Live coding interview reddit What do you think about a live coding interview? What good or bad practices have you seen? I deliberately gave only two extreme answers in the survey, because others would be "it depends" answers. true. coding test (SQL and Python) (pre screening) hiring manager interview live coding interview leadership interview something else I can’t remember technical discussion/scenario offer/salary negotiation I believe 5-7 were mainly seeing if I’d fit in with the team. ask for elaboration and bounce ideas off of them. In my experience there have been 2 interview tests that I thought were really excellent: I had one employer give me a book on some ancient programming language for a label printer, a laptop, a printer, and an example of a shipping label. Even if you don't normally code with a TDD approach. Live coding interviews are based on demonstration of problem solving process. I once had a coding interview for a company retrofitting garbage and recycling trucks with sensors and actuators to improve efficiency. Oral sql coding test, you are typically given a situation how to do some sql operations and which functions you will do. But, they still set me up for one hour virtual interview. What is the best way to prepare for this test so I dont miserably embarrass myself? Then as I said, I can change the parameters of the problem after the first solving to see the rest. You'll get some theoretical questions as well, at least that's how my interview went. The key is to practice under pressure – simulate that interview environment as much as you can beforehand. Live coding is "always" used than common during technical interviews. It will help you understand the requirements, and will show the interviewer that you understand how useful/important unit tests are and how to write them. Overall, the key is to create interview questions and scenarios that require human intelligence and problem-solving skills. I've found that if you know how to code, you'll Google a doc, find your answer quickly, and then go right back to coding. Not worth the effort. It's a desktop app that lets you get answers to coding questions from a LLM and it's undetectable from browser-based platforms like CoderPad or screen sharing if you have two monitors. Why not have coding interviews that are more like he is a real world app we need to be written and create the app and make it work Some companies do indeed have 1 or 2 day take-home exercises that are more realistic. I had 2 Devops interviews last year (I accepted an offer for the second job). If you feel confident that you know the fundamentals of what you went over in your DSAs course then you could probably do a combination of the things you listed. My opinion: I see different types of live In addition to general technical knowledge questions (such as OOP, design patterns, etc. Some interviews won't require you to share screen but speak about how the code will be coded. just keep doing it, take interviews for practice. Some people mentioning domain-specific questions related to ml/ds tho, which If In a live interview you for example solve 160/200 test cases. 3 x 45 min LC and LP question interview. Absolutely, categorically, fuck live coding interviews. First part of the interview was some behavioral questions and I felt I did pretty well on those. I don't take any points away for using Google. It's basic and easier process that can be used in interview settings. It didn't help that there was a language barrier between myself and my assessor. Will depend on the role, position level, company, team etc I have done a good amount of live coding interviews for analytics and data science jobs, though, and can say that the point here should really just be to see how you think and approach a few easy to medium level problems, not to give you a full-on comprehensive coding from When I (a grey haired engineer) used to interview a fellow grey haired engineer, & had to do a live coding exercise, I always said, "these are designed for evaluating someone in their early 20s. Feb 3, 2025 · So I'd like to start doing live coding sessions where I build a small app with some bugs, some features to add, etc, and we can work through them together. That's why I spent the past month building Interview Solver. I want to do mock coding interviews where they will act like its the real thing and then provide me with feedback afterwards or during. They gave me an online coding assessment which I did not do good at all. EDA/simple modeling coding interviews aren’t common in my experience for data roles, usually the coding interview is just some form of leet code. Without the coding test, we'd spent the whole year hiring. Write down all of the answers. Works great for live coding interviews. Second part was a live coding test where I failed miserably. I have been on both sides of a live coding interview where you take an existing small codebase and fix a bug or add a feature. 