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Discussion on: What's your take on coding exercises for non-coding interviews

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deleteman123 profile image
Fernando Doglio

Thanks for replying, I definitely agree with you when you say:

The problem is expecting candidates to solve problems that they would never have to solve in their real jobs (e.g. 'count the number of connected graphs of n nodes', a problem I got on Google Foobar)

That's my main problem, I've had interviews where they requested me to write an API that would consume 3rd party services and gave me a few days. That makes sense to me, and that's real.
But I've also had those "solve this riddle in 2 hours using this auto-testing platform to check how well your code behaves" type of problems, where I always keep failing. I get frustrated and fail, and the worst part is (at least in my experience) the biggest companies tend to do that kind of interviews (I'm talking Amazon, Google and the like).

Whenever I get to interview a possible candidate, I try to stay away from seeing their code, I prefer having a conversation about their experience, actually listening to what they say and ask follow-up questions to verify their claims. I've found that works great and it doesn't really take a lot of time either.

Anyways, thanks again for sharing your opinion!