4 ms·

Just out of personal curiosity, you should try to find out if any of these failed candidates are actually skilled developers but there's something about the que

Just out of personal curiosity, you should try to find out if any of these failed candidates are actually skilled developers but there's something about the questions or interview that's messing them up? For example I consider myself a reasonable programmer, I can certainly do any project put in front of me. But I failed a YouTube phone interview because they asked me to "say" a function for finding the longest common subsequence of a set of strings. I learned the following issues completely stop me from being able to program: 1. Someone waiting on an immediate answer. 2. Someone watching/listening to my though process. 3. Not being able to experiment with the code on a computer. That didn't cut it for them because apparently at YouTube a lot of your programming is done over the phone (sarcasm). I guess my point is, try to think of the exact tasks this hire would be doing, and ask them to do that. Will they really be writing recursive functions often? Also if possible give them a take home project, so they can work in a more natural environment.

allenbrunson 17y ago
oh man, this is my downfall as well. hearing stories about the way google conducts interviews convinces me that i'll never get in there, or anywhere like it. i'm perfectly willing to write code as part of a job interview. just not on a whiteboard or over the phone.
- _pius 17y ago
  i'm perfectly willing to write code as part of a job interview. just not on a whiteboard or over the phone. why not on a whiteboard?
  - tocomment 17y ago
    Like I mentioned, I just get flustered when people are watching me, or want me to speak my though process aloud. Those skills, (being able to code complex problems when people are watching) have never been a requirement of any job I've seen so I've come out of many interviews feeling that they got an inaccurate picture of my skills.
    - lutorm 17y ago
      It's a skill that can be practiced, though. And it might come in handy in general discussions, not just in job interviews.
    - mmc 17y ago
      With some preparation, you can transform the problem from one that may not be part of your job (solving completely new problems in front of an audience) to one that certainly will - explaining your solution clearly to an audience. If you try hard enough, you can be familiar with likely interview questions and then the problem is how best to present your solution, which is an important skill, and one worth practicing.
    - kscaldef 17y ago
      Really? You never get together in a room with other devs to talk through & pseudocode a solution to a tough problem?
      - tocomment 17y ago
        Yeah, I guess it's different with people I know. And to already be familiar with the problem helps too. But to solve something say from project Euler on a whiteboard in front of three strangers and talk about my thought process at the same time, that's hard.
soc 17y ago
I agree. When I first meet someone over the phone or in person I'm in a social mood and prefer to talk rather than do a code dance for them. Once I'm alone at my desk though it's easy to get down to business. Think it would be cool if companies just said show up to work, and you work for free for the first week. After that both parties can decide if they want to continue.
- zeckalpha 17y ago
  That's basically how open source works.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
  Maybe it's just me, but I tend to immediately discount any advice or proposals that suggest I work for free.
  - pj 17y ago
    I would actually enjoy a one week type engagement to get a good fit for a company. It works both ways. You are selling your time. They are selling their environment. The problem is that the employer is accepting a lot more risk than the employee. Do you like paying for something you can't return and you can't get your money back for if it is crap? This is the situation a lot of companies are in. They hire someone, they pay them to write the code or build the project and it turns out it's all a lot of garbage and the company is out the money. This problem is really tainting our industry. I think a lot of people who call themselves programmers are really just some kids off the street who grabbed an open source package and started hacking away. They can build a website with some graphics and stuff, but they have no vision, no experience with large systems that are actually going to be used for any significant period of time. It is quite depressing actually.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
plinkplonk 17y ago
"you should try to find out if any of these failed candidates are actually skilled developers but there's something about the questions or interview that's messing them up? hard to think of a halfway competent developer failing to answer "where I ask them to implement a simple function, implement a recursive function, write a simple SQL select (join across two tables), and create a simple object model (how would you represent a car as an object)." in about a minute or so all told, even verbally, over the phone. "YouTube phone interview because they asked me to "say" a function for finding the longest common subsequence of a set of strings." This is (ever so slightly) different from OP's ultra simple questions above , but otoh , YouTube has a lot of tough algorithmic problems to solve. I am not sure what position you interviewed for, but the question itself sounds decent for a position that could involve algorithms and searching and so on. Now if the interview were for a job involving "code up a basic enterprise app" I can see how it could be inappropriate. All that said, I am not a fan of extended phone interviews , but asking very basic questions (as the OP seems to have done) eliminates a surprisingly large number of looks-good-on-paper-but-can't-code-for-nuts type "programmers". The key to not getting depressed is not to waste any time on people who can't answer ultra basic questions. If in 30 seconds you feel someone is too incompetent, shut the conversation down politely. Spending long periods of time with incompetents is depressing. One solution is to send a (moderately complex) programming problem by email and ask them to send code back. This will weed out a lot of people without wasting your time.
- pj 17y ago
  I agree. The questions the OP asked are all very easy. It'd be easy to describe a function to find the longest common subsequence of a set of strings as well. The reason such a question is asked is because it isn't something that we do everyday and how we solve problems that we don't immediately know how to solve is what sets good programmers apart from bad programmers. I find anyone who immediately blames the environment for their lack of ability to answer the questions correctly to be suspect. These types of complainers are externally motivated and will never accept fault for their lack of capabilities. "You should have asked me in a different way." or "I need to be taught differently" or "There's too much pressure"... look, you can come up with whatever excuses you want, but the fact is, you can't solve the problem and what we are looking for is someone who can solve problems. Case closed.
blankity_blank 17y ago
because they asked me to "say" a function for finding the longest common subsequence of a set of strings. That's rough, asking for a solution to an NP-hard problem over the phone? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_common_subsequence_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_common_subsequence_prob... Or maybe they were just expecting you to say "for each combination of subsequences of each string, check if they are equal ..."
- mquander 17y ago
  We may be mishearing their intended formulation, which could have been asking for the longest common substring (described here: difference is that subsequences don't have to be entirely contiguous, just in the same order.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_common_substring_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_common_substring_proble... That's an interesting problem with some simple solutions worth understanding. I don't think it would be unrealistic to expect a high-quality programmer to be previously familiar with it, or, if not previously familiar, to be able to make progress toward the DP solution with some thought.
  - plinkplonk 17y ago
    "We may be mishearing their intended formulation, which could have been asking for the longest common substring " Good Point. And asking a clarifying question would be a very strong positive in a candidate.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- tocomment 17y ago
  No, they wanted a working function. I used Python :-(
jasonkester 17y ago
No, that sounds about right. 70% of the people you interview will not be able to code their way out of a sack. It actually sounds like he must have done some form of initial screen just to get the success rate up to 30%.
philwelch 17y ago
I got asked to write a fibonacci function in an interview once, but they were kind enough to say "go sit at your text editor and write it and then read it to us". I was still flustered a little (since I wasn't sure whether to just talk through it or actually say "int fibs open-parent int n close-paren open-brace...") but apparently I passed the phone screen. I did remark that the naive recursive approach was a terrible algorithm, which may have helped. Of course, I failed their day-long battery of on-site interviews later. But I did get interviewed by the entire development team, plus the CEO. That was kind of fun.
adam_feldman 17y ago
Companies could always do the interview on a tool such as etherpad.com so they could watch the interviewee write.
agotterer 17y ago
We are currently going through the same daunting process trying to hire a PHP developer at CollegeHumor. I would say 70% of the applicants we interview cant answer basic computer science questions. We don't give a written technical test. We don't expect a developer to be able to code on paper. In a real environment they have access to tools, compilers, docs, etc. It's an unfair and unnecessarily stressful test. Good luck with your search. Shameless plug: If your interested in a development position at CollegeHumor in New York City... Email techjobs@connectedventures.com.

