Rockstar programmer interview questions

[Mohamed Mabrouk]

Hi,
With the variety of specialization of the different people interviewed in the book, what kind of questions are asked?

[Alaa Nassef]

From the table of contents and reviews on amazon, I can tell you that most of the questions asked or on how they view problems, how they approach them to solve them, and how they approach soft and hard skills. Some intervewees were asked personal questions, questions on their background and questions regarding views of business.

[Ed Burns]

Hello Mohamed and Alaa,

As some may know, I work at Sun, and Sun is a great place to work. One reason is their support for working at home, a benefit of which I regularly avail myself. Anyhow, one of the problems with working from home is the inability to shout technical questions over the cubicle wall. I got to thinking, if I could have the best programmers in the world on the other side of that wall, as my mates, as it were, what would I ask them?

I held this idea in mind when I crafted the questions. A quick glance over the "index of Common Questions asked of interviewees" reveals the likes of:

How to handle hard to diagnose and fix bugs

How important is it to be a master of emacs (and tools in general)

When is it time to change jobs?

What are the hard problems in IT today?

I hope this gives you an idea of the sorts of questions.

I encourage you to read the chapter 1 excerpt that was posted on computer world:

http://digg.com/programming/Secrets_of_Rock_Star_Programmers

Ed