Seeing the attitude/reaction of a candidate faced with a totally irrelevant question can be interesting, though.

Quote:Original post by lmelior

Quote:Original post by jpetrie

Quote:Original post by TheUnbeliever
Washu's C++ quizzes. Start at the bottom of the bottom of the page and work your way upward. Not every quiz has an 'aftermath' post, though: these were on his Gamedev journal, but I couldn't find it with a very quick Google.

These err more on the side of technical details about the language itself rather than design issues, though.

Washu's quizzes are great, are at the same time I wouldn't feel too bad if you can't get them, as most people cannot, including many of the people who would interview you.

Out of the 19 questions, I believe I got maybe one and a half of them. And one of those was question 2 in the first quiz, which is by far the easiest. My eyes glazed over just trying to read some of the code, let alone trying to understand what was happening.

I retract my previous statement, I got exactly zero of them correct. Nothing like a thorough pwning for a lesson in humility.

Quote:
Right, it's irrelevant because whether or not you know it has zero bearing on what your skill level with C++ is. And anybody who won't hire you because you don't know the answer isn't worth working for, in my opinion. Remember you're interviewing them, too.

Not that I've had many job interviews, but of the dozen I've sat through most of the questions I've been asked were essentially irrelevant. A human resources person once told me of a study which claimed that a random sampling of job applicants performed better on average than those filtered by interviewing.

One of the first things I noticed when I actually had to interview people was how many apparently skilled people (PhDs, semi-famous people, people with very impressive prior experience, etc) failed at answering relatively straightforward questions. It seemed a little odd to me, so I asked the same questions to the office intern (english major who took a programming class once) and an artist (occasionally scripted web pages) who both answered more successfully than *any* of the dozen professionals I had interviewed.

Deciding whether someone understands something or has the ability to perform a job well is non-trivial, most likely extremely difficult.

Quote:Original post by jdindia

One of the first things I noticed when I actually had to interview people was how many apparently skilled people (PhDs,

You get two people to show up at your Al's Used Cars and Garage.
- A greasemonkey who's been fixing up cars for 20 years, ever since he started on his dad's 1973 chevy
- A F1 fuel intake specialist and PhD in polymer synthesis

Who will be more effective at your job?

Most software companies are just Used Car Dealers. They simply have nothing to offer to a PhD. They want cheap, expendable greasemonkeys, skill is optional. There's obviously exceptions, but they are far and few in between.

Quote:so I asked the same questions to the office intern (english major who took a programming class once) and an artist (occasionally scripted web pages) who both answered more successfully than *any* of the dozen professionals I had interviewed.

Go into a medical building, then round up 30 people in white coats. Ask them some relevant questions (the type found in such questionaieres):
- what color is blood?
- how many arms does an average person have?
- if Jack and Jill ran up the hill, who arrived first and why?
- How do you spell vaccine?
- What is 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine

Then use the results of such test to determine who of these people is an internationally renowned neurosurgeon.

(btw, in reality, it would be simple. the neurosurgeon would be the one who would get securty called upon you, and have you thrown permanently out of their private clinic after billing you $500 for the time).