Month: December 2016

Recently my friend Janie has done a series of blog posts on her disagreement with using computer science questions as a major part of the hiring process. I can agree with her, to a point. If you’re hiring for someone to do a specific job using a specific language or framework, and the person being interviewed can demonstrate experience with and competence in that language or framework, then that’s probably as far as you need to go. You have a job that needs to be done and you’ve found someone who can do that job. Win! I think that when the job is less well-defined is when algorithms questions can more usefully come into play. But let me back up and relate a few stories from my personal experience. As a GTA (graduate teaching assistant) part of my job was to monitor the computer lab and help people as needed. The undergraduate classes at my school used Java; I don’t, but I grabbed a book and picked up enough of it to be able to get people unstuck. I guarantee that pretty much everyone I helped had much more experience with and knowledge of Java than I did – they were using it every week for their classes, while I’d picked up the bare minimum to be able to read it. But I was getting people unstuck because they...