4 ms·

Yup. I sure solve THAT problem every day. My boss comes in and is like, "well, we have the bugs from that security audit, we need to come up with a design for t

Yup. I sure solve THAT problem every day. My boss comes in and is like, "well, we have the bugs from that security audit, we need to come up with a design for the feature we want to try and roll out in two quarters so we can agree on it and cut tasks/divy up work, and then we're using two many boxes for the Foo processor. I think you've never optmized that right? Why don't you have a look at that. Also, don't use any standard library functions or look anything up. When you're done with that, I have a question for you about manhole covers." Yup, another great interview question for your repertoire to weed people out and talk about the kinds of things that come up in the day to day of being a modern software engineer.

legutierr 12y ago
Does a modern software engineer not need to demonstrate an ability to design efficient algorithms that solve problems that haven't been encountered before? Or, in your mind, is the solution to every problem that a modern software engineer might encounter already found in some stackoverflow post?
- peeters 12y ago
  > Does a modern software engineer not need to demonstrate an ability to design efficient algorithms that solve problems that haven't been encountered before? On the job? Sure they do. In an interview room? That's not an adequate replication of the job environment. I am not asked to design an algorithm for a problem introduced to me 17 seconds ago and have 5 minutes to do it. Plus, you're committing the #1 sin of interviews; that many of the people that can answer the question in an interview setting have encountered the problem before, and that's why they can answer it.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    That answers something that's been bothering me about interview coding. The ones who pass, are the ones who've seen the problem before. So its not a coding test nor a creativity test; its an experience test only.
    - cousin_it 12y ago
      I've passed many algorithm interviews without knowing the answer beforehand. It's very possible, people just don't bother to learn. Any good textbook on algorithms will give you the tools to create new ones. Mostly it's application of a few basic concepts, like big-O complexity, divide and conquer, or dynamic programming. Go through 100 problems on Project Euler and this stuff will become second nature.
- btilly 12y ago
  It all depends on the job. Most people with the title "software engineer" are day in, day out, faced with random debugging, tinkering with code and keeping the code-base organized as they go. Clever algorithms are not needed. Solid development skills are. Furthermore when you do run into occasional algorithm problems, it is enough for there to be people in your environment that you can turn to for that. This is an accurate description of most of the productive colleagues that I've known over the years. I've known a lot of people who do not do well on algorithm challenges, but who I'd like to work with again because I know that they can consistently pull their weight. But doesn't someone need to know algorithms? Well, yes. I certainly do. But it doesn't need to be everyone. In a good team, people naturally turn to the most appropriate teammate for help when they need it. So they might turn to me for algorithm questions, someone else for weird git problems, and yet another person for networking expertise. Algorithms are just one component. But, I can see you say, all else being equal, wouldn't you prefer someone who knows algorithms? Obviously so. But algorithms are only one component of what we do. And is not always strongly correlated with everything else that we need to know, such as unit testing and writing modular code. And here we get to the real problem. When our interview tests test something different than what we actually need, then we don't know whether we're getting the skills we need. Furthermore when that different thing is something that every other organization is also testing for (like algorithms), then we wind up both not being interested in people who have the skills we need, but we wind up in direct competition with everyone and his dog. Therefore interviews should try to test the skills that we actually need people to use day to day. If your job does not require people to regularly write clever data structures, don't test for that. If your job requires people to lay out and modify class hierarchies for new business requirements, test for that instead.
cousin_it 12y ago
Sure, many programming jobs don't involve any algorithm design. But the most interesting programming jobs tend to involve algorithm design.
- VLM 12y ago
  Luckily thats only like 1% of jobs, even if all interviews are oriented toward assuming all jobs are like that. This is like the problem where distinct classes of applicants "A level" "B level" etc can be designated and have peculiar hiring techniques for their level, so logically ALL employers see themselves as an "A level employer" even if they're probably B or C or worse, and get all confused at the outcome when a "C level" employer tries to implement "A level" employee hiring practices. Another unrelated problem is there is a legit observation that the most interesting jobs involve very interesting business logic and/or unusual situations. I'd much rather be programming a bubble sort on a mars rover at NASA than writing (from scratch of course?) quicksort at a corporate crud app house, despite in theory the crud app being more "elite" of an algo. You'd be surprised how much embedded / life critical stuff is brutally brute force, and is also pretty fascinating work. Implementing a beautiful recursive algo for robot arm movement is cool, until a stack overflow kills an employee. Then its not so cool compared to brute forcing it where the employee would have lived. I heard about that one although I wasn't involved directly. (and this is bordering on hearsay so I have nothing further to say wrt that specific death)

legutierr 12y ago

Does a modern software engineer not need to demonstrate an ability to design efficient algorithms that solve problems that haven't been encountered before? Or, in your mind, is the solution to every problem that a modern software engineer might encounter already found in some stackoverflow post?

