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>And that helps us understand why Recursive Cactus spends so much time practicing. He’s training himself partially because his current company isn’t developing

>And that helps us understand why Recursive Cactus spends so much time practicing. He’s training himself partially because his current company isn’t developing his skills. I develop software full time and have some 10 years of experience depending on how you count it, and I'm absolutely terrible at leetcode style problems and find whiteboard questions difficult for non programming reasons. I know it wasn't the point of the article, but there's a deeper problem here that most FAANG programming questions aren't actually testing work related code skills. At my company we give two very basic tests, takehome. Both can be completed in 15 minutes if you're rushing. Far more useful of a tool than any of leetcode style questions.

mav3rick 7y ago
How is your test proven to be better than the others ? Can't the FAANGs be more selective ?
- twomoretime 7y ago
  We can't reasonably priced which is superior for selection, but in our opinion the process is much saner and less resource intensive on our part. I wonder if the modern interview process at large orgs is built on a false sense of security. They are possibly overly selecting and perhaps successfully choosing above average candidates but missing exceptional cases who fail to conform to their rigid criteria.
  - mav3rick 7y ago
    In the numbers game they are okay with false negatives.
dvirsky 7y ago
The big companies don't care if some great candidates can't do these kinds of problems, there are many others who can. They care about not hiring bad candidates, period. Anyway, I've done both types and for me the false positive rate for take-home assignments is far greater. I've seen people ace home assignments and later turn out to be mediocre engineers. Maybe they were cheating. Maybe not. But I've never seen anyone really ace an on-site coding question and not being great (I'm sure there are some, this is just my own experience).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
austincheney 7y ago
I remember one time I was hiring for a JavaScript developer. The most important technical competency was a brief working knowledge of the DOM. The actual position required modifications to pages for A/B tests and jQuery was either too slow or broke in production when other developers used it for their test code. Of everybody that passed through HR to me I sent out a notice that there would be a minor code assessment and they could not use jQuery. 6 or 7 people instantly dropped out. There were 22 people left that I actually talked to which only three could pass the code assessment. The assessment was never designed to be challenging. Candidates were using their home computers had access to any reference material. There was no hurry. They could look things up. I also told them if they got stuck just ask me and I would point them in the right direction without any penalty, but only 2 candidates tried that. The assessment was an hour long phone call. At the start of the call I would send out a static HTML page for the candidates to open in their browser and for them to write an answer in whatever tool they wanted but it had to execute in the console of a browser on that page. Tasks were things like take this item out of the page and reinsert at some other location or change the color of a particular paragraph to red. Stupid simple stuff that you would expect any UI developer to do easily. After all these were beginner skills and this was a senior level position. I did ask to see the code they wrote only to make sure they completed the tasks. I would drop their code in my browser console and run. I never looked at code style or sloppiness. It’s a job interview where people are rushed and nervous. Their code is allowed to be sloppy. Only 3 candidates were able to pass this code filter. The people that did pass either did well enough to pass or extremely excellent. The people that failed, maybe 19 of 22 people, all failed epically. That experience really shocked me. I did everything I could think of to make this relaxing and take the edge off because there is always pressure during a job interview. No matter how much of a lifeline I threw out almost nobody would bite. They would sit there silent on the call or they would attempt to stall like that would somehow make code magically appear. Sometimes I would remind candidates they could ask me questions because I cannot evaluate a blank answer. Other times I would try nudge them to get started or guide them into progress, which only seemed to hurt more than help. Very bizarre experience.
- monksy 7y ago
  > No matter how much of a lifeline I threw out almost nobody would bite. They would sit there silent on the call or they would attempt to stall like that would somehow make code magically appear. Sometimes I would remind candidates they could ask me questions because I cannot evaluate a blank answer. Other times I would try nudge them to get started or guide them into progress, which only seemed to hurt more than help. Because they felt that it was a false help. If they take it they're disqualifying themselves because they didn't know something.

mav3rick 7y ago

How is your test proven to be better than the others ? Can't the FAANGs be more selective ?

twomoretime 7y ago
We can't reasonably priced which is superior for selection, but in our opinion the process is much saner and less resource intensive on our part. I wonder if the modern interview process at large orgs is built on a false sense of security. They are possibly overly selecting and perhaps successfully choosing above average candidates but missing exceptional cases who fail to conform to their rigid criteria.
- mav3rick 7y ago
  In the numbers game they are okay with false negatives.

dvirsky 7y ago

The big companies don't care if some great candidates can't do these kinds of problems, there are many others who can. They care about not hiring bad candidates, period. Anyway, I've done both types and for me the false positive rate for take-home assignments is far greater. I've seen people ace home assignments and later turn out to be mediocre engineers. Maybe they were cheating. Maybe not. But I've never seen anyone really ace an on-site coding question and not being great (I'm sure there are some, this is just my own experience).

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

austincheney 7y ago

I remember one time I was hiring for a JavaScript developer. The most important technical competency was a brief working knowledge of the DOM. The actual position required modifications to pages for A/B tests and jQuery was either too slow or broke in production when other developers used it for their test code. Of everybody that passed through HR to me I sent out a notice that there would be a minor code assessment and they could not use jQuery. 6 or 7 people instantly dropped out. There were 22 people left that I actually talked to which only three could pass the code assessment. The assessment was never designed to be challenging. Candidates were using their home computers had access to any reference material. There was no hurry. They could look things up. I also told them if they got stuck just ask me and I would point them in the right direction without any penalty, but only 2 candidates tried that. The assessment was an hour long phone call. At the start of the call I would send out a static HTML page for the candidates to open in their browser and for them to write an answer in whatever tool they wanted but it had to execute in the console of a browser on that page. Tasks were things like take this item out of the page and reinsert at some other location or change the color of a particular paragraph to red. Stupid simple stuff that you would expect any UI developer to do easily. After all these were beginner skills and this was a senior level position. I did ask to see the code they wrote only to make sure they completed the tasks. I would drop their code in my browser console and run. I never looked at code style or sloppiness. It’s a job interview where people are rushed and nervous. Their code is allowed to be sloppy. Only 3 candidates were able to pass this code filter. The people that did pass either did well enough to pass or extremely excellent. The people that failed, maybe 19 of 22 people, all failed epically. That experience really shocked me. I did everything I could think of to make this relaxing and take the edge off because there is always pressure during a job interview. No matter how much of a lifeline I threw out almost nobody would bite. They would sit there silent on the call or they would attempt to stall like that would somehow make code magically appear. Sometimes I would remind candidates they could ask me questions because I cannot evaluate a blank answer. Other times I would try nudge them to get started or guide them into progress, which only seemed to hurt more than help. Very bizarre experience.

monksy 7y ago
> No matter how much of a lifeline I threw out almost nobody would bite. They would sit there silent on the call or they would attempt to stall like that would somehow make code magically appear. Sometimes I would remind candidates they could ask me questions because I cannot evaluate a blank answer. Other times I would try nudge them to get started or guide them into progress, which only seemed to hurt more than help. Because they felt that it was a false help. If they take it they're disqualifying themselves because they didn't know something.