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It's really not at all unusual: Engineering roles in general will often have some technical interview with a problem to solve. If you are interviewing for a rol
by rcxdude 3y ago
It's really not at all unusual: Engineering roles in general will often have some technical interview with a problem to solve. If you are interviewing for a role with a particular practical skill (welding, soldering, plastering, etc) involved, it's also not at all unexpected that you will demonstrate it before you are hired. There's this idea that some programmers have that programming is some kind of aberration as a field: there's issues or practices in software you find nowhere else. And generally, this seems to come from a romanticised view of other fields: of the fields I am familiar with, software is not a particular outlier in interviewing, estimation accuracy, or general smoothness of project management.
- TrackerFF 3y agoThe difference is that traditional engineering roles will not ask you to solve partial differential equations or show the proof of some equation on the blackboard, but rather ask fundamental "big picture" questions related to your work experience, or the field itself. IT and SWE is very much unique in that they: 1) Ask highly specific technical questions 2) Require you to arrive at some optimal solution
- ZephyrBlu 3y agoThis challenge is the complete opposite of a highly specific technical question that requires an optimal solution. It's very open ended and the notion of "optimal" doesn't really apply.
- TrackerFF 3y agoYes it is a pretty open and exploratory problem, that shows how a candidate would navigate a code base, how they think about solving a problem, etc. I was just commenting on the more general electrode approach to interviewing, which is endemic to the SWE sector.