Comments on: Interviewing Programmers

By: Out of Cheese

Out of Cheese — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 16:11:46 +0000

Interviewing programmers

Erik Barzeski has some interesting commentary on interviewing programmers, which was largely inspired by an article entitled "How to Interview...

By: hebig.org/blog

hebig.org/blog — Fri, 07 Mar 2003 10:18:11 +0000

News Roundup

APPLE Business 2.0 What Works: The Floor Plan With a Plan - "Retail design guru Paco Underhill explains the little

By: inpromissum

inpromissum — Sun, 02 Mar 2003 23:27:42 +0000

Interviews

When you get right down to it, I agree with Eric and not with Erik B., who has two separate

By: rands

rands — Sun, 02 Mar 2003 16:55:26 +0000

I've interviewed a lot of programmers in my time and I suck at the technical side of the interview. This is why I quickly identify a pitbull in my organization -- this is someone who is more than willing to ask the complex questions that most folks are unwilling to do.

The pitbull is specifically instructed to not ask programming questions because of the reasons above... you're usually set of supporting tools aren't there... besides... really... when is the last time you wrote NEW code as opposed to STEALING someone else's and adapting it?

The pitbull asks abstract questions which force the candidate to demonstrate their structured thinking. WHO CARES if they can program in Perl/C++/Python... can they take a problem apart and psuedo-code a solution?

You can't fake thinking.

By: Interviewing Programmers, Part 2 | NSLog();

Interviewing Programmers, Part 2 | NSLog(); — Sun, 02 Mar 2003 15:22:41 +0000

Eric-with-a-C has some commentary on my previous article on interviewing programmers. I also had a conversation with Jeff after I posted my article. I want to refine my point of view....

By: Buzz Andersen

Buzz Andersen — Sun, 02 Mar 2003 02:48:08 +0000

I interviewed with Amazon.com once and had a very similar experience. I was asked to write a program to calculate fibonacci numbers. I gave them pseudo-code, but I think they really frowned on the fact that I didn't produce perfect Perl code right there on the spot.

I had the same reaction as you: such a request is ridiculous. In my normal programming environment I have access to technical books, API documentation, a compiler, and my own library of past code (so I can remember how I solved a particular problem before). The fact that I knew how to solve the problem generally should have been good enough...

By: Jeff Hunter

Jeff Hunter — Sun, 02 Mar 2003 01:59:23 +0000

"No programmer is ever asked to generate code on paper except in an interview, and so asking for someone to demonstrate that skill is, it follows, not a very good indication of real-world ability." Maybe. But you must remember that for Microsoft it is probably not as important to hire every competent person they meet as it is to make sure that no incompetent people are hired. If you can't write code on paper, that doesn't mean you aren't competent, but if you can write wizardly code on paper, then you very likely are. Microsoft can afford to turn down people that they "should" have hired in order to make sure that everyone that they *do* hire is up to snuff.