Code Samples for a Job Interview
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I've received an email from a prospective employer inviting me to set up a job interview. A note at the end requests a link to my GitHub code repo or sample code/projects prior to the interview. I don't have a personal GitHub repo or code samples because, unlike probably most here, I no longer do programming as a hobby on my own time. Everything I've done in the last 15 years that the interviewer would be interested in is proprietary code I've written for my current employer, and I don't feel comfortable sharing that outside the company, even though the two industries are not related by any stretch of the imagination, so they wouldn't be able to benefit. What would you do in this situation? Rewrite some of your code to remove any hints of its purpose or value to your employer? Write new code?
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
I don't do github, but I do have a laptop that I can bring code samples on, plus I refer potential employers here if they want some code I've written.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
I've received an email from a prospective employer inviting me to set up a job interview. A note at the end requests a link to my GitHub code repo or sample code/projects prior to the interview. I don't have a personal GitHub repo or code samples because, unlike probably most here, I no longer do programming as a hobby on my own time. Everything I've done in the last 15 years that the interviewer would be interested in is proprietary code I've written for my current employer, and I don't feel comfortable sharing that outside the company, even though the two industries are not related by any stretch of the imagination, so they wouldn't be able to benefit. What would you do in this situation? Rewrite some of your code to remove any hints of its purpose or value to your employer? Write new code?
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
This might be a hint that this is not the company for you. I would tell them that you don't code as a hobby anymore and you don't have GitHub code. In my opinion, any quality technical interviewer can ask questions and determine your skill level and if you'd fit into their organization or not. I've been in my current position for 5.5 years and got it during a 1.5 hour interview. Today, the same level position requires a 8 hour test/program/interview. I would not consider my current position if I had to take a day off work for the opportunity for a new position.
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This might be a hint that this is not the company for you. I would tell them that you don't code as a hobby anymore and you don't have GitHub code. In my opinion, any quality technical interviewer can ask questions and determine your skill level and if you'd fit into their organization or not. I've been in my current position for 5.5 years and got it during a 1.5 hour interview. Today, the same level position requires a 8 hour test/program/interview. I would not consider my current position if I had to take a day off work for the opportunity for a new position.
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I've received an email from a prospective employer inviting me to set up a job interview. A note at the end requests a link to my GitHub code repo or sample code/projects prior to the interview. I don't have a personal GitHub repo or code samples because, unlike probably most here, I no longer do programming as a hobby on my own time. Everything I've done in the last 15 years that the interviewer would be interested in is proprietary code I've written for my current employer, and I don't feel comfortable sharing that outside the company, even though the two industries are not related by any stretch of the imagination, so they wouldn't be able to benefit. What would you do in this situation? Rewrite some of your code to remove any hints of its purpose or value to your employer? Write new code?
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
Tell them what you have told us. If you are really keen on getting the job, you could also suggest that they set you a small project that would take no longer than a day to code then send back the resulting code to them. I say this because I really dislike coding tests in interviews and have always done really well when I am set something in advance that I can then be questioned about during interview.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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I've received an email from a prospective employer inviting me to set up a job interview. A note at the end requests a link to my GitHub code repo or sample code/projects prior to the interview. I don't have a personal GitHub repo or code samples because, unlike probably most here, I no longer do programming as a hobby on my own time. Everything I've done in the last 15 years that the interviewer would be interested in is proprietary code I've written for my current employer, and I don't feel comfortable sharing that outside the company, even though the two industries are not related by any stretch of the imagination, so they wouldn't be able to benefit. What would you do in this situation? Rewrite some of your code to remove any hints of its purpose or value to your employer? Write new code?
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
Never been asked that and at best I could point them here. And definitely don't show code that another employer owns.
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TNCaver wrote:
What would you do in this situation?
Look for a company that appreciates people. If you have 15 years experience then a simple 5 minute conversation should be enough to find out if you know what you claim to know. It sounds like the company may be too big and has to follow a ton of silly rules and procedures and that may be a glimpse of what it will be like working there. But, if you are interested, I would just put NA in the fields. If they think that lowers your value then you don't want to work for them anyway.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it. Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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I've received an email from a prospective employer inviting me to set up a job interview. A note at the end requests a link to my GitHub code repo or sample code/projects prior to the interview. I don't have a personal GitHub repo or code samples because, unlike probably most here, I no longer do programming as a hobby on my own time. Everything I've done in the last 15 years that the interviewer would be interested in is proprietary code I've written for my current employer, and I don't feel comfortable sharing that outside the company, even though the two industries are not related by any stretch of the imagination, so they wouldn't be able to benefit. What would you do in this situation? Rewrite some of your code to remove any hints of its purpose or value to your employer? Write new code?
