Re:Coding interviews are stupid (ish)
by belmarca on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @08:39PM
(#40293174)
Your "solution" is just another coding interview.
A typical engineer doesn't begin their day thinking "I should implement a streaming algorithm" out of nowhere (and if they do, they can always seek reference). They analyze a (typically underspecified) problem, figure out the constraints, and then start thinking about a solution. Note that both processes, analysis and solution, can take hours, days, weeks or months!
Coding interviews have everything backwards by providing synthetic solutions to mostly out-of-context problems.
For example, interviewers could:
- Share some portion of a codebase with the candidate prior to the interview
- Go over the code with the candidate
That's it. You will know really fast who's senior and who's never wrote software. It can't be faked. And it can be adapted to mostly any positions (backend, frontend, devops, architecture, whatever).
A typical engineer doesn't begin their day thinking "I should implement a streaming algorithm" out of nowhere (and if they do, they can always seek reference). They analyze a (typically underspecified) problem, figure out the constraints, and then start thinking about a solution. Note that both processes, analysis and solution, can take hours, days, weeks or months!
Coding interviews have everything backwards by providing synthetic solutions to mostly out-of-context problems.
For example, interviewers could:
- Share some portion of a codebase with the candidate prior to the interview
- Go over the code with the candidate
That's it. You will know really fast who's senior and who's never wrote software. It can't be faked. And it can be adapted to mostly any positions (backend, frontend, devops, architecture, whatever).