while actively ensuring they do not contribute to the solution of the problem so as not to skew results. Only one person is truly working towards the programming goal, and both participants know this.
- RandomOpinion 10y ago
  >I love pair programming Yes, but do you love pair programming: -with a person you met less than 5 minutes ago? -on a non-standard programming task you've been given less than a minute to think about? -with a person who is focused on assessing you rather than assisting you? -with your future job at stake and potentially your ability to ever interview at that company again at stake as well? I enjoy pair programming too but I still choke on whiteboard programming questions during interviews. And this is after 20 years in the industry.
hexagonc 10y ago
Basically, you just wrote nearly (exactly?) what I wanted to write. I'm good at algorithm problems. I LIKE algorithm problems, but having someone watching me on a whiteboard in a high pressure situation diminishes my abilities. At a minimum, it is a distraction. If it is an easy or familiar problem then it usually doesn't matter and we can discuss the solution and I might even want to talk about it. But if it is a tricky problem -- and a lot of tech companies intentionally give problems that are tricky or vague or superficially easy -- then I need to use my natural process for systematically and rigorously tackling tricky problems. I'll still probably finish it in a half hour and we can still talk about the solution and discuss improvements but let me work on it alone first. One thing I've found from technical interviews is that, due to the pressure to speak and communicate and "show my thoughts", I'm more susceptible to falling prey to trick and vague questions that I would otherwise treat more carefully. This is consistent with scientific results on the way people respond the pressure situations[1]. They tend to fall back on what is familiar instead of trying approaches that may be better. Working alone, there is no fear of judgement if I need to try an unusual strategy[2] that may not work or if I need to backtrack. Let me dabble and doodle on my own sheet of paper and iterate rapidly over whatever comes to mind freely. Furthermore, turning problem solving into a theatrical event unavoidably increases the cognitive load on an interviewee simply due to the fact that you have to make more decisions. You have the technical decisions like data structures and algorithms which are normal and expected, but on top of that, there are all these non-engineering decisions that you have to make because they want you to talk about how you're solving the problem in real time. Should you mention some fancy algorithm or approach that you are considering? You must choose your words carefully since anything you say can be used against you. I'm not claiming that everyone works better alone or even that I don't like working with others. I just think that the interviewee should have the option of working on the problem alone for up to 30 minutes. As suggested by parent, we can discuss the solution or non-solution after I've become familiar and comfortable with the problem. One of the worst feelings is when I fail to solve a problem during an interview, only to have the solution come easily when I'm able to tackle the problem in a pressure-free environment. Expecting some kind of portal into someone's mind while they solve an unfamiliar and maybe tricky problem strikes me as overindulgent and voyeuristic. It is a flaw in the current technical interview process and the only way to mitigate its effects is to just get more comfortable interviewing. [1] - https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/choke/201106/flocking-the-familiar-under-stress https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/choke/201106/flocking-t... [2] - For tough problems, tend to use my own idiosyncratic variant of Z-Notation. I have a very high success rate solving algorithm puzzles when I use it but it is easy to forgot to use it under pressure of an interview.

blowski 10y ago

Sounds like I'm completely the opposite of you! I'm fine with someone sitting next to me - I love pair programming. But cutting off internet access means no StackOverflow, no online documentation. The test should be very similar to normal working conditions.