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
1. Imagine you owned the company you are interviewing for and you're interviewing a programmer. 2. Imagine you knew that the code is a representation of the actual business itself -- via business processes, etc. 3. Imagine that when the developer wrote the code that s/he would own a part of the business itself via owning the business processes it represents. 4. Imagine that the developer could walk out at any time leave behind a mess of business process behind that some other poor unfortunate would have to maintain. 5. Imagine your business might lose time, customers, and/or money because of that. Now, what questions would you ask? :laugh:
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TNCaver wrote:
What would you do in this situation?
Look for a company that appreciates people. If you have 15 years experience then a simple 5 minute conversation should be enough to find out if you know what you claim to know. It sounds like the company may be too big and has to follow a ton of silly rules and procedures and that may be a glimpse of what it will be like working there. But, if you are interested, I would just put NA in the fields. If they think that lowers your value then you don't want to work for them anyway.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it. Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
011111100010 wrote:
If you have 15 years experience then a simple 5 minute conversation should be enough to find out if you know what you claim to know.
The only problem is that the interview done by HR...
Skipper: We'll fix it. Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this? Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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I've received an email from a prospective employer inviting me to set up a job interview. A note at the end requests a link to my GitHub code repo or sample code/projects prior to the interview. I don't have a personal GitHub repo or code samples because, unlike probably most here, I no longer do programming as a hobby on my own time. Everything I've done in the last 15 years that the interviewer would be interested in is proprietary code I've written for my current employer, and I don't feel comfortable sharing that outside the company, even though the two industries are not related by any stretch of the imagination, so they wouldn't be able to benefit. What would you do in this situation? Rewrite some of your code to remove any hints of its purpose or value to your employer? Write new code?
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
What everybody else said. Don't try to "cover up" the fact that you've never used GitHub until now - the full history, with dates, is available, so they'll be able to tell you've hurriedly thrown something together for them to look at. I'd have no problem telling any potential employer I don't have a GitHub account. Or that I used to have one at a previous employer...but that code is theirs.
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I've received an email from a prospective employer inviting me to set up a job interview. A note at the end requests a link to my GitHub code repo or sample code/projects prior to the interview. I don't have a personal GitHub repo or code samples because, unlike probably most here, I no longer do programming as a hobby on my own time. Everything I've done in the last 15 years that the interviewer would be interested in is proprietary code I've written for my current employer, and I don't feel comfortable sharing that outside the company, even though the two industries are not related by any stretch of the imagination, so they wouldn't be able to benefit. What would you do in this situation? Rewrite some of your code to remove any hints of its purpose or value to your employer? Write new code?
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
Simply point them to the articles you have written for CP. Or tell them that you sell your code - how much are they willing to pay for it?
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What everybody else said. Don't try to "cover up" the fact that you've never used GitHub until now - the full history, with dates, is available, so they'll be able to tell you've hurriedly thrown something together for them to look at. I'd have no problem telling any potential employer I don't have a GitHub account. Or that I used to have one at a previous employer...but that code is theirs.
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TNCaver wrote:
unlike probably most here, I no longer do programming as a hobby on my own time
Er hum, cough. never. I only do it if someone is paying. Cant stand bloody computers.
TNCaver wrote:
proprietary code I've written for my current employer
You should still keep your own library of code, so you can cut and paste it into new projects, then charge the client full whack for doing sod all. Use that.
Munchies_Matt wrote:
I only do it if someone is paying
Me too. Coding at home would be like a dentist going home every night and practicing on his family and friends. I don't deal with clients. I have never worked for a code-for-hire shop (and don't plan to start now). I code for the needs of the company I work for, their web site, their intranet, their windows services, and now, their Salesforce implementation (yuck, and one of many reasons I'm leaving after 17 years here).
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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I guess being honest and saying you don't have any non-proprietary code to show them, but that you've spent the last 15 years writing code about 8 hours a day so that you probably know what you're doing, is out of the question? :rolleyes: I should say I know people who did that too and they are horrible programmers X|
Best, Sander Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
That's probably what I'll end up doing, though. I'm not a horrible programmer, I don't think I would have lasted 30 years in the biz if I wasn't at least decent at it (15 years is just how long I've been doing .NET).
