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That’s the entire point of those kinds of interviews. It’s a strong filter for “recent graduate” while maintaining plausible deniability for ageism. It has a se
by gaius 9y ago
That’s the entire point of those kinds of interviews. It’s a strong filter for “recent graduate” while maintaining plausible deniability for ageism. It has a secondary effect of filtering for “willing to do unpaid overtime”.
- hkon 9y agoI think also the interviewer gets to feel smart. Always nice to have the answers.
- tytytytytytytyt 9y agoYeah, right. Clearly they have nothing better to do and are all egomaniacs.
- fjsolwmv 9y agoMaybe it's just a way to provide a fair test that anyone with ability can pass with a little practice?
- zerr 9y agoI wouldn't call it "a little practice". There are people who are "into" competitive programming and there are people who aren't, and those "fair" tests are skewed towards the former group. The worst thing is that the actual job has nothing to do with the competitive programming at all.
- gaius 9y agoAnother filter for age is that 20-something’s are more likely to have time for this whereas older people may have more time commitments already People in their 20s and 30s now will regret not stamping out ageism when they hit their 40s and 50s, as they inevitably will
- czep 9y ago> People in their 20s and 30s now will regret not stamping out ageism when they hit their 40s and 50s, as they inevitably will The problem is, everyone in their 20s and 30s assumes they'll be gazillionaires by the time they're 40, because of course they're brilliant and hard work always pays off! Ageism is only a factor if you're not smart enough to make a billion by the time you're facing it.
- walshemj 9y agoRote leaning and getting a piece of paper is not a good way to interview for candidates who can when given a task that wasn't on the test research and implement a solution under their own power.
- gaius 9y agoMemorising derivations of algorithms and solutions to puzzles from a book like Cracking The Coding Interview surely is just rote learning. There should be a high correlation between the content of the interview and the actual job, or what is the interview really for?
- tytytytytytytyt 9y agoThat's not a popular viewpoint around here. :D
- harshgupta 9y agoI think its more of aptitude test in a domain common to all programmers.
- gaius 9y agoYeah right. Tell me the last time you built your own red-black tree in real actual code at work. Or did a sort by any other means than tacking “order by” on the end of a query. They are a test of how recently you crammed for your CS finals, that’s all.
- nordsieck 9y agoThere are languages - C and Go, and to a lesser extent, C++ - in which re-implementation of data structures and algorithms is not uncommon. To your larger point, data structures and algorithms are popular in interviews for the same reason Project Euler is popular - it is very easy to ask a well defined, but interesting question about core CS or math.
- bradlys 9y agoOr how much effort you're willing to put into prepping for interviewing and getting a new job. It definitely filters against the casual looker. Which, to some extent, makes sense. You're basically filtering out people who won't put in the effort to get the job. Whether or not those who put in the extra effort are actually going to be better employees is a different decision.
- hyperpallium 9y agoWould be legit if the job required tasks like implementing red-black trees or sorts. As is, it's more like advertising for python, then surprise java.
- gaius 9y agoIndeed. If the job was implementing algorithms on bare metal then bring it on! That job sounds like a lot of fun! But those kinds of questions make zero sense and have zero value if the job is actually implementing CRUD apps in a high level language. You might as well quiz candidates on their assembly language skills too, for a Python job... So there is obviously an ulterior motive.
- sireat 9y agoI do wonder how many 40+ programmers are able to keep up with "young ones" in these contests. I fear it is like chess, the cognitive decline starts to become noticable in the mid 40s and only gets worse from then on. There are a few exceptions like Korchnoi was in chess so there must be Fabrice Bellards and Bill Joys who would be able to keep up. Still looking at completion times for Advent of Code made me feel old.
- tedmiston 9y agoThat's enlightening. Never thought of it that way.