peeters 12y ago
> Does a modern software engineer not need to demonstrate an ability to design efficient algorithms that solve problems that haven't been encountered before? On the job? Sure they do. In an interview room? That's not an adequate replication of the job environment. I am not asked to design an algorithm for a problem introduced to me 17 seconds ago and have 5 minutes to do it. Plus, you're committing the #1 sin of interviews; that many of the people that can answer the question in an interview setting have encountered the problem before, and that's why they can answer it.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  That answers something that's been bothering me about interview coding. The ones who pass, are the ones who've seen the problem before. So its not a coding test nor a creativity test; its an experience test only.
  - cousin_it 12y ago
    I've passed many algorithm interviews without knowing the answer beforehand. It's very possible, people just don't bother to learn. Any good textbook on algorithms will give you the tools to create new ones. Mostly it's application of a few basic concepts, like big-O complexity, divide and conquer, or dynamic programming. Go through 100 problems on Project Euler and this stuff will become second nature.
btilly 12y ago
It all depends on the job. Most people with the title "software engineer" are day in, day out, faced with random debugging, tinkering with code and keeping the code-base organized as they go. Clever algorithms are not needed. Solid development skills are. Furthermore when you do run into occasional algorithm problems, it is enough for there to be people in your environment that you can turn to for that. This is an accurate description of most of the productive colleagues that I've known over the years. I've known a lot of people who do not do well on algorithm challenges, but who I'd like to work with again because I know that they can consistently pull their weight. But doesn't someone need to know algorithms? Well, yes. I certainly do. But it doesn't need to be everyone. In a good team, people naturally turn to the most appropriate teammate for help when they need it. So they might turn to me for algorithm questions, someone else for weird git problems, and yet another person for networking expertise. Algorithms are just one component. But, I can see you say, all else being equal, wouldn't you prefer someone who knows algorithms? Obviously so. But algorithms are only one component of what we do. And is not always strongly correlated with everything else that we need to know, such as unit testing and writing modular code. And here we get to the real problem. When our interview tests test something different than what we actually need, then we don't know whether we're getting the skills we need. Furthermore when that different thing is something that every other organization is also testing for (like algorithms), then we wind up both not being interested in people who have the skills we need, but we wind up in direct competition with everyone and his dog. Therefore interviews should try to test the skills that we actually need people to use day to day. If your job does not require people to regularly write clever data structures, don't test for that. If your job requires people to lay out and modify class hierarchies for new business requirements, test for that instead.

cousin_it 12y ago

Sure, many programming jobs don't involve any algorithm design. But the most interesting programming jobs tend to involve algorithm design.

VLM 12y ago
Luckily thats only like 1% of jobs, even if all interviews are oriented toward assuming all jobs are like that. This is like the problem where distinct classes of applicants "A level" "B level" etc can be designated and have peculiar hiring techniques for their level, so logically ALL employers see themselves as an "A level employer" even if they're probably B or C or worse, and get all confused at the outcome when a "C level" employer tries to implement "A level" employee hiring practices. Another unrelated problem is there is a legit observation that the most interesting jobs involve very interesting business logic and/or unusual situations. I'd much rather be programming a bubble sort on a mars rover at NASA than writing (from scratch of course?) quicksort at a corporate crud app house, despite in theory the crud app being more "elite" of an algo. You'd be surprised how much embedded / life critical stuff is brutally brute force, and is also pretty fascinating work. Implementing a beautiful recursive algo for robot arm movement is cool, until a stack overflow kills an employee. Then its not so cool compared to brute forcing it where the employee would have lived. I heard about that one although I wasn't involved directly. (and this is bordering on hearsay so I have nothing further to say wrt that specific death)