As someone who has a first round technical interview in about 10 hours for a 2020 Summer internship (yes, already), this post resonated with me. It's a frustrating grind to try to memorize data...
As someone who has a first round technical interview in about 10 hours for a 2020 Summer internship (yes, already), this post resonated with me. It's a frustrating grind to try to memorize data structures and random in-depth knowledge about the language of your choice. These are all things that I could Google in about 10 seconds, but I'm expected to know this trivia off the top of my head because that's supposedly a good demonstration of my problem solving skills and culture fit. Not to mention having to practice programming problem solving questions for hours despite not really using those skills anywhere else other than interviews. However, this system is currently in place because it does weed out the people who are nowhere close to being qualified. But, it leaves a lot of stragglers behind who feel gypped because they can't perform well under the immense pressure of the interview process.
Anyways, I'm not sure if I really said anything in this comment that the article didn't, just wanted to vent a little because I'm frustrated with these interview processes and the idea that I can ruin my internship chances at any given company just because I didn't study the exact question they are going to ask.
I do think there is some merit in testing your interviewees, and knowing that they can program well is valuable information, but I feel like companies value their interview test above almost anything else. You could have a multitude of projects and jobs under your belt, but if you can't think of the fastest way to traverse a binary search tree, you're gone.
As someone who has a first round technical interview in about 10 hours for a 2020 Summer internship (yes, already), this post resonated with me. It's a frustrating grind to try to memorize data structures and random in-depth knowledge about the language of your choice. These are all things that I could Google in about 10 seconds, but I'm expected to know this trivia off the top of my head because that's supposedly a good demonstration of my problem solving skills and culture fit. Not to mention having to practice programming problem solving questions for hours despite not really using those skills anywhere else other than interviews. However, this system is currently in place because it does weed out the people who are nowhere close to being qualified. But, it leaves a lot of stragglers behind who feel gypped because they can't perform well under the immense pressure of the interview process.
Anyways, I'm not sure if I really said anything in this comment that the article didn't, just wanted to vent a little because I'm frustrated with these interview processes and the idea that I can ruin my internship chances at any given company just because I didn't study the exact question they are going to ask.
I do think there is some merit in testing your interviewees, and knowing that they can program well is valuable information, but I feel like companies value their interview test above almost anything else. You could have a multitude of projects and jobs under your belt, but if you can't think of the fastest way to traverse a binary search tree, you're gone.