6 ms·

> Whether linked list questions are appropriate or not is another matter, but at least they're in the correct domain. It is not just "another" matter, it is TH

> Whether linked list questions are appropriate or not is another matter, but at least they're in the correct domain. It is not just "another" matter, it is THE matter. The correct domain is a vast space. The OP wants the interviewee to go through something they know instead of knowing more about the interviewee. It's lazy interviewing - it makes no attempt to understand the person's "appropriate" skills. If you care if they can program, you won't ask a LinkedList question. For the most part, neither the interviewer nor the interview would ever program a LinkedList apart from a few courses in university.

Jtsummers 6y ago
> For the most part, neither the interviewer nor the interview would ever program a LinkedList apart from a few courses in university. And many non-professional athletes going out for a tryout will be put into artificial situations as well instead of being placed on the team and taken to an actual competition for their trial, it doesn't mean that tryouts are fundamentally flawed. Linked list questions (or other data structure/algorithm questions) are synthetic questions used to gauge competence of individuals because we usually don't get the option to hire someone for a month and try them out in a real world scenario. If they're the sum of the interview, then they're moronic; if they're a portion of the interview, then they're (arguably) reasonable. Certainly more reasonable than the non-programming domain topics you listed.
- tchalla 6y ago
  > And many non-professional athletes going out for a tryout will be put into artificial situations as well instead of being placed on the team and taken to an actual competition for their trial, it doesn't mean that tryouts are fundamentally flawed. Athletes play games that are universally timed, programmers don't. Besides sportsmen and athletes are regularly tried out in "lower" games before they graduate to a "higher" level. Linked List questions select for university education and memorising problems, not programming. You are making a false binary of "whiteboard or hire for 1 month" which once gain shows laziness as an interviewer. If you are so proficient in your field, you should be able to gauge a competence of an individual from their past work. It shows more about the interviewr that they resort to some cookie-cutter university course questions to decide competence.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    Technical point: baseball doesn't have a clock. It's something its devotees are very proud of.
    - tchalla 6y ago
      There are many other sports (tennis, cricket etc.) that don't either but there's a limit on "resources" and it does correlate with time.
- cwilkes 6y ago
  Artificial situations? Like seeing how fast they can run 40 yards? Can they hit a home run? Can they stop 3 penalty kicks? Sports interviews are way more atuned to the actual job than software interviews.

Jtsummers 6y ago

> For the most part, neither the interviewer nor the interview would ever program a LinkedList apart from a few courses in university. And many non-professional athletes going out for a tryout will be put into artificial situations as well instead of being placed on the team and taken to an actual competition for their trial, it doesn't mean that tryouts are fundamentally flawed. Linked list questions (or other data structure/algorithm questions) are synthetic questions used to gauge competence of individuals because we usually don't get the option to hire someone for a month and try them out in a real world scenario. If they're the sum of the interview, then they're moronic; if they're a portion of the interview, then they're (arguably) reasonable. Certainly more reasonable than the non-programming domain topics you listed.

tchalla 6y ago
> And many non-professional athletes going out for a tryout will be put into artificial situations as well instead of being placed on the team and taken to an actual competition for their trial, it doesn't mean that tryouts are fundamentally flawed. Athletes play games that are universally timed, programmers don't. Besides sportsmen and athletes are regularly tried out in "lower" games before they graduate to a "higher" level. Linked List questions select for university education and memorising problems, not programming. You are making a false binary of "whiteboard or hire for 1 month" which once gain shows laziness as an interviewer. If you are so proficient in your field, you should be able to gauge a competence of an individual from their past work. It shows more about the interviewr that they resort to some cookie-cutter university course questions to decide competence.
- jfengel 6y ago
  Technical point: baseball doesn't have a clock. It's something its devotees are very proud of.
  - tchalla 6y ago
    There are many other sports (tennis, cricket etc.) that don't either but there's a limit on "resources" and it does correlate with time.
cwilkes 6y ago
Artificial situations? Like seeing how fast they can run 40 yards? Can they hit a home run? Can they stop 3 penalty kicks? Sports interviews are way more atuned to the actual job than software interviews.