Current Events > Just me or are coding challenges for big tech software jobs fucking nonsense?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Im an experienced software developer at this point in my career

a paypal recruiter reached out to me to start their interview process and the job was offering a huge bump over what Im making now so I figured fuck it why not

Just did the coding challenge and it was 3 medium-hard leetcode type problems with an hour to do it. I didnt even have time to get halfway through the second problem before running out of time. I just recently did the Amazon one which was 2 similar-level problems in 90 minutes and that one was a stretch but at least I felt like I had time

seems like a good way to weed out capable programmers with real world experience in favor of fresh college graduates who get lucky enough to cram for the specific algorithms that happened to show up in this test

I always ask my hiring teams to make sure the tests are well calibrated internally before sending them out to candidates. Very frequently they will test internal employees who will realize its a garbage test even they couldnt pass. A lot of them just write tests they think make sense but often dont.

Cleo_II posted...

I always ask my hiring teams to make sure the tests are well calibrated internally before sending them out to candidates. Very frequently they will test internal employees who will realize its a garbage test even they couldnt pass. A lot of them just write tests they think make sense but often dont.

It was really the time limit that seemed absurd

like I dont think the questions themselves were outrageously hard and I was well on my way to figuring out the first question, but 20 minutes is only enough time if youve already seen the problem in question and know in advance how to solve it. Add in the pressure of a time limit youd never have in a real world scenario and its just dumb

Once you get even more experience you will realize that interviews are only for people who know how to interview, not for good employees.

samurai bandit posted...

Once you get even more experience you will realize that interviews are only for people who know how to interview, not for good employees.

Seems like it would be a full time job just studying up interview questions

for comparison my previous job had no coding test, my current one had me code the card game War in an hour (and I nailed it)

I seriously have no idea how the fuck programmers do career advancement

As a sysadmin at worse it's 'so uh, you use the Microsoft azure? OK you're hired'

TheGoldenEel posted...

Seems like it would be a full time job just studying up interview questions

for comparison my previous job had no coding test, my current one had me code the card game War in an hour (and I nailed it)

My friend pretty much spent weekends for a whole year just studying the leetcode stuff when he was trying to get a new job a few years back. Insane

I don't understand that mentality. it's so cynical both for the company and those who excel at that kind of thing. like, if they were really that great, I figure they could do something that wouldn't require that sort of hoop-jumping and gatekeeping.

First question was something like

given an array of integers, return an array minimizing the values while keeping their relative values

so for something like [5, 2, 5, 10, 3]

return [3, 1, 3, 4, 2]

Second question was given two arrays of strings, return an array of YES and NOs telling if the strings at x(n) and y(n) are similar

similar meaning 1)theyre the same length, and 2)the number of each distinct character in each string doesnt differ by more than 3

so
[aaaaab, aabbcc, aab]
[bbabbb, abc, abb]

returns [no, no, yes]

third one I didnt even have time to think about but involved ordering log entries by keywords

TheGoldenEel posted...

seems like a good way to weed out capable programmers with real world experience in favor of fresh college graduates who get lucky enough to cram for the specific algorithms that happened to show up in this test

I'm not here to defend programing tests because as you said a lot of them are dumb (because it usually is pulled from a fixed list of generic problems), but I imagine they're fairly useful to weed out people who lie about their programming skills. FANG companies get a *ton* of applicants and a lot of the people who apply aren't qualified.

It would be nice if they would be able to vet experienced resumes more without having to resort to entry level application techniques though.

TheGoldenEel posted...

Seems like it would be a full time job just studying up interview questions

Yes. This is exactly it. That's why some people do a shitty job but still get hired elsewhere: they focus fully on studying up and don't work at all. It is pretty easy to tell when someone is thinking of leaving due to this. Some at least have the decency of quitting the job/taking like 1-2 months of vacations to study up.

Either way it is bullshit.

unless you're using a lanugage that makes manipulating maps / arrays / strings / etc a pain in the butt, these seem like 20 minute (or less) questions to me

kirbymuncher posted...

unless you're using a lanugage that makes manipulating maps / arrays / strings / etc a pain in the butt, these seem like 20 minute (or less) questions to me

More power to you, I guess

i have no doubt there are people that can do these in 20 minutes and Im sure PayPal has no problem finding people due to the sheer scale of their recruiting operation

and sure, at a basic level I can figure out what needs to be done to get these working; but 20 minutes leaves no room for any sort of debugging if you dont get it exactly correct from the jump.

note that hackerrank doesnt even accept brute force algorithms eitherthey time out

i dont think using this type of question as your gatekeeping is getting you anywhere near the best of the best imo