6 ms·

This happened to me once. I went for an an interview at a huge real estate company. They had a chat with me for exactly five minutes, then gave me a computer (a

by vijayr 11y ago

This happened to me once. I went for an an interview at a huge real estate company. They had a chat with me for exactly five minutes, then gave me a computer (an old one, with keyboard not working properly) and some legacy code. I wasn't asked to fix it, but I was asked to make a small change and given half hour for it. That code had no documentation and no comments. Then 5 more mins to explain what I understood about the codebase - no questions, just me talking about the codebase as much as I understood in that half hour. The whole thing took like 45 mins or so in total. No whiteboard questions etc. And they made an offer.

machinshin_ 11y ago
Did you accept?
- vijayr 11y ago
  No, I had another offer that I took. I'm an average programmer and was able to do the task easily, but that codebase really scared me. Plus the other job was to build something from ground up and I really liked the CTO, so I took it. They were primarily hiring someone just to keep it running than adding new features. It was a great interview experience though. One of the engineers commented that they gave the same task to other interviewees too. I think this is a smart and lazy way to hire people :P No need to spend an hour in the room asking random questions, having awkward pauses etc. Just let the candidate fight with the codebase - lazy and simple!
w1ntermute 11y ago
How'd you do it if the keyboard wasn't working?
- knodi123 11y ago
  Our main product was developed on a keyboard that was missing a "w". It's not a big deal, though - you can use a for(;;) loop instead of a while loop without hurting performance. And it's easy to just avoid "w" words in the view templates by being clever with word choice. Of course, that's not true at all. But giving someone a defective-but-not-entirely-broken tool can be a clever way of seeing how they work around problems or how they deal with frustration. Joking aside, we once let a guy go during his 1 week probationary period because he got a little too angry at a slow server. It's a valuable test.
  - CydeWeys 11y ago
    It's too contrived though; not having a single working keyboard anywhere isn't a real business situation. A slow bottlenecked server, sure. If the "w" key weren't working I'd copy-paste "w" characters from elsewhere in the document, or bring up the on-screen keyboard. Writing bastardized code -- for (;;), really?! -- would be a huge negative against a candidate. And, of course, if a company really didn't have a working keyboard to provide me with, I'd never work there in the first place, because if they can't even provide working peripherals there's no limit to what else they might skimp on. I actually have three keyboards at my desk right now -- one with Cherry MX blues, one with Cherry MX browns, and a Model M. No way in hell would I ever write code without "w"s.
    - grecy 11y ago
      Whenever you need a character your keyboard won't produce - either because it's broken or because it's in a different language and you can't figure out how to get it, just google the character and copy/paste it. i.e. Google "double u"
      - Terr_ 11y ago
        Or just use the mouse to open your whatever "Character Map" program comes with your OS... which works when you're missing the same letters you'd need to "sound them out", or even with no keyboard at all. (Assuming you managed to log in.)
        grecy 11y ago
        Try doing that when you sit down at a machine that has the language set to something you can't read :)
    - scintill76 11y ago
      I actually like "for (;;) {}" as an idiom for an infinite loop (or at least, the terminating conditions are in the body rather than the loop construct itself.) It maybe stands out more than "while(true)", so readers can easily see what's going on. But maybe that's just a justification, and the real reason is that it looks clever because not everybody knows you can do that with a C-style for loop.
- Qwertious 11y ago
  It wasn't working "properly". For all we know, that just means the insert and home keys were switched around somehow. Or maybe caps lock was broken.
- vijayr 11y ago
  They changed the keyboard twice :p
jsuar 11y ago
I wonder why this isn't more common with interviews.
rbobby 11y ago
> gave me a computer (an old one, with keyboard not working properly) What I like most about this is how close to reality their interview model is. Less than stellar equipment, legacy code, and a maintenance task... just a normal Monday.
- vijayr 11y ago
  Another story - I walk in on my first day (this is a subsidiary of a HUGE company). Nobody remembered that a new guy was supposed to join that day - so no desk or computer for me. First couple of hours I spent reading magazines, then I was given the oldest (probably older than me, ha) computer I've seen in my life. I am not kidding - I spent half hour just cleaning the thing (not talking about software, but hardware. it had half inch of dust on it). Good times.
overgard 11y ago
You know, interviews ideally go both ways. If a company was not willing to provide me with working equipment, I would likely decline any offer they might make. Not because I need the best of the best hardware or anything, but because it would be a huge red flag that they don't value the position or the people that fill it.

