You're Not Interviewing for the Job. You're Auditioning for the Job Title

It sounds like the author may have faced a bad interviewer, but I’d be curious to see their feedback on the author so we get both sides.

As I comment each time: you’re not being asked to sort a million item array because it represents the job, you’re being asked to sort a million item array because I want to see how you think, how you solve problems, and how good your underlying CS fundamentals are.

Yes - that means regardless of seniority, I expect you to know CAP theorem. Sure, knowing CAP theorem does not imply you are a good engineer, but being a good engineer DOES imply you know CAP theorem.

The job will change from project to project, but the CS skills should carry through.

Fundamentally, you can’t really figure out the things you are interested that way. This is the underlying problem with tech and CS bros which results in the broken system being even more broken.

If anything these types of interviews are really only to validate the interviewers bias which is that they think they are smarter than everyone else and anyone else that came before them. Otherwise why would they have been entrusted to being the gatekeeper of shiny job and privilege to work along the interviewer.

One may as well just defer to SAT scores, GPA, or the fact that a person actually graduated from a reputable CS program, or dare we say, the fact that a person actually had the same or similar jobs successfully over many years.

The reason people bomb these are precisely because they don’t need to exercise that “deep knowledge” that often in the first place. It doesn’t mean they aren’t capable it just means they’ll need to walk thru it longer than possible in a contrived situation. And the fact that they haven’t needed it is telling —these jobs aren’t really hitting the edge of CS research; it’s just a CRUD app.

The autists need to get off their high ponies and look at every other professional industry out there. Those industries have smart people too. Somehow humanity survives and the industry evolves…go figure.

Having run this “proxy” process for years now, I can tell you it is, in fact, the most accurate indicator I have seen of software engineering capabilities. If you prefer, there are absolutely companies that don’t use the process, and they’ll hire you after a quick resume conversation. Frankly, I wouldn’t want to work there, having seen the abysmally bad talent hired through lax processes, but Godspeed if that’s where you want to work.

> the fact that a person actually had the same or similar jobs successfully over many years.

No matter how good you think you are, if you can’t pass a basic live coding exercise, you have no place on my team.

…You’re not being asked to invert a binary tree in 20 minutes with your eyes closed, you’re being asked to traverse a string and use a set. Stop whining.