this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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Those are good approaches, I would note that the "90% is written" one is mostly about code comprehension, not writing (as in: Actually architect something), and the requirement thing is a thing that you should, IMO, learn as a junior, it's not a prerequisite. It needs a lot of experience, and often domain knowledge new candidates have no chance of having. But, then, throwing such stuff at them and then judging them by their approach, not end result, should be fair.
The main question I ask myself, in general, is "can this person look at code from different angles". Somewhat like rotating a cube in your mind's eye if you get what I mean. And it might even be that they're no good at it, but they demonstrate the ability when talking about coffee making. People who don't get lost when you're talking about cash registers having a common queue having better overall latency than cash registers with individual queues. Just as a carpenter would ask someone "do you like working with your hands", the question is "do you like to rotate implication structures in your mind".
Yup, that's the approach. It's okay if they don't finish, I want to know how they approach the problem. We absolutely adjust our decision based on the role.
If they can extend existing code and design a new system (with minimal new code) and ask the right questions, we can work with them.
I’m just getting started on my third attempt at changing careers from sys-admining over to coding (starting with the Odin project this time). I’m not sure the questions you ask, while interesting, will be covered. Can you point to some resources or subject matter to research to get exposure to these questions? The non coding, coding questions are interesting to me and I’m curious if my experience will help or if it’s something I need to account for while learning.
We stay away from riddles, and instead focus on CS concepts. We'll rephrase to avoid jargon if you don't have a formal education, or it has been a while. Here are a few categories:
And some practical details like:
That covers most of it. We don't expect every candidate to know everything, we just want to get an idea of the breadth and depth of their knowledge.
Love it. So much to look into. Appreciate your time.