8 ms·

My experience is that it's very hard to find good developers, or university graduates who want to become developers. The CS grads that I've interviewed fall in

My experience is that it's very hard to find good developers, or university graduates who want to become developers. The CS grads that I've interviewed fall into three groups: 1) They were good at Math, spent 4 years avoiding anything involving computers, and whose career goal is to find a cushy middle-management job. 2) Arrogant CV-fillers who think that their HTML/JS 'skillz' make them them God's gift to the world. Who then end up working for Big Consultancy Firm working on Sharepoint (because the money is good). 3) The rare gem, who love computers, love coding, and get usually get snapped up instantly by Google/Microsoft. As someone who doesn't have a degree, I find the level of CS graduates from (top!) universities disheartening. I've seen people who couldn't implement a simple sorting algorithm in pseudo-code (or even explain how they'd do it!). Things I can do with my eyes closed; you know, because I have actually read my algorithms book cover-to-cover. The cause is clear: developers can earn very good money at the moment. It's a good career move. So it's attracting the lazy chancers who just see the $$$$$. What ever happened to pursing a career doing something because you, you know, love doing it?

TheAceOfHearts 13y ago
I love coding, but if you make me implement a quicksort in the interview I'll probably be too nervous and fuck it up. Have you tried having more interactive interviews, or handing out projects? I just like doing cool things, honestly. And I know a few people that are just like me.
- radicalbyte 13y ago
  We tailor the interview to the applicant: so someone coming from (GOOD!) Uni should be able to verbally explain a sorting algorithm. We don't ask them to code - it will take too long and a discussion is much more valuable (and almost impossible to pass by memorizing a couple of algorithms). Heck, I passed a harder version of the test (including the theory, I'm a senior/lead/old-fart so I was expected to implement everything on top of the discussions) and I left formal education at 17 :) They don't have to implement a working version, just give a good outline and be able to answer questions about it :) For experienced people we go further, and do ask for some coding. You've got 5 years experience in SQL? Then solve this simple problem which requires using JOINs and aggregates. You're a javascript expert? Great, then demonstrate that you know the syntax and know what a closure is. Java expert with a focus on patterns? Then you should be able to implement one of: Singleton/Factory/Command. We get more people who have 10 years of experience with C# are are self proclaimed experts, but who don't know the difference between the heap and the stack then we do CS students applying for the wrong job.. but that's for a different thread :)
  - TheAceOfHearts 13y ago
    Ah, that seems pretty reasonable. I think my biggest problem is that when I'm interviewing I'll try to answer too quickly before thinking through a problem completely. But I love discussions too, and if it's something I'm comfortable with, I could keep talking about the topic for as long as the interviewer wants. I think there's value in recognizing when you don't know the answer to something. I had an interviewer ask me the difference between call and apply in JavaScript, at the time I wasn't sure, so I started to answer him... I explain that I knew you could use both to set the context in which the function was called, but eventually I just said: I'm not sure. And the interviewer gladly explained it to me. In my case I got an internship where they gave me a 24 hour project to demonstrate my skills. I found that way less stressful than any interview I've ever had. And after the internship the company was so happy that they offered me a full time job!
    - radicalbyte 13y ago
      Oh, that's exactly what I want to hear: everyone has gaps in their knowledge and it takes guts to admit it. As long as you can see that, and know where to gain the knowledge, than that won't be a problem. Unless that knowledge is something vital and general. I.e. like not knowing what HTML is. In the future I want to use internships to find younger engineers - it lets you get to know people a bit, and keeps new ideas flowing through the company.
  - matho 13y ago
    Here's my problem with using quicksort at interview: A developer who writes an implementation of the quicksort algorithm as part of their job should usually be removed from their post for incompetence. The interview process should be a two-way procedure which also allows the candidate to understand what is expected of them in a role (and make their decision about the job accordingly). If regurgitating quicksort is expected, then this is a fair test: otherwise, this is not how you should be presenting the job.
- UK-AL 13y ago
  How can you mess up quicksort? Pick a pivot, lower values on one side, higher values on the other. And recursively rinse and repeat.
  - TheAceOfHearts 13y ago
    I get really nervous and I make stupid mistakes. Every single time I've had an interview and I'm asked to code I end up making stupid mistakes because I try to answer too quickly or because I don't sit down to properly think about the problem. It's definitely something I need to work on. Thankfully I got an internship that let me do a small project to demo my skills, instead of hazing me. And after my internship they were so happy that they offered me a full time job.
  - zanny 13y ago
