python interview quuestions

[Peter]

Agreed. Although anything that involves "take home" or reading of
"their" code runs the risk of the candidate presenting somebody else's
work...

It was never a good experience being responsible for the hiring of
somebody based on how well they sell themselves in an interview - some
people are hopeless "sales people" and yet could be fantastic
programmers! I mean lets face it, if you were good at selling would
you still be a programmer? :-) I know who makes the most money! Of
course there is the question of job satisfaction...

I usually just tried to get a feel for their stated experience and ask
some questions just to make sure they weren't presenting somebodies
else's (fictitious even!) resume. You generally make the best decision
based on a number of factors about each candidate and depend on the 3
or 6 month "trial" period to weed out any bad mistakes you may have
made during selection!

I remember one team I managed had an individual from overseas (I won't
mention the country or anything) - and therefore background checks by
HR were not really possible. The person made so many fundamental
mistakes that I went to the project manager and asked to see the
resume - there was no way in this world that they had ever done even
1/100th of what their resume stated! :-) Obviously the interviewers
for that person where completely conned and missed the (what should
have been) obvious signs that the resume and candidate did not match.
This was one of the many reasons why I decided on a career change and
went back to being a dumb and happy programmer! That was 14 years ago
now and I haven't regretted the decision one single day of that
time :-)

Peter

On Aug 11, 6:44 am, J Kenneth King <ja... at agentultra.com> wrote:
> James Mills <prolo... at shortcircuit.net.au> writes:
> > On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 4:32 AM, Tim Chase <python.l... at tim.thechases.com> wrote:
> >>> I would like to aquint myself with Python Interview questions
>
> >> This came up a while ago:
>
> >> http://www.mail-archive.com/python-l...@python.org/msg168961.html
>
> >> Most of that thread is still relevant (perhaps throw in some py3l questions
> >> too)
>
> > A common thing you can do in interviews is ask
> > your interviewee to write (in Python) a solution
> > to the "FizzBuzz" problem. Any good competent
> > Python programmer should be able to do this
> > in 5-10mins (5 if you're good).
>
> > cheers
> > james
>
> Fizzbuzz is annoying in interviews.
>
> I've never worked at a job where I was under a timer while a group of
> people sat across from me and scrutinized everything I was doing.
>
> I don't see how it can honestly tell you anything useful about the
> person you're interviewing either.  Do you really think that what you
> assume about the interviewee based on characteristics you can infer from
> their solution to be really, honestly true?  They might even completely
> bomb the solution and still be a brilliant programmer, but you'll never
> know that if you trust this simple "fizzbuzz" test.
>
> I've been in those interviews on both sides of the table.  Neither side
> was a good experience.
>
> If a test is necessary, make it a take-home or demand source code if
> they have it.  Read their code and judge for yourself the quality of
> their work.
>
> Any questions in an interview should be the usual "get to know you" type
> stuff.  "What was the most difficult challenge you've faced on the job?
> How did you respond?"  That sort of thing.