Can’t just be me, can it? Currently 0 for 3 on interviews because I can’t seem to get past the technical interview/test. Usually because of some crazy complicated algorithm question that’s never been relevant to anything I’ve ever had to do on the job in all my years coding.
Also, while I’m ranting: screw the usual non-answer when given feedback.
If they ask a tech test question, it’s time to leave. When they act surprised, tell them you don’t believe in wasting your time with bullshit.
You’d be surprised by the number of applicants that can’t write a for-loop. There’s a middle ground between no test and complex tree search algorithms.
If I ever encounter that middle ground, I’ll let you know. Until now, it’s only ever been complex bullshit.
When I was interviewing people for sys admin jobs I would ask total softballs. People with any real skills at all would laugh and say, “that’s it,” at the end.
You’d be amazed at how many people those softball questions would knock out. I would even give them a laptop with full internet access. If someone can quickly find and implement and answer, cool, they have those resources in real life. Most couldn’t even do that, some wouldn’t even try.
When I say softball questions it was stuff like…
Open internet, with unlimited time, people failed this more often than not… not even getting close. It was really bad.
Lmao, what the heck. I’ve heard about that, but I still cannot believe it’s true.
This is why googling is a skill, even if I don’t know then some 15 year old kid from Bangladesh has a YouTube tutorial on it
Half the questions I asked were on a single page that came up first is a semi-decent search. Some people found that page and breezed through it. Others found that page, looked at it, didn’t recognize it has the answers and went back to keep looking. Some failed so badly they never even found anything close to the answer.
The most impressive one was a kid who never used Linux before. He looked up how to edit a file, then modified the file with vi, having never used it before, and he did it pretty quickly too. People like that pass in my book.
Why? Tech tests are fine, absurd complex tests for shitty jobs are not
If you find some that are reasonable then I consider you lucky. I have not. They’ve only ever proven to be an absurd waste of time in my experience.
I only got quite simple tests tbf, but I don’t look for senior positions. Main thing is to just get the problem solved writing decent code (if it’s a home assignment) or to walk them through your reasonings
The only time I got a leetcode waste of time it was a Dijsktra/A* problem (which I failed)