allenbrunson 17y ago

oh man, this is my downfall as well. hearing stories about the way google conducts interviews convinces me that i'll never get in there, or anywhere like it. i'm perfectly willing to write code as part of a job interview. just not on a whiteboard or over the phone.

_pius 17y ago
i'm perfectly willing to write code as part of a job interview. just not on a whiteboard or over the phone. why not on a whiteboard?
- tocomment 17y ago
  Like I mentioned, I just get flustered when people are watching me, or want me to speak my though process aloud. Those skills, (being able to code complex problems when people are watching) have never been a requirement of any job I've seen so I've come out of many interviews feeling that they got an inaccurate picture of my skills.
  - lutorm 17y ago
    It's a skill that can be practiced, though. And it might come in handy in general discussions, not just in job interviews.
  - mmc 17y ago
    With some preparation, you can transform the problem from one that may not be part of your job (solving completely new problems in front of an audience) to one that certainly will - explaining your solution clearly to an audience. If you try hard enough, you can be familiar with likely interview questions and then the problem is how best to present your solution, which is an important skill, and one worth practicing.
  - kscaldef 17y ago
    Really? You never get together in a room with other devs to talk through & pseudocode a solution to a tough problem?
    - tocomment 17y ago
      Yeah, I guess it's different with people I know. And to already be familiar with the problem helps too. But to solve something say from project Euler on a whiteboard in front of three strangers and talk about my thought process at the same time, that's hard.

soc 17y ago

I agree. When I first meet someone over the phone or in person I'm in a social mood and prefer to talk rather than do a code dance for them. Once I'm alone at my desk though it's easy to get down to business. Think it would be cool if companies just said show up to work, and you work for free for the first week. After that both parties can decide if they want to continue.

