Not really a peeve, although interviewing flat fail candidates is a bit of pain.
Guy today, when I was explaining a code exercise to him... his mobile rang. I paused, expecting to say, "No, no it's fine", when he silenced the phone, but instead he answered it. Went on mute on the call and had a conversation for a minute. Then returned. I re-explained the, really, really basic code example (a "insert code here" type affair" and asked him how he would approach it.
After much humming and ha'ing and having me repeat the breif 3 times, even giving him the first step in the process... his answer. "No, sorry, no idea".
He was applying for a software engineer job. Immediately I thought, is he just going to say that "on the job", "No sorry no idea how to do that?". I mean, does he understand engineering differently to the rest of us or something?
I didn't know how to do the first time I read the exercise, but I worked it out in about 2 minutes. Thats the point! How do you get an interview so badly wrong and still look confident at the end of it?
You guys aren't software enginers... have a crack.
String input = "5.56 5.58 5.54 5.48 5.54 5.59 5.52";
double[] idealBuySellPrices = calculateBestBuySell( input );
double[] calculateBestBuySell( String input ){
// TODO Implement
}
All I was looking for was "english pigeon code". For example. "I'd split the string on space...."
Bonus points for also taking a boolean "Short Sell"