This is something I've been wondering about over the past year, as I've been interviewing: Why are almost all interview coding tasks taking place using pen and paper rather than using a computer with a text editor or a full IDE? I've only had one opportunity this year to actually type in code. I can see many disadvantages for pen and ...
What are your criterias when interviewing a developer? What tests should he/she pass to be technically over-qualified to work in a small company that needs the best developers I can find? How can one determine that a developer can cooparate with others to achive teamwork? What qualities are you looking in a person (as in not proffesional...
Background: I have an interview some time next week (for a Jr position) that requires SQL Server. The job descriptions states "Must be able to score high in a C# and a SQL Server design test." I feel I'm solid on the C# portion, and I think I'm pretty good on implementation-agnostic DB design (Reread "Mastering Data Modeling" by Car...
I was reading about this person's interview "at a well-known search company". http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2009/05/one-of-toughest-job-interview-questions.html He was asked a question which led to him implementing a hash table. He said the following: HASH = INITIAL_VALUE; FOR EACH ( CHAR IN WORD ) { HASH *= MAGIC_NUMBER HASH ^= CHAR...
The program requires an input of an arbitrary large unsigned integer which is expressed as one string in base 10. The outputs is another string that expresses the integer in base 16. For example, the input is "1234567890987654321234567890987654321234567890987654321", and the output shall be "CE3B5A137DD015278E09864703E4FF9952FF6B62C1CB1...
Hi, I was recently asked this question in an interview: "How could you parse a string of the form '12345' into its integer representation 12345 without using any library functions, and regardless of language?" I thought of two answers, but the interviewer said there was a third. Here are my two solutions: Solution 1: Keep a dictiona...
given any number, what's the best way to determine it is even? how many methods can you think of, and what is the fastest way and clearest way? ...
You are conducting interviews for a few (3) hypothetical software engineer positions that have just opened up in the company for which you work or own. The position involves a small team environment and implements leading edge technologies and methodologies. You have a stack of roughly 100 resumes. How do you pick your 20 phone intervi...
What qualities or traits do you think attract talented programmers to a particular company? Certainly there's compensation, and company image, location, and other factors that you can't always change. As a company, what kind of environment can you foster that will make talented individuals seek you out and want to work for you? What sho...
I've been programming off and on since 4th grade (for about 20 years). Technology is one of my passions but after working in the field for a couple years out of High School, I spent nine months and $15,000 getting an accredited certificate in music performance instead of CS. I've been doing lots of self study but I think a CS degree is ...
In exams and interview situations, it's common to need to either write or review code that's not on a screen. Whether it's on paper or a whiteboard, what tips can you offer for both the writing and reviewing/debugging processes? ...
As an interviewer, do you have a policy on telling a candidate why he failed an interview? Does it change if he asks why he failed? As an interviewee, do you ask? Whenever I get to a face to face interview in the hiring process, and then don't make it, even if I feel I've aced the interview, I always feel crushed. I'm also very hesit...
This kind of relates back to the Specialist vs. Generalist questions, which I know that Both is the correct answer for, but I am coming at it from a different direction. I do the interviewing for new software development candidates, and we currently evaluate heavily for specific language skills and knowledge and look for specific langua...
There is an increasing (and generally good) trend for potential employers to ask candidates to sit some sort of technical test before even being invited to interview. I appreciate that it is going to be more cost-effective that even a phone call to screen you but there seem to be two types of test out there, in the wild. The first ty...
I was on a job interview few days ago and for the n-th time in the technical part I was given a detailed test with a set of .NET questions, some simple, some harder. After I had finished I thought about the reasons of doing this, because I don't really see the point. If I had to do something in my project that I already did't know, I wou...
My understanding is that asking for a work sample is a good way to determine if someone has the skillset you are looking for, as some people just interview well. So I want to ask potential developers to write some sample code for me. I'm looking for ideas on what kind of small project would be something they could do in an hour or two, ...
A friend of mine was asked, during a job interview, to write a program that measures the amount of available RAM. The expected answer was using malloc() in a binary-search manner: allocating larger and larger portions of memory until getting a failure message, reducing the portion size, and summing the amount of allocated memory. I beli...
I am from Mechanical Engineering background. Then I started working as Classic ASP and HTML programmer in 99. I started working on ASP,HTML and ASP.net from the past 5 years. I should admit that my basics are not good. wherever I worked in the past 8 years my managers were very happy with my work. I just completed my 2 year contract and...
I've come up with what I believe are realistic problems to work on during an interview. Frequently I have candidates respond that they cannot code under the pressure of me watching them code (via Live Meeting or Locally). Is this a valid excuse for inability to complete the task (or taking too long) during the interview? If so, what c...
Assuming: Typical interview stress levels (I am watching) Using familiar IDE and program language (their choice on their PC!) Given adequate explanation and immediate answers to questions Able to compile code and check answers / progress Claims to be a senior level programmer How long should it take an interviewee to answer FizzBuzz ...