Link Details

(Score:4.5, Cynical)

Considering how many 'senior' people I've interviewed who couldn't back up the experience on their resumes by answering simple questions...I'd say that you need to take up your rant with the poseurs who are polluting the candidate pool rather than the interviewers who find it necessary to vet the candidates who pretend to have skills they don't. The only way to filter the CRAP from the wheat is to put EVERYONE through a tech interview.

Your post sounds like so much sour grapes....

*How would you find a cycle in a singly linked list?*

If you can't do this, I don't care if you know php or mysql. Too many candidates are stumped with easy questions, thus easy questions are asked first.

*And how would you refine your solution to use O(n) time and O(1) space?*

Again, many candidates have no clue how to calculate running time for an operation, so the question is asked.

*Where do you see yourself in five years?*

If you're interested in management then I'm not hiring you for my senior developer position.

*Do you have any questions for me?*

This is where I sell the position and make sure you're interested and hooked.

It's not being passive aggressive, it's being honest. If you can't answer simple programming questions then I'm not going any further with you, I don't care what level developer you are. If you're a senior dev then it should take 2min for each question to show that you know how to program and then we can spend time talking about past projects, culture fit, and passion. Grow up, suck it up, and answer the questions. If you're too proud to answer simple questions then you're going to be a hindrance to my team and I don't want you.

I hope this post wasn't a response to your recently flubbing a job interview....

amen

Employment selection is broken and fatal for IT and CS, It sucks big time. With simple questions you will not find your best candidate it is a waste of time, I have seen cases that some Senior programmers will fail to your questions because they learned that in university or highschool but it was 20 years ago and he is more busy thinking about a SOA architecture than that stupid questions, That is not pragmatism.

The best interview for a job could be:
1.Introduce each other the employer and the candidate, Ask him just tell me what are your skills and what have been your best and bad experience. (this takes max 10min the talking)

2.I have a simple mock of a small web app or middleware logic and I will say to the candidate bring the mock to life "the code" and you have 30 min to finish, like a sprint or hackathon.

3.Last details/questions like about the salary or when he could start and maybe the candidate have some questions and Done (5 min max).

45 minutes without wasting time, straight to the point and pragmatic. I can find out if is a healthy person(not a criminal or something nasty), if is a lair or if really is a programmer, if fits good his programming style and he use good practices and finish the projects on schedule and it is not a mess for the projects, If fits with the team and the company, etc. you can see his experience right away there on the code for real.