3 ms·

Problem is however that a good crop of candidates doesn't know how to sort an array, am not sure why am finding myself explaining it for the 2nd time. So all I

by varjag 7y ago

Problem is however that a good crop of candidates doesn't know how to sort an array, am not sure why am finding myself explaining it for the 2nd time. So all I can say is they are below high school student in your neck of the woods, even if they have Masters in relevant discipline. And if you can't sort an array with all help of Wikipedia and Stackoverflow, you would not be able to walk a graph, let alone do anything useful with it. So I'm not quite sure what is your beef with it exactly. Do you think I should have used a more complicated task? Like, Dijkstras' on a graph? Are you sure that you wouldn't find that objectionable too, given that sorting an array is apparently asking too much?

scarface74 7y ago
Let’s say someone didn’t know any sort algorithms since he has been using one provided by the language. Would you have been willing to explain on a high level how the algorithm works? I wouldn’t be opposed to any algorithmic type question if you explain the requirements on a high level and let them do it within an IDE. But, you are hiring for a software developer, who should be able to translate business problems that you face everyday into a working system. Don’t you have any real world scenarios that you could use to test on?
- varjag 7y ago
  I would be willing to explain sorting to someone without formal CS training, but not to one with Masters degree in the discipline. They had 5 years to figure it out.
blub 7y ago
I was saying all along that your exercise: a) is too easy b) doesn't have enough meat to differentiate between junior / regular / senior c) covers very little if anything at all from what a SWE does on their day to day. OTOH I guess/hope you had more things, not just this.
- varjag 7y ago
  It was a junior position. This was the only coding test but we also either talked through opensource code candidates brought in or discussed some parts of one our real project here.

by varjag 7y ago

scarface74 7y ago

Let’s say someone didn’t know any sort algorithms since he has been using one provided by the language. Would you have been willing to explain on a high level how the algorithm works? I wouldn’t be opposed to any algorithmic type question if you explain the requirements on a high level and let them do it within an IDE. But, you are hiring for a software developer, who should be able to translate business problems that you face everyday into a working system. Don’t you have any real world scenarios that you could use to test on?

varjag 7y ago
I would be willing to explain sorting to someone without formal CS training, but not to one with Masters degree in the discipline. They had 5 years to figure it out.

blub 7y ago

I was saying all along that your exercise: a) is too easy b) doesn't have enough meat to differentiate between junior / regular / senior c) covers very little if anything at all from what a SWE does on their day to day. OTOH I guess/hope you had more things, not just this.

varjag 7y ago
It was a junior position. This was the only coding test but we also either talked through opensource code candidates brought in or discussed some parts of one our real project here.