Interesting Links for 19-06-2020
Jun. 19th, 2020 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- Warren Ellis Accused Of Sexual Coercion
- (tags:WarrenEllis abuse OhForFucksSake comics )
- UK virus-tracing app switches to Google-Apple privacy-centric model
- (tags:apple google pandemic apps uk privacy )
- Trump Facebook Ad Openly Using a Nazi Symbol For "Political Prisoner"
- (tags:republicans nazis Holocaust wtf OhForFucksSake USA viaSwampers )
- NHS coronavirus app to be scrapped after only detecting 4% of contacts on iPhones
- (tags:privacy apple Google pandemic apps )
- Masked arsonist might've gotten away with it if she hadn't left Etsy review
- (tags:police review Etsy wtf )
- This kind of shit is why you can't trust it when people "Just want to ask a few questions"
- (tags:OhForFucksSake communication fraud )
- How are TV subtitles made? Are they done by a human or a machine? (I could not do this job)
- (tags:technology BBC subtitles )
- FizzBuzz: One Simple Computing Interview Question
- You'd be astounded how many people fail this. People going for computer jobs who actually can't program.
(tags:interviews jobs computers ) - Vegetarian? Jewish? Muslim? Government food parcels may not be much use to you
- (tags:food pork UK government )
- Social progress is at the heart of community politics
- (tags:politics community )
- UK health ministry has no records on Turkish PPE fiasco and won't say if files destroyed
- (tags:UK pandemic OhForFucksSake )
Tags:
- abuse,
- apple,
- apps,
- bbc,
- comics,
- communication,
- community,
- computers,
- etsy,
- food,
- fraud,
- google,
- government,
- holocaust,
- interviews,
- jobs,
- links,
- nazis,
- ohforfuckssake,
- pandemic,
- police,
- politics,
- pork,
- privacy,
- republicans,
- review,
- subtitles,
- technology,
- uk,
- usa,
- viaswampers,
- warrenellis,
- wtf
You'd be astounded how many people fail this. People going for computer jobs who actually can't prog
Date: 2020-06-19 11:22 am (UTC)But the main point is to screen *out* the ones who sound utterly plausible in interview, and have an entirely plausible CV, often with coding jobs behind them with good references, but literally cannot write *any* working code for the simplest of toy problems. I am not exaggerating here.
Every time we've had a shortlist of 4-6 coders to interview - and I've never been short of candidates so these are 4-6 good ones on paper - at least one has flunked this test utterly. They'll do absolutely anything to try to avoid actually doing it, and when they do write something down, it's gibberish and can't possibly work. You get them to talk you through it and it's bewildering nonsense that sounds like they're talking about a program but doesn't come close to solving the problem.
I once, near the start of my interviewing career, appointed someone who would have failed that test had we had one, and I was the most junior person on the panel so it wasn't entirely my fault, although I was the only actually technical person so it was to a large degree. It was a miserable, draining experience for everyone for the entire year it took to get rid of them.
The only tip I have for candidates regarding this (assuming you can actually code!) is to be aware that while asking for more context before cracking code can be a very positive sign, stalling on actually writing any code is a showstopping bad sign and you don't want to run close to raising that flag.
Re: You'd be astounded how many people fail this. People going for computer jobs who actually can't
Date: 2020-06-20 08:23 am (UTC)One of my worst hiring mistakes was letting a less-technical (well, still with a math degree) colleague's very positive opinion plus a great-looking resume sway me in agreeing to the hire of a lovely guy who turned out to not easily understand the unremarkable code he was looking at. He didn't make it past the probationary period. On the flip-side the other worst mistake was hiring a guy who was very good but not quite as good as he thought.
Re: You'd be astounded how many people fail this. People going for computer jobs who actually can't
Date: 2020-06-20 05:29 pm (UTC)Reminds me of an intern we hired at a job about 20 years ago. *Very* smart guy -- totally aced these algorithmic questions, loved writing the most efficient possible code, and so on.
Problem was, he turned out to be *utterly* self-absorbed, and convinced that efficiency was the only thing that mattered. He couldn't write user-facing systems to save his life, and that super-efficient code turned out to be impenetrable and unmaintainable.
Suffice it to say, we didn't offer him a job at the end of that internship (to his loud dismay). And ever since, I've been a little suspicious of focusing too much on algorithms in interviews: I want to see evidence of code that is *good*, not just clever...
Re: You'd be astounded how many people fail this. People going for computer jobs who actually can't
Date: 2020-06-21 01:11 pm (UTC)(I have bad hands and panic under pressure; give me 30mins with my keyboard/text editor of choice and you'll have some working code; make me do it 'live' with a qwerty keyboard and vi and something might get broken)