Interviewing is a stressful process. And oddly enough, one of the most stressful times can be after you’ve received an offer. You’re still interviewing, you think the offer’s a good one, but they want an answer in 48 hours, and you still have another week’s worth of interviews lined up. What do you do? It can […]
Category Archives: Interviewing
For the past year or so, I’ve been asking an interview question which seems like it should be straightforward, but has turned out to be deceptively hard. The reason I like it is that it requires a candidate to convert a very common, well-defined, well-understood task from paper into code. There’s no trick, no gotcha, no […]
Interviewers are a diverse lot. Some care about this, others about that, each has her own set of biases, and short of being perfect, there’s really no way to please everyone. The worst is when you’re doing well, then get hung up on an obscure language feature that the interviewer decides is make-or-break. This says more […]
College recruiting season is almost upon us again, and I’ve been doing a little research to try to find a new question. My current question is OK, but it’s a little clunky, and I’ve been sniffing around for something new. In my research I’ve been going through Programming Problems. It’s a good compendium of the different […]
Whenever you find yourself doing one of the following things during an interview, just don’t. OK? Don’t suck at something you say you’re an expert at Seriously, how often do I talk to Java experts who don’t know how to use the most basic java.util classes? Or bash experts who don’t know how to grep? Or 3D math […]
Circus Manager: How long have you been juggling? Candidate: Oh, about six years. Manager: Can you handle three balls, four balls, and five balls? Candidate: Yes, yes, and yes. Manager: Do you work with flaming objects? Candidate: Sure. Manager: … knives, axes, open cigar boxes, floppy hats? Candidate: I can juggle anything. Manager: Do you […]
So, it’s time to retire my interview question. It feels like people are doing better on it than they used to (Glassdoor?), and frankly, I’ve asked it so many times that just walking into an interview room is enough to make me want to start chewing my own arm off. Still, if I’m going to […]
It’s spring career fair season. At most schools, the fall career fairs are dominated by graduating seniors and masters students looking for full-time work. During the spring the balance shifts, and the majority of candidates are freshmen and sophomores who just got started in their majors, don’t have prior work experience, and are looking to […]
Intern interview season is upon us, and last Friday I had the opportunity to sit on a panel discussing how to maximize the value of an internship. There were a couple of points I thought were interesting, and so I share them here for your reading pleasure. Why we intern In my mind, there are […]
When I joined TripAdvisor, I’d been out in the world as a professional coder for a decade and a half. I’d had significant management roles at a prior company, and had just come off of six years of running my own company. I was used to being in charge. And so, when my soon-to-be-boss asked […]
Dan Dreams of Coding 