stillworks 10y ago
Interesting to note how different people are indeed. I am fine with white board type situations, don't worry about writing code without IDEs etc (in my very first job vi editor was the only thing we had to write code so I still have instinctive memory to be resourceful without an IDE but I love IntelliJ for most things). Happy to discuss/draw out ideas/solutions on whiteboards. But find it very seriously annoying talking or being expected to talk while I am writing code ! I think the internet-access requirement depends on the problem. If I am expected to solve a problem by first-principles on a core CS topic then I guess internet is of no use ? Online Java Docs for e.g. may not serve a purpose here. If the problem requires using many different tools/APIs for the solution then I guess you are right, internet access adds value.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Indeed interesting how different people are. Here, I'm like you. But it carries over to normal job - I work best when left alone. Especially when I have a tough problem to solve, just having people sitting close to me makes me frustrated, and if they're talking, then I won't be able to concentrate at all. It takes a lot of energy for me to be able to work in the presence of other people.
  - stillworks 10y ago
    I understand where you are coming from... I think somehow the world was agreeable enough to drink the Pair-Programming KoolAid. The consulting companies or body shops were happy since they could bill 2x the number of heads for the same amount of time. The "buy-side" of Pair Programming were happy because the KoolAid evidently worked. Don't get me wrong, I am all in favor of getting my code eye-balled by anybody because I know I don't write perfect code 100% of the times and always open to critique and learning. Here's a thought experiment. Have two teams A and B. A are pair programmers i.e. |A| = 2*|B|. Now make team A don't do any unit testing, let them purely rely on pairing to ensure quality. Enforce team B to do TDD to the best of their efforts. I would be personally very interested in knowing where the consumer of the code and writers of the code have more confidence on code quality and functional completeness. Open-plan offices are hip and in Europe maybe even a requirement due to space constraints but I'd personally choose a cubicle over higher pay.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      I'd love to see that experiment, as I'm actually more inclined to believe in (occasional) pair programming (by the virtue of enforcing some focus) than in TDD. > Open-plan offices are hip and in Europe maybe even a requirement due to space constraints but I'd personally choose a cubicle over higher pay. Yeah. When I was still a high-schooler and later a university student, I used to laugh at cubicles. Oh, the corporate culture, oh, the rat race, etc. Now that I spent some time in this career, I would voluntarily go to cubicle and even take a pay cut. I now understand that cubicles were a good idea of solving the space/cost constraints. Hell, every now and then I think about building my own cubicle out of pizza boxes, but I'm pretty sure the management wouldn't be happy about it. Over-the-ear headphones suffice for eliminating sound for now, but I still can't focus when I have people walking behind my back.
mobiuscog 10y ago
Why would you need Stack Overflow ? Seriously, is the ability to copy/query from Stack Overflow expected from 'programmers' these days ?!
- coldnebo 10y ago
  That's a bit rough. I think you are missing the other value proposition for SO: in a world of poorly documented interfaces, it gives cogent, vetted examples of what works. And you still need to have expertise to know which solutions are crap vs gold. In the 'old days' you had maybe one or two languages and the language was the thing (not vast libraries like Java or .NET .. oh excuse me, the guys who used to get teased for the size of the CMS VAX reference are barely a man page in comparison to modern libraries) -- and now we have a proliferation of languages. Any web dev these days has to know at least 5, maybe more. Any old-timer has had to learn dozens during their career. So no, I'm not going to use my precious grey-storage to remember an arcane Perl invocation when I can find it easily on SO. Perhaps I don't meet your definition of 'programmer', but I've seen many junior devs get trapped in SO 'solutions' and wonder how I can possibly glance through 30 solutions and categorize them: "crap, crap, doesn't know what they are talking about, cargo cult, ... ah, there it is.. that's what we should try." Benefit of experience?
  - mobiuscog 10y ago
    I just wouldn't expect to be applying for something / trying to do a test task, where I didn't already have the knowledge. Then again, I don't really use SO anyway - I know somepeople use it daily.
    - wst_ 10y ago
      What does it mean "to have knowledge"? How much information qualifies you to be a knowledgeable? Plenty of us have a knowledge. Until, for one of your project you have to use Spring Boot and Hadoop at the same time. You know them well, you work with them already. But then you put both libs into one project and something throws an exception somewhere deep down in the unknown code. This is unexpected and does not come from your code. Good luck with searching for solution by yourself. Not that it's impossible, and you would learn something, sure, but troubleshooting takes a lot of time, you'd have to keep your current tasks aside and probability is quite high that someone had that problem before you. IMHO, what makes you a good software engineer is not an encyclopedic facts in your head but general knowledge about principles, algorithms, patterns, etc. You don't have to remember all methods of all classes of standard library, for details you can check the web or use IDE. But if someone asks you about thread safe objects you have to know what does it mean. What may go wrong if you fail to make it so? Why properties must be immutable? And what the hell immutability is in the first place? All other things you should be able find in the online documentation / language reference. What makes you a good software engineer is the ability to ask a meaningful questions. We have a powerful tools at our hands these days. Why wouldn't we use them for our benefit? You don't have to remember everything. It is there, within a hand's reach. Sometimes I have a feeling that asking Google the right question to solve your problem should be another skill tested during interviews. What makes you a good software engineer is the ability to switch the tools and adapt quickly to new environment. Give him Internet, give him StackOverflow and ask him to solve a problem in new language, new framework. If he got the concept well, if he knows principles, that should be more than enough to jump in. Don't get me wrong here. I not going to underestimate guys with years of experience. I am not saying he will write flawless code. But he will solve the problem - that's a good start, isn't it?
posterboy 10y ago
'normal conditions' vary widely, normalisation to a lowest common denominator allows for easier comparison. The other extreme end is the young students assumption, "you don't need to know everything, just where you can find it", but the ammount of stuff I have to look up repeatedly increases exponentially with, eg, every wiki-page I read and that just takes too long to the point of impossibility.
- blowski 10y ago
  For any software development position, normal working conditions probably includes an internet connection.
  - posterboy 10y ago
    like, directly plugged into the hypothalamus?
flurdy 10y ago
Agree. Pairing up during the onsite follow up interview whilst you describe and extend your sample app is essential part of my recruitment preferences. That is how I expect people to work once they are hired so I expect candidates to be comfortable with it. Many are not, including me 10 years ago. But most are these days. I don't expect them to solve the problem perfectly during that time, or even at all. The important bit is to test how they try to solve it, and how they communicate during it. Using Dash, google, SO, etc if fine, asking for help is fine. Essentially portray how they would work if hired. Many times this has quickly highlighted complete blaggers, or cowboys that should be rejected, or people caught like rabbit in head lights that are not right for us now (but maybe later). Adding a requirement that completely blows most people's initial domain model is good way to see how people respond, even if the requirement is essentially impossible.
- stillworks 10y ago
  > Agree. Pairing up during the onsite follow up interview > whilst you describe and extend your sample app is > essential part of my recruitment preferences. When you say "describe and extend your sample app", where does this sample app come from ? Do you give the candidate a chance to work or go through the sample app on his own for some time before you pair ? If that is the case then yes, I guess that is probably the correct way to do it. However of late what I have experienced in general is that I have to go in, meet up people for the very first time in my life, they give me a problem and a laptop/computer/pairing station and a written description of the problem which I get maybe five minutes to assess and understand and then... have a go at it, while the strange (sometimes grumpy) developer sits next to me. If I go quiet for 5 minutes I get the "what are you thinking ?" question and then I have to talk while I write code at the same time ! Maybe it works for some or most of the people out there. Not for me.
ar15saveslives 10y ago
Pair programming is not the same as writing code on an interview.
- ebrenes 10y ago
  It's completely different in my opinion, the only similarity is that you have two people and one computer. In pair programming you're both working together, complementing each other to tackle a particular problem or issue. In a good pair programming session we'll both work together to surpass an obstacle. In an interview, one person is observing, testing and ultimately judging the other person, while actively ensuring they do not contribute to the solution of the problem so as not to skew results. Only one person is truly working towards the programming goal, and both participants know this.
RandomOpinion 10y ago
>I love pair programming Yes, but do you love pair programming: -with a person you met less than 5 minutes ago? -on a non-standard programming task you've been given less than a minute to think about? -with a person who is focused on assessing you rather than assisting you? -with your future job at stake and potentially your ability to ever interview at that company again at stake as well? I enjoy pair programming too but I still choke on whiteboard programming questions during interviews. And this is after 20 years in the industry.

