I am a developer with a passion for testing. I've been coding for 14 years and I want to share my experience and learnings with other developers to help them write better software.
This is an interesting post and a great explanation of the problem.
But I must ask what is the point of an interview question where someone can basically Google the answer? This doesn't really tell you a lot about the developer.
It saddens me we see this a lot in the tech industry.
Good point. There's no absolute answer to this question. This has been and will be a heated discussed topic.
It doesn't sadden me, though. I wouldn't apply to work at such a company if it doesn't align to my values, which would be your case. And that's fine. It's just another type of interviewing.
Truth is, if your goal is work at a FANG company or a top remote company, chances are you'll need to do algorithms. No need to be sad about it, though, just avoid such companies and find those you feel comfortable with.
I am a developer with a passion for testing. I've been coding for 14 years and I want to share my experience and learnings with other developers to help them write better software.
Admittedly algorithms aren't the worst example of "obscure tech question bingo" which a lot of organisations base their interviews around.
It saddens me because I don't think it's a great way to find good developers and will result in plenty of false negatives. So I believe good developers will needlessly miss out on good opportunities. Assessing the way a developer works rather than what they know at a given point in time is a better approach for finding good developers IMHO because the former is harder to teach than the latter.
But as you say this is for FANGs and I have never worked at a FANG and probably never will. And I imagine most of the developers they interview are of a high quality regardless.
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This is an interesting post and a great explanation of the problem.
But I must ask what is the point of an interview question where someone can basically Google the answer? This doesn't really tell you a lot about the developer.
It saddens me we see this a lot in the tech industry.
Good point. There's no absolute answer to this question. This has been and will be a heated discussed topic.
It doesn't sadden me, though. I wouldn't apply to work at such a company if it doesn't align to my values, which would be your case. And that's fine. It's just another type of interviewing.
Truth is, if your goal is work at a FANG company or a top remote company, chances are you'll need to do algorithms. No need to be sad about it, though, just avoid such companies and find those you feel comfortable with.
Admittedly algorithms aren't the worst example of "obscure tech question bingo" which a lot of organisations base their interviews around.
It saddens me because I don't think it's a great way to find good developers and will result in plenty of false negatives. So I believe good developers will needlessly miss out on good opportunities. Assessing the way a developer works rather than what they know at a given point in time is a better approach for finding good developers IMHO because the former is harder to teach than the latter.
But as you say this is for FANGs and I have never worked at a FANG and probably never will. And I imagine most of the developers they interview are of a high quality regardless.