I've had some pretty easy questions come my way for FAANG interviews and some borderline impossible. Obviously, the easy questions were a walk in to the position. The hard ones, for the exact same position and level were immediate rejections. There has to be a better way to assess an individual's capabilities over more time than a few hours or days. Would like to hear other takes on this.
Testing always helps asses talent and knowledge
Do you remember everything you learned in complex analysis? Are you still able to compute the residue at the singularity of a given function?
No but the new grads I hire better remember
The best interview technique is to get them talking about something the recently did and go into as much detail about it as you can. You'll find out lots more than trying to trip someone up with an obscure coding question.
this doesnt make sense. people may touch some new area recently but have some strong background in other area
"tell me about a problem that you solved. Tell me more. Moar. Mooooooar." Either they solved it or they're full of shit. You'll find out either way.
Most software engineers that I know agree that it’s a pretty terrible system to assess software eng abilities. What do you get from seeing somebody code out regex matching or alien dictionary, most likely from memory? Some companies have a much better process than 5-10 leetcode questions. Their process usually involves system design/architecture, OOP design, data structures/algorithms, or going in depth into a project you’ve worked on. On top of that, they actually code on laptops instead of whiteboard (whose idea was that?). A couple of companies I’ve interviewed with recently stayed away from leetcode questions and I hope this new varied format catches on. Unfortunately, I think it’ll take FAANG a long time to change if ever.
Yes, they are. Get on board with the program. This is a time honored tradition between us nerds. We could measure dicks, but that won’t be very inclusive.
I’ve often wondered why interviewers don’t care to take a look at any open source code you’ve written. I even had an internal interview once where the interviewer didn’t bother to look at code I’ve worked on.
It’s not that good if it’s the only thing companies look at. But it’s not the only thing. It’s usually only 20% of on-site and acts as a minimum bar to make sure you have at least bothered to leetcode. And there’s tons of people who just don’t understand data structure/ algo no matter how much they leetcode, it filters out those people as well.
Ask the candidate to show some pieces of code he\she is proud of.
Unless they contributed to open source, they won’t be able to show the code they are proud of.
Home projects?
The current system exists because there is no other better alternative. When I ask coding questions to the candidate, I look for how they think, how they approach the problem, whether I can work with them and whether they can write code. It does not matter whether code syntax is right or not. Coding is the last step and often does not matter.
I saw so many smart speaking guys producing unmaintainable crap.
I don't think so. I've never been a fan of whiteboarding, programming or take home applications. I feel like the best thing is to just talk to the candidate and go over the resume thoroughly probing for issues. It's generally not that difficult to filter the people that are not going to work out.