I agree with the sentiment that it is inappropriate to ask applicants to do significant work unpaid. They set themselves up for a lot of problems when they do that, and not just when they get a “blub” who doesn’t want to learn anything sharper than Visual Basic or PHP. At Binary Vibes, we have made it mandatory for candidates to write code during the interview. It talks about language features. If someone were interviewing to make a career move for the better I can see them being picky and having some leverage throughout the interview process. In the ten years since … Since we’re planning to hire you for at least 5 years at a $65k floor or higher, then invest substantially more in training, we _WILL_ want to see for ourselves that you can do the job. To Daniel: Agreed, and that’s why to me, ‘coding test’ and ‘provide sample’ are very different things. There’s a wider range of things I can do in PHP/ruby/groovy/perl (connect to DB, easier logging, etc), it’s one less language to burden other team members with, and so on. Seeing how they approach a problem and how they solve it, however, is very insightful about that person. I must also add that for a really good candiate, they’re going to get an offer long before they finish your silly pre-screening application “test”…. They still have to take my test though! He wants to see how people think, how they respond to critique, and how they come up with solutions. For all their faults, coding interviews prove three things: How coding interviews vary across companies. SQL challenges and questions are very common. One company I interviewed at (and was actually hired by) actively refused to look at my code samples, even after I offered them to multiple people during the interview process. Review this list, count how many of these signs you noticed, and you'll have a good idea if your interview went poorly or badly. In most cases, the programs don’t need to be functional. It is also designed to not only show common coding techniques, but also analytical and interpretational skills. I realize these are bold claims. I recognized that his lessons came from both a passion for coding, and a passion for teaching others about what he loves to do. See Resume prep items in Cracking The Coding Interview and back of Programming Interviews Exposed Be thinking of for when the interview comes Think of about 20 interview questions you'll get, along with the lines of the items below. Note: I wrote most of the words in this post, but the legendary Dave Holtz did the heavy lifting on the data side. Why do ask about the mistakes/areas you would change ? Worse yet, he can derail it. Plumbers would be even harder to get to your house than they are today. For junior programmers, this approach applies. I, too, sit the “other side of the table”. Do you think about how to code well? I’ve always felt it’s worth the code, small company or large. You will also here if they take responsibility, or blame others. During interviews I’ve done in the past, I sat next to the candidate and posed a somewhat neutral design problem – a quoting and booking system for a fictional shipping company. Then he asked me a question about a random class in the programming package, (one class out of thousands), which happened to be one that I would never use. I do have a problem spending several hours working on something, though, partly because I’ve already spent hours developing this blog and other code samples, and partly because I don’t have hours and hours to give. The truth is, you could probably fill libraries with resources to help you master coding interview challenges. If a company is using programmers for anything significant to the business at all, then the programmers will be co-inventing that business with them. Whiteboard coding has nothing in common with normal, day-to-day coding. Not only do you get practice interview questions and answers, but we create detailed explanation videos for each solution, showing you how to solve it in an interview. Decisions as seemingly trivial as “do I use MD5 or SHA?”. There’s no uniform standard or certification for that. The 1 assumes the 4 were snowed. Joel Spolsky talks about how it’s important to ask developers to write code during their interview. He likens the coding test to asking a plumber or an electrician to provide some sort of proof that they’re capable. I realize these are bold claims. I think you’re being not only a baby here, but also a bit pompus. Few months ago we interviewed a handful of Red Hat certified engineers. (And anyway, doing that solution via recursion is inefficient. Had you asked that question in the first place, you could have sorted that candidate out much quicker. Additionally, you’ll all have a better idea as to whether there’s a personality fit or not. Examples of good and bad interview techniques. We still have over 50% failure rates though. I generally don’t like coding tests because the people administering them don’t know how to interpret the results. If you want to work at a top tech firm, like Google or Facebook, we recommend you practice for: For more mid-range companies, like Series A/B startups, you can usually get away with less preparation: Yes, it is a lot of time, and you may be thinking “do I really need to prepare that much?”. In this article, I am going to teach you how to prepare and eventually get hired. But, we didn’t ask this of ‘senior’ (unless we got suspicious in interviews), and if someone had OS contributions, or just wanted to provide a general code sample, we’d be fine w/ that as well. Collabedit), white-boarding, paired-coding, or a variety of other styles. Few companies treat their programmers as ‘partners’ when it comes to making stategic decisions, for example. See more of his work on his blog.. In the end, you don’t have a solid ‘overall team feeling’ about the candidate. I’ve already responded to this post earlier but it prompted me to be a bit more verbose about what our entire recruiting process looks like. @Eli White: “Had you asked that question in the first place, you could have sorted that candidate out much quicker.”. You are bad at giving technical interviews. “Did you stop learning when you got your degree?” I didn’t say. In my experience, it rarely happens. At least once, I sent in a half-finished “test” with a note that I had another offer, so here’s what I have done so far. Totally agree. It’s like a driving test – if you pass, you get your license – but that absolutely doesn’t mean you’re a good driver. Acing the Google interview. Chris, I’m not sure “You do not seem to understand programming” is fair statement to make. Rob, it’s been my experience that there’s a fine line between a coding test that’s over the top, and a coding test that’s acceptable. The make-or-break nature of exams is clearly a reflection of abundant supply of programmers versus very limited demand from software development companies. At that point, we the team (not me the manager) make the decision to hire or not. Let them. And if they can’t explain more than (oh, it works) on a tech decision, odds are a) they didn’t make it b) or don’t understand it and c) can’t communicate it. Before diving into code, most interviewers like to chitchat about your background. I generally acknowledge that that *can* be done in a variety of shells, but I tend to do complex shell scripting in PHP (or on occasions ruby, groovy or perl). Asking