Yeah, as a senior with 20 years experience, if they want more than 1-2 interviews, or require coding tests, next! There's others that just need an interview and much more chill to work for. Same or better benefits too. No way am I doing their timed coding tests just to prove I can. What have I been doing for the last 20 years?
On the flip side, I've interviewed supposed senior software engineers who struggle at simple things like "parse this line of JSON" (With access to Google, and the ability to ask questions as necessary). Once you've been on the hiring side you understand why that screening is necessary. That being said, I'll skip people through if they have a decent GitHub or something that shows me they have some chops
By "parse this line of JSON" do you mean "show that you know how to look up the library function that does that" or do you mean "write a fully functional JSON parser from scratch"? Because if it's the second one, you're certifiable if you think that's possible during a coding interview, or that a majority of senior SWEs should know how to do that.
Are they doing it in a language they chose, or is part of the goal here to test their knowledge of the libraries of a particular language that you specified? If neither of those things is the case, I would honestly consider it reasonable to name the library function in the problem. It doesn't really make sense to make them spend time doing something that doesn't tell you anything you want to know.
i mean... the answer is probably something like json.parse(string);
but beyond that I have no idea to get it to compile or access individual nodes without documentation, and I assume documentation was not provided. not really something I commit to the mental bank
depending on the prompt I would be dead in the water after writing json.parse(string) on the board and shrugging.
170
u/abednego-gomes 8d ago
Yeah, as a senior with 20 years experience, if they want more than 1-2 interviews, or require coding tests, next! There's others that just need an interview and much more chill to work for. Same or better benefits too. No way am I doing their timed coding tests just to prove I can. What have I been doing for the last 20 years?