1 x 30 minute interview with someone from Amazon asking about step 2 and how you came to your answers and the Time and Space complexity, etc If you get this type of final interview, good chance you’ll get the return offer. maybe you should too I got asked 2 coding questions in an interview. Anyone with significant professional experience should be evaluated through in-depth digging into their ongoing and completed professional projects. I panicked harder than I thought was possible. These people got summer 2023 intern offer from Meta, Amazon etc. Spent the last year interviewing numerous devs every week. At the end of the day, it's a coding problem (at least for when I'm doing the coding interview vs system design) but it isn't one that is really going to take a trick that people generally won't get. For example saying, I think I should have done x instead of y. Then create some more relevant questions and write the answers for those. Kaya kinabahan ako ng todo sa interview ko last week. If you don't pass the interview, you're not a good fit. All the programming questions I've had in interviews were directly in the book. Like for a fresh grad, you just have your typical initial, technical live coding, then final. 5 hours technical and skills interview - dito tinanong sa akin yung mga nagawa kong projects and all. Live coding interviews belong in Junior or below interview levels when that's the only real gauge you have for a candidate with 0 experience. 407 votes, 134 comments. There are some seasoned experts with decades of experience who subscribe to the idea that you shouldn't bother memorizing things that you can quickly find with a search. Practice a bit in hackerrank so you familiarize yourself with the UI, but otherwise don't count on practicing there just so you might encounter the same problem in your interview. But I seldom encounter companies like these here in the PH but they exist. g. By practicing coding,white boarding, mock interviews, CS fundamentals regularly you increase your chance of getting your dream job. I'm going to stay up and research a bit, but if any of you have successfully completed a 'live coding interview' then please comment and let me know what it entailed. After the technical interview, in-endorse ako sa team lead (or manager nila?) for a quick interview. honestly this year i took probably 50+ live coding interviews, and at some point the nerves just went away. That feels like it leverages actual experience and is easy to assess. We have to thin the numbers of actual interviews we need to conduct. I was able to verbally come to a conclusion that the interviewer agreed upon with me, but coding the problem became rough. And start running out of time. 4 b. Pero the more senior you get, may other screens of interviews pa. If you lie your way through it, be prepared to have to keep lying, and if you can't keep it up, your reputation will spread. Have you ever done a live coding interview? They don’t want you to just silently type out code. These tools reveal if an interviewee moves the mouse outside of the editor. Seeing how people learn things is what we were looking for much more than what they know. Manager / Team Lead Interview 15 minutes. You are given a set of tasks, and they will watch you coding. Super informal lang nung interview ko before kasi kaclose ko hr and devs tapos madali lang yung 2 tech exam. Yung live coding interview, yan yung quick way ngayon to screen out most applicants. Throughout my career, I've conducted hundreds of interviews, and it's usually clear when someone is cheating, especially with coding platforms like CoderPad or HackerRank. They asked me to live code a hotel booking system. Even with a coding test, our annual hiring takes 2 months. Jan 9, 2025 · Admittedly, I don't have a lot of experience with live coding interviews, but real development is constantly looking things up, even stuff you've done a lot before. List down all of the questions. Doing well at programming interviews is a skill. I didn't fall on my face but I sure didn't ace any of them. Aug 7, 2024 · You're not alone – live coding interviews are the worst. Won't even apply for them now. As long as you communicate well, there’s a chance they can still pass you. TBH I would rather give a coding test than an interview. Admittedly I SUCK at live coding and I dread it when ever it comes up in an interview. I did 15/15 on question one and 7/15 on question two only. Its so pathetic, we work so hard grinding leetcode and these people STEAL our jobs? P. Honestly, those live coding exercises are not a great way to assess a candidate anyway. Go through it. I prefer live coding itws than a 1-2 week home project and then to get a shitty feedback and a "sorry, you're simply not good enough for us". It was pretty basic and felt like I was working with the interviewer rather than being scrutinized. Interviews are the way to see if you're a good fit for the role. Worst case scenario you won't go well. So before the interview you give ChatGPT this prompt: “You are an interview coach for this job (paste the job description), provide me with guidance on upcoming question during a technical (or behavioral interview), please explain your thought process to the answers in a confident and logical manner” Most interviews with live coding tests I've attended I was only allowed to use the interviewer as a resource, e. Hi all, I'm looking for some platforms that are either free or subscription-based where I can get live mock interviews by an interviewer for interview practice. I completely bombed it after suffering a brain freeze after reading the question. S These are international students pursuing MSCS at good university in US Before the assessment had done some preparation, complexity times, coding exercises etc. If you cant beat em join em I run a lot of interviews and I explicitly tell people that they're allowed to Google things during the live coding. 