[joshvm]

The take-home system is great if you actually use it. I won a prize in a programming comp from a well known hedge fund - lots of interesting (and frankly hard) problems and I learned a lot. The competition was essentially take home and submit a bunch of numerical answers. Several questions were pinched from Project Euler, but I won't hold that against them... Small cash prize and offer of an interview for an internship. I assumed that they would take into consideration the submitted code, perhaps discuss some of the solutions.

So what do they ask in the phone interview? "How would you reverse a linked list?". Yeah, no. They didn't even bother to call back after I'd bombed it. It struck me as a bit weird that they went to the effort of coming up with a competition and then chucked the winners through the usual loop.

[victorhn]

Genuine question, but what is so difficult about reversing a linked list? I don't have the algorithm memorized, but i can deduce in 10 minutes at most.

[joshvm]

It's not, at all, but it took me by surprise and I made a mess of it. In hindsight the answer was less than 10 lines of python. The next time I went round an interview loop I rote learned all the CS101 stuff, because that's what you have to do (I'm not a computer scientist).

The issue was that the comp contained a lot of stuff that you couldn't deduce in 10 minutes. For example, all-shortest-paths graph search, performing huge calculations (e.g. stuff that blows up extremely fast), monte carlo simulations and other bits and pieces. It would have made for a much more interesting interview.

[jogjayr]

Not everyone can come up with an answer under a pressure situation when put on the spot. I've managed it in an interview but it was quite stressful.

[udev]

I had a very similar experience. The interview guy most likely first saw my resume a minute before the interview. Clearly did not see the code I wrote for them.