sfthrowaway

I completely agree. I feel like these type of interviews are biased towards developers who have just graduated and still have data structures fresh on their minds and have the free time to actually study for interviews. I also think that this is an incredibly inefficient way to hire developers for both sides of the process. I mean, having 4-5 developers spend a one hour meeting for each interviewee who has a high chance of not making it is such a waste of time. And on the interviewee side, having them take a day off just to interview? That's a lot to ask especially if they are interviewing for several companies. Again, this is a bias towards younger grads who do have the time to take a day off.

Personally, if these algorithm interviews are nothing more than a fancy FizzBuzz test, why not just provide a take home coding problem? And if the interviewee doesn't pass them, then at least they just didn't waste a vacation day to interview with the company. And if they do pass, then subsequent interviews should be more open ended (like how to design/code an elevator) and more knowledge base (deep down questions about systems that they have worked on) to prove that they try to understand the entire problem space and not just do superficial fixes.

Also IMO, asking questions where there is an obvious right or wrong answers adds unnecessary pressure to the interviewee since a 90% correct solution is still wrong. And expecting an interviewee to code during a whole day interview is crazy. How many of us can think straight after having a whole day high pressured meeting?

In all honesty, the place where I worked with the best developers was with this one company who only had an average level of difficulty on their interview process but was very proactive in letting people go if they don't measure up within 6 months. I'm not saying that is the correct approach (as it had an adverse effect on the company culture and welcoming new employees), but I think for me, I would gladly do that rather than go through the Bay Area interviews.

Thanks for the recommended books and links. That's actually what I'm currently doing. Studying and practicing. I just wish there was a better way. I feel like I'm back to my school days where your SAT/GRE scores mean more than your body of work. Of course, the difference is that I have to take a test for each company I apply to now.

Hah.. sorry about the long paragraph. I edited it so it's now two whopping paragraphs :) And thanks for the link, that's really useful!

An active github/stackoverflow account would definitely have helped me, but it seems like, those things just gets you to the first step of getting a phone interview. You will still have to go through the entire process. But yeah, I do just have to keep at it.