Comment by codex_irl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by codex_irl | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Rails developer here, I am thinking of changing jobs right now but am put off by the thoughts of going to bullshit technical interviews where I need to implement / modify some obscure algorithms or concepts which I last saw 12+ years ago in a computer science class.

I would be much happier if the interviewer gave me a small app to create from home (which was relevant to the work they actually do) & then discuss my implementation choices in person with them.

What is the point of having me spend most of an interview doing things with dijkstra's algorithm if never, in the history of your company has this been used nor do you plan to use it & then spend the last 5 minutes asking a few vague questions about what I like about Ruby / hate about Rails.

Technical tests, in my experience, are mostly (90%+ of the time) composed of challenges which have no relevancy to the work I would be doing for that company, its pointless ceremony over common sense.

Do you, in fact, have small apps that you send to companies you apply to? Because I personally will spend time asking that flavor of "bullshit" questions if and only if the candidate can't show me any significant code they've written. I have to gather some kind of direct evidence that you are good at actually writing programs.

I have a few small apps, personal projects, that I have offered to show to an interviewer & discuss, while this offer is normally received positively, it is always viewed as an addition to some sort of cryptic test, never a replacement.

I am also happy to work on a small take-home project for them (within reason) & provided its relevant to the work they do.

But how does the company recruiting you know that you are actually doing the work, and not having someone else do it.

The purpose of data structures and algorithms questions is to demonstrate some abstract thinking and coding ability in a short space of time - if you can do that you can probably code in whatever language / framework they use.

Brainteaser questions on the other hand, those are worthless.

That is a genuine concern, however what would be the point, within hours of me starting my first project with them it would become obvious that I could not do my job & end up being fired. Lose Lose for everyone.

Also, having been on the interviewers side of the table - I think as soon as a candidate & I begin discussing his code & technical choices, it becomes obvious if he did the work himself i.e. can he talk in depth about the stack he used, any algorithms, schema decisions etc... or does he just give short "I'm hiding from your question" type answers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com