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I agree with you that the real rubric is that I'd expect the candidate to be able to explain everything they did and why. For the most part I don't care how the

by jghn 1y ago

I agree with you that the real rubric is that I'd expect the candidate to be able to explain everything they did and why. For the most part I don't care how they got there. Was thinking about this recently in a conversation about whether or not the candidate should have a full screen share so that interviewers could see what they're looking up, etc. I realized that I'd reached the point where I now trust my fellow interviewers less than I do the candidate at these bits. Personally I think it's nice to see how people are leveraging tools, but too often I see interviewers dig candidates anyways on the specifics. I've now found this across multiple companies now has been that when coding exercises are "open book" like this that other interviewers *are* actively judging people based on what they're googling, and these days LLMing. If you're going to allow google but then fall back to "I can't believe they had to look *that* up!", that's not how it works.

sokoloff 1y ago
I think “how to write for loop in $LANGUAGE” is something that it’s fair to judge a candidate on if they claim (or the job requires) recent experience in $LANGUAGE.
- jghn 1y ago
  Maybe. I've been coding professionally for a few decades now. I have always looked stuff up constantly. It's a lot more seamless now due to first search engines and later the ever improving autocomplete. To be honest, I think half the time I just do it to do it. But for instance I bounce between languages so often that I can never remember the fine details of syntax. To use your example, things like for loops, matches, and the like are things that I tend to double check. And that's the point. Everyone has their quirks, and if you're going to claim you want them to work they way they normally work, who cares? If they're able to turn out quality code at a reasonable clip, who cares what they need to look up.

by jghn 1y ago

sokoloff 1y ago

I think “how to write for loop in $LANGUAGE” is something that it’s fair to judge a candidate on if they claim (or the job requires) recent experience in $LANGUAGE.

jghn 1y ago
Maybe. I've been coding professionally for a few decades now. I have always looked stuff up constantly. It's a lot more seamless now due to first search engines and later the ever improving autocomplete. To be honest, I think half the time I just do it to do it. But for instance I bounce between languages so often that I can never remember the fine details of syntax. To use your example, things like for loops, matches, and the like are things that I tend to double check. And that's the point. Everyone has their quirks, and if you're going to claim you want them to work they way they normally work, who cares? If they're able to turn out quality code at a reasonable clip, who cares what they need to look up.