Interview Qs - Your experience!

Pelvis

I'm working my way through "Cracking the Coding Interview" and there's a lot to take in really. I think it's a good catch all book but definitely has interviews with the larger tech companies in mind, so Microsoft/Google/Amazon/Facebook etc etc.

Just wondering what people's experiences are here going for interviews with companies like the above but also smaller Irish operations? Do they vary much, are there topics that everyone should focus on regardless? Questions that likely pop up no matter what?

14ned

Pelvis wrote: »

Just wondering what people's experiences are here going for interviews with companies like the above

The five/six segment tech multinational interview is fairly standard nowadays. Same here in Ireland. I've done those in Ireland, the UK, US and Canada, and they're fairly consistent across those countries. Which isn't surprising.

Pelvis wrote: »

but also smaller Irish operations? Do they vary much, are there topics that everyone should focus on regardless?

In local Irish companies, anything goes I've seen everything from a ten minute check to make sure you're not a serial killer (i.e. no technical interview), and you're in, right through to an hour or two of deep technical interview. Few Irish companies bother with the five hour interview though.

Pelvis wrote: »

Questions that likely pop up no matter what?

You can find lists of standard questions and answers for the big multinationals online. You'll need to rote learn those to have any chance of passing. Make sure you use a fresh list, they get changed up over time.

Be aware I've never passed a Google interview. Tried five times in total so far. For most of the tech multinationals, there is an expectation that you will repeatedly cram for the interview and reattempt as many times as is necessary to demonstrate to them how much you want to work for them. In other words, don't sweat the questions, instead prepare yourself for a multi year long effort to get in.

Niall

Idleater

Pelvis wrote: »

Do they vary much, are there topics that everyone should focus on regardless? Questions that likely pop up no matter what?

The last lot I went through (New Year) all had "submit a code project doing the following..." before which was both good and bad. Bad because they were all different and you can actually spend quite a lot of time on them assuming you are in work as well. Good because a good portion of the interview can be going through your actual submission and almost code reviewing it. I suppose companies can find developers that can talk through their work and explain themselves.

This means (for me anyway) less reliance on the whiteboard "can you write an algorithm for Fibonacci". I think there is now more emphasis on fit in the interview rather than raw programming. Having said that, I did get the random "explain inner join" when I mentioned searching a data store, or "explain process or thread lifecycle" when I mentioned investigating some exception or other.

In a way I hope this is the start of moving away from the formulaic interview that you study answers for to a more technical conversational to and fro where the candidate also gets a feel for the type of problems likely to encounter.

That said, I did read multiple "programming questions" lists and in one form or another what I was asked could be most likely found on one of them.

I should add, I was *not* going for "Google"-like companies.

14ned

Idleater wrote: »

The last lot I went through (New Year) all had "submit a code project doing the following..." before which was both good and bad. Bad because they were all different and you can actually spend quite a lot of time on them assuming you are in work as well. Good because a good portion of the interview can be going through your actual submission and almost code reviewing it. I suppose companies can find developers that can talk through their work and explain themselves.

Yeah, that's a big shift in recent years. The big multinationals don't do it ... yet. But almost every startup does, and small companies. They all want their "program solving real world problem".

I can see the attraction, and the gains, and it's an overall net gain I think. But some companies have front loaded it to the very beginning of the hiring process i.e. straight after you submit your application. In this situation, it's really a virtue signalling endeavour, you "proving" how much you want to work there to get far enough past the gate that a human will actually examine your application. I can see how that majorly benefits the company and its staff, especially small companies. But every candidate doing a bespoke multi-hour programming project for every application? That doesn't scale out well.

I've taken to answering such requests with "here's my github with 25+ years of code written by me. That's my proof of competence. I'm unwilling to do your programming exercise until after an interview with a human".

To date, everyone I've said that to has immediately cancelled my application. So there we go.