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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Tell them what you have told us. If you are really keen on getting the job, you could also suggest that they set you a small project that would take no longer than a day to code then send back the resulting code to them. I say this because I really dislike coding tests in interviews and have always done really well when I am set something in advance that I can then be questioned about during interview.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
GuyThiebaut wrote:
you could also suggest that they set you a small project that would take no longer than a day to code
I like that idea. I'll float it at them and see what happens.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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Simply point them to the articles you have written for CP. Or tell them that you sell your code - how much are they willing to pay for it?
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I've received an email from a prospective employer inviting me to set up a job interview. A note at the end requests a link to my GitHub code repo or sample code/projects prior to the interview. I don't have a personal GitHub repo or code samples because, unlike probably most here, I no longer do programming as a hobby on my own time. Everything I've done in the last 15 years that the interviewer would be interested in is proprietary code I've written for my current employer, and I don't feel comfortable sharing that outside the company, even though the two industries are not related by any stretch of the imagination, so they wouldn't be able to benefit. What would you do in this situation? Rewrite some of your code to remove any hints of its purpose or value to your employer? Write new code?
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
I have a "portfolio" that includes code I've written for my employer and from my outside projects. I don't have any qualms about sharing bits and pieces of code from my employer, as it is only intended to illustrate my programming style.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I've received an email from a prospective employer inviting me to set up a job interview. A note at the end requests a link to my GitHub code repo or sample code/projects prior to the interview. I don't have a personal GitHub repo or code samples because, unlike probably most here, I no longer do programming as a hobby on my own time. Everything I've done in the last 15 years that the interviewer would be interested in is proprietary code I've written for my current employer, and I don't feel comfortable sharing that outside the company, even though the two industries are not related by any stretch of the imagination, so they wouldn't be able to benefit. What would you do in this situation? Rewrite some of your code to remove any hints of its purpose or value to your employer? Write new code?
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
I too do not have a GIT (yuck) repository. However, I do share my CP profile if someone wants. Apart from this I have a library of things that I simply copy and paste to applications I work with. For instance, encryption utilities, hashing utilities, basic REST API scaffolding. If they are hell bent and you too are for the job, I might just dump it all somewhere and share.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[^]
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I've received an email from a prospective employer inviting me to set up a job interview. A note at the end requests a link to my GitHub code repo or sample code/projects prior to the interview. I don't have a personal GitHub repo or code samples because, unlike probably most here, I no longer do programming as a hobby on my own time. Everything I've done in the last 15 years that the interviewer would be interested in is proprietary code I've written for my current employer, and I don't feel comfortable sharing that outside the company, even though the two industries are not related by any stretch of the imagination, so they wouldn't be able to benefit. What would you do in this situation? Rewrite some of your code to remove any hints of its purpose or value to your employer? Write new code?
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
Tell them you would show them after they showed you some examples of people they hired in their hobby time. If you have to prove how much you like your job outside of work hours, then HR should at least do the same for you.
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I've received an email from a prospective employer inviting me to set up a job interview. A note at the end requests a link to my GitHub code repo or sample code/projects prior to the interview. I don't have a personal GitHub repo or code samples because, unlike probably most here, I no longer do programming as a hobby on my own time. Everything I've done in the last 15 years that the interviewer would be interested in is proprietary code I've written for my current employer, and I don't feel comfortable sharing that outside the company, even though the two industries are not related by any stretch of the imagination, so they wouldn't be able to benefit. What would you do in this situation? Rewrite some of your code to remove any hints of its purpose or value to your employer? Write new code?
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
I recently was asked to sit a sit a proprietary test at hackerrank [^]. I didn’t get around to it yet but I found that the training section has some good, short challenges that might be a good way of demonstrating your coding style and approach without the tedium of running your own project. Good luck!
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I've received an email from a prospective employer inviting me to set up a job interview. A note at the end requests a link to my GitHub code repo or sample code/projects prior to the interview. I don't have a personal GitHub repo or code samples because, unlike probably most here, I no longer do programming as a hobby on my own time. Everything I've done in the last 15 years that the interviewer would be interested in is proprietary code I've written for my current employer, and I don't feel comfortable sharing that outside the company, even though the two industries are not related by any stretch of the imagination, so they wouldn't be able to benefit. What would you do in this situation? Rewrite some of your code to remove any hints of its purpose or value to your employer? Write new code?
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
I've tried rewriting some of my code, but ended up telling the people that interviewed me that all of my work is done for a client and that I'm not able to share it with 3rd party. To my surprise, they were happy enough with my answer and told me that even they don't have it. Keep in mind that for this to work, you will have to make good impression in the rest of the interview process.
