4 ms·

"None of the interviews asked about my ability to design systems, how to test or manage large-scale applications, how to gather requirements and work with custo

"None of the interviews asked about my ability to design systems, how to test or manage large-scale applications, how to gather requirements and work with customers." No company will ever ask such questions, which is mind boggling. They will all ask minute questions about sorting algorithms which you will never code instead of asking questions related what you will be doing day to day or stuff that is actually critically important. No one asks design questions, perhaps because it is an open-ended question. But aren't those the best question for a role that often requires coming up with new solutions? EDIT: perhaps I was too harsh by saying "never". In my experience, companies have occasionally asked about design, but very few and very little in terms of the ratio with algorithm questions. Part of the problem is the "new interviewer every 45/60 minutes" style of interviewing. They all come in and start off with an algorithm question. Each and every one (at least the technical ones).

forgottenpass 10y ago
No company will ever ask such questions Once you get outside the bubble where development process is a dirty word and/or meme cargo culted from a blog, they often do. Especially companies with immutable external quality standards to design and test towards.
throwanem 10y ago
> No company will ever ask such questions Not true in my experience, and the company that did ask such questions turned out to be a great place to learn a lot in a hurry. It also turned out not to be a good long-term fit, but I'm a much better dev for the experience, and I don't regret it at all.
nigelk 10y ago
My interview for Google as an SRE in late 2009 consisted of well over half design questions around improvements of a system with lots of users. One of the best series of questions I've ever gotten in an interview. We probably spent close to an hour just on one major aspect of the service.
dagw 10y ago
Ironically I've found that non-software companies are a lot better about this than software companies when hiring programmers. They are much more likely to ask questions along the lines of "here's a typical problem we might have, give us a high level overview about how you might help us solve it".
lostmsu 10y ago
That's not true very much. Both Facebook and Amazon are asking systems design questions.
mabbo 10y ago
Replying 11 days later so maybe you never see this but... I'm an interviewer (and SDE) at Amazon and (at least in my division) we won't do a hire loop for a non-entry level engineer that doesn't include a design interview. It can make or break a candidate, but if you've been in the industry for a few years we expect you have some ideas beyond "Get a bigger database server" when we ask how you'd scale a solution.

forgottenpass 10y ago

No company will ever ask such questions Once you get outside the bubble where development process is a dirty word and/or meme cargo culted from a blog, they often do. Especially companies with immutable external quality standards to design and test towards.

throwanem 10y ago

> No company will ever ask such questions Not true in my experience, and the company that did ask such questions turned out to be a great place to learn a lot in a hurry. It also turned out not to be a good long-term fit, but I'm a much better dev for the experience, and I don't regret it at all.

nigelk 10y ago

My interview for Google as an SRE in late 2009 consisted of well over half design questions around improvements of a system with lots of users. One of the best series of questions I've ever gotten in an interview. We probably spent close to an hour just on one major aspect of the service.

dagw 10y ago

Ironically I've found that non-software companies are a lot better about this than software companies when hiring programmers. They are much more likely to ask questions along the lines of "here's a typical problem we might have, give us a high level overview about how you might help us solve it".

lostmsu 10y ago

That's not true very much. Both Facebook and Amazon are asking systems design questions.

mabbo 10y ago

Replying 11 days later so maybe you never see this but... I'm an interviewer (and SDE) at Amazon and (at least in my division) we won't do a hire loop for a non-entry level engineer that doesn't include a design interview. It can make or break a candidate, but if you've been in the industry for a few years we expect you have some ideas beyond "Get a bigger database server" when we ask how you'd scale a solution.