Edit, 6/26/2012:
This post is my personal rant about interview questions. If you got here looking for actual programming interview questions, I can recommend these books: Cracking the Coding Interview and Programming Interviews Exposed. These books helped many engineers getting their dream jobs.
It’s no secret I’ve been in a lot of interviews in the past couple of years, both as an interviewer and as a candidate. When it comes to tech interview questions, to simplify things, I can break it into 3 major types:
- Implementation questions
- Architecture/design questions
- “Problem solving” questions
The first type intends to check your experience with current industry standard tools. For instance, as a javascript engineer you will be asked about specific jQuery method, what problem it designed to solve, and how you can effectively use it, how a web browser works, or what is the HTTP protocol.
The second type intends to check your software design skills, and your ability to design a complex application. As a front end engineer, you will probably asked about MVC concepts, RESTful architecture, or design patterns.
The third type intends to check how well you handle with random problems you didn’t expect. However, in many cases, this part is a tricky, and mostly out of scope.
It’s not that I don’t think a good engineer should have strong “problem solving” skills. I do.
I just think most of these “problems” you are being asked about has nothing to do with what most of us actually do on a daily basis.
In my past interviews I was asked algorithmic questions, mathematical/geometry questions and physics questions. Hell, I’m surprised I wasn’t asked to solve rocket science problems. After all, my “problem solving skills” are being measured.
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