> Using algorithms&data structures trivia in interviews
I never said trivia. By definition, trivia is stuff that is not important. I interview for things that are important to the work we do, and I give plenty of hints along the way to give a candidate a chance to show their reasoning abilities even if they have gaps in their knowledge or memory. This is what critics of algorithm interviewing conveniently ignore to make the interview seem unfair and unreasonable.
If you had a bad interviewer I'm sorry to hear that. Formal interview training in places like Google explicitly includes how to hint and unblock people effectively, and hiring committee feedback-on-feedback can instruct interviewers how to be more fair and better reflect the candidate's potential. Maybe your interviewer did a bad job and later received that feedback, but it had already soured your perception of algorithm interviews.
It's also a total myth that candidates are completely rejected because of one bad algorithm interview. If you have a day of five interviews, your success is not an AND() of the five, but it's also not an OR(). Whoever looks at the feedback weighs the various positive and negative signals to determine if it's a fit for the role. Skills in some areas can outweigh skills in other areas. Algorithms are one of those areas for a reason but it's still only one area and probably only one or two of the five or more interviews people will do.
If you know a better way to interview for these skills before hiring someone, please tell the rest of us and change the industry for the better. Until then, this seems to be the best we can do.
If your organization has very different needs, you can interview your candidates however best meets those needs. I know my organization needs algorithms and data structure skills, not just trivia but actual fundamental skills that generalize to novel problems we encounter along the way, and I'm going to keep interviewing for those skills. It's still just one interview out of several, and we've hired people that totally flunked my interview, so I'm not even gatekeeping, I'm giving the hiring team the signal they asked me to give them and the rest is up to them.
I never said trivia. By definition, trivia is stuff that is not important. I interview for things that are important to the work we do, and I give plenty of hints along the way to give a candidate a chance to show their reasoning abilities even if they have gaps in their knowledge or memory. This is what critics of algorithm interviewing conveniently ignore to make the interview seem unfair and unreasonable.
If you had a bad interviewer I'm sorry to hear that. Formal interview training in places like Google explicitly includes how to hint and unblock people effectively, and hiring committee feedback-on-feedback can instruct interviewers how to be more fair and better reflect the candidate's potential. Maybe your interviewer did a bad job and later received that feedback, but it had already soured your perception of algorithm interviews.
It's also a total myth that candidates are completely rejected because of one bad algorithm interview. If you have a day of five interviews, your success is not an AND() of the five, but it's also not an OR(). Whoever looks at the feedback weighs the various positive and negative signals to determine if it's a fit for the role. Skills in some areas can outweigh skills in other areas. Algorithms are one of those areas for a reason but it's still only one area and probably only one or two of the five or more interviews people will do.
If you know a better way to interview for these skills before hiring someone, please tell the rest of us and change the industry for the better. Until then, this seems to be the best we can do.
If your organization has very different needs, you can interview your candidates however best meets those needs. I know my organization needs algorithms and data structure skills, not just trivia but actual fundamental skills that generalize to novel problems we encounter along the way, and I'm going to keep interviewing for those skills. It's still just one interview out of several, and we've hired people that totally flunked my interview, so I'm not even gatekeeping, I'm giving the hiring team the signal they asked me to give them and the rest is up to them.