| > > I do think there's some signal in whether a candidate can get the syntax right. > I know you're talking about software engineers, not data analysts, but: (inserts self-pwn car crash here) I've done SQL for ~20 years and I'd say I'm good at it. I don't make as many mistakes as you've described but I know exactly what you mean, and I'd never hold that against you because I don't give a toss about mistakes that the language will catch. I've rarely interviewed others, but when I did I asked high-level stuff approaches. I wanted to see if they could grasp the solution, not the physical framework. Actual example: you're given a large collection of words, which you're allowed to pre-process - you have plenty of time to do this. Later on you are given another word, how would you very quickly find all acronymns of that word? (inerviewee programmer didn't get it, so I tried it on a non-programmer we had around - she very quickly worked out you ordered the letters and saved them - she didn't explain it clearly (to repeat, she wasn't a programmer) but in programmer terms it was a dictionary with keys as the sorted letters and the values as a set of the words). In this case, would you employ the supposed programmer who didn't get it, or the non-programmer who did? Actual example: Show me how you'd represent an arithmetic expression using objects, and how you'd evaluate it in an OO style (was after class hierarchy of (op, leftexpr, rightexpr and .eval method. With plenty of time and pushes in the right direction, he still didn't get it despite claiming good OO on his CV) (True story: to same guy who didn't get the OO expression question, I started off with an SQL question. His CV said SQL was his strong point, so I gave him an easy one: "explain to me what a left outer join does". He shook his head in confusion "Never heard of it". Actually happened! I'm not even exaggerating!) |
As a SQL guy who knows Python, but specifically just pandas/seaborn/numpy (matrix/set operations rather than the underlying constructs which make numpy/pandas possible), as opposed to a SWE with OO skills, could you point me in the right direction to learn how this question should be answered?
>"explain to me what a left outer join does". He shook his head in confusion "Never heard of it". Actually happened! I'm not even exaggerating!
I... I don't even know what to say here. That's absurd to me he would claim SQL knowledge and respond with that answer.
My response would be "that is the same as a `left join`" (then I'd explain what a left join was) and follow up with "I exclusively write 'left join' and never 'left outer join' as my experiences with the DB/MS I'm most familiar with (Postgres, Redshift, MySQL, MSSQL and a couple others) accept the `left join` syntax without specifying `outer`".