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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

> o Do they ask questions?

I find I get 90% of the insight from simple questions like "write a function to shuffle a deck of cards. Don't worry about simple typos like forgetting a semicolon."

You learn a lot from how they set things up (make a suit class, and a vector of card classes? Or just use the integers 1-52?) and talking about that. Do they think about the problem (and, as you say, ask a couple of "requirement" questions) before diving in?

One of the best hires I remember was someone who got this problem wrong (went to a lot of work to leave the deck unshuffled). We gently asked if it did what was required. Hi smacked himself on the forehead and said, "I'm a fucking idiot" (in front of us in his interview!) and quickly corrected the bug. Great guy.

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I’m not sure that’s a great interview question; the right answer to google the appropriate algorithm (e.g. Fisher–Yates), make sure you understand implementation errors that will lead to bias, and implement it over any arbitrary sequence.

If you ask me a question that boils down to “write a card shuffling algorithm”, I’m going to do less well because I’m being taxed by the thought of “Why is this person asking me to shuffle a deck of virtual cards?” During the interview, I’d probably just google “best algorithm for shuffling deck of cards in <language>”, and I’d tell you I was looking it up. If you tasked me with shuffling cards on the job, that’s what I’d do.

You could just ask, and we'd answer "it's just a simple problem so both of us can see what it's like to work together." You'd be surprised how many people show up who don't actually know how to write a for loop.

And if you didn't like the experience you wouldn't want to work for us so the interview would be a success too.

> don't actually know how to write a for loop

My god, yes. We had a two-part problem that we used for the "work skills" part of the interview. Part 1 boiled down to writing a two-level nested for loop that was simpler than fizzbuzz. Part 2 was using that loop to solve the rest of the problem, which was far more complex. I lost track of how many candidates spent 40 of the 50 minutes just writing that loop.

Come up with better problems, please.

What would you recommend?

you don't actually believe that "work together" crap do you? You realize you're dangling a job over their head, right? There is a power imbalance. You'll never see "work together" in an interview because you're not colleagues on equal footing.

Often candidates already have a job and are looking to see if they want a change. There's parity in such situations.

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