It has been a bit since I’ve written here. Sorry about that, life has kept me busy, and work was all encompassing. But, I find myself now with more free time and I’m back in the hunt for my next position after being part of a large Reduction in Force at my old company.
Back to the “Fun” of Coding Tests
Now that I’m back in the market, I’m remembering the “fun” of coding tests. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love to write code and solve real problems. But I find many of the coding tests out there are really contrived, or academic and really, have no bearing on whether or not you can write good code.
I say that as someone who’s been part of hundreds of interviews as an interviewer. I’ve been part of many interviewing processes that use these tests, and most of the hundreds of interviews in the past couple years used them. I put little weight on the results of the coding tests simply because I have seen how little their use is as a measure of someone’s coding abilities.
But, I recognize that I’m in the minority in industry with this opinion.
Make Coding Tests Useful
So I work to make the best of them when I am the one conducting the interviews. I challenge the candidate to talk through their thinking, and decision making. I ask questions on why they took a particular approach. I point out obvious issues. The discussion through the process tends to be at least a little useful this way.
When I’m on the other side of the table, I try to talk through my thoughts as I work the problem. This is so the interviewer can understand my thought process and decisions. I do try to make the process somewhat useful and demonstrative of my skill.
All this being said, since I’m back in the market, I’ve started spending some time at LeetCode preparing for these little tests. I’ve done all my submissions so far in JavaScript and I created a nice little Git repository of my work to date:
https://www.github.com/brianteeter/LeetCodeSolutions
In the repo you’ll find the problems I’ve solved so far. Use Node 14+ and mocha to run them. Also, I checked in Webstorm project files in case anyone else can make use of them. I’ve made this public so others could benefit. Take a look if interested.