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I have a different approach: Me: Are you comfortable solving a small programming problem? If the answer is yes: Here's a simple algorithmic problem you can so
by hliyan 10y ago
I have a different approach:
Me: Are you comfortable solving a small programming problem?
If the answer is yes: Here's a simple algorithmic problem you can solve in under 20-30 LOC. You can choose any language you wish, including psedocode. You can choose to write on paper or on this PC.
If the candidate seems nervous, I leave the room for a few minutes.
It can't find you the best developers. But it certainly helps weed out candidates who talk up a storm but can't actually code.
- davidbanham 10y agoAll depends on the nature of the work you're hiring for. The weakness I see with that approach is that I can't think of many workplaces where the main component of the job is solving 20-30 LOC algorithms. The correct answer to most sorting algo challenges in the real world is some variation on "use Array.sort" I'm more interested in how people interpret requirements, how they resource knowledge, how they architect their code, how they test it, etc. My recently retired pet challenge was to fetch and amalgamate responses from three different, unreliable, URLs and then return them in a single JSON document. For the web developers I was hiring it worked well.