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To share my experience, the kinds of "make you cry" interviews which test a lot of CS knowledge seem relegated to the Bay Area companies which I interviewed wit

To share my experience, the kinds of "make you cry" interviews which test a lot of CS knowledge seem relegated to the Bay Area companies which I interviewed with. All my interviews with companies in Texas (where I live) would interview more to ask about your experiences with a technology, challenges you'd faced when working with a similar stack, and maybe ask how you solved some tricky performance problem. They tended to focus more on the real world experiences than the academic knowledge. Once in a while someone would throw a framework- specific curveball your way to make sure you knew what your resume said you knew. This isn't a knock on the companies in the Bay Area, because clearly what they are doing works for them, but it's just a drastically different style that feels foreign to me. When those of you in the Bay Area interview every few years for new jobs, do you just brush off all your CS textbooks, study/review for a month, and then start the process?

sitharus 13y ago
That's what I've always experienced. I've only had one company do a technical phone interview with one company - Google - and I told them not to call me back. All the other jobs I've only had an in-person interview and it's been about experiences and the occasional "Why is Prototype a bad Javascript framework?" for example. Anything more complex than FizzBuzz will take me a while to figure out, because I never start writing code without actually understanding the problem that's being solved.
mmorett 13y ago
I happened to have a conversation with someone about this recently. Software developer: the career where you study to get the job, toss much of that away when you actually do the job, then study for the interview for the next job, where you toss much of that away when you actually do the job... It's a rhetorical question, but I can't understand studying for a job. You either do it on the job or you don't. Studying, however, puts a ton of stuff in short term memory where it gives the appearance of brilliance.
- hkarthik 13y ago
  See that's where I want to dig deeper with those that really believe in this style of interviewing. Clearly it must have some value other than the weed-out factor. Are there engineers who actually keep the algorithms/data structure stuff in their head and find small ways to apply it while they work on a standard web or mobile app? That's the only way I could see the knowledge having any value, but I've never worked this way nor have I observed anyone who works this way.

sitharus 13y ago

That's what I've always experienced. I've only had one company do a technical phone interview with one company - Google - and I told them not to call me back. All the other jobs I've only had an in-person interview and it's been about experiences and the occasional "Why is Prototype a bad Javascript framework?" for example. Anything more complex than FizzBuzz will take me a while to figure out, because I never start writing code without actually understanding the problem that's being solved.

mmorett 13y ago

I happened to have a conversation with someone about this recently. Software developer: the career where you study to get the job, toss much of that away when you actually do the job, then study for the interview for the next job, where you toss much of that away when you actually do the job... It's a rhetorical question, but I can't understand studying for a job. You either do it on the job or you don't. Studying, however, puts a ton of stuff in short term memory where it gives the appearance of brilliance.

hkarthik 13y ago
See that's where I want to dig deeper with those that really believe in this style of interviewing. Clearly it must have some value other than the weed-out factor. Are there engineers who actually keep the algorithms/data structure stuff in their head and find small ways to apply it while they work on a standard web or mobile app? That's the only way I could see the knowledge having any value, but I've never worked this way nor have I observed anyone who works this way.