3 coding questions and leadership principles with Amazon employees. The first was a live coding session that involved parsing web server logs to answer a couple of questions. Sure thanks! Honestly, I'm only in the beginning of my preparation for interviews. Talking through what you could do better and improve could go a long way. All the coding interviews I have done we let people google for whatever they want to. I would like to know your opinion about live coding during the interview. 4 a. This approach will make the coding interview less reliant on AI models and more effective in identifying strong candidates. Got this question valid sudoku and "basically flopped". I've conducted a fair few pair-programming (live coding) interview exercises and here are some tips: TDD/ red-green-refactor is your friend. System design is totally different. I'm pretty sure I'd mess up a technical interview since I barely remember any technical terms. They expect the best but they are not Meta, Google, Netflix, and Microsoft in terms of culture, pay and benefits. Share Add a Comment What I ended up doing is I have a document for every programming pattern/data structure (eg graph, linked lists, heaps, dp, bst), I go through the top 150 interview list for each category, find the most correct solution and sometimes the editorials are even not the best way to write a solution for an interview, and I screenshot and paste the I'll have my first ever live coding interview for a job as junior full stack developer in August. They'll hire someone who communicates well, explains their thoughts, and knows their failures over someone who gets the right answer right away, at least so I Just had my first live coding interview. i've died in the middle of many interviews just like how you imagined that im kind of desensitized. The one and only time I applied for a job that involved a live coding test, I failed to find the obvious bug in 30 lines of JSX. I will have an live interview for Microsoft next week -and i am so nervous, How exactly should I start solving the problems, should I give the most optimal solution as soon as I get the task, or should I start with a brute force solution - so that he asks me to optimize it?What happens if i cannot think about brute force but i can think the optimal one :D ? I had a live coding interview with a company yesterday. I was expecting one person in the call as per the interview schedule and another person joined the call during my interview. I practiced some leetcode problems easy -> medium in quality for about a week/week and a half. . The interview started and I talked with the interviewer about my experience (which is extensive). This is the worst because you can forget everything if you are nervous. I hate live coding questions and overly difficult leet code questions that you don't even use when you're developing a website. The reason for this is to measure your "mastery" of the skills. Anyone can amass enough knowledge to sail past a 2 hour coding interview but giving someone a problem they have to do research to solve is more akin to day to day work. That's how bad the interview went 😅. On the day of the itw just try to be chill and optimistic. aced one cuz i practiced it, completely died on the othernever seen it before and couldn't figure out the trick and still got a call back. The interview will not be entirely live coding. Please feel free to elaborate. Nobody can tell you what to expect for this specific job. What type of questions/difficulty is expected in the interview? Would really appreciate any help! The first half of the interview was great, I could answer all the technical questions and was feeling good, then they asked me to do a live coding challenge whilst they watched I'd practiced the whole take it slowly, repeat the question, verbalise your thought process and so the first few minutes was feeling okay but slowly the pressure Technical Interview 30 minutes live coding 1. I had 2-3 live coding interviews for my current job. Disallowing the use of Google is obviously stupid and live coding where it's glorified algorithmic trivia is as well. You have to get lots of failed interviews under your belt before you can start doing well in an interview setting. They just seemed a bit more personal. Is anyone doing anything similar and have collab tools they like? Mar 4, 2023 · A live coding interview is a real-time and “face-to-face” interview where a candidate demonstrates their coding skills by solving a live coding challenge using a code editor in a set amount of time. I had prepped so much for the interview and this was the very first live coding interview that I had taken in my life. So nagtechnical interview ako and live coding a week ago and this was my FIRST ever actual interview kasi na-absorb ako nung OJT. Marami sa mga nagcomment here, including me, di pa uso nun live coding, tipong nakapasok kami sa industry dahil di pa ganu crowded and competitive nun (harsh, but true). I stopped doing live coding interviews. Granted it's not the same as live coding, but it'll help you focus on solving problems in two key areas. Do some leetcode maybe to get your algo muscles warm. Lets make this community a place where people get support on programming questions, find partners for mock interviews and learn from interview experiences. It's like your brain decides to take a vacation the second you're on the spot. Me just one, tapos q&a lang. You & I will not be as skilled at these because we have habits for