    I once messed up a string size parser in an interview by going len instead of len - 1 in measuring the number of characters displayed. It is stress. Introverts like myself I imagine collectively are horrible under intense pressure from random strangers who can dictate your future for months or years.
  - T-hawk 13y ago
    Quicksort is amazingly easy to screw up. There's a lot of opportunity for off-by-one errors in all the index manipulation. I coded quicksort as an interview practice exercise in plain C a few years ago and it took quite a number of iterations until getting it all correct.
don_draper 13y ago
Maybe the real lazy person is you and the way you interview. What does writing mergesort on a whiteboard have to do with writing Web software in 2013?
- glesica 13y ago
  Nothing, but I think the implication is that it is a signal that can be used to predict which of the three categories the person falls into. People who fall into the third category (the desirable one) are likely to be able to implement mergesort on a whiteboard because they have a genuine interest and paid attention. That being said, other, more practical questions may exist that retain the signaling characteristic.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    With respect, I'd like to add a fourth category: 4) Actual computer scientist. If you ask him how to write mergesort, he will ask for a book to look it up in, same as if Einstein was asked for the value of pi. If you ask him to describe his favorite algorithm or the details of his current research, he will gladly tell you in extensive detail. The problem with hiring those of us in category (4) is that it's hard to tell if we're bullshitting you, since after all we operate at a far more advanced and specialized level of expertise than most software development jobs actually use or require.
    - Groxx 13y ago
      Sorting algorithms in general aren't constants, though. The implementation can have significant impact on running time, memory use, etc. And there are an infinite number of them with various tradeoffs you can tune. I wouldn't expect an interviewee to know sorting algorithm X because they may just have forgotten. But why wouldn't they be able to come up with a sorting algorithm, and have some feel for the behavior? Seriously, selection sort is about as easy to come up with as fizzbuzz. If they can't think through a simple problem and come up with a solution, is it wrong to question their problem-solving skills?
Wilya 13y ago
There are things from a formal CS background I wish more people mastered. Things like understanding how JOINs work, basics of memory management and understanding that two nested for loops is likely to be worse than a single one, even in the cloud. But knowing how to implement a specific sort isn't one of these. It's simply never come up outside of an exam.
- gtz58 13y ago
  I think that's kind of the point. If radical is looking for (3), they will probably know the information because it is interesting.
- 14113 13y ago
  I'm shocked that a proper CS course wouldn't teach them. We covered Joins (and the relational maths behind them) in first year, and "nested for loops being bad" would be a necessary by-product of learning anything about complexity.
  - Wilya 13y ago
    Oh, I don't mean to say these aren't taught (though being taught something and mastering it isn't quite the same). What I mean is that those are the parts of a CS background that have actually been useful in my everyday coding life, and that I would expect from candidates I interview. To be opposed to knowledge/implementation of different types of sorts, which is also a part of a CS background, but has low practical use in my everyday coding.
    - 14113 13y ago
      mm, I agree with you there. I guess it's because sorts come up so much in a CS curriculum that they're considered to be magnificently important. In other words, they're just really handy bodies for imparting central ideas (like complexity), and people mix up the messenger with the message.
    - cbhl 13y ago
      > the parts of a CS background that have actually been useful in my everyday coding life Someone fresh out of school would have no idea how to discern that from anything else in the wide, wide world of CS unless they have experience working in the industry (from, say, a summer internship or co-op terms). Hell, mastery of basic DVCS operations (say, git pull, git commit, git merge, although equivalent experience with hg, perforce, or TFS would be reasonable) isn't a guarantee, even if students spent four months in a lab "using" such a tool. The people who "do best" in university get told by their professors to become graduate students. Most are not optimized to teach the skills you seek -- if you picked a random fresh graduate and they happened to have those skills, it's probable that either they taught themselves or they learned them at another employer.
rayiner 13y ago
Doing what you love, without getting paid a lot for it, is for social workers and teachers and other people whose jobs don't make someone else a ton of money.
- zanny 13y ago
  Social workers can build parks or public housing or feed people, where in each case there is increased traffic through an area creating a boon in income for local business, there are public utiltiies companies that profit off more people in homes, and there are farmers and food distributors who have increased demand from food kitchens, even if the margins are sour. Likewise, teachers lead to the student often becoming more productive and wealthy by knowledge transfer. There is value in almost anything you do. We just have a social organization where some things are overvalued and others are undervalued.
downrightmike 13y ago
Tuition from schools that don't really teach?

