I know - or even, what will happen when they get to the onsite interview?
-
Join the MyBroadband community
South Africa’s biggest forum. Discuss, discover, and connect with thousands of members.
-
Question of the Day: What's the most interesting small town you've visited in South Africa?
Coding Interviews are Broken
- Thread starter Flojo
- Start date
I know - or even, what will happen when they get to the onsite interview?
charlieharper
Expert Member
Links to previous projects you worked on.... and if possible, 1 or 2 projects on Github.
Barbarian Conan
Executive Member
Different people have different kinds of experience. Usually juniors will work on existing applications that have been going for years, and would never have had to create a db connection, or even populate a dropdown from scratch.
Even now, after 15 years, I've only ever created a db connection for personal projects and I'll need to google it again.
That's part of the reason I think it's important to have interview test questions match what will be expected from someone when they are on the job, not just general questions testing how experienced they are in software dev.
What type of projects would employers like to see on Github? Example, a html with a h1 "Hello World", a to-do list, or a fully functioning eCommerce site that takes into account time complexity and scalability? Please give suggestions for a junior full stack developer role.
Honestly, this is the worst way ever to judge a developer. Many developers don't have the time to contribute to open source projects. Open source contributions doesn't make a dev better or worse. I honestly wish the industry will one day move away from this habit of asking for Github links. Code project, sure, that I'll happily do, but don't expect me to disclose what I've worked on (it is protected by NDA) and don't expect me to magically have projects on Github (I keep personal projects personal for a reason, and I refuse to use Github, there is better places to keep personal projects).
charlieharper
Expert Member
The person who asked, asked for Junior Web Developer position... They won't land their first job/project if they don't have a few personal projects on their name to prove they can actually put stuff together & ship it in a real life environment.
Having contributed to one or two projects on Github (or Gitlab / Bitbucket, etc) is more a matter of seeing how passionate they are when it comes to improving an existing codebase and of course, if they can actually use Git in a teamwork environment.
Honestly, this person should apply for internships or graduate programs, it shows more in the long run. This is a very separate discussion to this topic.
charlieharper
Expert Member
I'm no expert though... I just shared what worked for me.
I've been working for a Canadian based firm (remotely) as a full stack developer for the last 2 years.
I'm a self-taught developer.
Kosmik
Honorary Master
The problem with a public git repository is how much was done by the person and how much not. I think an assessment requiring the use of git to store and share is fine but a coffee / panel style interview is needed. Also, regarding a junior, I care more about how they think logically, their passion and drive, for self fufillnent. Very very rarely would a junior ever come in and hit the ground running, there's normaly a strong learning curve and controlled instruction /adjustment into the team and code base. Not to say they won't code on the first day but they would probably start with adding or moving data structures to a framework so they can learn from the team and not get stuck trying to absorb everything at once.
NDA's prevent me from sharing links or code on projects I've worked on (even in my Junior days). We do, however, ask for a Github link if they do the tech test at home. Some companies I've worked for has generic "copy and paste" questions from the internet. They tend to "copy and paste" back (usually removing the link where they forked the project from), and then doesn't change a *single* thing in it, except maybe if there is a footer with copyright information in.
Search on github reveals quite a lot if the code is unique to them, and hey, even if it isn't, I kind of expect them to fix obvious bugs in the code they copy from. If I click through a reactJS project for example, and there are errors, I check where it is, and what needed to be done to fix it to make it workable, then check on github and find the original project everyone forked from.
It's quite fun to never hear from them again or see their face in an interview drop when I cite the original project they copied from without even checking.
As a junior, you kind of have a fresher memory on how to create a database connection and populate a dropdown. Laziness isn't an excuse. I have to google connection strings from time to time as well when starting new projects, but someone fresh from an education on how to do the simple things, should actually know how to, and if they forget, use google (like we told them they can as google is usually used in normal day-to-day and we won't expect someone to recite something that specific from memory)
^^vampire^^
Expert Member
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2009
- Messages
- 3,912
- Reaction score
- 648
I love the whole open source statement because everyone says it but I've never contributed to a project in my life
I contributed to an open source project 2 years ago, first time in 20 yearsI love the whole open source statement because everyone says it but I've never contributed to a project in my life
charlieharper
Expert Member
I love the whole open source statement because everyone says it but I've never contributed to a project in my life
I made contributions to Ghost and GatsbyJS.. few months later a bunch of GatsbyJS merch arrived in my PO BOX.
^^vampire^^
Expert Member
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2009
- Messages
- 3,912
- Reaction score
- 648
The most success I've had
Coding interviews tend to be very unimaginative and because of that are usually all the same or even very similar. The coding tests I've done for them I put up on my Github then when they send me one of these things they get all surprised when I send them a github link 3 mins later
I've literally received the same tests from a couple of different companies and so I spruced up my code to be all elegant and made it solve the problem is the best way possible, packaged it as a standalone library and everything. People seem to love that and not hard to see where you don't want to work when all they do is google C# interview test
Coding interviews tend to be very unimaginative and because of that are usually all the same or even very similar. The coding tests I've done for them I put up on my Github then when they send me one of these things they get all surprised when I send them a github link 3 mins later
I've literally received the same tests from a couple of different companies and so I spruced up my code to be all elegant and made it solve the problem is the best way possible, packaged it as a standalone library and everything. People seem to love that and not hard to see where you don't want to work when all they do is google C# interview test