[twblalock]

I agree that many coding interviews don't test on-the-job skills. But pressure-cooker situations do happen on the job, e.g. production outages, major customers being affected by bugs and threatening to cancel, etc. It's not unrealistic to say that people who can't deal with that are unsuitable for many engineering positions.

[sho]

Well fair enough but I don't see the two qualities as being all that related.

"Oh my god, production is down! Quick, someone tell me, from memory, the solution to the N Queens problem!!"

[Humdeee]

"Production is down. Let's put our heads together to fix the problem!"

vs

(raspy voice) "Wanna play a game? You have 45 minutes to parse this html in assembly using only half a keyboard. Otherwise... you will not be able to feed your family. From us, at least."

I would absolutely watch SAW: The Software Interview

[alacombe]

> (raspy voice) "Wanna play a game? You have 45 minutes to parse this html in assembly using only half a keyboard. Otherwise... you will not be able to feed your family. From us, at least."

Don't forget about interrupting the candidate every 5 minutes to ask about the color of a blue moon, effectively preventing him to "get in the zone".

[rrauenza]

And if production is down, and you're the one under the most pressure, it's probably because you're the one who knows "production" the best.

[matte_black]

What tech company do I sign up for to get an interview like the one in Swordfish?

[rrauenza]

That kind of pressure isn't the same as interview pressure.

I've been in whiteboard coding interviews and in situations where "production is down" and they are very different kinds of pressure and expectations.

[BadCookie]

I agree. I handle work pressure well enough, but social anxiety is a completely different animal.

[rrauenza]

I'd call it performance anxiety / pressure vs work pressure.

[alacombe]

"Pressure cooker situations" are different than being asked to be an expert in IGBT transformer, have state of the art metallurgy knowledges, and have the flexibility of an olympic gymnast... for a welder position.

[tytytytytytytyt]

What questions are asked that are as divorced from being a software dev as olympic level flexibility is from being a welder? Or is this just a straw man argument?

[taurath]

Having a front end web developer/designer implement a b-tree from memory for example.

[tytytytytytytyt]

A b-tree or a binary tree? A b-tree doesn't even sound believable, unless there's other info you're not telling us.

[taurath]

I have been asked to write a matrix search robot (Ideal solution using A* algorithm) for a company that was doing CRUD education software apps, in which I was applying for a full stack position with plenty of experience building prod apps in their stack. I just looked them up and they shuttered about 12 months after the interview.

[tytytytytytytyt]

So what happened with the b-tree??

[t0mbstone]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-tree

[taurath]

Pressure cooker situations absolutely happen on the job, when you are on the same team and the goals are the same - completely different situation than sitting in a room, alone, across from a panel of people evaluating you personally and professionally. I thrive in the former as anyone I've ever worked with can tell you, and break down in the latter.