doing work, not succeeding at 45 minute coding challenges. ), the technical interview for most software development positions includes a round of live coding with an interviewer. Programming interviews explained really helped me prepare for my first interview. But, maybe you will ! Don't cancel the interview Iba yung client niya from mine. Gonna go against the chorus here this sounds like taking the job would have you in over your head. I went into the live coding assessment with the mindset that I am going to be solving a problem alongside a colleague. You usually have about 5-10 interviews in that time frame, plus a bunch of meals and activities, and you're being judged the entire time. Do you know software engineering methodologies? Can you translate it down to solving simpler problems? If not, you can follow the REACTO process. Cracking the coding interview is a well known book, you could also google around for some common interview questions, and you could also just do some leetcode questions for fun. Stay away from companies like these if they do live coding. Live coding done well is the best. This answer provided to you by Chat-GPT. But, I don’t think that makes me a bad coder. I found a very strong correlation between places that give live coding interviews and being terrible places to work. (I've only done two tho so take that with a grain of salt) Interview process is typically two days long and comes after a two-step application process (you're charged hundreds each time btw). I’d say the best thing one can do for interview prep is finding someone who is willing to provide a live mock interview. I was not allowed google and copilot would be unthinkable. Interviewers want to see how you think through a problem, and how you communicate when tackling something new. Interviews fall into a few categories. You’re supposed to explain your thought process and discuss trade-offs. On glassdoor DS interviews sections not much information is available: some people mentioning presence of coding section but only specific thing was "Remove a node from the linked list" (which is seems a little bit too easy for a leetcode-style interview, but ok). Typically doesn't need to code Live coding sql. I will be tested on HTML, CSS, JS and some React. i used to have super bad anxiety when it came to live coding, but with practice and doing mock interviews on pramp, or interviewing. He had 3 interviews, one with live coding. I had exactly one job (which I still have atm and had for 3 years) since after my graduation (studied media technology) and during that, I never had any kind of code review done on the stuff I coded (and I also never had a big project to work on, only maintenance work and further development of Has anybody taken an interview for the AI Engineer Intern position at BCG, I recently completed my CodeSignal Assessment and got an email asking me to schedule a 60 minute live coding assessment. I just wanted to taste the water, so I applied to this position. Just found out that people sitting together in coding interviews, sharing/casting screens and getting an optimal solution. Thank you guys, appreciate ya. Live coding is essential. I have a live coding interview with a senior engineer from a company that I am applying for in 1 week. So many instances of devs looking great on paper, being able to handle most of our questions, and then not understanding very basic shit like how to iterate through items in an array when we sit down and throw the easiest problem I can think of at them. Meron din iba na may live coding talaga, regardless of level. I had an interview today with a prospective employer. Or just be naturally good at interviews works too. My tips if you get number 3, don't be nervous. I generally find hackerrank problems simpler than leetcode problems, so even if you've only been using LC, it's still good practice. What helped me land the role was the ability to communicate and show my future teammates that I would be a pleasure to work with. Couple of powerful features make it useful: When Microsoft had mock interviews at my university, I asked about what they're looking for in live coding interviews and they told me it's all about thought process and communication. Practice coding the solutions for the coding questions. Pero ngayon nga, expected na na you'll do well sa coding interview, lalu na sa mga CS majors. At my current company we actually do EDA/modeling interviews for data roles, but we try to keep the scope very focused, and overall the exercise takes 20m. io, it has helped a lot. So the next round is this week, it is an hour long technical interview with an engineer from AWS, with a 35ish minute live coding exercise in it, I have never done a live coding interview before and I cannot stand the hackerrank/leetcode grind, so anyone that has done this before with AWS and could tell me what to expect would be a big, big help. Because if you rely much on ChatGPT, then the company will hire ChatGPT instead of you. Kind of silly IMHO, because you'll always be in the docs for your tools when on the job. Live coding is a way for the interviewer to gauge your understanding of data structures and algorithms which are the bread and butter of SWE. I wasted my 1 hour and the interviewers' hour. It explains allot of the work around interviewing as well as going over common programming problems. ztypmk bgxqn nlrjx eoedv uhxagi tkwg qxjatjj yqdo pxsgzuxk tpwmbb lydkmr kykzkd zylv nxvc tgvik