Subj : Re: Software Job Market Myths
To   : comp.programming,comp.software-eng
From : adaworks
Date : Mon Aug 15 2005 03:33 pm


"Richard Heathfield" <invalid@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
news:ddktlq$ag3$1@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
>
> As a matter of fact, I think they are more or less irrelevant. I've had to
> teach CS graduates how to write programs because they were hired on the
> false assumption that anyone with a CS degree would know this. And one of
> the most clueless programmers I ever talked to was a Microsoft employee.
> (If you think about it, that isn't actually an MS-bashing statement!)
>
A friend of mine who used to interview programmers for HP had a couple
of simple algorthmic problems he would use during an interview.  He would
ask the interviewee to lay out a solution on a whiteboard in a closed-door
conference room session.   Although this was only part of the interview,
it quickly determined whether a candidate was able to reason about
software solutions.   Too many candidates are able to toss out the
buzzwords without being able to do the work.

I recall that one of the algorithmic problems was left over from the days
of magnetic tape systems: write an algorithm to read a transaction tape
with a set of specified transactions (e.g., add, delete, deactivate, update)
that will update the master file records on an input tape and write a new
master file on a output tape.   This problem is somewhat trickier than it
sounds since one can end up with missing records at varioius stages
of the algorithm.  It was amazing how many candidates failed this test.

Richard Riehle

.