Annoying Interview Q

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

Just thought I’d share this and see if anyone else would get the right answer. It’s a question I got at an interview (about 2 years ago now but still annoys me!). It was part of a verbal section of the interview, so it wasn’t multiple choice or a question paper or anything. It went something like this:

“What does a Continuous Integration System (e.g. Jenkins) where the system automatically builds your software, require to do it’s job?”

What would you reply, bearing in mind it was an interview, so you want to look and sound intelligent! :slight_smile:

(EDIT: I had to put the deliberate mispelling of “Question” in the subject since I wasn’t allowed to use the word “Question”.)

#2

It requires someone else to set it up. Next!

Cas :slight_smile:

#3

I think the question wasn’t about configuration, but about the flows:
[x] repo -> test -> artifact
[x] artifacts -> deployments

#4

Depends how you interpret the question, because of course you can go through the tools which are required, but in my opinion it was not the goal of the question. I think more on project suitability for CI tools, and in my opinion for CI to be able to do its job, it requires the application to have significant test coverage (since CI tools main purpose is to prevent integration problems) and properly configured build system environment (with database migration tools, release management, etc). Additionally, I would probably speak about the agile environment, since when the builds are failing you require someone to take care of them and generally agile teams devote some % of for maintenance and are ready to jump in almost at any time to solve the problem.

#5

requires a computer and sometimes an internet connection. Almost always requires a monkey to maintain it.

#6

Reminds me of this interview question:
Interviewer: Design a lock-free list.
Candidate: No.
Interviewer: Hired!

Cas :slight_smile:

#7

Thanks for the replies. To answer some of them, there was a specific answer that they were looking for, and it was a specific thing (i.e. not a concept) that they wanted to hear.

And no correct answers yet. (Phew, it’s not just me then!)

#8

The real answer is, it depends. What do you want the CIS to do? They do more than just run javac every 5 minutes.

Cas :slight_smile:

#9

You wouldn’t want to work anywhere anyway where employees are selected by guessing games…

#10

Ah, come on. You should be able to work your way out of ambiguous questions - just keep asking questions, that’s your job - coding is a given.

#11

Sure. What I understand here is that it was annoying because there was only one and only super smart accepted answer.

#12

Sounds like you dodged a bullet then (assuming you weren’t offered a placement)… interviewer was basically being a bit of a dick if they hinged any import on the answer to such a question.

Cas :slight_smile:

#13

Well, I didn’t get the job, but of course I’m not sure how much it hinged on this particular question. There were plenty of other pointless quiz questions (e.g. what’s the diff between public/private/protected etc…). No actual coding; I meant, who cares how well you can code as long as you know the different between public and private? BTW, this was at the head office of a well known UK small-supermarket chain. My answer to this one was something like “any required libraries, access to an email server (not a definite requirement of course), an internet connection.” Things like that.

And the answer was “the source code”! WTF!? I felt like saying “Well, if we’re getting obvious, it also needs electricity. And oxygen for the programmers. And gravity to keep it anchored to the earth” . The interviewer then spent 5 minutes explaining what CI was and why it was used, presumably under the assumption I didn’t know, although I was so incredulous I’d stopped listening by this point. I just wanted to say “I do known all this, having used it for years” but I thought it would sound a bit blunt.

#14

After 25~ odd years programming I was asked in an interview at Sony to reverse an array of 10 floats. That was the only question. I kid you not, but apparently most of the applicants couldn’t actually do it. I got the job.

Cas :slight_smile:

#15

What do you do at Sony?

#16

He reverses arrays of floats. ;D

#17

Hehe :smiley:

I was working in Broadcast Production Labs Research, doing hi-def video stuff and tape recorder controllers with RS422. Not exactly groundbreaking work. It was 7 years ago now though!

Cas :slight_smile:

#18

We changed our strategy at our workplace for hiring developers. We don’t even ask them where they graduated, or what they can/can’t do. We give them a real-life, very relevant problem that currently exists in our stack, and get them to come up with a solution. Of course we pay them a temporary contract rate for the project and they can also work from home. The expected time it takes is generally 2-3 days (if one of us had to sit down and do it) so we expect candidates not to take more than 2 weeks.

Of potentially 20-30 candidates, only 1-3 actually finish it. The final interview is simply a discussion about the problem and their solution (and why they did certain things the way they did, the thought process etc…). By the time they are hired, they have already contributed relevant code into the stack.

#19

I want to work where you work. I don’t have a college degree but I do have two years of professional experience now and it worries me to no end that no one will consider me after I leave my current company. I’ve gained a lot of great experience here as we’re a relatively small company and we work on some very complex software that millions of people use every month. Because of that I’ve been forced to learn rapidly and be able to teach new hires. But I feel like all of that will fall to the wayside if someone with a degree applies to the same position I did.

I guess it doesn’t help that I would really love to work a remote position, from what I can tell those are even harder to get a hold of…

#20

I wouldn’t worry about it. I’ve been programming professionally for just over 20 years and never been without a job, and I don’t have any degrees or programming qualifications, just a few completely irrelevant A-Levels. As long as you can do the job well you should be fine.