A Strategy For The Dreaded Interview Coding Question

http://www.etherealbits.com/2012/07/a-strategy-for-the-dreaded-interview-coding-question/

by tysont • 14 years ago

39 21 14 years ago

Shoomz• 14 years ago

I like the framework you layout. It's always good to have a method for walking through problems because it conveys a cogent thought process (reminds me of SAT multiple choice problems or Spelling Bee questions about word origins).

msluyter• 14 years ago

Yes. Having been on both sides of the process a lot recently, I'd agree that restating / asking questions / talking through the problem as you do it is helpful. But beyond that, I think that simply practicing typical whiteboard questions is the best preparation. You can find a lot of these simply by googling, or, by looking at a typical CS algorithms or data structures textbook. Re-familiarize yourself with lists, trees, etc... and basic searching/sorting algorithms. Steve Yegge offers similar advice here: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog...

tysont2• 14 years ago

Love the Yegge posts on interviewing, and I completely agree. There are all kinds of things on the technical side that would be interviewers should brush up on, I'm just preaching having a strategy to run thru when actually answering the question instead of haphazardly diving into code.

cdr2• 14 years ago

Yegge's post is a classic but getting a bit old. I highly recommend "Cracking the Coding Inteview" [http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-...] for serious prepping.

Edit: It looks like the author of the above has a newer book out called "The Google Resume", probably worth taking a look at too.

gwillen• 14 years ago

I don't know about you, but I don't dread interview coding questions at all -- I love them. What I dread are the squishy / soft questions. "Where do you see your career going in 5 years?" "What do you want to get out of this job?" "What is your greatest weakness?"

Coding I can handle.

asparagui• 14 years ago

Here's a good cheat sheet of answers to memorize.

http://www.gowrikumar.com/interview/index.html

jmillikin• 14 years ago

Rather than memorizing the answers to bad questions, technical interviewers should memorize the questions themselves. Then if any of those show up in an interview, walk out -- one doesn't want to work at those sorts of companies.

drivingmenuts• 14 years ago

I like this one: Where do you see yourself five years from now?

The problem is that my answer is always something involving writing code and solving problems. I have no desire to be a manager of any kind - companies don't like people who aren't interested in moving on to management.

If someone can devise a job where they slide a problem description with some guidelines under the door, I'd be perfectly happy.

toomuchcoffee• 14 years ago

It isn't coding, in the sense of actual real world production coding, that the AOTOA[1] appears to be dreading.

But rather being buttonholed in the hopelessly awkward and incredibly claustrophobic "code this completely contrived (and like as not[2], poorly articulated and presented) search problem that I got from some blogpost somewhere, and which BTW bears virtually no resemblance to the day-to-day gruntwork you'll actually be asked to do here, RIGHT NOW, bitch!" routine -- that passes for a filtering process in far too many companies, these days.

A Strategy For The Dreaded Interview Coding Question

Related Stories