Are you up to the challenge? Dropbox wants to know

Re:Are you up to the challenge? Dropbox wants to know by jhuckestein on Tuesday September 14, 2010 @05:35PM (#1692419)

I'd love to know how well this is working for them.

I think the first problem is easy to solve inefficiently but finding a very good solution takes an inappropriate amount of time. The second problem is rather boring.

Perhaps asking open/creative questions makes more sense? Here's some ideas

- Write a script that saves you at least one minute of time every day

- Draw a picture of the future of the internet/technology/whatever

- Build a tool that amplifies people's need for cloud storage

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Are you up to the challenge? Dropbox wants to know by dagw on Tuesday September 14, 2010 @06:36PM (#1692596)

I'm guessing they need people to solve the sorts of questions they're asking, so filtering out the sort of people who find those problems "boring" or "takes too much time" probably makes a lot of sense.

Your questions would be more useful if you're looking for more of a high level concept architect rather than a low level algorithms hacker.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Are you up to the challenge? Dropbox wants to know by nl on Wednesday September 15, 2010 @02:25AM (#1693498)

I think the second problem is much more interesting, because the first one can be judged pretty objectively.

The second one is more about trade offs.

Assuming optimal coding, "better" output means more complex code, and means lower performance in terms of processing time and memory usage.

For example, you could write a very complex version that tracked the lifecycle of a file by it's name, and "folded up" the manipulations into a couple of lines of output.

This would be more complex, slower and bug prone - but more human readable.

A test like this is a very interesting way to understand someone's programming taste.

[ Parent | on HN ]