IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

TJT

TJT

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alavaz said:
Well trick questions are pretty stupid. I also hate it when people ask you what you think is the best way to do X, and the whole time you are trying to say how you would do it they interject with questions and try to lead you down the path of how they would they would do it.

That's actually just a pet peeve of mine in general and seems to happen a lot in this line of work. Some manager or another will tell me to accomplish X and then nitpick my methodology the whole time and suggest I do it their (usually antiquated or misguided) way.
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I had a brain teaser in my interview yesterday. Luckily it was one I heard before and I just pretended to think about it before working the answer out in 3 minutes.

Suppose you are outside a room. The room has no windows and inside the room are 3 lights. Outside the door there are 3 light switches. Each switch corresponds to one light. You can touch the switches all you want but you can only open the door once. How do you determine which light goes to which switch?
 
Noodleface

Noodleface

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alavaz said:
Well trick questions are pretty stupid. I also hate it when people ask you what you think is the best way to do X, and the whole time you are trying to say how you would do it they interject with questions and try to lead you down the path of how they would they would do it.

That's actually just a pet peeve of mine in general and seems to happen a lot in this line of work. Some manager or another will tell me to accomplish X and then nitpick my methodology the whole time and suggest I do it their (usually antiquated or misguided) way.
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I wish I could remember it, but he had sort of an AH HA GOTCHA BITCH! moment with how the loop unraveled. Something about how it would optimize one of the variables and it wouldn't be what I expected. I don't know, I remember leaving that interview kind of discouraged because I hate trick questions. That interview question did nothing to demonstrate my capabilities but rather set out to determine if I knew this one random case from the compiler this particular dude was using. Had no relation to the job I applied for. Still got the job and every time I saw that dude he had a disgusted look on his face. I got my revenge when I left th company and I was the only bios engineer out of the 10k people. They didn't even hire my replacement until a month after I left.
 
Noodleface

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For the light switches is it something stupid like leave one on for several minutes then shut it off and turn on another? The hottest light was controlled by 1, the light on is by 2, light off by 3? I think I've heard this before and I was mad at the question
 
TJT

TJT

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Noodleface said:
For the light switches is it something stupid like leave one on for several minutes then shut it off and turn on another? The hottest light was controlled by 1, the light on is by 2, light off by 3? I think I've heard this before and I was mad at the question
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Yeah that's the one.

Interviews are seriously a crapshoot. I feel its luck of the draw if you get non retarded questions and make the right impression with them somehow. I almost laughed at the interview team they sent me. The format was 3 guys in front of me and a whiteboard. The lead was a fat guy in suspenders and a tie with a waxed mustache. A dude in a torn t-shirt dirty long hair and cargo shorts who was scarfing down pizza as he walked in and another guy who actually dressed business casual like I was.

They asked me two code questions I got right. That were quite easy. I fucked up syntax though because... fucking whiteboard. Then a ton of stuff about my personal experience and had me rate my skills in things on a 0-7 scale. 0 being never heard of it, 1 being you've heard of it, 7 being you designed it (like literally designed part of the linux kernel or something). Then they asked my personal hobbies and actively wrote all of this down.
 
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Deathwing

Deathwing

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We have the candidate implement hex() and path elision in a language-applicable-to-the-job web IDE. They can google all they want.
 
ShakyJake

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We don't white board our candidates. We simply talk with them to get a feel for their personality and whether they will mesh with the team. Afterwards, if we like them, we have them do a series of progressively more complicated code challenges on a PC. The final one being write a simple CRUD web app in their preferred language and framework.
 
alavaz

alavaz

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TJT said:
I had a brain teaser in my interview yesterday. Luckily it was one I heard before and I just pretended to think about it before working the answer out in 3 minutes.

Suppose you are outside a room. The room has no windows and inside the room are 3 lights. Outside the door there are 3 light switches. Each switch corresponds to one light. You can touch the switches all you want but you can only open the door once. How do you determine which light goes to which switch?
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Brain teasers are ok sometimes. I hope no one actually takes them as a serious gauge of skill, but they can shed some light on how a person reasons through things.

A lot of companies though thought they could just copycat Google and Microsoft by adding in brain teasers without actually understanding the point of doing so, and that was pretty annoying.
 
Vinen

Vinen

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alavaz said:
Brain teasers are ok sometimes. I hope no one actually takes them as a serious gauge of skill, but they can shed some light on how a person reasons through things.

A lot of companies though thought they could just copycat Google and Microsoft by adding in brain teasers without actually understanding the point of doing so, and that was pretty annoying.
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Brain teasers are a cop-out.

A good, clear, programming question where the interview and interviewee work as a team members is the best approach.
 
Lendarios

Lendarios

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That light bulb question is retarded. It has no logic to it and assumes a lot.

Also my coworker likes to ask on interviews, "what does the interviewee would like to do in Computer science", then he holds it against when the answer does not line up with what the company does.

"Oh yeah he said he wants to do AI.. well we don't do AI.. so he is not a good fit."
 
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Deathwing

Deathwing

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The primary point of a coding challenge is to see how they think, which is why we let them google anything. I mean, if you can't implement hex(), you have no business programming. I'm usually more sympathetic towards answering path elision though.
 
Khane

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If you give them a real world problem you are hoping they can solve, you should let them use real world tools, including google. Asking someone to write code on a whiteboard is idiotic and proves nothing other than memorization.
 
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alavaz

alavaz

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Well if you expect someone to write syntactically correct code in whatever language on a whiteboard, then yeah I think that's lame. A little bit of pseudo code though I don't see any problem with. Especially if the job may require it from time to time.

I mean honestly, I think a lot of IT people just suck at reading other people. I can ask maybe 10 questions total and get a good gauge at whether know you shit (or could learn) and fit in culturally. None of them overly technical or trick questions either.
 
Noodleface

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I just don't think having someone code something up proves much of anything. I'd rather know about a person's experience
 
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Vinen

Vinen

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Noodleface said:
I just don't think having someone code something up proves much of anything. I'd rather know about a person's experience
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I highly disagree. There is a reason FizzBuzz is such a common interview question (or as in the past). There are a lot of fakers out there.
 
alavaz

alavaz

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Noodleface said:
I just don't think having someone code something up proves much of anything. I'd rather know about a person's experience
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I'd rather hear them talk about it. Like I said, I've worked with 20+ year "engineers" who would look very impressive on paper but couldn't troubleshoot their way out of a paper bag.
 
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TJT

TJT

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Vinen said:
I highly disagree. There is a reason FizzBuzz is such a common interview question (or as in the past). There are a lot of fakers out there.
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Any idiot can memorize the modulus loop for fizzbuzz without actually knowing anything else about coding.
 
Vinen

Vinen

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TJT said:
Any idiot can memorize the modulus loop for fizzbuzz without actually knowing anything else about coding.
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No disagreement there. I should have been clearer and stated questions "like." Complex programming questions shouldn't be performed in interviews. Simple and varied (to avoid memorization) questions should be used.
 
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