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Comment by jquery | Hacker News Reader

Sadly true. In my last set of interviews for a web developer position at Google, I aced the questions from fellow web developers, questions relevant to my experience and to web development. Then they sent in a "software engineer" (who probably couldn't code a rich web app to save his life) who asked a disjoint set theory merging question that I struggled with. He grimaced at my "incompetence" and at that moment I hated backend engineers and their superiority complex. Naturally I didn't get the job, but they had the nerve to tell me they gave it to a "stronger" candidate.

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I've been there. I think the idea is to look for people who can "solve problems" and can use the right algorithm for the right problem. In the end, it seems that candidates just spend a lot of time practicing algorithm problems in online competitions to get good at the questions so that they can recognize the base problem in interview questions and implement answers really quickly. Just because you've been spending hours doing online competitions and remember algorithms really quickly doesn't make you a good engineer in my book. Especially when you will probably forget all of them the second you get your job and stop practicing.

I can't blame other people for studying for tests, I can just blame the tests.

Have you actually ever competed in online competitions like Topcoder or algorithm competitions like ACM ICPC?

For solving these kind of problems knowing a bunch of known algorithms won't take you too far. They will only be useful in the beginner stages, but as you progress you need to invent new algorithms, make modifications to the existing algorithms (so they test that you really understand the idea behind them), combine different algorithm design techniques, etcetera.

They are often a good proxy to test how creative in problem solving you can be, not just mere rote memorization of algorithms and how good are you at remembering known algorithms.

I am a region finalist & happen to know a few ICPC world finalists, and though one of them is very sharp analytically, I am not sure how good a proxy such problems are for a web developer, or even for most technical positions. Some of the best problem solvers I know CS-wise (not algorithmic puzzle solving, but real CS research/ implementation) are not that fast of thinkers to do very well in such circumstances without a lot of pattern matching through practice.

You're very confident of your abilities. It could be that they did actually give the job to a stronger candidate.

Sure, I'm far from a great web developer. But I do resent being asked monkey-dance questions that ignore my experience and expertise, in favor of questions I would've done far better on right out of school.

YAGNI doesn't exist in the corporate world, and software development may be one of the only professions where overqualification is desired.

YAGNI most definitely exists in the corporate world, and your second claim is meaningless.

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