199

Programmers of Lemmy, what are your interviewing horror stories? (poptalk.scrubbles.tech)

submitted 2 months ago by scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

138 comments fedilink hide all child comments

What are your worst interviews you've done? I'm currently going through them myself and want to hear what others are like. Dijkstras algorithm on the whiteboard? Binary Search? My personal favorite "I don't see anything wrong with your architecture, but I'm not a fan of X language/framework so I have to call that out"

Let me hear them!

(Non programmers too please jump in with your horrid interviews, I'm just very fed up with tech screens)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 77 points 2 months ago

I think the interview I least enjoyed was with an unnamed big tech company.

It was the first interview of the day and the guy came in with "so me and my buddy have been trying to solve this algorithm problem for years. I'd like you to try and solve it for me."

Like... Dude, that's not a reasonable interview question! You should not use algorithm questions that you don't know of any answer to in an interview. You're effectively asking someone to give you a solution to something way too complicated of a problem without even a few hours to think about the problem or sit down with it on their own.

[-] subignition@fedia.io 69 points 2 months ago

That sounds suspiciously like doing actual work for them.

[-] azimir@lemmy.ml 22 points 2 months ago

I had one interview where they literally got me to fix their Sendmail server while I was there.

[-] subignition@fedia.io 13 points 2 months ago

I seriously hope you got the job.

[-] azimir@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 months ago

I did.

I was there 5 months before heading back to grad school.

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 21 points 2 months ago

Oh god I've had an open ended one like that only once, and you're right it's terrible. Those questions would be great things to tackle as a team of peers where you're all working together without the pressure, but dude you hold our careers in your hands. Pull it together

[-] daq@lemmy.sdf.org 16 points 2 months ago

Aren't most questions like this are simply looking at what approach you try and not a solution? They've been at it for years so they can easily tell if you're trying something that makes sense or something trivial even if they don't have a solution or even if there isn't one.

[-] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 8 points 2 months ago

The problem is you're effectively leaving "can I program and work through the kinds of tasks this job entails" and entering "how do you work through a complex theoretical research topic" land.

White board questions should be relative softballs related to the work you're actually doing to see how you think... Now that's often forgon for "welcome to a game of algorithm and data structure trivia!" but this is just a much more extreme version of that.

Also if you don't actually know the answer, how can you judge the direction? Even if you do know the answer for a problem that complicated, can you say the interviewee isn't solving the problem in a novel and possibly better way?

I presume he was looking for specific terms like DAWG (directed acyclic word graph) and things like that as well... Which I know because he would teach me the names of things as I slowly rediscovered them in conversation. Personally, I don't put much stock in grading someone on their knowledge of obscure data structures and algorithms either.

[-] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 3 points 2 months ago

When I give interviews, I'm more concerned with the process than the results for some questions. I don't really do it any more, but I'd sometimes ask one question not related to programming or anything on their CV just to see how someone works through a situation given a little bit of a curveball.

[-] Fester@lemm.ee 5 points 2 months ago

Sorry, but the answer we were looking for is “I’ll need to work on this over the weekend.” That’ll be all for today. We’ll call you.

[-] olafurp@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Sometimes you don't have to solve it but instead ask them about what approaches they tried so far and suggest a new one. Just showing interest

this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024

199 points (98.5% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27268 readers

3285 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

6) No US Politics.

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.