No question in my mind that completely inept engineers are everywhere. It's mind numbing how many people will respond to a opening for an experienced coder and literally cannot code in any capacity.
In a previous life we were hiring C# WinForms guys, and I would always ask to code "Explorer". Some people couldn't get past creating the solution in Visual Studio, others couldn't figure out how to get the directory listing at C:\, but some got remarkably far along in just an hour or so, with directly & file listings, navigation up/down the tree, context menus, rename, copy/paste, etc..
I never ask trick questions, I just come up with cute apps. I think my new interview question forever henceforth will be to code and launch "Magic", I'll be back when it's time to get lunch, and help yourself to the espresso. Write it in whatever language you want, using whatever tools you want, on your laptop, with a full internet connection. If you want external keyboard and monitors, please use them.
The only rule is you can't claim someone else's solution as yours. You can use Stackoverflow, or any other resource you want to build up the parts, but you have to cite any code which carries a license.
Find a task which you can describe at 30,000 ft in 2 or 3 sentences, then spend 5 minutes sketching out ideas (not code!) on the whiteboard of what the components are and how they fit together. Then, probably best to leave them to it and not stare over their shoulder making them nervous.
In a previous life we were hiring C# WinForms guys, and I would always ask to code "Explorer". Some people couldn't get past creating the solution in Visual Studio, others couldn't figure out how to get the directory listing at C:\, but some got remarkably far along in just an hour or so, with directly & file listings, navigation up/down the tree, context menus, rename, copy/paste, etc..
I never ask trick questions, I just come up with cute apps. I think my new interview question forever henceforth will be to code and launch "Magic", I'll be back when it's time to get lunch, and help yourself to the espresso. Write it in whatever language you want, using whatever tools you want, on your laptop, with a full internet connection. If you want external keyboard and monitors, please use them.
The only rule is you can't claim someone else's solution as yours. You can use Stackoverflow, or any other resource you want to build up the parts, but you have to cite any code which carries a license.
Find a task which you can describe at 30,000 ft in 2 or 3 sentences, then spend 5 minutes sketching out ideas (not code!) on the whiteboard of what the components are and how they fit together. Then, probably best to leave them to it and not stare over their shoulder making them nervous.