

Ask HN: Interview questions for experienced programmers - 31reasons

I have 15 years of experience as a software developer. What kinds of interview questions are asked to experienced programmers at Silicon Valley startups and companies like Google, Apple etc ? Are they exactly the same as someone getting out of collage ?
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gensym
Nope.

When you're a new college grad, it's assumed that you know jack but are
hopefully smart enough that you can learn it. Even if you've had some
internships, it's understood that someone else was calling the shots, and
you're just doing what you're told. The only real exception here is folks
who've shown some true entrepreneurship or have already made significant open-
source contributions.

Therefore, the questions that most companies ask new college grads are to
assess potential - what you got out of your college courses, what initiative
you've shown in your life so far, what your general level of curiosity,
intelligence, etc, etc, etc is. Hence lots of puzzle-type questions and
softballs to give you a chance to highlight the best stuff you've done in the
first 20 or so years of your existence.

However, when you have 15 years of experience, you'd better know your shit in
several areas related to your work experience. Expect to be grilled in the top
few technologies you list on your CV. Also, at this point, you're expected to
have shown good judgement and leadership at some point, so expect to be asked
about that. And savvy companies know that in 15 years, you've likely royally
screwed up on some occasion, so expect to be asked about that in order to
demonstrate hat you're honest, humble, willing to learn from mistakes, and a
whole slew of other things smart developers want to see in their experienced
comrades.

In other words, review your work experience so far - what have you learned?
How have you demonstrated your value? Where have you grown? Where are you
still growing? Be prepared to talk about those things - and don't pass up the
opportunity to do so.

Many prospective employers and future coworkers will be concerned that your
knowledge is 15 years old, so be prepared to answer potentially condescending
questions about how you've kept your skills up to date (and I sure hope you
have).

(Nevermind that everything interesting in software was discovered 30 years ago
- that won't impress anyone who's not already very aware of the fact, so it's
probably not worth pointing out.)

Oh yeah, and expect to code. At the very least, expect to show some code
you've written. This should be true (at clueful companies) for new grads as
well, but is typically more true for experienced hires.

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31reasons
Thank you for your thoughtful response. So it seems, there could be a lot more
behavioral style questions compare to white-board coding? Does that mean less
algorithm and binary tree/sorting related questions?

I've been a programmer all those years and haven't pursued much on managing
other people, would that work against me ?

~~~
gensym
Yes, more behavioral, less algorithmic. At least, fewer general algorithmic
questions, though maybe expect some that are specific to the employer or your
experience.

Regarding the managing thing - not necessarily, though most programmers with
your years of experience have managed in some capacity before, you so may be
asked why you have not. In my experience, though, a lot of experienced
programmers looking for jobs seem to be in the opposite situation - they've
been managing for a few years and now are looking to get back into
programming.

~~~
31reasons
I was in academia for 8 years and working with scientists to build prototypes.
Although work is interesting in universities, most programming jobs are dead-
end career wise. I quit my job a year ago to build iPhone apps and learned
quite a lot as an entrepreneur. Hopefully that should help me with the
interviews.

------
rex_gsd
Why is a manhole cover round? It's an oldie that tests logical thinking, I
believe Microsoft used to use it back in the day :)

