Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

Re:Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering... by hermitdev on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @01:29PM (#16914654)

I remember interviewing a candidate that didnt even know what a binary tree was (context was big-O complexity of algorithms). That interview was really bad. Left the candidate in tears (which was not intended, but I think of their realization they werent going to get the job), and me annoyed at the waste of my time (should have been caught in phone screen instead of on site).

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Re:Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering... by nugator on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @02:03PM (#16914974)

Was it necessary to know on the top of your head without Googling what a binary tree is for the position the candidate applied for? I've been a developer for 12 years and I've never had the use for that. Computer science is a VERY large field and being good at everything is impossible.

Asking the right questions at interviews are crucial for finding the right people. If a candidate for a programming job knows binary trees but doesn't listen to other peoples views I would say he's less worth to us than a listener that easily learns new concepts but is currently not familiar with binary trees.

BTW, leaving a candidate in tears is not professional recruiting. Please let someone with more people skills accompany you to your interviews, you might leave people with scars that takes years to heal.

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Re:Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering... by AnimalMuppet on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @04:25PM (#16916199)

I've been a developer for 30 years, and I haven't ever had a need for it, either - but I still know what one is. I expect that you do, too.

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Re:Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering... by nugator on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @04:36PM (#16916316)

I came across it when studying computer science 20 years ago, yes. Heard about it after that but never directly needed the knowledge.

I'm sure it's used under the hood in a lot of code I write and have written but so is XOR, manual memory management and a bunch of other lower level implementations that I don't need to spend time on when developing on a higher abstraction level.

Not sure why you would expect all programmers to know about binary trees specifically.

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Re:Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering... by Retra on Wednesday April 25, 2018 @12:05AM (#16918559)

Binary trees are the simplest kind of nontrivial tree, and trees are used extensively in programming. Most computer problems are solved using trees of one kind or another.

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Re:Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering... by ascorbic on Thursday April 26, 2018 @01:57AM (#16929166)

If you've never needed to know it, what is its value for finding a good candidate? A lot of these questions are basically testing whether you did a CS degree. If you're self taught, you might be just as good a coder, but have never had reason to learn what a binary tree is or how to implement quicksort, or whatever similar puzzle.

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Re:Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering... by quickthrower2 on Tuesday May 01, 2018 @12:37AM (#16964618)

It's a nice way to filter out people who can code and basically do the job, but didn't have the financial resources to get a CS education, and weren't lucky enough when researching to see that his is an interview question. Although at least they'll know for next time.

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Re:Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering... by Clubber on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @02:22PM (#16915179)

Why on earth did you think that was a good, relevant question to ask? Did you ask about how to implement merge sort? I learned about it in college in the early 90s. Haven't implemented it directly since.

I'll bet, even with this feedback, you'll continue to ask that question, just because.

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Re:Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering... by rhizome on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @02:09PM (#16915053)

How often would you estimate either of binary trees or big-O were discussed in one year of that job?

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Re:Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering... by irundebian on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @04:43PM (#16916373)

At least, for sure I know I wouldn't hire you as a recruiter.

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Re:Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering... by debacle on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @03:10PM (#16915639)

Most programmers never need to interact with binary trees directly, and I would hazard a guess that if I asked ~10 of my compatriots about big-O notation, maybe 2 of them would understand what I was talking about.

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