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The problem is that it's impossible to get an idea of someone's problem solving skills by feeding them artificial bullshit to solve. I strongly prefer the appro
by codr4life 10y ago
The problem is that it's impossible to get an idea of someone's problem solving skills by feeding them artificial bullshit to solve. I strongly prefer the approach of having applicants show and discuss real code that they wrote themselves. And I'd consider not having any code to show a serious warning sign.
- curtis 10y agoThese kind of coding questions aren't about the interviewee's "problem solving" skills. It's purely a question of basic competence in the field. If it's general problem solving capability you're after, then you're right, there are much better ways to do that. In the case where a job interview involves multiple one-on-one interviews, it might make sense to have one interviewer focus on basic competence, and another interviewer to focus more on more general problem solving skills. You might think we ought to be able to assume a basic level of competence, but lots of people in the industry think you can't. And to the extent that you can, that's often because the person sitting in front of you in an interview had to get through an initial online screen where they had to do some sort of coding exercise.
- Pinckney 10y agoAsking about bubble sort is a terrible question, though. Bubble sort is a bad algorithm by virtually every measure relative to the alternatives. You might as well ask candidates to implement bogo sort.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- codr4life 10y agoBut whiteboard coding says nothing about basic competence, unless writing algorithms on whiteboards is the actual job to be performed.