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There's literally no question in that list (or questions like those) I would bother asking during an interview to any candidate at any career level. My expectat

There's literally no question in that list (or questions like those) I would bother asking during an interview to any candidate at any career level. My expectation simply is that a solid candidate would be able to figure out anything on that list given a reasonable amount of time commensurate to their career level. I've been interviewing software engineer/dev candidates for 10+ years, and I would be extremely concerned if these kinds of questions either sunk or swam a candidate on their own. Obviously if someone couldn't figure out any of these, they'd be a bad hire - but I've found simply discussing work/projects people have done before, peeling the onion away layer by layer, to be a far more effective way of determining skill/fit/critical thinking skills.

thereare5lights 8y ago
> Obviously if someone couldn't figure out any of these, they'd be a bad hire Patently false.
- king_magic 8y ago
  No, I think it’s quite true. My deal is: I’m not going to ask you condescending, useless questions like these, but you gotta know your stuff. Not unreasonable, IMO.
  - thereare5lights 8y ago
    You can think it's true all you want. That doesn't make it true. Plenty of people don't know the answers to all those questions and they do great work. Your biases reflect the way you think the world should work, not the way it actually does.
    - king_magic 8y ago
      I think you’re actually arguing my side. All I’m saying is the candidates should be smart and capable enough to figure out those problems, which is more than enough for me. I’m not going to hire someone who can’t solve one of these problems if they absolutely needed to: these are pretty basic computer science problems at the end of the day. I’m looking for problem solving capability, not rote memorization. But at the same time I’m not going to ask them because they are condescending; it’s like asking someone with a math degree interviewing for a teaching job to explain basic algebra in an interview, which would be absurd. And if they really couldn’t do basic algebra, it’d come out through other lines of questioning.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
sonnyblarney 8y ago
"My expectation simply is that a solid candidate would be able to figure out anything on that list given a reasonable amount of time commensurate to their career level." The point of the interview is to determine if they are in fact a 'solid candidate'! Also, sometimes very experienced engineers have difficulty thinking, communicating and writing code coherently even if they can 'discuss' project issues in detail. Here's a famous and interesting article on that [1] [1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
- king_magic 8y ago
  Oh, I had an edit to my original post that included something about coding challenges (either homework or pair programming) - didn’t want to give the impression that should be ignored - forgot to submit that change to my post.

thereare5lights 8y ago

> Obviously if someone couldn't figure out any of these, they'd be a bad hire Patently false.

king_magic 8y ago
No, I think it’s quite true. My deal is: I’m not going to ask you condescending, useless questions like these, but you gotta know your stuff. Not unreasonable, IMO.
- thereare5lights 8y ago
  You can think it's true all you want. That doesn't make it true. Plenty of people don't know the answers to all those questions and they do great work. Your biases reflect the way you think the world should work, not the way it actually does.
  - king_magic 8y ago
    I think you’re actually arguing my side. All I’m saying is the candidates should be smart and capable enough to figure out those problems, which is more than enough for me. I’m not going to hire someone who can’t solve one of these problems if they absolutely needed to: these are pretty basic computer science problems at the end of the day. I’m looking for problem solving capability, not rote memorization. But at the same time I’m not going to ask them because they are condescending; it’s like asking someone with a math degree interviewing for a teaching job to explain basic algebra in an interview, which would be absurd. And if they really couldn’t do basic algebra, it’d come out through other lines of questioning.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

sonnyblarney 8y ago

"My expectation simply is that a solid candidate would be able to figure out anything on that list given a reasonable amount of time commensurate to their career level." The point of the interview is to determine if they are in fact a 'solid candidate'! Also, sometimes very experienced engineers have difficulty thinking, communicating and writing code coherently even if they can 'discuss' project issues in detail. Here's a famous and interesting article on that [1] [1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

king_magic 8y ago
Oh, I had an edit to my original post that included something about coding challenges (either homework or pair programming) - didn’t want to give the impression that should be ignored - forgot to submit that change to my post.