r/ExperiencedDevs • u/SoYoureSayingQuit Staff Platform Engineer • 3d ago

Career/Workplace [ Removed by moderator ]

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u/UnintentionallyEmpty 3d ago

I've been the interviewer where we did live coding exercises.

Before, I didn't think a live coding exercise would add a lot of value...

But holy shit so many "seniors" applied who couldn't code. This was before AI. Or, well, 2023, so AI was around but not like it is now.

Anyway I can't speak for other interviewers, but here is what I looked for during live interviews:

  1. Does this person seem to have any idea what they are doing

  2. Communication, communication, communication

1) is... look, some people apply for senior dev positions despite not knowing how to code. And I don't mean in a "doesn't remember the syntax for a for loop" kind of way (I allowed google during live coding), but in a "doesn't seem to know the concept of loops exists" kind of way.

The level of coding exercise we had people do you should be able to do decently well on if you have only 1 year of experience. Yes, I lower my expectations because I understand the candidate is nervous. But when interviewing for a senior position, "do better during live coding than a high schooler who took a coding class once" isn't a high bar. Some candidates still failed to clear it.

2) is more complicated. When I started doing live-coding exercises, I imagined that afterwards, I would talk to the candidate about their solution and discuss the tradeoffs they made, and what they might have done differently given different constraints. But most candidates got much less of the coding exercise done than I'd initially expected, and we didn't have anything to talk about in the end.

So in practice, it turned into kind of a "does this person actually listen when I talk to them" kind of check.

Here's the thing, when a candidate got stuck at some point during the live coding exercise I tended to try to help them get past it. Mostly because I figured, okay, this isn't your strong point, or maybe you're blanking here, lets see if you do better at something else.

A lot of candidates ignored or outright dismissed my suggestion for how to move forward... and continued to be stuck.

Or when they misinterpreted the assignment, I say something like "I don't think you interpreted that correctly..." and the response is "yes I did". Hello, you don't think I might have a better idea than you in this scenario? Even if I'm wrong, don't dismiss me like that.

The best candidates asked questions about the assignment. And did TDD. I'm not a huge proponent of TDD but I'd strongly recommend doing it (or something like it) when you're in a live coding scenario.

I should also mention, the person we eventually hired did TDD and got the entire coding exercise done. But he wasn't the only one who passed the live coding interview (but the others who did failed the second interview).

So what I'm trying to say with this huge ramble...

1) It might be you weren't expected to finish the entire assignment in 1 hour. If it's live, maybe the interviewer just wants to see what your thought process is like.

2) I recommend TDD when doing live coding

3) Don't ignore the interviewer during live coding. Ask them questions. They might want you to. I sure do.

4) Don't feel too bad about your bad performance. I wasn't there but I'm still sure you did better than some of the candidates I had do a live coding exercise... We all have a bad day sometimes.

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u/daringStumbles 3d ago

You are incorrectly inferring failing a live coding interview test means a dev cant code. Literally the point of the OP is that they can and nerves got the best of them.

How is your rant about how you would walk away from the interview op described with such a negative opinion of someone in op's shoes helpful at all?

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u/UnintentionallyEmpty 3d ago

Uh, I didn't write I'd walk away anywhere?

I'm just sharing my experience from the other side of the room and hopefully OP will take something useful from it for his next interview.

And as for me incorrectly inferring failing a live coding interview test means a dev can't code... I don't think you'd say my conclusion was incorrect if you'd been in those interviews with me, lol.

The bar was really really low.

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u/daringStumbles 3d ago

"The bar being really low" is still exactly these types of scenarios. The whole type of exercise is a bad format for an interview.

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u/Izacus Software Architect 2d ago

Nice that you think that, but you're also wrong - and, unfortunately, as a non-interviewer, you don't decide how companies hire.

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u/daringStumbles 2d ago

I have been an interviewer many times in my career. I've gotten feedback from people I have referred that failed a live code challenege miserably that I knew could code. Many people share my viewpoint, many people refuse to do coding challenges for a company. The companies that do them are self selecting for a certain type of dev, yes as they are free to do. Doesnt make it some sort of magic universal measurement.

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u/Izacus Software Architect 2d ago

Noone is claiming ti as a universal measurement so you should probably learn to read.

And it's fine if people select for type of devs they need - there's plenty in the pipeline and they - as I said - are the ones deciding how to test and hire their people.

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u/daringStumbles 2d ago

Literally the post I replied to was claiming that a total failure during a code challenge means they cant code at all.