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Admin
I don't really see the issue with the first story apart from the brusque way he wrote it. Many software engineers, especially senior ones, find it downright insulting to be asked to do some kind of technical test for a company that they are probably better than. Sure, the guy writing it comes off like a total douchebag bozo but he has a point: You don't belittle candidates with this in-the-box puzzle question bullshit like Microsoft tries to pull (the manhole question, or crossing the bridge, nonsense like that).
I would have refused that as well, although wouldn't have been as much of a jackass in the reply. Ask me for a code sample, ask me to walk through some ideas for a small application (one job interview I had we were discussing how to build a house for a mad scientist and sketching out ideas on a whiteboard), that's fine. But don't ask stupid textbook logic question garbage, because that's a waste of time.
Admin
Be wary of any programmer cursing a particular language. While it is easier to write good code in some, the quality of the code depends ultimately on the programmer. An experienced programmer may criticize PHP's flat and inconsistently named global function namespace, Javascript's poor DOM traversal or both languages' haphazard object orientation, but when someone rants that a certain language simply "sucks", it is just as likely that they can't use that language very well.
Admin
"using JavaScript is like getting a bad blow–" - to the face. I've been hacking on JavaScript for about 18 months and it doesn't get any better.
Admin
He must be a back-end kinda guy.
Admin
Eh, I rant about Java quite heavily... simply because there are better alternatives (such as C#) that do the same thing... for practically EVERYTHING that Java does, there is a better alternative: hence, it sucks. It is inferior to its competitors overall, and Java itself doesn't appear to have been designed very well - it can be extremely frustrating to use in many situations, whereas using even C++ in the same situations is quite easy (I actually enjoy using C++).
Admin
Oh, don't worry, I can estimate those numbers quite easily. But that's not the point.
You can give those questions to some newbie fresh out of college, but doing it to someone with a fair amount of experience in the industry is plain insulting. If he deems it appropriate to decide whether I'm a good candidate by asking me silly and inane "why are manhole covers round" type of questions, he can forget about me working there.
A man's intelligence can be inferred implicitly by paying attention to his code, his previous projects and overall demeanor.
It seems to me that those questions aren't really there to establish your ability to "give estimates on the fly", but rather to gauge your personality and filter for people who are willing to take it up the ass and not complain about it.
Now granted, some big companies tend to ask those questions. If I were interviewing with a big I-bank or a company like Microsoft, I'd probably take it, since they have an established hiring process and you can't do much about it. It's not personal. But it becomes personal when you sit face-to-face with the owner of a small startup who really has the choice not to treat you like a moron, and he still opts to treat you like you're mentally deficient.
Admin
It could have been better. The Recruiter's name could have been Lorena Sanchez.
Admin
You'd think that someone who reads tdwtf would realize that no matter the amount of experience, or the number of projects worked on.. That's no guarantee for competence
Admin
When life gives you a man with my skills, do this: Take your comment, roll it up, and HIRE ENGINEERS TO INVENT A COMBUSTIBLE COMMENT THAT BURNS YOUR HOUSE DOWN.
Admin
He was simply confused because of the latest addition of the ArrayLinkedList class to all known libraries. Totally understandable.
Admin
I did, with my ex-wife.
Admin
When a commenter with ABILITY humoAMERICANISMr makes a ADJECTIVE-arsed attempt at the recycled meme of replacing FIELDS in the OP, here's what you don't do:
Repeat it.
Admin
In local government, incompetent people get "redeployed". They get shifted from pillar to post. Unfortunately, by the time anyone high enough up the food chain realises that they've hired an incompetent, it's too late to do anything about it - if they try and fire it, it'll sue for unfair dismissal, harassment, bullying and victimisation, and the whichever way it goes the employer pays the costs and the manager concerned gets sacked or demoted. I bet they'd say something like "Oh, if only I hadn't been quite so polite to that person, maybe I'd still have my job and even have been promoted by now ..."