TheAceOfHearts 13y ago

I love coding, but if you make me implement a quicksort in the interview I'll probably be too nervous and fuck it up. Have you tried having more interactive interviews, or handing out projects? I just like doing cool things, honestly. And I know a few people that are just like me.

radicalbyte 13y ago
We tailor the interview to the applicant: so someone coming from (GOOD!) Uni should be able to verbally explain a sorting algorithm. We don't ask them to code - it will take too long and a discussion is much more valuable (and almost impossible to pass by memorizing a couple of algorithms). Heck, I passed a harder version of the test (including the theory, I'm a senior/lead/old-fart so I was expected to implement everything on top of the discussions) and I left formal education at 17 :) They don't have to implement a working version, just give a good outline and be able to answer questions about it :) For experienced people we go further, and do ask for some coding. You've got 5 years experience in SQL? Then solve this simple problem which requires using JOINs and aggregates. You're a javascript expert? Great, then demonstrate that you know the syntax and know what a closure is. Java expert with a focus on patterns? Then you should be able to implement one of: Singleton/Factory/Command. We get more people who have 10 years of experience with C# are are self proclaimed experts, but who don't know the difference between the heap and the stack then we do CS students applying for the wrong job.. but that's for a different thread :)
- TheAceOfHearts 13y ago
  Ah, that seems pretty reasonable. I think my biggest problem is that when I'm interviewing I'll try to answer too quickly before thinking through a problem completely. But I love discussions too, and if it's something I'm comfortable with, I could keep talking about the topic for as long as the interviewer wants. I think there's value in recognizing when you don't know the answer to something. I had an interviewer ask me the difference between call and apply in JavaScript, at the time I wasn't sure, so I started to answer him... I explain that I knew you could use both to set the context in which the function was called, but eventually I just said: I'm not sure. And the interviewer gladly explained it to me. In my case I got an internship where they gave me a 24 hour project to demonstrate my skills. I found that way less stressful than any interview I've ever had. And after the internship the company was so happy that they offered me a full time job!
  - radicalbyte 13y ago
    Oh, that's exactly what I want to hear: everyone has gaps in their knowledge and it takes guts to admit it. As long as you can see that, and know where to gain the knowledge, than that won't be a problem. Unless that knowledge is something vital and general. I.e. like not knowing what HTML is. In the future I want to use internships to find younger engineers - it lets you get to know people a bit, and keeps new ideas flowing through the company.
- matho 13y ago
  Here's my problem with using quicksort at interview: A developer who writes an implementation of the quicksort algorithm as part of their job should usually be removed from their post for incompetence. The interview process should be a two-way procedure which also allows the candidate to understand what is expected of them in a role (and make their decision about the job accordingly). If regurgitating quicksort is expected, then this is a fair test: otherwise, this is not how you should be presenting the job.
UK-AL 13y ago
How can you mess up quicksort? Pick a pivot, lower values on one side, higher values on the other. And recursively rinse and repeat.
- TheAceOfHearts 13y ago
  I get really nervous and I make stupid mistakes. Every single time I've had an interview and I'm asked to code I end up making stupid mistakes because I try to answer too quickly or because I don't sit down to properly think about the problem. It's definitely something I need to work on. Thankfully I got an internship that let me do a small project to demo my skills, instead of hazing me. And after my internship they were so happy that they offered me a full time job.
- zanny 13y ago
  I once messed up a string size parser in an interview by going len instead of len - 1 in measuring the number of characters displayed. It is stress. Introverts like myself I imagine collectively are horrible under intense pressure from random strangers who can dictate your future for months or years.
- T-hawk 13y ago
  Quicksort is amazingly easy to screw up. There's a lot of opportunity for off-by-one errors in all the index manipulation. I coded quicksort as an interview practice exercise in plain C a few years ago and it took quite a number of iterations until getting it all correct.

