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Jeremy Falcon wrote: Very few tech interviews care about personality
Ironically, that's what I interview for. Whether I'm interviewing a candidate, or I am the candidate, there's only a single question I want answered:
"Are you a jerk?"
If I'm the candidate, I want to know what the place is like. Not to borrow a cliche, but I want to know what the culture is: constant panic, laid back, demoralized drone farm, happy unicorns.
If I'm looking for a candidate, I have to know I can stand being around you for 40 hours a week. Do you have a life, or is code your holy calling? Can you take direction without whining? Can you give direction without being a prick? Our products have a 10-15 year life span. Will you deign to work on code that old, or are you a New Stuff Nancy?
I've turned down job offers because the place had a dress code (ties, for f***'s sake). I've turned down candidates because they were too good, and to convinced of their own superiority.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote: "Are you a jerk?"
Simple and to the point. Too bad we can't just flat out ask that.
Jeremy Falcon
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As always, the devil's in the details. As programmers, we should be used to that.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I've been on both sides of the table. There is no set pattern for an interview that works well with everyone.
I usually ask these:
What was a project that got you excited and why?
How do you react to people criticizing your code/documents?
What do you do when you get stuck with a problem you can't solve?
What are your strengths and weaknesses as a developer?
Do you favor Webforms or MVC?
[Edit: the latter includes "and why?"  ]
Much better than technical questions since people will inevitably start discussing technology and how they used it.
modified 10-Oct-15 18:52pm.
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+5 - except for the last one unless you add "and why?"
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Maxxx wrote: except for the last one unless you add "and why?"
I would, of course. Just want to see them justify and hold a position.
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Hilarious. When I've been asked that question, I usually say "My greatest weakness is not tolerating people who don't do what they say they will do".
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- Write a bubble sort in your favorite language, you have 10 minutes.
- In configuration management terms what is a "trunk" directory and how does it differ from a "tag" directory.
- Who is Tom Demarco.
Rage against the narrative.
"To Build a Fire" - A dystopian novel about project management, and I am the dog.
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4. Spell "Bjarne Stroustrup" backward.
5. Implement a Turing Machine in XSLT. Have it compute the value of 6!.
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6. Which can you do faster:
a. describe why you are probably not the right person for this position
b. describe why you are better off in the long-run not to have been offered a job.
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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Ernst Iliov Stavro Blofeld wrote: Who is Tom Demarco
Third baseman for the Chicago Cubs
What we got here is a failure to communicate
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Ernst Iliov Stavro Blofeld wrote: Write a bubble sort in your favorite language, you have 10 minutes.
You have no idea how often I've seen programmers get the bubble sort wrong. Even the examples on some expert websites are wrong.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I have never, ever, needed to do a bubble sort in my professional career as a software engineer (15+ years). If someone asked me that question, I would leave the interview, after flipping them the bird.
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You'd prefer a harder question?
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No, I think it is a stupid question.
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+1
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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+1
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Ernst Iliov Stavro Blofeld wrote: Write a bubble sort in your favorite language
Who the heck cares. It's an inefficient algorithm and I would never write one myself.
Ernst Iliov Stavro Blofeld wrote: In configuration management terms what is a "trunk" directory and how does it differ from a "tag" directory.
Obsolete. At best, describe how branches work in Git.
Ernst Iliov Stavro Blofeld wrote: Who is Tom Demarco.
That's DeMarco.
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: Ernst Iliov Stavro Blofeld wrote: Write a bubble sort in your favorite language
Who the heck cares. It's an inefficient algorithm and I would never write one myself.
I would hope that the questioner would accept your response (apart from the mild expletive) as being the correct answer. Refusing to do something because it is flawed shows that you are a programmer, not a code monkey. If the questioner still insisted, then you know that the company is not a good place to work at.
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Not to mention, nobody uses the term "configuration management" to explain source control.
Jeremy Falcon
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Question(s) from me:
- What was the most interesting (to you personally) problem you worked on, in your professional career? How did you go about addressing it? What more could be done to improve the solution you implemented?
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1. First focus on Coding Ability of a candidate. Ask questions such as write a function to convert an array into a linked list.
2. Next focus on Logic. Write a function to find the number of occurrences of a sub-string inside a given string.
3. Next focus on Design. Write code to demonstrate the Command Pattern.
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"Do you want to work here?"
"You realise the salary we're paying?"
"Seriously? You want to work here?"
"why?"
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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divyamistry wrote: I've had 7-10 years of experience
In my opinion it's not about experience at all... I've known people who had been doing the same for ten years and were outmatched in knowledge by juniors.
My previous company hired someone with around thirty years of experience with various technologies at various companies, but he wasn't able to write a simple WinForms application! Needless to say we let him go after a month.
For my current job I was asked to find the next number in a sequence, to reason about what would happen to a drop of mercury and a candle in an elevator if the elevator fell down a shaft (how the hell should I know, the only thing I know about mercury is that it was used in thermometers) and to write some code that anyone could look up on Google.
It's all to "test how you think about problems."
And then you get hired and you find out that most people don't think at all.
Or that they know what happens with a drop of mercury, but they have no clue what happens inside a database or ORM.
I recently read a post by a guy who paid promising job candidates (about $200) to conjure up a small application over a weekend and decided to hire them based on that.
That shows some real world experience and it's a hell of a lot cheaper than hiring someone and finding out they aren't what you're looking for.
Unfortunately I haven't been hired like that yet 
Maybe more important is your personality.
How well do you go with the team? What is your willingness to learn? Etc.
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