3 ms·

I think that they want to hear is thinking. So every time I am during technical interview, I just talk out loud what I see in front of my eyes. That is great be

• cogman10 5y ago
  This is something a great interviewee does. I don't try and trick interviewees or make things unnecessarily hard. I really just want to see "can you think like a programmer". When an interviewee gets stuck and isn't saying what they are thinking about, it makes it really hard for me as an interviewer to give good prompts. Obviously, I can't give away a solution, but at the same time some people will get stuck on things like "Can I use X" or "can I use Y". And for me, that answer is almost always "Yes, absolutely use X!". Because that's what I WANT from someone I'm working with. I don't want you to write a sort from scratch, I want you to call `Collections.sort` or even have the wherewithal to ask someone/google "Hey, I know Java has some inbuilt sorts, how do I invoke those?". The only time I'll maybe mark you lower is if you start the interview by saying "Yes, java is my favorite language to program in and I use it all the time!" and then struggle to do `new ArrayList<>()` (which has happened on multiple interviews). I always try to get someone to use whatever language they are most comfortable with. Because, to me, languages are stupidly easy to pick up and which one you are most familiar matters far less than how you use it.