Seriously, been working as a software developer for 9 years now and never passed a single coding test.
The jobs I got were always the ones giving me weekend projects or just no coding test at all.
I have a job opportunity that looks exciting but they sent me this coding test link and I know I’m gonna fail for sure. Any tips aside from the obvious (practicing in advance on leetcode etc)?
What I’m about to say might come off as smug. I don’t mean it to be a flex, it’s just for context.
I’ve been programming since i was 6 years old, and have 26 years of continuous professional experience. 30 years of open source contributions. You are almost definitely interacting with code I wrote on a daily basis.
7 years ago I was caught up in a round of layoffs and I was scouting around for jobs. I got an interview at a startup - it wasn’t a huge tech challenge, but I needed a job.
I did an initial technical interview with the tech lead for the company. All went great. I did a “final HR interview” , again great. Then the CTO stepped in and said that he would need me to complete a coding test before I could be hired.
I failed that live coding test despite producing code that outperformed the code in the “correct” solution by several orders of magnitude.
The CTO was clearly upset by my solution, which he got very angry about and insisted was wrong, without explanation, and despite it beating the spec and passing all the predefined tests.
2 days later the tech lead, who was also present in the test, told me there was nothing wrong with my code. Better still they had actually taken it and put in into production in place of the code that CTO had written, and which was the basis of the “correct” solution.
He also told me that he’d quit after an argument with the CTO about this and asked if I found a good place to work, if I’d let him know.
Sometimes tests are not about what you can do, but how smart they make the person testing you look.
…yeah ok
Yeah idk why that comment is being upvoted so hard… It sounds very weird like a copy pasta or a bot. He didn’t even answer anything 😅
I like how they said it wasn’t a flex when it clearly was only a flex
Really, it isn’t meant to be. I’m Just trying to say it’s not always the candidate at fault.
This is one example from a great many interviews I’ve had in my time, most of which went much better.
I do have other things to do during the day :-)
I guess the CTO saw you as a threat to his position.
I’m trying to wrap my head around the CTO writing code unless it was from long ago when they were a developer. If that is the case, the CTO should understand that a better or more performant solution is likely over time. I’d say that was a bullet dodged. That’s very poor executive behavior.
It was a really small startup where the CTO was one of the founders and had written the first version of everything. I don’t mean to belittle what he did, I have a lot of respect for people building thins from the ground up.
It was just a very odd episode and illustrative that you don’t always fail because you’re bad at coding.
I’m bad at tests due to anxiety. Tests usually just elimiate me on the spot so I wish I knew.
Same here. I can’t stand the countdown timer
Never heard of a countdown timer. Usually I’ve seen these either as whiteboard problems in which interviewers will help you if you’re struggling and be forgiving of the stress the situation creates, or you get days to complete a task you turn in later.
The ticking clock is weird and unnecessary
Yep I wish it was like that. These days mostly it’s just links to online coding platforms where you do everything on your own and there’s a ticking clock like this
Yikes
I had coding and k8s tests before my current role. As they role is platform engineering, it may not be quite the same as if you’re going for an actual coding job, but - it was open book, and you could pick your language - they weren’t trying to test “do you know [language]”, they were trying to test your analytical and thinking skills.
The only part of it I remember now (vaguely) was something about flipping a coin. It wasn’t actually a coding test so much as a logic and problem solving test. The only thing I actually brought to the table was knowing most languages have a modulo function and how to make use of one for various thing (from experience, I’ve never actually been formally taught any coding), and I basically then Googled the pieces to put it together. They know that’s what you’re going to do on the job anyway, as literally everyone does, so why keep you from doing it in an interview?
Have a spare laptop/desktop that you can use to lookup answers quickly.
What is it you struggle most with? The type of questions? The time pressure? Anxiety?
The type of questions are really bizarre. Time pressure also.
I am a mobile dev so my day to day is dealing with UI, api requests, writing test cases, CI/CD stuff…
This is one example I remember being in a test: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/the-skyline-problem-using-divide-and-conquer-algorithm/
In that case it was books in a shelf and some other additions but yeah it’s not something that I relate to at all.
Yeah, those kind of questions are silly and don’t reflect problems that happen in real life.
My advice when you get a question similar to this is to have a pen and paper at hand. Draw a few easy examples and find a solve those systematically by hand. From there you go to harder and harder examples and adapt your system for those examples. Try to find examples where your system fails.
Once you’re confident you’ve found all corner cases you can start to write down the algorithm.
That’s the advice I can give. Hope it helps!
Definitely helpful! Thanks
When I think about it, what I just wrote is basically test driven development, but by hand on a piece of paper.
Coding tests are there to present problems from the computer science side of things and rank people on how well they are able to solve them. The whole point is to judge applicants on their understanding of the knowledge they would have gained in university programs. Universities became accreditation factories during a boom in programming and technology hiring and employers needed some way to filter people who just skated by.
You are failing them because you don’t have or cannot express formal training.
Short term, cheat. Use a second computer and look shit up, form an llc and register on all the test websites (they often have free trials just like anything else) so you can send dummy applicants to learn their tests, etc.
Long term, audit some of the many university programs available online up past the 200 level.
One of the examples in this thread looks like the calculator problem (I might be wrong, it’s been 25 years!). They say “you can’t use these libraries, write a pocket calculator, no ui required” and provide a picture of a pocket calculator as the reference. The student is supposed to learn that even stuff that they thought was simple isn’t and that their language has unique quirks that many libraries work around.
Someone who solved this in 102 would crack their knuckles and knock it out. Someone who never had to do something so inane would find it very hard.
I’ve only been seriously coding for about 2 years (and not full-time as I have another full time job that I’m trying to get out of) and I almost passed 4/5 of the coding tests that I took for one interview (I did pass one, but realized my solution wouldn’t pass all tests - though it did pass the ones given - so I was working to retool it when time ran out). The 5th one was in C++ and I don’t know shit about that syntax. Idk if it was legal, but I have two monitors and used a cheat sheet for the JavaScript and C++ one.
I think with your experience, you’ll probably do fine unless you get anxiety from the clock ticking down.
May or may not be a formality. Take it and don’t sweat it. What’s the worst that will happen? It’ll rip your leg off?
