
Faster Coding Interview Prep Using Interactive Visualizations - fahimulhaq
https://www.educative.io/collection/5642554087309312/5679846214598656
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coldcode
Perhaps the next thing will be AI driven coding interview robots. Why bother
with people when you can optimize the whole process without human
intervention? Call it Being Interviewed As A Service.

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moron4hire
"We put the extra A in BIAAS"

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ryanong
I always hated algorithm interviews when it came to applying for web
development jobs. I've been a developer for 8 years now and I have only had to
use any algorithms once in my career. I get it that for facebook, google, and
what not these could be representative of the work you do but I don't think
this is a good interview.

I tend to look for developers now that have a better sense of modeling and api
design. One interview that works really well is modeling a chat app and going
through all the edge cases. Also a fan of Rob's Pairing Interview that is
executed by pivotal. Build an array or perhaps a set from scratch and pair on
building it where the interviewer is a driver and the interviewee as the
navigator.

~~~
dominotw
you are right. But the fact of our industry is there is no way around these
interviews. You _have_ to do them.

~~~
bluejekyll
This is not true. You have to do them if you don’t have much experience, i.e.
straight out of college. With no experience, these stand in for an
understanding of your CS understanding. Organizations that put very
experienced candidates through algorithms questions show that they don’t value
experience, and I wouldn’t want to work there.

With a large amount of experience, we as interviews, should be asking much
more about past projects and issues people have run into. I find it much more
valuable to understand what real world problems people have faced, and how
they solved them. Sometimes you even get to a point where someone actually has
a good story about using the wrong algorithm, and so you still get to talk
about algorithms.

This tends to also tell you a lot about the candidate’s abilities to work in
the environment you are thinking of placing them into. Algorithms questions
should be a fallback only when you can’t discover this while running through
questions about their experiences.

~~~
watwut
The trouble with "nice discussion about past projects" interview style is that
it is super easy to pretend way more experience and skill then you really
have. You are literally measuring how smooth talking that person is and
whether has good idea about what opinions are cool now.

That is what fizz buzz or basic algorithms are for. Because really,smooth
talking incapable collegus do more harm then normal incapable ones.

~~~
jakub_g
Sadly this is very true. I had been working with a colleague who was a perfect
talker about best practices and what not, and first to criticize the offshore
team for bad coding, yet himself he was as well doing a lot of crazy things
and sloppy coding, and breaking the build and shipping regressions on a
regular basis.

Unfortunately I don't have a good solution to this problem.

I'm wondering how interviews in other professions look like. For example when
you're a director of a hospital and want to hire a surgeon. I guess you don't
ask him to come one day to make a little surgery for free.

~~~
watwut
Surgeons are heavily credentialed. You have to have school and residency and
subsewuent tests what not. I don't think same would be appropriate for coders.

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jfyne
Windows user here. .mediumTextViewer class has a overflow-x: scroll on it
which makes everything look like this:

[https://i.imgur.com/kE2ElEv.png](https://i.imgur.com/kE2ElEv.png)

Switch it to auto and it will look a lot cleaner.

Otherwise cool site

~~~
_nh_
Thanks for the suggestion. I'm the co-founder of Educative where this course
is hosted. We'll fix it.

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zengid
Is the industry staying focused on algorithms written in imperative Object
Oriented languages for interview quizzes, or has anyone seen more functional
styles being used? I know Facebook does a lot with OCaml so I wonder if they
are strict about requiring proficiency in OOP patterns, or if it depends on
what you put on your resume.

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kafkaesq
_Engineers have used Coderust to crack the coding interviews at Google,
Amazon, Snapchat, Uber, Dropbox, Lyft, Facebook, Microsoft, Netflix, Zenefits,
Pinterest, eBay, Twitter, Cloudera, Salesforce, Tableau and many others._

If one can "crack" these interviews by spending a couple of hours on some
interactive tool... then shouldn't that be an indication to those conducting
these kinds of interviews that, fundamentally speaking, they might not be all
that useful in the first place?

And not only that - but perhaps _counterproductive_? In that they explicitly
reward not the thoughtful, disciplined engineers you want to hire -- but the
drudges and go-getters who think, "Gots to get me into a top company - just
tell me what I gotta do to pass the test!"

Shouldn't it now?

~~~
noitsnot
The quote is a fancy marketing line to sell a product. Good companies don't
use a coding test to straight out determine hirability. Or at least they
shouldn't.

~~~
kafkaesq
They aren't 100% determinative, of course. But by and large, many companies do
place a great deal of emphasis on ones performance on these tests (perhaps
being only partly conscious of the extent to which they're doing so).

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shadykiller
Can anyone suggest if this is good and worth the money ? I'm planning
interviews at top 5 next year.

~~~
nerpderp83
[https://www.pramp.com/#/](https://www.pramp.com/#/) the ridiculous problems
are about 1/3 of it. Interacting and thinking under pressure are the other
2/3\. Best to practice exactly how one would perform.

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adwhit
Wonder if this got to the top of the front page because it looks like "Code
Rust".

It has nothing to do with Rust, of course.

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oldsj
Yea how are you going to put Rust in your product name and not even include
it!

~~~
dominotw
I read it as 'get the rust off of your algorithm coding'

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pfarnsworth
Is HN now allowing advertisements for services to be on the front page now?

