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Programmers Are Confessing Their Coding Sins To Protest a Broken Job Interview Process (theoutline.com)
A number of programmers have taken it to Twitter to bring it to everyone's, but particularly recruiter's, attention about the grueling interview process in their field that relies heavily on technical questions. David Heinemeier Hansson, a well-known programmer and the creator of the popular Ruby on Rails coding framework, started it when he tweeted, "Hello, my name is David. I would fail to write bubble sort on a whiteboard. I look code up on the internet all the time. I don't do riddles." Another coder added, "Hello, my name is Tim. I'm a lead at Google with over 30 years coding experience and I need to look up how to get length of a python string." Another coder chimed in, "Hello my name is Mike, I'm a GDE and lead at NY Times, I don't know what np complete means. Should I?" A feature story on The Outline adds: This interview style, widely used by major tech companies including Google and Amazon, typically pits candidates against a whiteboard without access to reference material -- a scenario working programmers say is demoralizing and an unrealistic test of actual ability. People spend weeks preparing for this process, afraid that the interviewer will quiz them on the one obscure algorithm they haven't studied. "A cottage industry has emerged that reminds us uncomfortably of SAT prep," Karla Monterroso, VP of programs for Code2040, an organization for black and Latino techies, wrote in a critique of the whiteboard interview. [...] This means companies tend to favor recent computer science grads from top-tier schools who have had time to cram; in other words, it doesn't help diversify the field with women, older people, and people of color.
and I don't know what "truth" means. I look up things like "democracy" and "separation of powers". I don't do riddles.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
As a CS professor, I find the use of these kind of review processes kind of contradictory.
In education, we often based pass/fail on two hours long exams where the student has no access to outside information. Then companies say that's not how the real world works. CS evaluation sucks!
We change to continuous evaluation or project based learning, where student has longer time (well, certainly not 2 hours in a closed room) and can access external resources. You know, like the real world. And now it's companies the ones evaluating candidates the old fashioned way!
Let's go back further in time and go for corporal punishments...
It is always about whiteboards. Blackboards are never given a chance.
There is no way such an environment could help diversity.
... I was interviewing a lady for a clerk job at Mobil Oil, where she'd be doing data entry.
I was looking for:
1.) Dedication to accuracy and detail 2.) Willingness to work overtime 3.) Ability to get along with others
She was a single mom who was hungry to work; liked people; her children were almost grown, so she had the time.
SHE FLUNKED THE GODDAM TYPEWRITER TEST!
Typewriter? I told HR I didn't have a goddam typewriter -- test her keyboard skills.
Nope.
That was in the mid-Dilbert years at Corporation.
You gotta love it when HR decides who you can hire. I once was asked to apply for a job at a company I was currently doing work for as a consultant. They had to post the job and HR decided I wasn't qualified enough, even though I was currently doing it, to forward my resume so the hiring manager couldn't offer me the job. As a result, I stayed on as a contractor at 1.5x the pay and they didn't hire anyone.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Yet another subscriber to the "many eyes make all bugs shallow" bullshit. If you need to look up simple stuff like how to make a custom string object or do a sort you aren't there yet. No wonder software developers are going to be replaced by AI within a decade or two - AI can probably be taught to cut and paste quicker than you can do it.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Sorry but we don't hire people who use monospace in their posts.
#DeleteFacebook
Fontism.
#DeleteFacebook
It's perl, so there's probably a pragma that reverses the meaning of the signs because one guy had a reason once.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Way back in the 1980s, one of my physics professors told the following joke:
The trustees of the university want to find out if the professors really knew their stuff so they came up with a question: What's 2+2?
They go to the math department and the professors there said, "Oh, that's easy. It's 4."
Then the go to the physics department and the professors there said, "Oh, it's 4.000000000 with an uncertainty of another decimal place."
Then the go to the engineering department and the professors there said, "Just a minute while I get my handbook."
Finally, they go to the accounting department and the professors there look around to see if anyone can hear them and then the whisper, "What do you want to be?"