and that's what makes it ridiculous. In my whole career I have not been forced to vocalize hard problems on a whiteboard in one hour, getting judged for how good of a dog and pony show I put on with "evaluating and discarding ideas" on the fly, out loud, in an interrogation setup. This is so artificial. Not even close to how real teams work. My best ideas start to really form after thinking about a hard problem for days, including in off hours, background mode. Often I have to talk to many people, including non-programmers, to cover all angles of a hard problem.
These "hard interview problems" that must be solved through some artificially staged contemplation really are useful for two reasons:
* it's sadly the only way to quickly try to get a random reading of a person in a semi-standardized way while minimizing time commitment, kind of like fast food is the quickest way to fill oneself, and
* people who pass these at least demonstrate that they can drill/memorize or otherwise prepare for a challenging activity, which takes time and discipline, which in general are desirable characteristics
that's it, pretending like this in any way models real work or has any other benefits is not right.
Right. It's an interview - artificial by definition, not meant to be perfect; in fact perfection in hiring (or in anything) is unachievable - we aim for the "good enough".
> Often I have to talk to many people, including non-programmers, to cover all angles of a hard problem.
Here we are - me and my colleague - there to answer questions, reflect on your thoughts, etc. Talk to us, that's exactly what I expect. Not just to give solutions, but to clarify the problem (for you and for us). Make us understand how you're looking at it - we'll also share our perspective and see if we can come up with something together.
Is this really something that you don't see happening, in practice?
Depends what you're testing for. If I'm testing for problem-solving skills, I will pick increasingly harder problems, until you can't solve them. I will judge you on how well you performed on the one you couldn't solve.
The problem is that you can't just solve the hard problems (e.g. those from hackerrack) like that by just thinking about it for some time (it would probably need hours or days of research).
You just have to learn and remember some obscure algorithm to solve them.
That just filter for "unexperienced" people that have enough time to actually learn a lot of algorithms by heart.
I.e. that would be fresh graduates. But then you could just look at their uni grades, if you want people who are good at learning.
> The problem is that you can't just solve the hard problems
Which is why I said I don't expect them to solve the problem, I'm interested to see:
- the general thought process
- whether the candidate is inclined to jump at the solution or clarify the problem (neither approach is "disqualifying", btw! but for a senior position I do kinda' expect the candidate to recognize when a specification is incomplete, and I will provide increasingly ambiguous problems/questions to see when he stops making assumptions)
- that the candidate is capable to identify some "leads"/ subproblems that need to be solved first/ to reduce the problem to a different one/ etc.
> But then you could just look at their uni grades, if you want people who are good at learning.
If only it was so simple... some people are good at learning, they just don't have good grades (e.g. they have to work to support themselves and don't care much about some grades); while others are good at getting generally good grades without actually being good learners (extreme example: cheaters).
These "hard interview problems" that must be solved through some artificially staged contemplation really are useful for two reasons:
* it's sadly the only way to quickly try to get a random reading of a person in a semi-standardized way while minimizing time commitment, kind of like fast food is the quickest way to fill oneself, and
* people who pass these at least demonstrate that they can drill/memorize or otherwise prepare for a challenging activity, which takes time and discipline, which in general are desirable characteristics
that's it, pretending like this in any way models real work or has any other benefits is not right.