5 ms·
> I used to ask people to write code in interviews. This is terrible. Bull! Last time I interviewed someone, they looked good on paper and decent on the phone.
by darkstar999 12y ago
> I used to ask people to write code in interviews. This is terrible.
Bull! Last time I interviewed someone, they looked good on paper and decent on the phone. When it got down to solving a _simple_ problem on the whiteboard, he totally flopped. This is a totally realistic situation; we get together at least weekly and hammer out a solution on the whiteboard. Nerves could be an issue, but a good candidate should be able to solve an easy problem in a handful of minutes in an interview. (I'm talking _super_ easy, like joining one SQL table to another after saying that you are proficient)
- tptacek 12y agoHe didn't say coding was bad. He said coding on a whiteboard is bad. And, if you evaluated 100 strong developers by comparing their performance at a terminal and a whiteboard, my guess is that you'd quickly see that he's absolutely right about that --- not only would everyone outperform the whiteboard with a terminal, but that the whiteboard deficit would be highly irregular, defying any attempt to "handicap" for it.
- buckbova 12y agoI would rather hire the strong developer that can code without autocomplete and write without spellcheck.
- tptacek 12y agoThat'll come in handy when the inevitable days-long autocomplete and spellcheck outage strikes.
- Apocryphon 12y agoOr if the firm only uses Emacs.
- tptacek 12y agoYou use Emacs without autocomplete? That's not snark: I'm just here to tell you that Emacs has fantastic autocomplete and you should definitely look into it.
- wglb 12y agoUh, just hit tab, or at worst Meta-/
- willismichael 12y agoM-x ispell
- spdy 12y agoWhy? Because he is good at memorizing things? That does not make the strongest developer.
- dllthomas 12y agoBeing able to memorize things is valuable to a developer. I'm with you that other things are more valuable, but you don't always have to make a trade-off.
- jebblue 12y agoThanks for articulating this. I'm going through the interview process again now so this is especially resounding to me.
- mwcampbell 12y agoCoding on a whiteboard is also impossible or infeasible for candidates with some kinds of disabilities (e.g. blind). Sure, you can make an exception for those few candidates, but I suppose the fact that you even have to make an exception to your normal process for a particular candidate might bias you against that candidate.
- danielweber 12y agoThere are lots of accommodations I would need to do for someone who is blind, or deaf, or missing his hands. (I knew (through association) a developer who had hooks for hands.) The fact that you need to put some changes into your recruitment process for disabilities doesn't mean your recruitment process is necessarily broken.