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In my 20+ year career as a web developer and software engineer, I have never ONCE had to merge two sorted arrays as part of my job. If you asked me that questi

In my 20+ year career as a web developer and software engineer, I have never ONCE had to merge two sorted arrays as part of my job. If you asked me that question in a whiteboard interview without access to my favorite IDE, a REPL, or google, there is a good possibility that I would fail to impress you. Never mind the fact that I have been involved with the development of multiple highly successful, multi-million dollar projects where I wrote massive portions of the codebase. At my current company, they didn't give me a code test or anything like that. They just gave me a small project as contract work (migrating some of their infrastructure to the cloud). I knocked it out, they paid me for the work, and then they hired me full time. I've been here for two and a half years and the CEO once publicly stated that hiring me was one of the best things the previous CTO ever did.

cogman10 5y ago
> In my 20+ year career as a web developer and software engineer, I have never ONCE had to merge two sorted arrays as part of my job. Cool. It doesn't come up in my job either. That's not the point of the question. The point of the question is "given an algorithm specification, can you implement it" and that problem, particularly at my current work place, comes up very frequently. > If you asked me that question in a whiteboard interview without access to my favorite IDE, a REPL, or google, there is a good possibility that I would fail to impress you. All my coding interviews are done via hackerrank which has an OK IDE. I generally also allow googling or questions from the interviewer. > Never mind the fact that I have been involved with the development of multiple highly successful, multi-million dollar projects where I wrote massive portions of the codebase. > At my current company, they didn't give me a code test or anything like that. They just gave me a small project as contract work (migrating some of their infrastructure to the cloud). I knocked it out, they paid me for the work, and then they hired me full time. I've been here for two and a half years and the CEO once publicly stated that hiring me was one of the best things the previous CTO ever did. Congratulations! Honestly, I think you are letting this sort of question intimidate you too much. It is an easy question to answer and if you sat down for a few minutes I'm sure you could solve it. It's not a trick question. It's not one that's designed to filter someone of your qualifications. It's simply a "can you write an algorithm" question. Something that's really important in finance because a lot of what we deal with (particularly where I'm at, financial reporting) is writing code that matches financial models and algorithms. There's not a library you can reach for that computes everything we do. Give it a shot in your favorite language and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how easily you can write a solution.
- t0mbstone 5y ago
  Oh, don't get me wrong. I have done my fair share of "leet" and toy code interview problems over the years, and for a while I even used them when I was interviewing and hiring other devs myself. But then I had some personal experiences that changed my perspective... There were a couple of jobs that I applied for where I was perfect for the role. Every single piece of technology they used and listed in the job description was something that I had mastered and used with success at other companies. I got turned down for those roles, however, because I didn't ace their stupid leet-code bubble sort style questions during their interviews. These were trick problems that had NOTHING to do with the actual day-to-day work I would have been doing. There were a hundred other things they could have looked at to determine that I was a good fit. They could have asked me to show some of my other work. They could have looked at the 100+ projects in my Github. They could have looked at the 20+ written recommendations on my LinkedIn profile all vouching for me (including glowing recommendations from other developers I worked with over the years, many of whom are now working at companies such as Facebook, Apple, and Google. But nope. Instead of doing any of that, they would rather rely on some leet-code trick questions to gauge my abilities. As a result, they missed the forest for the trees and they lost out on what could have potentially been a perfect fit and a valuable hire. So yeah. That's why I don't do that type of interview anymore. If the job is actually for a role that literally solves algorithm problems on a day-to-day basis, then a code test for algorithm problems makes sense. If not, then please don't use them!

cogman10 5y ago

> In my 20+ year career as a web developer and software engineer, I have never ONCE had to merge two sorted arrays as part of my job. Cool. It doesn't come up in my job either. That's not the point of the question. The point of the question is "given an algorithm specification, can you implement it" and that problem, particularly at my current work place, comes up very frequently. > If you asked me that question in a whiteboard interview without access to my favorite IDE, a REPL, or google, there is a good possibility that I would fail to impress you. All my coding interviews are done via hackerrank which has an OK IDE. I generally also allow googling or questions from the interviewer. > Never mind the fact that I have been involved with the development of multiple highly successful, multi-million dollar projects where I wrote massive portions of the codebase. > At my current company, they didn't give me a code test or anything like that. They just gave me a small project as contract work (migrating some of their infrastructure to the cloud). I knocked it out, they paid me for the work, and then they hired me full time. I've been here for two and a half years and the CEO once publicly stated that hiring me was one of the best things the previous CTO ever did. Congratulations! Honestly, I think you are letting this sort of question intimidate you too much. It is an easy question to answer and if you sat down for a few minutes I'm sure you could solve it. It's not a trick question. It's not one that's designed to filter someone of your qualifications. It's simply a "can you write an algorithm" question. Something that's really important in finance because a lot of what we deal with (particularly where I'm at, financial reporting) is writing code that matches financial models and algorithms. There's not a library you can reach for that computes everything we do. Give it a shot in your favorite language and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how easily you can write a solution.

t0mbstone 5y ago
Oh, don't get me wrong. I have done my fair share of "leet" and toy code interview problems over the years, and for a while I even used them when I was interviewing and hiring other devs myself. But then I had some personal experiences that changed my perspective... There were a couple of jobs that I applied for where I was perfect for the role. Every single piece of technology they used and listed in the job description was something that I had mastered and used with success at other companies. I got turned down for those roles, however, because I didn't ace their stupid leet-code bubble sort style questions during their interviews. These were trick problems that had NOTHING to do with the actual day-to-day work I would have been doing. There were a hundred other things they could have looked at to determine that I was a good fit. They could have asked me to show some of my other work. They could have looked at the 100+ projects in my Github. They could have looked at the 20+ written recommendations on my LinkedIn profile all vouching for me (including glowing recommendations from other developers I worked with over the years, many of whom are now working at companies such as Facebook, Apple, and Google. But nope. Instead of doing any of that, they would rather rely on some leet-code trick questions to gauge my abilities. As a result, they missed the forest for the trees and they lost out on what could have potentially been a perfect fit and a valuable hire. So yeah. That's why I don't do that type of interview anymore. If the job is actually for a role that literally solves algorithm problems on a day-to-day basis, then a code test for algorithm problems makes sense. If not, then please don't use them!