Gameloft just contacted me about a job I applied for there. They’re sending me a test on Monday to complete. This is my chance!
Good luck!
Study up, especially 3d Physics and Matrix Math
If its a test you take online, it’s probably a programming test. Make sure you can code fast and efficiently and good luck : )
Anyone have experience using this site? https://www.vworker.com/ It used to be called Rent A Coder, which is a better name IMO.
I just had the weirdest interview of my life.
It’s for a non-gaming programming position, but the questions asked didn’t seem related to the field at all. I wrote down the weirdest questions I was asked after the interview.
1. What was the last book you read?
I asked for clarification on that one, like did he want to know if it was related to programming? He said any book, so I told him. I said the last book I read was Three Kingdoms, but it was actually A Dance of Dragons. I did read Three Kingdoms, though.
2. If the salary, benefits, and terms are good, how much time would you take to accept the offer?
This seriously felt like a trick question. If everything looked good to you, is there a reason why you would wait before accepting the job?
3. How long would it take you to lose your temper?
The truth is, it takes a lot for me to lose my temper. I am a very patient person, and I told him that much. I even told him how I spent 5 years of my life doing tech support dealing with stupid/irate customers. In those kinds of jobs, you have to be patient.
4. Can you tell me how to get the height of a building if I give you a bottle of water?
I wish I could’ve seen my own face when he asked this question. I’m paraphrasing here, but that’s the gist of it. Maybe this was a logic question, but it made no sense to me. I ignored the bottle of water and gave him some dumb answer.
I don’t know what to make of these questions, which is why I’m asking anyone here who might have experienced something similar during a job interview for a programming position. These felt like trick questions to me. Needless to say I didn’t feel good about the interview, and just felt dumb.
The last one is an old boyscout/I’m sure other stuff trick to get the height of a tree or something with a pencil. Requires two people, and for you to know the length of a pace on one. You line up the water bottle with the building so the waterbottle completely covers it, then turn it sideways, have the second person walk from the base of the building till the end of the water bottle(from your view) and count their paces.
The others are probably just conversation points to judge what kind of person you are, IE, the temper question saying you worked with support is good, but calling the customers stupid is probably not(something like inexperienced customers would be better, since it doesn’t show disdain). The second one may jus tbe to see how quickly you can start working, or gauge how many other options you may be looking it. For the book it may have been as simple as seeing if you were willing/able to talk about yourself, and answer like “I read the three kingdoms” is short and doesn’t give a lot of info. I’d probably have gave a short plot synopsis and seen if it looked like he wanted to talk more about it.
Go to another company who will pay you the money you want. Trust me there are tons out there.
The last one sounds like one of those typical “catch em off guard and see how they think” google answers. Like, wait until it’s hot, then go into the records office and bribe the secretary with a bottle of water to have her pull the building height information for you. Or more like drop the bottle of water and time how long it took to fall, then weight it and factor in the speed of gravity, and determine how tall you think the fall was.
Actually a big company like IBM can handle it if you walked out. Companies generally don’t care about losing people. They’ll just replace you with 4 or 5 half assed developers. As long as the product is being supported and making some sort of money, that’s all the company looks at. And if you walk away, who is to say they won’t restructure it, or out source the support. I’m sure you’re valueable, but don’t over estimate your value. I’ve been working as a contractor for 13 years on and off, and I’ve seen a lot of people put on the streets who literally knew everything there is to know about a product. I’ve seen companies retire the product when the person leave, replace it with another one, etc. So don’t get to smug, especially when bucking a company like IBM who trades for over 100, and existed before they took over your old company, and can exist without it.
Remember the only thing that matters to a company are their shares. walking out just creates more money for them. And in my opinion, not to sound like an asshole, if your product was that important, and generated some sort of revenue, then trust me IBM would have more than one person supporting it. I’ve worked for a tons of these old school companies, and they’ve been in a scenario where “if that one guy who knows it walk out we’re screwed” scenario. don’t underestimate how experienced some Sr. management is. Trust me, if something is hanging on a thread, it’s something they can usually stand to lose. I work at ATT, and I support a superstar product. ATT has tons of people all over it. Some products and application have like 1 or 2 people developing for it, but ATT feels it’s a small loss anyway. That’s just the politics of corporate America. If you want more money, Sr. Management feels you should support and develop for a more critical app.
Oh, I didn’t tell him I talked to stupid customers. I left that part out of the discussion.
Regarding the book question, I wasn’t sure what he wanted other than the name of the book I read. I told him the name of the book and what it was about, but that was it. He didn’t ask a follow-up question like “what did you like about it” or anything like that. I’m one of those “I didn’t say anything because you didn’t ask” people. He was reading questions off a piece of paper, so it’s not like he was asking me these things out of personal interest.
The last question made me feel super dumb. If I wanted the height of the building, I would ask someone or call the building developer for specs. That’s pretty much what I told the interviewer. Why would I go through such a roundabout way of getting the height when I could just research it?
You could also do some crazy estimation for the waterbottle, like estimate how many waterbottles tall a single room/floor is, then count how many floors the building is to get how many water bottles it is, then guess/figure out the height of the water bottle and use it to estimate the height of the building.
I like these questions. Hopefully phase two would have been a whiteboard, but still, solid character assessing questions.
The last question is also a trigonometry/geometric question.
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Forgot this year was a leap year. Happy Belated Programmers Day my fellow nerds
So that’s like ANDing a subnet mask and ip address?
Yup, ANDing is the same operation. It’s a & operator in C++.
Sorry to bump this thread, but I had a question for those of you working full-time jobs in computers:
Do you guys still program or practice programming at home? How do you do it? Right before I got my job, I was starting to get back into the languages I knew in order to get better. Now, with my job, I keep saying I’ll try to freshen up, but I never get around to it. My job is glorified data entry/manipulation, but it tires me out computer-wise. I only feel like using a computer for silly shit at home. Is there any way I can break out of that “slump?”
Get creative I suppose, that’s what id do, just think of creating something and try and create it.
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Hop on GitHub or any other open source, find something you like, and figure out how to improve it.