How coding interviews evolve:
- Whiteboard interview without internet
- Whiteboard interview with internet
- Whiteboard interview with internet and informed prep. materials beforehand
- coding interview (1 interviewee, 1 interviewer) in Google doc
- coding interviews in cloud coding platform
- coding interview in cloud coding platform and informed prep. materials beforehand
- Take home exercises
- Take home exercises within 8h (paid)
- Take home exercises submitted before given date (paid)
I have been through 30+ interviews, and no company is doing things beyond 10. All companies all prepared with well-narrowed questions that looks for the perfect answer.
Some twitter threads shows why Coding Interviews do not work:
i remain convinced that whiteboard interviews are little more than developer hazing. they demonstrate nothing of value or import about the candidate other than “can successfully memorize ’cracking the coding interview.’”
— EricaJoy (@EricaJoy) April 27, 2019
The pair programming interviews are pointless but they are at least a winnable game: you can ace them. You can't improve at many of the other games because what you said "wrong" in one whiteboard interview might be exactly what the next interviewer wants to hear.
— Avdi Grimm (@avdi) February 26, 2020
You ever think about all the great engineers who were passed on because they got anxiety during their algorithm interviews?
— Cher (@CHERdotdev) February 23, 2020
An Android dev I hired was very shy and wanted to make sure there wouldn't be live coding in the interview. I assured her that's not how I run things. Instead we talked in detail about past projects.
— April Wensel (@aprilwensel) February 21, 2019
She ended up doing stellar work.
Toxic interviewing would have ruled her out. https://t.co/dD9IXafnIz
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┻┳| •.•) you can't effectively judge a programmer's technical ability in a 1hr coding interview
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— I Am Devloper (@iamdevloper) May 15, 2019
Here's a crazy idea for technical interviews. Instead of whiteboard coding, 45-minute algorithms challenges, and brain-teasers, ask the candidate to bring some code they wrote. It can be anything. The interview is then just a code review.
— Rúnar (@runarorama) February 25, 2020
Algorithm interviews are a measure of how you'll perform during the kind of high pressure situation that
— Avdi Grimm (@avdi) February 24, 2020
literally will never happen in your entire professional career. https://t.co/itshyDRKlH
A good Hacker News comment on tech interviews. pic.twitter.com/doOFTz2tbt
— Max Woolf (@minimaxir) February 15, 2020
There’s absolutely no way I could pass the coding interview at any of the big tech companies. Even the ones where the interviewer learned to code from one of my tutorials. https://t.co/rheTgnosPe
— Michael Hartl (@mhartl) February 15, 2020
Some of y’all have way too much confidence in your own interviews. If someone with 20+ years of relevant experience fails your coding interview, it takes some damn hubris to assume that the person has been a fraud for two decades.
— Pete Holiday (@toomuchpete) April 15, 2019
Coding interview does not work. Interviewer should:
- Decide what to look for given a role
- Ask same questions and prepared how to score each question
- Talk in depth with the candidate about past experiences, projects
- What exactly you built, dig into details
These are from: