4 ms·
Why would it be random? I have seen people describe this as related to performance anxiety, and maybe some part of it is that. I have myself come to conclusion
by keskival 5y ago
Why would it be random? I have seen people describe this as related to performance anxiety, and maybe some part of it is that.
I have myself come to conclusion that this is largely due to brain architecture. Notably the same part of the brain is responsible for coding as for speaking. Asking people to explain their thinking to an unknown person with unknown criteria takes a huge amount of brain capacity exactly from the parts of the brain one needs to program.
Additionally, the normal way experienced programmers approach these types of problems is to utilize background processing in the brain. They first encounter the problem, then they aim to understand it well. Then they go take a coffee, or even sleep on it, while the brain is working in the background unconsciously, and then at some point an innovation comes almost unbidden. The coding interview set up doesn't measure this real problem solving capability in any way. This is why experienced people become stumped, because it is not the way they actually solve the problems in the real life, and they might not even be aware of why their brain seems to not work suddenly.
This might even flare up their impostor syndrome which is a common professional hazard if they think they have failed in something they should have succeeded in. It is not only a bad way to interview and screen people, it is discriminatory and materially abusive.
- erik_seaberg 5y agoHow do they handle pager duty?
- keskival 5y agoIf you're asking how people solve problems with systems they know from head to toe, with which they have worked for ages and they know common issue types, and procedures how to diagnose and debug by endless repetition, you're right, they don't need to sleep on it, they just do it by muscle memory. That's not unlike math olympiad competitors or competitive coders who by repetition generate a skill for those types of problems exactly.
- sokoloff 5y agoI used "if" in the sense of "if (i < 95)..." It's not arguing that i is always less than 95, just saying what the consequent is in the event that it is. For many people, it is episodic/random; performance is variable by day, hour, and situation.