github.com/ManagerJS/paper-code
In addition to writing daily for this blog, I’ve been scraping together resources that web devs and their managers might benefit from during interviewing. I made the ManagerJS GitHub organization to hold those documents and code.
Today I’m announcing the paper-code repository. It will hold programming challenges you can sketch out with pen and paper during interviews. I routinely use these when interviewing intern candidates.
I know these aren’t perfect. They aren’t uncommon, either.
Personally, I’d like to move on to a paid audition model. Candidates would have a week or two to solve a real problem for us and get paid for it. I can’t quite get that to work right now.
In the meantime I use a combination of other more static tools — like the challenges in paper-code.
Some of my peers have told me, “you’re crazy to post those things online.” I think they figure candidates will find them. Personally, I think if a candidate finds these problems and prepares for them then they deserve to do well in my interview. As the instructions state, I’m not just looking for a canned answer. I’ll probe. I expect it would be hard to pass on a memorized solution.
Plus, I only have a couple of problems documented today. Over time I’ll add more and more. If you ace all of them, you’re probably well prepared anyway.
