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>I have prompts that test very basic concepts and nearly everyone fails. Resume fraud is rampant. It is crazy how many people will fail a question that boils d

>I have prompts that test very basic concepts and nearly everyone fails. Resume fraud is rampant. It is crazy how many people will fail a question that boils down to 'write a for loop' despite going to college for 4 years in CS.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mulmen 2y ago
What’s the question?
- woobar 2y ago
  FizzBuzz?
zelphirkalt 2y ago
Speaking about Germany: This is because many CS degrees do not include sufficient practical projects. If you get some degree concluding practical project, you can already be happy. The real practice most CS students get, they get "off the job", in side projects. Or on the first job they somehow manage to get.
- lucb1e 2y ago
  Netherlands also, although it depends a bit on which master's they did. If you want people able to do stuff off the bat, hire those who did MBO or HBO (in DE, HBO=Fachhochschule, but DE doesn't have an MBO equivalent I think: that would be Ausbildung level afaict, except MBO doesn't require you to have a job at the same time). In English, my HBO translated their name to "University of Applied Sciences"; my MBO did not give a English translation of the degree
- emseetech 2y ago
  There should be a 4 year Computer Science degree and a 2 year programming trade school, both equally difficult but in different directions, and companies should be aware enough to know which graduate they need. Of course the best hires would be those willing to do both, if they're capable of a 6 year commitment. Apprenticeships and on-the-job training is also an option, but nobody seems to be willing to do that anymore.
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    There are a (very) few coding boot camps that offer something resembling the practical model. Check out Turing School. 40 hours/ week of classroom instruction, including 6 weeks of just programming before you get introduced to a framework.
toast0 2y ago
I'm a little bit more demanding. I want people to write a loop with a loop in it. I've had too many candidates that can write a single for loop, but get so beyond mixed up when there's a loop inside a loop. I do a fairly simple encode/decode problem (run length encoding). I describe the basic encoding concept, provide a sample input that should have byte savings with any reasonable encoding, and have the candidate come up with what the output should be. There's lots of ways to do the encoding, mostly anything works (and I'm clear with the candidate about that)... I allocate about 15 minutes for this stage; I've got lots of hinting strategies to keep clients from getting stuck here... but if it's not clicking, I'll give them a simple format to move on. Then the candidate writes the decoder; decoding is easier; some candidates get really stuck on the encoder and I'd rather have a code sample than a stuck candidate. Some of my worst candidates have already forgotten the encoded format that they just designed, and they write a decoder that might work on some other encoded input, I guess. Hopefully this takes 10 minutes or less, but if you can't write a loop in a loop, you might get pretty stuck. I don't care about the language used, it doesn't even need to be a real language, it just needs to be self consistent and reasonable; i/o comes as easiest for the candidate. If we've got 15-20 minutes left, the candidate can work on the encoder. The encoder trips up a lot more people than the decoder; so I stopped having people work on that first. There's plenty of options for discussion at any point. Could you make the format better for some cases, could you make it work in a resource constrained system. The specific problem isn't really day-to-day work, but it's approachable and doesn't require much in the way of data structures or organization or prior domain knowledge. Some candidates express that they had fun doing my problem, and especially for junior candidates, if they've never done compression exercises, I hope it is an opportunity to see that compression isn't always magic; simple compression is approachable.
- foobarian 2y ago
  I have a pet problem that is also solved with a pair of nested loops. I had one candidate use infinite loops and a bunch of convoluted logic to manually move the index around (a single index).
- boredtofears 2y ago
  I'm genuinely curious about what this challenge looks like exactly. I know you probably can't share it but are there any analogous code challenges/problems out there that you can? It sounds interesting.
parpfish 2y ago
I wonder how much the context of being in an interview screws this up. They might be able to solve it perfectly if encountered in the wild, but if you see it in an interview part of you is thinking “there’s got to be a trick to this that I’m not seeing”
- itronitron 2y ago
  Yeah, the first time I interviewed after working at the same place for over ten years I was totally thrown off, because I was expecting to have a discussion about my experience and not have to whiteboard a method to list all files in a directory.
SoftTalker 2y ago
If a CS grad can't write a 'for' loop you should write to the CS department chair or dean and the career services office at the department and let them know that you're disappointed in the quality of graduate that they are turning out and that you'll be thinking twice before hiring their graduates in the future. Colleges and universities are lowering standards and accepting anyone with a pulse to get their tuition dollars.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mulmen 2y ago

