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Comment by joslin01 | Hacker News Reader

How is that a "trick" question? I never been asked that in an interview question and had the correct solution in my head in just a few seconds for the very reason he gives -- experienced programmers can map their intuition to code. This is certainly a skill that takes time to develop, and if you're concerned with hiring the best, don't you think this is a decent heuristic to throw in with a bunch of others?

Programmers are so sensitive, and honestly all your "sighing" is obnoxious. You don't have it all figured out.

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I think most people here miss the point, thinking that they need to know about symmetric binary trees in order to be able to answer such questions.

These kind of tests are aiming to find developers who can think out of the box and start solving problems they haven't heard of before. This is quite a simple problem to solve if you start thinking about it. If you get stuck because of the binary tree and because you've never done that before, then I believe you would be a mediocre dev (which is not a problem in many companies).

" This is certainly a skill that takes time to develop, and if you're concerned with hiring the best, don't you think this is a decent heuristic to throw in with a bunch of others?"

It's an excellent heuristic. It doesn't separate good vs bad programmers; it identifies programmers who love solving problems, and see their careers as problem solvers instead of as limited-view coders who are assigned a javascript task.

Like you said, it also takes time to develop this. So it also identifies programmers who have taken the time to hone that kind of problem-solving intuition, which is far more difficult to develop, than throwing up a webpage with bootstrap.

I run a successful coding interview prep bootcamp for a living. Among other things, we also go thru several Data Structures and Algorithms. Primary objective is to practice intuition on some of these problems. Those who work hard at it, invariably develop irreversible intuition to this stuff.

[http://interviewkickstart.com]

> Programmers are so sensitive, and honestly all your "sighing" is obnoxious.

Perhaps instead of being annoyed, you could try to understand why people are sighing. Many of them will have lost out on a job they were qualified to do because of bullshit interviewing practices like this one. It has a real effect on them. It's not a trivial issue.

> You don't have it all figured out.

No one here has claimed to have it all figured out, nor are the majority of comments an implication of that. We're all just saying we have one thing figured out: whiteboard interviews are terrible, alienating, unrealistic, antiquated tools for hiring.

Your profile says you're a CTO, and you should know that research increasingly shows that people don't quit jobs, they quit bosses. If you want to be the kind of boss that programmers want to work for, you should be more open to understanding why the vast majority of us feel strongly about a topic like this instead of calling us obnoxious.

If you yourself are not a programmer, I'm not sure why you're weighing in on this at all.

I'm actually not annoyed nor do I misunderstand why people are sighing. Your emotional appeal does not hold much weight when faced with real business practices of hiring "the best" that every organization is going to strive for.

I'm somehow a poor boss to work for because I told the OP his sighing is obnoxious? It is. It feigns authority and condescends the entire post for being so dumb he has to sigh at it. While you might have your feelings hurt, have you considered the feelings of the guy who took the time to write up an entire post explaining his position in a rather civil & straightforward manner? Have you considered the person at the other end of the interview table?

> No one here has claimed to have it all figured out

> whiteboard interviews are terrible, alienating, unrealistic, antiquated tools for hiring.

Hm...

And ya man, I'm not a programmer but I figured out his coding puzzle in a few seconds.

> I'm actually not annoyed

Calling people obnoxious makes it sound like you were annoyed.

> Your emotional appeal does not hold much weight when faced with real business practices

People are highly emotional. Emotions explain the way people behave far better than logic does. Hiring is partially a process of selling a product (employment) to a customer with lots of options (the "best"). If you don't consider the emotional impact of your hiring practices, you'll turn off some of the "best" for no reason.

Considering and accommodating people's emotions also has a huge impact on retention, which is also incredibly important.

> considered the feelings of the guy who took the time to write up an entire post explaining his position in a rather civil & straightforward manner

No. He didn't have to write the post. He wanted people to hear him and respond, and that's what he got.

I consider the feelings of people applying for jobs because they have no other choice.

> Have you considered the person at the other end of the interview table?

I've been that person for 10 years. That's the first person whose feelings I've considered because they are my own.

Interviewing is boring, tedious, and almost impossible to turn into a repeatable process. I understand the impulse to find repeatable, objective ways to measure a candidate's abilities.

Unfortunately, people don't necessarily like being test subjects in high-pressure situations.

> Hm...

As I stated above, saying one thing about a very specific interview practice is not claiming to know everything. It's claiming to know a single, specific thing.

> Unfortunately, people don't necessarily like being test subjects in high-pressure situations.

And yet somehow they love to play highly stressful, challenging video games and love to be ranked against their peers. Something to think about, is not it?

If the reward of a video game were a job, and the penalty was being unemployed for, let's say, 2 more weeks, people would not play video games the same way they do now.

Artificial pressure and competition is enjoyable, just as roller coasters are enjoyable but riding a swaying bus on a mountain road without a guard rail is not.

> Programmers are so sensitive, and honestly all your "sighing" is obnoxious.

> I'm actually not annoyed

TIL that programmers can be both sensitive and deny being sensitive.

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