Niall

rainbow kirby

I find that sort of exercise an enormous pain in the arse. With two kids under 3 I don't have time to be doing multiple multi-hour at-home assignments as part of the job hunt. My current job was a phone screen plus 2 hour interview, with a 30 minute coding test there.

moycullen14

14ned wrote: »

Yeah, that's a big shift in recent years. The big multinationals don't do it ... yet. But almost every startup does, and small companies. They all want their "program solving real world problem".

I can see the attraction, and the gains, and it's an overall net gain I think. But some companies have front loaded it to the very beginning of the hiring process i.e. straight after you submit your application. In this situation, it's really a virtue signalling endeavour, you "proving" how much you want to work there to get far enough past the gate that a human will actually examine your application. I can see how that majorly benefits the company and its staff, especially small companies. But every candidate doing a bespoke multi-hour programming project for every application? That doesn't scale out well.

I've taken to answering such requests with "here's my github with 25+ years of code written by me. That's my proof of competence. I'm unwilling to do your programming exercise until after an interview with a human".

To date, everyone I've said that to has immediately cancelled my application. So there we go.

Niall

Gosh, that's really interesting - the fact that the cancelled the application. As I long suspected, it's probably a very strict process.

I had an interview a few years ago where I was asked to sort a set of strings using 'the fastest algorithm'

Anyway, couldn't be ar*ed doing it and, if I'm honest I doubt I'd have been able to implement Quicksort in 20 minutes, so I just wrote down insufficient information, I would need to know:
Dataset size?
Is the data sorted?
Are there duplicates?
Is the dataset immutable?/How many times do I have to search?
What are the memory/time constraints?
What sort of application is this for?
Is the data in memory, on disk, in a database?
Etc, etc

This would determine whether what type of sort I would use.

I thought this was quite clever - real senior engineer stuff. Anyway, the 'test' was being run by a recruitment agency (I know, I know, I should have just walked out) and the rather glamorous agent came back in at the end and said 'Ooh, you couldn't do it, that's a shame. The answer was......' Needless to say the application (I didn't want the bloody job anyway) went no further.

I should have written Bogosort for them :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogosort

Must say I find the whole 'test' thing with interviews to be a royal PITA.
If you can't tell by talking to a candidate whether they are a fit for the organisation then you shouldn't be doing the interview.

Really, what does being able to regurgitate an 'algorithm' in an interview prove?

As you say, 14ned, ain't nobody got time for writing 'mini projects' for every interview.

Maybe we should have a talent show - a sort of Britain's Got Talent for developers.

'Jimmy, will now describe the 246 options to the ls command whilst tap-dancing with a bear'

14ned

moycullen14 wrote: »

Gosh, that's really interesting - the fact that the cancelled the application. As I long suspected, it's probably a very strict process.

Something I've noticed is that the same "Daniel Oblinger" appears to work at all the startups I've applied to recently. I suspect he's a third party paid to filter C++ job applications, they give him a local email address. He basically has everybody do the (not great) Codility tests, if you get > 95% on those then you get assigned a three hour coding exercise which actually takes a full day, usually on a coding problem directly using the employer's bespoke technology and solving an actual problem of theirs. Only after all of that might you see a Skype interview.

And, in the end, for 100% remote positions I can see why they set the bar that high. You gets tons of applications, need a way of whittling them down. But equally you won't be hiring people like me with a recruitment process like that.

Same goes for Google or any of the other multinationals, incidentally. A few years ago I was happy to take their five segment interview, I didn't feel I was senior enough to simply say no. A month or two ago Google approached me again, and I said straight out "no time for day long interview sorry, too busy with standards work, plus not interested working onsite". Never heard back from them, as I expected (Google don't do remote workers, except when they do).

Microsoft however is starting to hire a lot of people remotely, if they have long track records in open source. Pay is daft high by Irish standards as you're paid out of Redmond at US rates. I'm very much hoping I can snag one for January 2019, it has a fair bit of travel in it, but it's in all first class at least.

Niall