Ask HN: Do you anticipate technical questions during live interviews?

[charmides]

My partner was recently at one of the first interviews in her life for a software engineering position. I was surprised to hear how it went. The interviewers quizzed her on arithmetic problems and asked many direct questions about specific APIs and programming languages (e.g., "What is the difference between an interface and an abstract class in Java?").

During the ten or so interviews that I've been to, I have never been put on the spot regarding my technical knowledge. Instead, my interviews have always been more like a casual dialogue where I describe some of the previous projects that I've worked on and answer soft questions about my expectations. A few times I've been asked to submit code that I could complete at home.

I've been wondering whether my experience is uncommon. Therefore I would like to ask whether you anticipate and prepare for technical questions about some of the technologies that you're expected to know.

[mytailorisrich]

> "What is the difference between an interface and an abstract class in Java?"

This sort of question is quite common when interviewing for a dev. position. There may also be a short coding test to take during the interview, which will test both your reasoning skills and your dev. skills.

If the job is to develop in Java, for example, and since you put on your CV that you know Java (since you got a face to face interview) they will probably quiz you a bit to check to actual knowledge and experience of the language.

I would definitely prepare for this sort of relatively basic questions.

[charmides]

Do you frequently get direct questions about your technical knowledge during interviews or is your experience more like mine?

[mytailorisrich]

I had direct questions similar to the one you describe in all interviews for hands-on technical positions I can remember.

[charmides]

Sounds like my experience is more unusual then. I would love to hear from other people. Java has been front and center on my CV since I graduated from college and for the ~10 mid-size and small companies that I've interviewed at, not a single one has put me on the spot regarding my knowledge. Not that I would mind. My partner was a little thrown off, though.

[davismwfl]

It depends where you are interviewing. If you are interviewing at startups or pure tech companies you can expect a fairly deep technical interview that most of the time while factually valid is not necessarily true to the daily job requirements. If you are interviewing at most SMB's (outside the tech startup scene) or any Enterprise company then you will get more a skills & experience based interview, not a deep dive technical interview. The skills & experience interview will be what have you done, ask you some questions around your experiences, ask you questions around things you claim expertise in, like a programming language, check you for team fit etc. But then they move forward, there is no long drawn out technical interview about algorithms etc unless the job is specifically hiring that as a primary skill. This IMO is the way startups should be hiring for anyone with more than 3-4 years of experience. I get using pure CS interviews when someone has NO to very little experience because you can only rate them on what they should have learned in school, but once they have experience then their abilities change, and they won't remember every algorithm, especially when they can look it up in 10 minutes because it isn't something needed everyday. Instead, they'll remember all the things to deliver product, issues to avoid, how to architect solutions, how to debug problems, all of which are FAR more critical than remembering how to code out a specific algorithm.

I have never seen anything wrong with probing someones knowledge on their claimed expertise, but I also went through the dotcom days where we did this same tech style interviews and as the implosion was taking place it was obvious doing these interviews was hurting companies not helping. Hurting because companies were full of super book intelligent people that couldn't get a product out the door that worked to save their lives. I saw it daily in my work, so many companies, cool ideas, good product market but they'd spend forever and a day working on technical details versus shipping product, huge waste of money and time. Most companies I know of back then that are still around today in some form moved to more experienced based interviews with technical screens around the specific issues you will be addressing regularly in whatever position you are applying to. And left the CS skills type interviews for new grads, and even then toned that down some. Some places like Amazon and specific tech companies (Microsoft) still use highly CS driven interviews, but they also have the highest number of new grads applying so that mostly makes sense. And when you apply to those companies at the higher levels with more experience the interview styles change generally.

So I don't think your experience is uncommon overall, it just depends where you are interviewing and what your level of experience is, if they are doing it right.

[charmides]

Thank you for the insight; this makes a lot of sense to me.