Have technical interviews have become unreasonable

http://www.quora.com/Why-have-the-technical-interviews-in-companies-like-Facebook-Uber-Dropbox-Google-and-Twitter-become-so-unreasonable?share=1

by safij • 12 years ago

9 1 12 years ago

quora.com

vparikh• 12 years ago

It think that most companies have completely gone of the deep end in their interviews. I have been a full-time developer for 25+ years now. My first job was writing DOS application on a 286 in assembler. Later I moved on to c/c++, Delphi, Ruby, Rails, NodeJS, etc. I can't pass half the interviews I go to. If I can provide a proven track record of 25+ years of solid development (and sadly most of the people interviewing me have much less experience) work, I should be a viable candidate? But apparently I don't interview well. Here are my frustrations:

1. I get asked if I know the latest library/gem/package/etc. This is just pot luck, either I have used it, or I have come across it in reading, or I just haven't. Doesn't mean I can't learn it....

2. Write on the black board some algorithm from my college days - really?? 95% of the code a developer writes uses libraries to do this. Honestly, how many people here have and to implement by hand a search algorithm, sorting algorithm, or know the O notation for some algorithm???

3. They are WAY to specific. What? you only have 1 year of experience in Rails? Or oh, even though you know assembler, C/C++, Java - we only work in scala here and you don't have any experience in Scala ???

See the problem is, most place don't realize that you cannot know everything and be unto speed on everything. Much less remember all of the stuff from college textbooks.

Everytime I have had to apply for a new job, I have to spend three to four weeks re-reading my old college notes and going on the web and learning the latest buzz word languages/tool/utilities. I don't think there is any other profession that subjects applicants to this kind of crap.

Have technical interviews have become unreasonable

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