[subwindow]

If you're asking questions related to "raw algorithmic skill" you're filtering for people who either: 1) Have had a computer science education and happen to remember the algorithm at hand. This is also a function of recency so senior engineers are less likely to remember any given algorithm. 2) Study algorithms so they can do well at job interviews.

Neither one is something you want to be selecting for. Some of the best engineers I've worked with haven't had a proper CS education. I've known extremely strong engineers with Neuroscience, Mathematics, Physics and Public Policy degrees. I've got a business degree.

Unless you're working in certain extremely hard (and extremely rare) areas you do _not_ need to filter for algorithmic skill. Most ML doesn't count. Neither does Data Science. In 99% of engineering jobs it's more important to be diligent, rigorous, and organized. (Of course, filtering for those is another issue altogether)

[cookiecaper]

Spot on. The reasons are exactly right too; seniority and "ability to recall obscure minutia from college years" are inversely correlated, for obvious reasons.

Companies need to understand that not only are they mis-selecting, but they're broadcasting that they're doing so to all the candidates that go through that process.

Approaching candidates with textbook-style algo or data structure questions merely informs that they're going to be working with an educated but overall somewhat junior lot. That's not necessarily always a deal killer, but it's probably not the image that these interviews are hoping to project.

For well-qualified candidates not applying at an industry headliner like AppAmaGooBookSoft, the interview process quickly inverts itself, and it becomes more about the company selling the candidate on their offer than the candidate selling the company on their skillset. Tread carefully.

[trh88]

The only people that say that a CS education doesn't make you a better programmer are people without a CS education.

[C1sc0cat]

CS is not programming just like 99% of musicians don't have music theory degree.

[aczerepinski]

It's probably a great analogy because the best musicians all know basic music theory, whether they learned it in school or on the bandstand. As for the advanced theory that they teach in graduate programs, it isn't even applicable to most genres of music.

[AnaniasAnanas]

> the best musicians all know basic music theory

Do you have any evidence for such a bold claim or is this just speculation?

[C1sc0cat]

They might know it instinctually but Funk brothers / James Jamerson (the bass player on a lot of Motown) didn't go to uni to study music.

[bigiain]

Interesting analogy.

I bet there's scope to twist it beyond all sensible bounds, and compare the ability of the 99% to the 1%.

I suspect there's top level classical, jazz, and session musicians - who're the industry equivalent of 10x programmers. (And all the other stereotypes probably exist too, I bet there are occasional untrained but gifted musicians who can produce 10x output, but who're amazingly difficult to collaborate with compared to degree level music theory trained musicians... And I bet there are "10 year" musicians with one years experience repeated ten times over.)

The other interesting point there is that probably 99% (or more for, five, perhaps six nines) of "programming" doesn't actually require that much hard-core CS theory. You can get paid well playing covers in bars with a good ear and not being able to read a single note from a chart, just by listening to the originals and copying them over and over in your bedroom. Same as you can make a decent living building basic CRUD websites/apps without having written your own compiler that can compile itself or defended a phd that advances humanities start of the art understanding of something fundamental.

[C1sc0cat]

The only problem at that level of musician ship you lose the fun and can end up with some very sterile music that's only of interest to other people who have degrees in music theory.

Btw years ago I did work with a top session guitarist (top 10 hits) who after an accident taught himself to program from his hospital bed.

[detaro]

Good thing parent didn't say that then.

[chosenbreed37]

> If you're asking questions related to "raw algorithmic skill" you're filtering for people who either: 1) Have had a computer science education and happen to remember the algorithm at hand.

Probably true. But perhaps that could be accounted for in the assessment process. After all graduates from Neuroscience, Maths and Physics degrees have got to be some to smartest people around.

[lordnacho]

Agree. A lot of coding is simply banging your head against the wall, search SO over and over, changing things around, until it does what you want.

Raw algo quizzing skill isn't necessarily the same thing, though you'd think it was somewhat related because when you're learning to code up "find longest continuous run" you also need to change things around for a bit.

Difference is in real life there's never an end. The algo quiz leaves you at some optimum eventually due to being quite a small thing.

[bulditand]

Coding is the easiest part. Understanding the actual problem and solving it is the hard part.

> A lot of coding is simply banging your head against the wall, search SO over and over, changing things around, until it does what you want.

It doesn't look like programming to me. Yes, sometimes we miss something, so our code doesn't do exactly what we want it to do, but when we realize it we just fix the code. This view of coding resembles an improved way to write Shakespeare with monkeys.

[jcadam]

> A lot of coding is simply banging your head against the wall, search SO over and over, changing things around, until it does what you want.

I don't find myself in these situations nearly as often as I did back when I was a junior engineer. But damn, I'm sure I looked busier (and more stressed out) back then.

[ams6110]

I was mostly through that phase of my career before any of those things were available. Toward the end of it, stack overflow had just launched. I mostly relied on printed books for help with languages and frameworks I was using.

[make3]

the ability to prepare for an interview is likely correlated to the ability to do the required work, so that point is moot.

[fogetti]

It's not correlated at all. I can ask you questions about implementing a b-tree and then give you a job to fix CSS. Which is the case in most jobs and job interviews.

[make3]

if you were able to prepare for the btree stuff, the css stuff will be a joke to learn. that is my point.