Admin
Admin
Well, if you want to give people a programming test, you could always do something like http://angel.sg01.net/test.php
Though that might be a bit cruel :D
Admin
Admin
10+ years of experience doesn't mean you're good. It could mean that you're just competent enough not to fail completely with a different employer every few years, and as soon as you get to the point where you can't fake it any longer ("oh shit, double-linked lists!") you move on.
Admin
Admin
Worked with one once. When he got on my nerves, I'd dig up the source for something he'd written, figure out how to make it core dump, and then file a bug report.
Admin
Proper response to Mr. Big Picture "Thanks for being such an a-hole up front so we didn't discover it after we hired you. We really didn't need someone who was going to do nothing but regurgitate white papers from Gartner/Burton/et al and then rant about how stupid everyone else was when your vague 'ideas' turned out to be poorly conceived and missing answers to the actual hard questions."
Admin
Naah, that's 100% Cave Johnson. I don't think Thomas B was talking shit, considering how he made it passed round 1 of the interview process.
Admin
Umm, but how can they know your skill level until they, like, ask you some questions?
Do you really expect to call a company and say, "I'm fully qualified for this job", and they'll reply, "Oh, well, okay then, I guess we needn't bother with all that silly 'interview' stuff."
Admin
==== Highlight for Spoilers ====
For the people who got question # wrong:==== End spoilers ====
Admin
From: Robin Lee To: Lorena C----- Subject: Robin - a great Job Opportunity
Dear Lorena,
Thanks for letting me know about the JOB TITLE job. Yes, I'm very interested in this position. I've been thinking for some time that I'd like to move to CITY. I think it's one of the most interesting and lively places in COUNTRY.
I am certainly qualified for this job as I have over 7 years experience in SHORT JOB DESCRIPTION.
I am a little concerned that the job is only for DURATION. I had been looking for a position that would be for at least DURATION*1.5. But I'm sure we can discuss this further with HR MANAGER.
Admin
I agree, sometimes interview questions seem silly (especially to an experienced developer), but given the attitude demonstrated by The Big Picture Thinker, my bet is he is much more likely to be a dickhead rather than a top-notch engineer... and if he is both than I'd probably not want to have him on my team anyway.
Admin
You should always send the "insulting". It was a written test that the guy never received, so how would he know how hard or easy or "in the box" the test was going to be.
When I run interviews, I always run tests because even the questions that I think are insulting end up pushing out at least 90% of the people because they can't seem to answer them.
Undergrad, Graduate, 2+ years experience, 10+ years, etc. Amazing!
Admin
Consider locality of reference. Arrays are stored linearly in memory. This means that the CPU's prefetch can more efficiently gather the soon-to-be-referenced memory data.
A linked list is harder to predict and pipeline. Not to mention that it's harder to parallelize onto multiple threads.
--Joe
Admin
The Big Picture thinker is probably the same guy who left this voice message to a potential date: www.noob.us/entertainment/the-douchiest-voicemail-in-the-history-of-douchebags/
Admin
Eh, I've seen senior level developers with 15 years of experience who can talk a lot about writing software and throw around buzz words and mostly just state the obvious. But ask them to write something trivial, from scratch, in a language they say they've used for the last five years and they drop the ball.
I don't know how the lasted so long, or what they did in the past. Still, they exist. I'd never be offended if someone asked me to show off what I can do.
Admin
Way to test if people can code 20 years ago. I had an interview once where I politely told the guy that I do know pointers, but that if anyone actually used UNSAFE code in C# instead of the built-in lists, that it would be very unwise.
Despite raining on his parade (again, politely), I got offered the job (but I took a higher-paying one).
Admin
Linked lists have to follow pointers repeatedly while arrays go directly to a memory address. Following 100 pointers may be fast, but it still requires 100 memory reads. Array references require zero memory reads since the address will most likely be filled in during compile time. If not, it's still only 1.
Today, this probably makes zero difference in 99% of cases, since CPUs can do about a million things a second anyway.
