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It matters because SWE interviews rely on coding without googling. Maybe we need to change how interviews are done to test people on their Googling skills. For

It matters because SWE interviews rely on coding without googling. Maybe we need to change how interviews are done to test people on their Googling skills. For a given coding task, what do they search for? Do they Google for the right terms? Do they converge quickly on the right website to copy from?

deeeeplearning 6y ago
Or just give them free reign to use whatever tools they would use in an actual work environment and see what the end results are. Sure makes more sense than seeing how many leetcode problems you memorized.
slg 6y ago
>It matters because SWE interviews rely on coding without googling. Some (probably most) SWE interviews rely on coding without Googling. However I have been through plenty of interviews in which that wasn't the case. Coincidentally I also find this type of honesty in the interview process is a good indicator of how much I would enjoy working at the company.
kortilla 6y ago
SWE interviews (at FAANGs at least) don’t care about library specifics though. As long as you know the syntax and how to write algos/data structures, you can make it through. There is a strong argument that being good at that isn’t required for most SWEs (including at FAANG), but it is something that having library/framework references doesn’t really help with.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > There is a strong argument that being good at that isn't required for most SWEs (including at FAANG) Algos/data structures are used as a proxy for problem solving and how fast someone can learn. Plus every decent CS program will have a few courses on it. Also, internal codebases are, well, internal. You won't get a nicely formatted Stack Overflow response on how X works if X is deep in the Google Source tree.
  - prewett 6y ago
    > Algos/data structures are used as a proxy for problem solving and how fast someone can learn. Problem solving, yes. How fast someone can learn, absolutely not. If you've never heard of dynamic programming there's absolutely no way you're going to come up with that in an hour. If you've never heard of binary trees you aren't going to think that one up in an interview. (Of course, you should already know basic data structures, but my point is a lot of these things aren't something you'll come up with if you haven't heard of them before.) I had a FAANG interview question applying statistics to a unbounded input. It took me a while to understand what the question was really asking, followed by some shock because it was something I'd never even imagined before (since I haven't needed to do much statistics in my line of work) and I didn't have the faintest idea where to start. With some hand-holding I figured out some basics, but I'm pretty sure that interview was part of the reason that "the hire signal was not strong enough". Now, let me take a walk for 15 or 30 minutes to consider solutions to something I've never imagined, and I'll probably come up with a reasonable solution on my own, and also be able to extend it for the rest of the interview. That might measure my ability to learn. But expect me to solve it in five minutes so we can go on to the deeper questions? Yeah, not really. So this interview didn't measure my ability to learn, it measured what happens when you give me something I've never imagined before and expect a solution in five minutes. (What's a little frustrating is that I'm not really sure how to expose myself to the problems I've never imagined but which FAANG interviewers are likely to ask. I'm not sure that leetcode would do it, although obviously it'd be a place to start.)
    - 908B64B197 6y ago
      > Of course, you should already know basic data structures That's partly what the whiteboards are screening for. Any decent CS program should teach them. > I had a FAANG interview question applying statistics to a unbounded input. It took me a while to understand what the question was really asking, followed by some shock because it was something I'd never even imagined before (since I haven't needed to do much statistics in my line of work) and I didn't have the faintest idea where to start. With some hand-holding I figured out some basics, but I'm pretty sure that interview was part of the reason that "the hire signal was not strong enough". Yeah, if you are asking something weird (as an interviewer) you should be expected to explain it. It sounds to me you had the right approach (figuring out what the problem is and getting help from the interviewer). Ultimately, it's completely possible you simply stumbled upon a bad interviewer who assumed his specialty question was well known.
spideymans 6y ago
A measure of a good developer is how they choose and utilize tools. I really don’t see the benefit of prohibiting developers from using tools that they’d otherwise have complete assess to on the job

deeeeplearning 6y ago

Or just give them free reign to use whatever tools they would use in an actual work environment and see what the end results are. Sure makes more sense than seeing how many leetcode problems you memorized.

slg 6y ago

>It matters because SWE interviews rely on coding without googling. Some (probably most) SWE interviews rely on coding without Googling. However I have been through plenty of interviews in which that wasn't the case. Coincidentally I also find this type of honesty in the interview process is a good indicator of how much I would enjoy working at the company.

kortilla 6y ago

SWE interviews (at FAANGs at least) don’t care about library specifics though. As long as you know the syntax and how to write algos/data structures, you can make it through. There is a strong argument that being good at that isn’t required for most SWEs (including at FAANG), but it is something that having library/framework references doesn’t really help with.

908B64B197 6y ago
> There is a strong argument that being good at that isn't required for most SWEs (including at FAANG) Algos/data structures are used as a proxy for problem solving and how fast someone can learn. Plus every decent CS program will have a few courses on it. Also, internal codebases are, well, internal. You won't get a nicely formatted Stack Overflow response on how X works if X is deep in the Google Source tree.
- prewett 6y ago
  > Algos/data structures are used as a proxy for problem solving and how fast someone can learn. Problem solving, yes. How fast someone can learn, absolutely not. If you've never heard of dynamic programming there's absolutely no way you're going to come up with that in an hour. If you've never heard of binary trees you aren't going to think that one up in an interview. (Of course, you should already know basic data structures, but my point is a lot of these things aren't something you'll come up with if you haven't heard of them before.) I had a FAANG interview question applying statistics to a unbounded input. It took me a while to understand what the question was really asking, followed by some shock because it was something I'd never even imagined before (since I haven't needed to do much statistics in my line of work) and I didn't have the faintest idea where to start. With some hand-holding I figured out some basics, but I'm pretty sure that interview was part of the reason that "the hire signal was not strong enough". Now, let me take a walk for 15 or 30 minutes to consider solutions to something I've never imagined, and I'll probably come up with a reasonable solution on my own, and also be able to extend it for the rest of the interview. That might measure my ability to learn. But expect me to solve it in five minutes so we can go on to the deeper questions? Yeah, not really. So this interview didn't measure my ability to learn, it measured what happens when you give me something I've never imagined before and expect a solution in five minutes. (What's a little frustrating is that I'm not really sure how to expose myself to the problems I've never imagined but which FAANG interviewers are likely to ask. I'm not sure that leetcode would do it, although obviously it'd be a place to start.)
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    > Of course, you should already know basic data structures That's partly what the whiteboards are screening for. Any decent CS program should teach them. > I had a FAANG interview question applying statistics to a unbounded input. It took me a while to understand what the question was really asking, followed by some shock because it was something I'd never even imagined before (since I haven't needed to do much statistics in my line of work) and I didn't have the faintest idea where to start. With some hand-holding I figured out some basics, but I'm pretty sure that interview was part of the reason that "the hire signal was not strong enough". Yeah, if you are asking something weird (as an interviewer) you should be expected to explain it. It sounds to me you had the right approach (figuring out what the problem is and getting help from the interviewer). Ultimately, it's completely possible you simply stumbled upon a bad interviewer who assumed his specialty question was well known.

spideymans 6y ago

A measure of a good developer is how they choose and utilize tools. I really don’t see the benefit of prohibiting developers from using tools that they’d otherwise have complete assess to on the job