zeckalpha 17y ago
That's basically how open source works.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
Maybe it's just me, but I tend to immediately discount any advice or proposals that suggest I work for free.
- pj 17y ago
  I would actually enjoy a one week type engagement to get a good fit for a company. It works both ways. You are selling your time. They are selling their environment. The problem is that the employer is accepting a lot more risk than the employee. Do you like paying for something you can't return and you can't get your money back for if it is crap? This is the situation a lot of companies are in. They hire someone, they pay them to write the code or build the project and it turns out it's all a lot of garbage and the company is out the money. This problem is really tainting our industry. I think a lot of people who call themselves programmers are really just some kids off the street who grabbed an open source package and started hacking away. They can build a website with some graphics and stuff, but they have no vision, no experience with large systems that are actually going to be used for any significant period of time. It is quite depressing actually.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago

plinkplonk 17y ago

"you should try to find out if any of these failed candidates are actually skilled developers but there's something about the questions or interview that's messing them up? hard to think of a halfway competent developer failing to answer "where I ask them to implement a simple function, implement a recursive function, write a simple SQL select (join across two tables), and create a simple object model (how would you represent a car as an object)." in about a minute or so all told, even verbally, over the phone. "YouTube phone interview because they asked me to "say" a function for finding the longest common subsequence of a set of strings." This is (ever so slightly) different from OP's ultra simple questions above , but otoh , YouTube has a lot of tough algorithmic problems to solve. I am not sure what position you interviewed for, but the question itself sounds decent for a position that could involve algorithms and searching and so on. Now if the interview were for a job involving "code up a basic enterprise app" I can see how it could be inappropriate. All that said, I am not a fan of extended phone interviews , but asking very basic questions (as the OP seems to have done) eliminates a surprisingly large number of looks-good-on-paper-but-can't-code-for-nuts type "programmers". The key to not getting depressed is not to waste any time on people who can't answer ultra basic questions. If in 30 seconds you feel someone is too incompetent, shut the conversation down politely. Spending long periods of time with incompetents is depressing. One solution is to send a (moderately complex) programming problem by email and ask them to send code back. This will weed out a lot of people without wasting your time.

pj 17y ago
I agree. The questions the OP asked are all very easy. It'd be easy to describe a function to find the longest common subsequence of a set of strings as well. The reason such a question is asked is because it isn't something that we do everyday and how we solve problems that we don't immediately know how to solve is what sets good programmers apart from bad programmers. I find anyone who immediately blames the environment for their lack of ability to answer the questions correctly to be suspect. These types of complainers are externally motivated and will never accept fault for their lack of capabilities. "You should have asked me in a different way." or "I need to be taught differently" or "There's too much pressure"... look, you can come up with whatever excuses you want, but the fact is, you can't solve the problem and what we are looking for is someone who can solve problems. Case closed.

blankity_blank 17y ago

because they asked me to "say" a function for finding the longest common subsequence of a set of strings. That's rough, asking for a solution to an NP-hard problem over the phone? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_common_subsequence_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_common_subsequence_prob... Or maybe they were just expecting you to say "for each combination of subsequences of each string, check if they are equal ..."

mquander 17y ago
We may be mishearing their intended formulation, which could have been asking for the longest common substring (described here: difference is that subsequences don't have to be entirely contiguous, just in the same order.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_common_substring_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_common_substring_proble... That's an interesting problem with some simple solutions worth understanding. I don't think it would be unrealistic to expect a high-quality programmer to be previously familiar with it, or, if not previously familiar, to be able to make progress toward the DP solution with some thought.
- plinkplonk 17y ago
  "We may be mishearing their intended formulation, which could have been asking for the longest common substring " Good Point. And asking a clarifying question would be a very strong positive in a candidate.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
tocomment 17y ago
No, they wanted a working function. I used Python :-(

jasonkester 17y ago

No, that sounds about right. 70% of the people you interview will not be able to code their way out of a sack. It actually sounds like he must have done some form of initial screen just to get the success rate up to 30%.

philwelch 17y ago

I got asked to write a fibonacci function in an interview once, but they were kind enough to say "go sit at your text editor and write it and then read it to us". I was still flustered a little (since I wasn't sure whether to just talk through it or actually say "int fibs open-parent int n close-paren open-brace...") but apparently I passed the phone screen. I did remark that the naive recursive approach was a terrible algorithm, which may have helped. Of course, I failed their day-long battery of on-site interviews later. But I did get interviewed by the entire development team, plus the CEO. That was kind of fun.

adam_feldman 17y ago

Companies could always do the interview on a tool such as etherpad.com so they could watch the interviewee write.

agotterer 17y ago

We are currently going through the same daunting process trying to hire a PHP developer at CollegeHumor. I would say 70% of the applicants we interview cant answer basic computer science questions. We don't give a written technical test. We don't expect a developer to be able to code on paper. In a real environment they have access to tools, compilers, docs, etc. It's an unfair and unnecessarily stressful test. Good luck with your search. Shameless plug: If your interested in a development position at CollegeHumor in New York City... Email techjobs@connectedventures.com.