Programming test for Job interview

D.P.

D.P.

D.P.

Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
32,750
I have been firing off job applications for interesting positions in the US for the last 2 weeks without expecting any result. A small company (spin-off of a university research lab) quickly got back to be but I must do a programming test before being invited for an interview.

It should take 3 days supposedly and was described as very hard. :eek::eek::eek:

Now, I can program, maybe even quit well, but i am not a guru. Actually, the worst problem wont even be producing code, but I believe I have to develop some complex algorithm first and may need a lot of maths. This, I don't think I am so capable of. The CEO I was chatting to was a professor of maths at Oxford, computer science at Standford for starters. I'm just not on that level:o

Bricking it waiting for the email.

I know I should just consider it experience but I hate to embarrass myself or loose out on a good opportunity.

Anyone else had to do similar things?
 
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I have taken and given programming tests but not to this magnitude. Really just quick fire questions making sure they are not lying on their CV.. My advice is to obviously give it your best shot.. which is all they are probably looking for.

Good luck
 
^ Same. This sounds a bit more in depth than 'write a regular expression to check for an email address'.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
 
You won't know until you try. If nothing else you will probably learn a lot from whatever research it is you undertake to tackle the problem they set you and that'll make you more ready for similar scenarios in the future.
 
yeah, I have done simple tests before, the biggest took about an hour and I had to implement a vision algorithm after reading the research paper.

Seems to be quite a strict time restriction. 3 Days is a bit awkward to block out, luckily I am not working full time.
 
I'm currently applying for soft dev positions at the moment and I would dread something on that scale.

Best of luck and be sure to post it up here after you're done. I'd be interested to check it out!
 
Are you sure he's just not making you do the work that he should be doing for free as an "interview".

A 3 day test seems like full blown overkill to me. I dunno.
 
Cuchulain said:
If it's out of your league, get some Uzbekistanian from rentacoder.com to do it for a nominal fee for you ;)
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The thing is it is not a software engineering challenge, but a challenge in algorithm design, maths and optimization, perhaps machine learning as well.

Managed to delay things until sunday so now I am frantically going back through my undergrad notes and re-learning everything I forgot.
 
Knubje said:
Are you sure he's just not making you do the work that he should be doing for free as an "interview".

A 3 day test seems like full blown overkill to me. I dunno.
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The thought crossed my mind but no. It is a small company that exists by using the latest in computer science and artificial intelligence research (many of the management have part time positions within universities). There is no problem I can solve in 3 days that would be useful to them!


Being a small company they have a lot of risk in hiring new people and only want competent people, especially if they have to organize me a US work visa.
 
Before they let me join IBM I had to do a test that involved me being a pirate on a pirate ship and how I'd overcome certain obstacles, believe it or not.

It was all about lateral thinking.#

For example 'You are running out of food .. what now'

'Go to a port to buy some food'

'You have just made the ASSUMPTION you are out at sea. Assumptions cause mistakes in business. You wouldn't be a very good business analyst'. etc. etc.
 
Only real programming test I had was nowhere near 3 days, but then that was for a larger company,

I'd say give it a shot, assuming you can handle the potential 'you suck' bit if you fail, and if/when you do go for it then post it here please (just to see, not to get any help, of course :p)
 
Spunkey said:
^ Same. This sounds a bit more in depth than 'write a regular expression to check for an email address'.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
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I'd fail that, even tho I have almost 20 years of programming experience, I've generally avoided regex for some reason and while I could work it out easily enough I couldn't come up with it off the top of my head due to lack of experience with regex.

Meanwhile I could on the spot code a complex function using any one of 6-7 languages to parse out the data :D - hell I could code regex functionality from scratch on the spot lol.
 
Rroff said:
I'd fail that, even tho I have almost 20 years of programming experience, I've generally avoided regex for some reason and while I could work it out easily enough I couldn't come up with it off the top of my head due to lack of experience with regex.

Meanwhile I could on the spot code a complex function using any one of 6-7 languages to parse out the data :D - hell I could code regex functionality from scratch on the spot lol.
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Good with state machines, i guess then?
 
Are they allowing you research time in that 3 days? Thats probably why its so long. No matter how smart someone is, you can never remember everything. If its something remotely complex, its probably going to require a little bit of research before hand.
 
Spunkey said:
^ Same. This sounds a bit more in depth than 'write a regular expression to check for an email address'.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
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Its impossible to write a regex for email, the official email address spec allows email addresses to have nested structures such as comments...

This is why you should never attempt to parse html, xml or anything with a recursive structure with regex.

If you want the job that bad, just get a cs phd =P Hell you could become a quant.
 
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UK-AL05 said:
Its impossible to write a regex for email, the official email address spec allows email addresses to have nested structures such as comments...

This is why you should never attempt to parse html, xml or anything with a recursive structure with regex.

If you want the job that bad, just get a cs phd =P Hell you could become a quant.
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I have a PhD in CS, well robotics actually but from the CS department. I thought about training to be a Quant but it isn't really for me.
 
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