hexagonc 10y ago

Basically, you just wrote nearly (exactly?) what I wanted to write. I'm good at algorithm problems. I LIKE algorithm problems, but having someone watching me on a whiteboard in a high pressure situation diminishes my abilities. At a minimum, it is a distraction. If it is an easy or familiar problem then it usually doesn't matter and we can discuss the solution and I might even want to talk about it. But if it is a tricky problem -- and a lot of tech companies intentionally give problems that are tricky or vague or superficially easy -- then I need to use my natural process for systematically and rigorously tackling tricky problems. I'll still probably finish it in a half hour and we can still talk about the solution and discuss improvements but let me work on it alone first. One thing I've found from technical interviews is that, due to the pressure to speak and communicate and "show my thoughts", I'm more susceptible to falling prey to trick and vague questions that I would otherwise treat more carefully. This is consistent with scientific results on the way people respond the pressure situations[1]. They tend to fall back on what is familiar instead of trying approaches that may be better. Working alone, there is no fear of judgement if I need to try an unusual strategy[2] that may not work or if I need to backtrack. Let me dabble and doodle on my own sheet of paper and iterate rapidly over whatever comes to mind freely. Furthermore, turning problem solving into a theatrical event unavoidably increases the cognitive load on an interviewee simply due to the fact that you have to make more decisions. You have the technical decisions like data structures and algorithms which are normal and expected, but on top of that, there are all these non-engineering decisions that you have to make because they want you to talk about how you're solving the problem in real time. Should you mention some fancy algorithm or approach that you are considering? You must choose your words carefully since anything you say can be used against you. I'm not claiming that everyone works better alone or even that I don't like working with others. I just think that the interviewee should have the option of working on the problem alone for up to 30 minutes. As suggested by parent, we can discuss the solution or non-solution after I've become familiar and comfortable with the problem. One of the worst feelings is when I fail to solve a problem during an interview, only to have the solution come easily when I'm able to tackle the problem in a pressure-free environment. Expecting some kind of portal into someone's mind while they solve an unfamiliar and maybe tricky problem strikes me as overindulgent and voyeuristic. It is a flaw in the current technical interview process and the only way to mitigate its effects is to just get more comfortable interviewing. [1] - https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/choke/201106/flocking-the-familiar-under-stress https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/choke/201106/flocking-t... [2] - For tough problems, tend to use my own idiosyncratic variant of Z-Notation. I have a very high success rate solving algorithm puzzles when I use it but it is easy to forgot to use it under pressure of an interview.