Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job, 3rd Edition

Why Programming Interviews?

Why do software firms use programming interviews? They want to hire great programmers who can work well with others to successfully produce great products. Unfortunately, bitter experience has taught employers that a substantial portion of applicants for programming jobs simply cannot code. You might expect that these applicants could be screened out by careful review of résumés, experience, course work, and degrees, but in practice this often fails. There are a surprisingly large number of applicants with sparkling résumés and years of apparently relevant industry experience who cannot accomplish even the simplest of programming tasks. Many of them have picked up enough terminology that they can appear competent in conversations about programming and technology. Hiring one of these “developers” who can’t code can easily sink a department (or even a small company).

Recognizing that traditional interviews are ineffective to identify applicants who can’t code, employers took a logical step: Ask applicants to do some coding during the interview. Thus the programming interview was born. Programming interviews are extremely effective at separating those who can code from those who can’t, which is why they are a nearly universal part of the technical interview process.

The difficulty with programming interviews is that employers don’t just want to screen out people who can’t code. Employers want to distinguish the best programmers from those who are merely ...