Want to become a doctor? Study for 12-15 years. Lawyers, accountants, pilots, actuaries all have similar multi-year licensing requirements. Places like investment banks and consulting firms will put candidates through a multi-week interview process involving stuff like case studies which make a 1 hour technical interview seem like a joke. And on top of it all you still have to "make an impression" which involves networking and ass kissing the right people in the chain.
Being able to walk into any company with just a 4-5 hour mostly objective interview is one of the best parts of the software industry.
Yeah, and all of those years are filled with constant punishment. In my experience it was common for medical students to have depression, severe anxiety, panic attacks before and after tests and exams. Binge drinking was extremely common after. At least two students committed suicide.
A glimpse into US medical school life:
https://web.archive.org/web/20101218031844/http://www.medsch...
Definitely not something to be emulated.
Turns out he was addicted to cocaine.
I do the same kind of interview, and after figure this issue happens, also LEFT the room.
Then eventually add: You can do it any language (even different to any we was hiring), then add: You can do whatever you want to succeed (hinting to the fact the machine used has the docs, internet, YouTube influencers, whatever at their fingerprints).
It STILL have huge casualty rates.
What all of this left me to wonder: How the heck this industry absorb they?
e.g: I challenge you to give an answer to my question?
it's such a simple question, how could anyone not give the right answer. but it's as badly communicated as your comment, subject to interpretation and perplexing.
now imaging being in a position of inferiority, in total fear to be asked about things you've never hear about before. like it happens not so rarely when sitting University in exams. you studied 90% of the curriculum for a year, but, bad luck, the exam concentrates on that 10% you've overlooked. you haven't prepared for a year for that interview, but it does feel like it while waiting in that soulless waiting room. The secretary bored to death nearby doesn't help gain any courage: she mastered the art of pretence, she isn't building some complex excel queries, she plays the solitaire. but you don't know that. and you haven't even entered the interview room yet.
if you don't picture that scenario, just try to give a speech on a very large audience. you will see how emotions can very well take full control over you.
Questions:
- Reverse a string like "hello" without using the "reverse" function of your lang, ie: manually
- Do it in the lang you prefer most
- I will return later when you are ready
- This machine is as your full disposal, so use anything you need.
Seriously, if this is challenging, now imagine when facing actual requirements...
this interview question is crystal clear and anyone applying for a software dev position should be able to provide a valid answer.
it doesn't remove the fear factor problem. but agreed. that's also why we got screening calls, in 10 mins even a tech recruiter can filter out wanna be engineers who can't answer super basic tech questions.
We would give them a quick screen of “write in one of the languages this position requires a program that takes in a string, reverses it and prints it out.” And we changed it to any language once we started working with novel stuff like JavaScript that any programmer could pick up.
It was so weird how many people would fail this test.
I always wondered how other industries dealt with people just flat out lying on resumes and applying for positions they shouldn’t. Programming is lucky that we have some litmus tests.
I feel bad for people who freeze up and can’t even write a three line program on paper.