Re:Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken...
by aaronbrethorst on Tuesday February 28, 2017 @05:03PM
(#13758535)
> If you have one candidate who has seen all of this stuff before and can use it directly from memory
Except that the continued success and popularity of books like Cracking the Coding Interview suggest that this really isn't the case.
The candidate who has spent the last month cramming on the best way to reverse a string in place, or the difference between the plethora of types of trees isn't guaranteed to be the best candidate for your position. All they're proving is that they can pass your screening process.
Edit: and to answer your question, I'd rather have the person with 20 years of experience in the field who can't remember how to draw the Lewis structures for arbitrary molecules off the top of their head than the doctor fresh out of school who doesn't have the slightest clue what this blotch on my abdomen might be.
Except that the continued success and popularity of books like Cracking the Coding Interview suggest that this really isn't the case.
The candidate who has spent the last month cramming on the best way to reverse a string in place, or the difference between the plethora of types of trees isn't guaranteed to be the best candidate for your position. All they're proving is that they can pass your screening process.
Edit: and to answer your question, I'd rather have the person with 20 years of experience in the field who can't remember how to draw the Lewis structures for arbitrary molecules off the top of their head than the doctor fresh out of school who doesn't have the slightest clue what this blotch on my abdomen might be.