by vijayr 11y ago

machinshin_ 11y ago

Did you accept?

vijayr 11y ago
No, I had another offer that I took. I'm an average programmer and was able to do the task easily, but that codebase really scared me. Plus the other job was to build something from ground up and I really liked the CTO, so I took it. They were primarily hiring someone just to keep it running than adding new features. It was a great interview experience though. One of the engineers commented that they gave the same task to other interviewees too. I think this is a smart and lazy way to hire people :P No need to spend an hour in the room asking random questions, having awkward pauses etc. Just let the candidate fight with the codebase - lazy and simple!

w1ntermute 11y ago

How'd you do it if the keyboard wasn't working?

knodi123 11y ago
Our main product was developed on a keyboard that was missing a "w". It's not a big deal, though - you can use a for(;;) loop instead of a while loop without hurting performance. And it's easy to just avoid "w" words in the view templates by being clever with word choice. Of course, that's not true at all. But giving someone a defective-but-not-entirely-broken tool can be a clever way of seeing how they work around problems or how they deal with frustration. Joking aside, we once let a guy go during his 1 week probationary period because he got a little too angry at a slow server. It's a valuable test.
- CydeWeys 11y ago
  It's too contrived though; not having a single working keyboard anywhere isn't a real business situation. A slow bottlenecked server, sure. If the "w" key weren't working I'd copy-paste "w" characters from elsewhere in the document, or bring up the on-screen keyboard. Writing bastardized code -- for (;;), really?! -- would be a huge negative against a candidate. And, of course, if a company really didn't have a working keyboard to provide me with, I'd never work there in the first place, because if they can't even provide working peripherals there's no limit to what else they might skimp on. I actually have three keyboards at my desk right now -- one with Cherry MX blues, one with Cherry MX browns, and a Model M. No way in hell would I ever write code without "w"s.
  - grecy 11y ago
    Whenever you need a character your keyboard won't produce - either because it's broken or because it's in a different language and you can't figure out how to get it, just google the character and copy/paste it. i.e. Google "double u"
    - Terr_ 11y ago
      Or just use the mouse to open your whatever "Character Map" program comes with your OS... which works when you're missing the same letters you'd need to "sound them out", or even with no keyboard at all. (Assuming you managed to log in.)
      - grecy 11y ago
        Try doing that when you sit down at a machine that has the language set to something you can't read :)
  - scintill76 11y ago
    I actually like "for (;;) {}" as an idiom for an infinite loop (or at least, the terminating conditions are in the body rather than the loop construct itself.) It maybe stands out more than "while(true)", so readers can easily see what's going on. But maybe that's just a justification, and the real reason is that it looks clever because not everybody knows you can do that with a C-style for loop.
Qwertious 11y ago
It wasn't working "properly". For all we know, that just means the insert and home keys were switched around somehow. Or maybe caps lock was broken.
vijayr 11y ago
They changed the keyboard twice :p

jsuar 11y ago

I wonder why this isn't more common with interviews.

rbobby 11y ago

> gave me a computer (an old one, with keyboard not working properly) What I like most about this is how close to reality their interview model is. Less than stellar equipment, legacy code, and a maintenance task... just a normal Monday.

vijayr 11y ago
Another story - I walk in on my first day (this is a subsidiary of a HUGE company). Nobody remembered that a new guy was supposed to join that day - so no desk or computer for me. First couple of hours I spent reading magazines, then I was given the oldest (probably older than me, ha) computer I've seen in my life. I am not kidding - I spent half hour just cleaning the thing (not talking about software, but hardware. it had half inch of dust on it). Good times.

overgard 11y ago

You know, interviews ideally go both ways. If a company was not willing to provide me with working equipment, I would likely decline any offer they might make. Not because I need the best of the best hardware or anything, but because it would be a huge red flag that they don't value the position or the people that fill it.