3 ms·

I’ve always thought that in that aspect hardware interviews are much better. The typical approach I’ve seen is to give someone a PCB and just ask them “tell me

I’ve always thought that in that aspect hardware interviews are much better. The typical approach I’ve seen is to give someone a PCB and just ask them “tell me everything you can figure out from this device”. I’ve always wanted to test how well that would work for software interviews: - print some pages with the source file of a toy project - give the interviewee a pen and just ask “tell me all you can about this code”

pandapower2 7y ago
that actually sounds like quite a good idea. At least it would serve as a good conversation starter and provide insight into how they think. I'd caution against a toy project however. Just find something small and contained. Toy projects typically don't have enough warts to lead to a really interesting conversation.
AndrewDucker 7y ago
I once had an interview where I was handed some source code to explain. Apparently three quarters of previous applicants hadn't even managed that, so it was a great filter for non coders.
cableshaft 7y ago
One of my best interview experiences was exactly that. The interviewer handed me a printed out class and said "tell me what this does, any mistakes you see, and any little improvements that you think could be made." I got the job and later confirmed it was a class that was actually in the software I would be working on, not some toy class he came up with. He also asked me a handful of technical questions and had me go over some source code I brought in, but that was about it. At one point he even said, "I know enough to know you can do the job, but now I'm curious what you really know." And asked me some no pressure really low level questions. When I said I didn't know the answer to something he'd spend a couple of minutes explaining the concept to me. I walked out of that interview having learned a few new things about my field. A couple of them have stuck with me over a decade later. And the guy was a grizzled veteran who was the lead on some massive mainstream projects I pretty much guarantee you've heard of. He's probably the most knowledgeable programmer I've ever met. I've never had anyone try going over actual with me since, in probably a couple dozen interviews, and I don't understand why. It seemed very effective.
l0b0 7y ago
This is a fantastic idea, except I would print some real code rather than a toy project. Unlike natural languages there's no way you'll be able to understand a piece of non-trivial code deeply without also being able to write it. And any developer reads many times more code than they write, if only because they have to re-read every time they want to modify anything. Just make sure the code is linted and idiomatic unless you want the poor interviewee to be bogged down by a bunch of irrelevant details.

pandapower2 7y ago

that actually sounds like quite a good idea. At least it would serve as a good conversation starter and provide insight into how they think. I'd caution against a toy project however. Just find something small and contained. Toy projects typically don't have enough warts to lead to a really interesting conversation.

AndrewDucker 7y ago

I once had an interview where I was handed some source code to explain. Apparently three quarters of previous applicants hadn't even managed that, so it was a great filter for non coders.

cableshaft 7y ago

One of my best interview experiences was exactly that. The interviewer handed me a printed out class and said "tell me what this does, any mistakes you see, and any little improvements that you think could be made." I got the job and later confirmed it was a class that was actually in the software I would be working on, not some toy class he came up with. He also asked me a handful of technical questions and had me go over some source code I brought in, but that was about it. At one point he even said, "I know enough to know you can do the job, but now I'm curious what you really know." And asked me some no pressure really low level questions. When I said I didn't know the answer to something he'd spend a couple of minutes explaining the concept to me. I walked out of that interview having learned a few new things about my field. A couple of them have stuck with me over a decade later. And the guy was a grizzled veteran who was the lead on some massive mainstream projects I pretty much guarantee you've heard of. He's probably the most knowledgeable programmer I've ever met. I've never had anyone try going over actual with me since, in probably a couple dozen interviews, and I don't understand why. It seemed very effective.

l0b0 7y ago

This is a fantastic idea, except I would print some real code rather than a toy project. Unlike natural languages there's no way you'll be able to understand a piece of non-trivial code deeply without also being able to write it. And any developer reads many times more code than they write, if only because they have to re-read every time they want to modify anything. Just make sure the code is linted and idiomatic unless you want the poor interviewee to be bogged down by a bunch of irrelevant details.