What’s the question?

woobar 2y ago
FizzBuzz?

zelphirkalt 2y ago

Speaking about Germany: This is because many CS degrees do not include sufficient practical projects. If you get some degree concluding practical project, you can already be happy. The real practice most CS students get, they get "off the job", in side projects. Or on the first job they somehow manage to get.

lucb1e 2y ago
Netherlands also, although it depends a bit on which master's they did. If you want people able to do stuff off the bat, hire those who did MBO or HBO (in DE, HBO=Fachhochschule, but DE doesn't have an MBO equivalent I think: that would be Ausbildung level afaict, except MBO doesn't require you to have a job at the same time). In English, my HBO translated their name to "University of Applied Sciences"; my MBO did not give a English translation of the degree
emseetech 2y ago
There should be a 4 year Computer Science degree and a 2 year programming trade school, both equally difficult but in different directions, and companies should be aware enough to know which graduate they need. Of course the best hires would be those willing to do both, if they're capable of a 6 year commitment. Apprenticeships and on-the-job training is also an option, but nobody seems to be willing to do that anymore.
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  There are a (very) few coding boot camps that offer something resembling the practical model. Check out Turing School. 40 hours/ week of classroom instruction, including 6 weeks of just programming before you get introduced to a framework.

toast0 2y ago

I'm a little bit more demanding. I want people to write a loop with a loop in it. I've had too many candidates that can write a single for loop, but get so beyond mixed up when there's a loop inside a loop. I do a fairly simple encode/decode problem (run length encoding). I describe the basic encoding concept, provide a sample input that should have byte savings with any reasonable encoding, and have the candidate come up with what the output should be. There's lots of ways to do the encoding, mostly anything works (and I'm clear with the candidate about that)... I allocate about 15 minutes for this stage; I've got lots of hinting strategies to keep clients from getting stuck here... but if it's not clicking, I'll give them a simple format to move on. Then the candidate writes the decoder; decoding is easier; some candidates get really stuck on the encoder and I'd rather have a code sample than a stuck candidate. Some of my worst candidates have already forgotten the encoded format that they just designed, and they write a decoder that might work on some other encoded input, I guess. Hopefully this takes 10 minutes or less, but if you can't write a loop in a loop, you might get pretty stuck. I don't care about the language used, it doesn't even need to be a real language, it just needs to be self consistent and reasonable; i/o comes as easiest for the candidate. If we've got 15-20 minutes left, the candidate can work on the encoder. The encoder trips up a lot more people than the decoder; so I stopped having people work on that first. There's plenty of options for discussion at any point. Could you make the format better for some cases, could you make it work in a resource constrained system. The specific problem isn't really day-to-day work, but it's approachable and doesn't require much in the way of data structures or organization or prior domain knowledge. Some candidates express that they had fun doing my problem, and especially for junior candidates, if they've never done compression exercises, I hope it is an opportunity to see that compression isn't always magic; simple compression is approachable.

foobarian 2y ago
I have a pet problem that is also solved with a pair of nested loops. I had one candidate use infinite loops and a bunch of convoluted logic to manually move the index around (a single index).
boredtofears 2y ago
I'm genuinely curious about what this challenge looks like exactly. I know you probably can't share it but are there any analogous code challenges/problems out there that you can? It sounds interesting.

parpfish 2y ago

I wonder how much the context of being in an interview screws this up. They might be able to solve it perfectly if encountered in the wild, but if you see it in an interview part of you is thinking “there’s got to be a trick to this that I’m not seeing”

itronitron 2y ago
Yeah, the first time I interviewed after working at the same place for over ten years I was totally thrown off, because I was expecting to have a discussion about my experience and not have to whiteboard a method to list all files in a directory.

SoftTalker 2y ago

If a CS grad can't write a 'for' loop you should write to the CS department chair or dean and the career services office at the department and let them know that you're disappointed in the quality of graduate that they are turning out and that you'll be thinking twice before hiring their graduates in the future. Colleges and universities are lowering standards and accepting anyone with a pulse to get their tuition dollars.