Admin
No at all. In addition to what others have already pointed out, if you know that the array is sorted, you can do an easy and efficient binary search. Not so easy on a linked list since access is sequential rather than random.
Admin
If you never kiss anyone's ass, then you don't need to worry about it. Simple.
Admin
With a pogo stick.
Alternatively, magic.
Admin
Admin
You mean, you can use C# to write cross-platform apps?
Admin
I have to say that I can see where the first guy is coming from. The style of the email indicates a mentally unstable person whom you probably don't want working for your organization, but I myself get more and more annoyed by recruiters sending my resume for senior developer positions and companies asking me questions like "what is an interface" and "how do you apply a CSS style". Guys, if you get "senior" resumes who don't know what interfaces are, stop working with that recruiter, and if you really think that it's worth your and my time asking these kinds of questions "just to make sure", then look elsewhere.
Admin
Hey, that job opportunity looks just right for me! As you can see I have just the right skill set and experience required:
RESUME
Admin
Looks like a full mental block. You'd need to figure out whether something like it would be likely to occur under normal working conditions.
Admin
If you were sending this to the interviewer's boss, then I can see this as a sort of Hail Mary play. Try to position yourself as so far above the maroons you have working for you now that the quiz is beneath you. (This assumes you can BS the one-up into believing you sight unseen.)
Sending that pile of drenn to the interviewer? This is either someone who didn't want the job, or someone very, very stupid.
Admin
I know this is an old post, but the first guy is a tool.
I had another guy I interviewed that supposedly did kernel work. Something equivalent to NATting. I felt I may insult him when I asked my screener question - linked lists. He failed miserably. If I just assumed he knew it, we may have hired him. And a 'kernel hacker' couldn't do a linked list.
On the other end, there's my ex-boss Chris' friend Mike. Chris was a hard core geek, doing TSRs for the hell of it. Mike was totally nontechnical, but had learned enough buzzwords from Chris that he literally had HR folks chase him at parties to hire him as a developer.
So this guy has unknown tech skills, and he's shown himself to be a dick. I'd shred the resume.
CAPTCHA: feugiat Made me thing of a feudal gay man for some reason.
Admin
Oh fuck. I'm always looking for new awesome hackers to hire, and I would hire this two first motherfuckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hprogrammers without a doubt.
Really, if you guys are reading, post contact information, you'll fit in our team like a glove.
(BTW: Javascript really is like a bad blowjob. At first, you want it. You think it'll get the job done, but getting through it can be as awkward as painful. In the end, you reach your goal, but you feel empty and disappointed, but hey, it's still better than nothing. )
Admin
Welcome to the Arpeture Science testing facility. We are sure you, <SUBJECT NAME HERE>, are the pride and joy of <SUBJECT HOMETOWN HERE>
Admin
i'm always looking for people like this, as long as they do actually know how to do all that crap. these types of interviews are insulting to many people for good reason, and i'm glad they have these types of interviews because otherwise a lot of bad matches would be made.
Admin
how come #5 question is: true || false && false
and the answer page shows: true && false || true
Admin
I like the mental image that the poor guy kept on repeating this until you thanked him for his time and told him you'd be in touch, and he went out the door saying "Array".
Admin
To figure out if you're paying attention of course ;)
Admin
You're doing it wrong.
Addendum (2011-06-09 23:11): Edit: Too slow, and too obvious.
Admin
I like this guy. I'd hire him!
Admin
"1. How many people are born in this city every minute? "
Estimate population - UK is about 50 million, so my big city is about 500k Halve it to remove men = 250k Assume equal number of people of each age Assume people die at 75 Use assumptions to remove people not likely to be pregnant - those < 16 years or > 45 years old - so remove 45 years worth of people in 250k group = 110k Assume 5% of 'pregnant capable' women are pregnant now = 5k (biggest uninformed guess I've made) Assume they have even distribution of dates to give birth = 5k/365 = 13 per day on average
Sounds about right for a city of 500k.
Estimation, showing assumptions and methodology, is not a useless skill.