don_draper 13y ago

Maybe the real lazy person is you and the way you interview. What does writing mergesort on a whiteboard have to do with writing Web software in 2013?

glesica 13y ago
Nothing, but I think the implication is that it is a signal that can be used to predict which of the three categories the person falls into. People who fall into the third category (the desirable one) are likely to be able to implement mergesort on a whiteboard because they have a genuine interest and paid attention. That being said, other, more practical questions may exist that retain the signaling characteristic.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  With respect, I'd like to add a fourth category: 4) Actual computer scientist. If you ask him how to write mergesort, he will ask for a book to look it up in, same as if Einstein was asked for the value of pi. If you ask him to describe his favorite algorithm or the details of his current research, he will gladly tell you in extensive detail. The problem with hiring those of us in category (4) is that it's hard to tell if we're bullshitting you, since after all we operate at a far more advanced and specialized level of expertise than most software development jobs actually use or require.
  - Groxx 13y ago
    Sorting algorithms in general aren't constants, though. The implementation can have significant impact on running time, memory use, etc. And there are an infinite number of them with various tradeoffs you can tune. I wouldn't expect an interviewee to know sorting algorithm X because they may just have forgotten. But why wouldn't they be able to come up with a sorting algorithm, and have some feel for the behavior? Seriously, selection sort is about as easy to come up with as fizzbuzz. If they can't think through a simple problem and come up with a solution, is it wrong to question their problem-solving skills?

Wilya 13y ago

There are things from a formal CS background I wish more people mastered. Things like understanding how JOINs work, basics of memory management and understanding that two nested for loops is likely to be worse than a single one, even in the cloud. But knowing how to implement a specific sort isn't one of these. It's simply never come up outside of an exam.

gtz58 13y ago
I think that's kind of the point. If radical is looking for (3), they will probably know the information because it is interesting.
14113 13y ago
I'm shocked that a proper CS course wouldn't teach them. We covered Joins (and the relational maths behind them) in first year, and "nested for loops being bad" would be a necessary by-product of learning anything about complexity.
- Wilya 13y ago
  Oh, I don't mean to say these aren't taught (though being taught something and mastering it isn't quite the same). What I mean is that those are the parts of a CS background that have actually been useful in my everyday coding life, and that I would expect from candidates I interview. To be opposed to knowledge/implementation of different types of sorts, which is also a part of a CS background, but has low practical use in my everyday coding.
  - 14113 13y ago
    mm, I agree with you there. I guess it's because sorts come up so much in a CS curriculum that they're considered to be magnificently important. In other words, they're just really handy bodies for imparting central ideas (like complexity), and people mix up the messenger with the message.
  - cbhl 13y ago
    > the parts of a CS background that have actually been useful in my everyday coding life Someone fresh out of school would have no idea how to discern that from anything else in the wide, wide world of CS unless they have experience working in the industry (from, say, a summer internship or co-op terms). Hell, mastery of basic DVCS operations (say, git pull, git commit, git merge, although equivalent experience with hg, perforce, or TFS would be reasonable) isn't a guarantee, even if students spent four months in a lab "using" such a tool. The people who "do best" in university get told by their professors to become graduate students. Most are not optimized to teach the skills you seek -- if you picked a random fresh graduate and they happened to have those skills, it's probable that either they taught themselves or they learned them at another employer.

rayiner 13y ago

Doing what you love, without getting paid a lot for it, is for social workers and teachers and other people whose jobs don't make someone else a ton of money.

zanny 13y ago
Social workers can build parks or public housing or feed people, where in each case there is increased traffic through an area creating a boon in income for local business, there are public utiltiies companies that profit off more people in homes, and there are farmers and food distributors who have increased demand from food kitchens, even if the margins are sour. Likewise, teachers lead to the student often becoming more productive and wealthy by knowledge transfer. There is value in almost anything you do. We just have a social organization where some things are overvalued and others are undervalued.

downrightmike 13y ago

Tuition from schools that don't really teach?