Need to hire someone

[DimPrawn]

DimPrawn, the brand.

Something fishy in the codebase? Shell out on the best!

[EternalOptimist]

Dim Prawn
the Dunces Dunce

when there's something strange
in the treeview hood
who you gonna call
DunceBusters

-EO Proud to be a dunce (like me 'at ?)

[SimonMac]

Have you tried Baby-Oil?

I'm game if you are

[tranceporter]

It doesn't matter how little you are paying, if they can't asnwer a simple question like this they aren't much use.

Honestly, I now know that commodities is not for me. It has been 10 years since I used any tree structures or the likes. The kind of web development I do using ASP.NET et al is far off from these questions/requirements. I would have just admitted not knowing a lot about data structures since I have not worked with them for ages, and taken my leave. No point in wasting the interviewers time. That being said, XML manipulation is a completely different beast, esp. around XSLT, recursive traversal, XPath etc. i suck at writing regexes and recursions.

[suityou01]

Out of interest, do they actually need to know this stuff for the role? I stumbled my way through my technical interview for current gig dragging rusty stuff up from the darkest recesses of my brain and forgetting terminology and I've not done anything that remotely needs it in the gig - just basic crud + webforms stuff.

Doodab is one of those twat interviewers that likes to ask questions for the hell of asking a tricky question to stump people and boost his oversized ego.

If he even found a coder that could answer the question intelligibly, he or she would be the kind of black polo necked, theological debatey poncey pattern munching twunt that sits around all day arguing semantics while the under paid stuff doers crack on and cobble something together that vaguely passes the UAT tests.

Doodab wants his prodigal child. Ahh bless.

[d000hg]

Doodab is one of those twat interviewers that likes to ask questions for the hell of asking a tricky question to stump people and boost his oversized ego.

Um, it's not a tricky question.

Seriously, what is it with people here getting all offended when asked to show they know their stuff? You're earning more per day than anyone outside senior management, you prove you're worth it before I waste a single day's rate on you.

Princesses!

[suityou01]

Um, it's not a tricky question.

Seriously, what is it with people here getting all offended when asked to show they know their stuff? You're earning more per day than anyone outside senior management, you prove you're worth it before I waste a single day's rate on you.

Princesses!

It's a tulipty question as mudskipper pointed out.

Start with a job spec, then build your interview questions around that. This is what the pros do.

[doodab]

If he even found a coder that could answer the question intelligibly, he or she would be the kind of black polo necked, theological debatey poncey pattern munching twunt that sits around all day arguing semantics while the under paid stuff doers crack on and cobble something together that vaguely passes the UAT tests.

If he was I wouldn't hire him, because at the moment I'm the underpaid stuff doer and I seriously need the help. Still, better to soldier on than draft in some cowboys.

[BlasterBates]

It's a stupid question.

"Doing something different with each leaf in turn". Doing the same something different? What sort of something? Does the something change the structure?
"collating the results" - what does that mean exactly? Why can't you just copy the original structure and change the new one? What's the purpose of the exercise?

Absolutely...

I would give up searching because the likelyhood of finding someone who can answer that question is NIl.

[suityou01]

If he was I wouldn't hire him, because at the moment I'm the underpaid stuff doer and I seriously need the help. Still, better to soldier on than draft in some cowboys.

Remove head from arse.

Absolutely...

I would give up searching because you´re basically excluding most of the best Java programmers.

You´r looking exclusively for a good Java progranmer who solved that problem last week.

I would give up searching because the likelyhood of finding someone is NIl.

You're exclusively looking for someone who cuts java and doesn't mind tulip interview questions. I'd run a mile.