the specifics of some method in some library is extreme and probably useless since that kind of information can be Googled. Too much advice obscures itself and makes it hard to navigate. The software engineer can effectively articulate their problem solving. Managers, HR departments and headhuters need to stop taking shortcuts in hiring because it only leads to hiring mistakes. Just because you have been code for 10 years does not mean you are an architect or senior developer. But my definition of “coding test” does not include anything that should take over 30 minutes. And only then once he’d failed asked: “Where does a server store mail on the server”, and got the ‘mutt’ answer. The person managed to successfully answer some of my questions because he had worked with a team that managed several email servers. To have had an initial phone interview with the person, to get a ‘good feel’. It is a very sensitive and controversial topic. re:zce – I think the zend *framework* cert is probably more like what you’re thinking. This is where the real fun begins! The dynamics of a team interview are such that it is very difficult to BS other developers for very long. Those sorts of tests have a habit of reinforcing the company’s culture by ensuring only like-minded and like-abled people get in. It’s not a trade. After answering the questions, I was asked to come in to take a coding test that consisted of: creating a database, stored procedures, designing web services and a web front-end. ZCE is anithetical to demonstrating programming knowledge. But it won’t be cheap to play. Software engineers love to trick the interviewees and give extremely challenging questions. For some reason people praise ‘well documented, well written OO PHP code’, but the same people (sometimes) want unintelligble one-line BASH hacks. I also agree with Cal on the interviews, our current interview process is to give the guy at least 2 or 3 1-1 with the whole team, which is awesome since we are a multi-discipline team, each one can evaluate a different area, plus we rely a lot on the “team feel”, the guy needs to be good, but he also needs to be a great guy on a personal level, like fit in the team. Coding tests can be perceived offensive and disrespectful by decent programmers. Do you really want to work in every single one of these shops? if nothing else it shows that they put forth the effort. As to the things it tests, I’ve now come to look at it as a way of demonstrating that you’re able to deal with a myriad of other peoples’ code, which is often what employers are hiring you to do (come in and work on existing code). You need to look at the entirety of their resume, not just one aspect of it. The test that irritates me the most is a list of questions on paper: what does the PHP function X do, what PHP function would I use to do Y? There are both paid and free trainings on the internet. You can’t know for sure. While the format and length of tests are debatable, I have yet to find a better way of discerning a good developer from a bad one than to look at their actual work. Some are obvious and some are sneaky. It's all in the approach-- this guide is a step by step walkthrough on exactly how to answer coding interview question from companies like … It takes time to be proficient at interviews. What to do when stuck# Getting stuck during coding interviews is extremely common. The software engineer can solve problems and actually code. I know they’re looking for some “I’ve done sysadmin work so I’m some unix geek and I know sed/grep/sort/uniq like the back of my hand and can pipe stuff around in one long BASH line” sort of answer. You are looking for the design process, requirements, expectation management, how team members were used etc, how they communicated up and down. The chance that an interviewer will ask me a question that I can solve easily on a whiteboard in just a minute or two while under the stress of an interview, is nill. If you find yourself seemingly unable to move forward on a coding problem, you have way more options at your disposal than you probably think. I couldn’t exactly determine the candidate’s skill level based on the discussion. Get real. Are they the type to completely overengineer a simple task? However, speaking from he other side of the table, the manager doing the hiring, I do agree with you on this point. Any qualified programmer, he says, should be able to produce that function about as quickly as it takes to write it down. That's right, you can get good at getting un-stuck!You just have to learn the steps. Our test is designed to be simple; it should take an experienced programmer no more than 30-45 minutes to write a good solution, but it has room for ‘showing off’. I’ve also noticed the same initial screening questions (which I inevitably never prepare for and get wrong) involving differences between inner and outer joins and other somewhat geeky stuff. I simply responsed “Are you serious? I always pay well for the consulting gig but about 3 weeks in, I get the entire team together again for a stand-up. Yes. If you disagree with the methods of the certification, then simply disregard it when looking through candidates — but outright dismissing a candidate for taking it? If you’ve got your heart set on applying to a certain company, it then makes a lot of Essentially, coding interview preparation needs to be a daily habit. You certainly can make out whether the candidate belongs to A grade category, by talking about relevant subjects for a while. Yes this interview process take a minimum of 4 hours, but it weeds out a lot of the jokers. Don’t piss on yourself when you go to interview! However, making a mistaking on hiring is even more expensive. You don’t want that! I highly dislike this practice. In fact, with a bit of poking, you can find out *lots* more than even a few interviews can give you. I think he may have done it because he felt his position was threatened, the company should have had a director with him. And although Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions does cost money, the price is modest compared to your earnings once you pass your interview and receive an offer from a FAANG. I don’t know about Zend PHP certification yet”. The last one I applied to wanted 15 years of detailed work history, it took me 2 hours to fill out. I now understand those operations were nothing but a series of instructions provided by a senior. To fully prepare for your technical interview, you should always know the company, give a good first impression, understand body language, learn to talk about your projects, and be ready for a coding assignment. There is a risk that busy candidates won’t find time to attend an interview in the middle of the day that happens to coincide with when the interviewer was available. We’ve had candidates spent half a day and delivering it with design documentation, unit tests and api documentation, but that’s up to them. Point is you probe at what you expect them to know rather than make an assumption. I’ve applied to a job before where I had been asked to answer about 10 conceptual and function questions (such as structure of cursors in SQL) before I’ve been asked to come in for interview. Asking someone to write a recursive function, for example, is an acceptable technique to weed out programmers from non-programmers. 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