I’ve done a lot of interviews and I want to add a few points about nervousness (As discussed in the beginning of the post):
1. 99.99% of candidates sound extremely nervous for the first few minutes. That’s fine. I think most interviewers expect it. Both the interviewer and the interviewee want to calm down, and a few min of introductory chat seems to help most people.
2. If I notice a candidate is nervous in the middle of a technical question, I try to say something to calm them down. Often people seem super nervous while doing well/sometimes people confidently do badly — Point is that nerves are not a sign that the candidate is bad, but rather a sign the candidate might be able to do better/be happier if they were calmer.
3. At least if you were interviewing with me, I’d hope candidates who feel too nervous tell me they are nervous. Maybe other interviewers wouldn’t take kindly to this, but if it leads to better/happier hiring then I’m all for it. FWIW this has only happened a handful of times in my career.
Also done a ton of interviewing on both sides of the table. On 3:
There's a ton of interviewers who are on a power-trip would would potentially take an admission of something like that as a yellow or red flag. In engineering/business there's a ton of folks who have huge egos and love to rip into candidates for stuff that's small to insignificant.
Then there's the legitimate "that may just weed you out" thing. I have had to hire engineers who I know can deal with tough social situations with grace. Someone admitting openly that they're nervous in an interview isn't necessarily someone who I'd trust going glove-to-glove with execs who will bend your arm to get their way.
Anywho - maybe my reasons aren't the right ones (and they're surely not universally applicable)... but I'd absolutely not give someone the advice to show that card on the interviewee side of the table.
As much as I can agree to this, for me personally it wouldn't be worth it to work at a place where clearly defining your feelings and letting your coworkers know is seen as a weakness. In many of my interviews I've had no problem asking for a minute or two to recompose myself due to nervousness, and even though it might have led to me being rejected, at the end of the day it just means I wouldn't enjoy working there anyways.
For 3, I assume most people would not say they were nervous. It's seen as a negative thing and a thing to try to hide.
A lot of nerves come from the unknown. In an interview you could be asked pretty much anything. In my opinion, interviews should be about relevant experience and talking through a problem that was given to the interviewee before hand. I really wish I knew which companies did interviews like that near me.
Example of a fibonacci recursion implemented in exponential time just after mentioning big-O notation? Looks just like one of those articles written by a copy-writer who knows nothing about programming and created the article by reading some similar articles thinking he understands it all now
If I were interviewing someone, I would expect the linear solution and from a CS graduate would at least expect mentioning the logarithmic one..
defmodule Fibnoc do
def fib(0), do: []
def fib(1), do: [0]
def fib(2), do: [1 | fib(1)]
def fib(n) when n > 2 and is_number(n) do
[a, b | _] = rest = fib(n - 1)
IO.puts("a: #{a} b: #{b} rest: #{inspect(rest)}")
[a + b | rest]
end
end
Although I wouldn't call these questions a great way to assess people for the job, they are fine as a way to weed out people who can't program at all. Most high schoolers spend hours leetcoding these days. I do wonder how tough the market would be by the time I can legally work given current trends of everyone jumping into IT jobs.
How does implementing Fibonacci weed out people who can't program at all? Spending hours doing Leetcode is far from a reliable assessment of someone's programming skills.
> Spending hours doing Leetcode is far from a reliable assessment of someone's programming skills.
That's what I mean tho. In high school, they start leetcode practice from day 1 of programming or CS classes. Soon, you will get many leetcoders in the market.
> How does implementing Fibonacci weed out people who can't program at all?
There are many people applying for jobs who can't program a buzz fizz. They exist. A fibonacci is enough to throw them off in an unfamiliar language.
Well, for what it's worth I've been programming professionally for 4 years and never had to write fibonacci even one. I think doing something that's more immediately alike what you'll be doing in the project is more productive for both sides.
Why would you expect grads to come up with the logarithmic solution? That's a piece of trivia that says absolutely nothing about their actual capabilities, just how well they remember their linear algebra.
Also why stop there? An actual smart coder would have looked up the constant time solution instead of bothering with any of that.
1. 99.99% of candidates sound extremely nervous for the first few minutes. That’s fine. I think most interviewers expect it. Both the interviewer and the interviewee want to calm down, and a few min of introductory chat seems to help most people.
2. If I notice a candidate is nervous in the middle of a technical question, I try to say something to calm them down. Often people seem super nervous while doing well/sometimes people confidently do badly — Point is that nerves are not a sign that the candidate is bad, but rather a sign the candidate might be able to do better/be happier if they were calmer.
3. At least if you were interviewing with me, I’d hope candidates who feel too nervous tell me they are nervous. Maybe other interviewers wouldn’t take kindly to this, but if it leads to better/happier hiring then I’m all for it. FWIW this has only happened a handful of times in my career.