I have a job interview tomorrow at 12:30. I had actually interviewed with this company a few months ago and while the interview went well, they decided to go with someone else with a little more specific experience. I hadn't heard from or expected to hear from the IT recruiter since then, but today I get a surprise call from him that he had showed my resume to the hiring manager for another position within the company and that he is eager to meet with me. They decided to skip the preliminary phone interview since I already had one before and he wants to meet with me as soon as possible.

This position is for a Test Integration Engineer which is basically at this company involves both QA type tasks and developing, which I have experience in both.

They use C++ which I haven't seen since college and my first job out of college and have been recently using C# and VB6.

I am wondering if some of you programmer guys provide some possible C++ interview questions that you have encountered during your career, I would like to refresh my C++ knowledge and to be as prepared as possible for this interview. Everything else like database, Testing methods, etc, I should be ok with, just need some refreshers on C++.

I'm researching online right now, but the more sources I can get info from the better.


Thanks in advance!

 

Well I have been retired for a year and a half now but I was a software developer for 29 years. Never used classic C++ but did use it in a C setting... we used C++ for our primitive API libraries. Brush up on inheritance, operator overloading, public and private data/methods, and similar constructs. And good luck to you.

 

:sitsinadarkcornerrockinghimselftosleep:

I hated C++ when I took it.

Good luck!

 

Guarantee you'll be asked about pointers.

Fuck pointers.

Good luck! I'm looking for a C# job myself.

 

what is polymorphism?
what does the virtual keyword do?
what's the difference between malloc/free and new/delete?

 

cliffs...
I GOT AN OFFER!!!!


details...

The interview was pretty long and I had to interview with 3 people as well as the hiring manager. I got some C++ questions which I knew MOST of what was asked despite not using it for nearly 10 years. The interview was going pretty well until the final developer came in and drilled me pretty hard on UNIX, and the difference between AGILE and Waterfall methodologies. I couldn't answer all his questions, but if I didn't know something I wouldn't bullshit him and simply told him I didn't know which I think he appreciated. In fact I couldn't answer his very first question on UNIX but I stayed calm as possible and was able to answer the rest of them. He also tested my confidence on things I did no to be sure that I just didn't memorize some things that I didn't have a real knowledge of. Like I would give an answer and he would ask me things like "how do I know you're not pulling that out of your butt", "what do you mean" or "what is that?". His direct interviewing style kind of made me nervous, but afterwards he eased up and we had a few laughs about a few things.

The hiring manager then came back in and took me on a tour around the building, before seeing me out. I asked him a couple of final questions like how soon they were looking to make a decision and he told me today. I later go to the gym to work out, then I get a call from my wife telling me their recruiter called. So I called him back and he tells me that everyone was very pleased with the interview and the hiring manager wanted to extend an official offer!!

I tried in the past to get into this company and I had interviewed with this company back in 2007 with no offer, as well as earlier this year for another position with no offer. But as I said yesterday, their IT recruiter kept to his word and kept me in mind for future opportunities and this one just happened to become available.

I have another interview tomorrow at a company downtown, but unless they offer significantly more in salary (which I doubt), then I'm going to accept the offer at the company that offered me a job today.

The company that offered me the job today is only 4 miles from my house, and in an industry which I was originally looking for. In fact this was one of the first companies I applied to when I got laid off in December. One of the good things about this job is that there is no waiting period for benefits which means no COBRA payments for April!!!

It took me 3 months and 8 days to find a suitable job since being laid off last year which is not too bad when I think about it. Thanks guys for all your help and encouragement in my other thread I created when I was laid off.

 

Good luck with the new job man! Sounds like it's perfect for ya, plus only a 4 mile commute? Lucky you!

 

Dude it sounds like one of the best days of your life. Congrats man. I wish I get to have the same excitement as you later on in my life.

 

Pointers? One of C's golden constructs. What starts to make you crazy is when you run across pointers to pointers and then maybe another pointer. But pointers are the essential richness of C.

 

Congratulations! That is what I would call a great day. Though I no longer have to worry about interviewing or finding a job or layoffs, I say good for you.

So what is your position and job description in this new position if you don't mind my asking?

 

conrats!

 

Thanks!

Well the official title is Software Integration Test Engineer. In a nutshell at this company this will involve working on the Dev team and assisting Developers in debugging issues sent in by QA. That would include viewing log files and tracing things through code to pinpoint where the error is happening or ifs its really bug in the first place. I also will have some development responsibilities in creating specific test scenarios for the QA team and maybe fixing some bugs. I was a Software Developer at my last job, but it was in a language that is not used widely today and naturally it was hard finding another job using that language. This company uses C++ and I believe it is a more widely accepted language. I have more experience in QA, but the opportunity to get exposed to C++ in this position is exciting.

 

i'm in the same boat as you.. i have a s/w engineering title but work more with QA than dev. i troubleshoot issues they find, and fix them if it's confined in my small area of responsibility, and if not, send them off to dev to fix. i work a lot with storage hardware that use SCSI and NDMP.

however, i've been trying to make a break out of this particular role and get myself into more of a pure development role when i can get more experience in design and implementation. but that's been proving to be difficult.

congrats on the new job.

 

How has it been difficult for you?

 

Back in the 90's, I worked for a company that had a program in place they called, "Rotational Developer". The candidate spent six months with a QA/testing/client response team. He didn't have to deal directly with company clients, but he did deal directly with the staff who did this, or Q&A or testing. I was chosen to spend six months at this and it was a valuable lesson. While with them, I wrote some tools to help them since their actual technical knowledge was short in UNIX. One of the tools I wrote was called "locate", written in C, to take the place of "grep" because they were always asking how to use grep to do this or that (piping was out of the question). Since locate.c was mine, I carried it to other places and tweaked it enough to add a lot of extra functionality. I also made it faster than grep and made it capable of doing multiple string searches on a single pass (yes, grep can do this on some systems).

So my time with that group was all good. And they were a bunch of great people.

 

Congrats! I'm in the same industry and I know how stressful finding another position can be.

I've done my share of development work on both existing systems and new applications as well and to tell you the truth, I'm sick of writing the code. I'm in a QA shop now and couldn't be happier. I don't know if I attribute it to laziness or not, but writing code just wasn't doing it for me anymore. Plus the boredom of only being a part of the overall system left me feeling limited. I'd rather be exposed and gain knowledge of the overall system, not just the cust admin or reporting parts.

 

That sounds kind of like me! In most of my jobs as a QA person, I would write different tools to help the testers be more efficient. At my first job I wrote an application that would automatically create XML and EDI LSR (for number porting) orders based on a given phone number. Like you the team I worked on was great, and I think I may have still been there had they weren't in the process of outsourcing everything to India.

Sounds like you are very skilled in C/C++, I'm not at that point yet and although I'm familiar with the language and many of its nuances, I'm by no means Senior Level. I like C++ but it has kind of intimidated me since the time I had to write a polynomial application using pointers back in college.


Thanks! and I know exactly what you mean.

My last job was my first pure development role, and while i liked it for the most part, there were times that I thought to myself what did I get myself into. I know I like development, so I don't know if it was the language I didn't enjoy, the environment or just that I didn't like doing it all the time on a schedule. It may have something to do with the differences between coding for fun and coding because you have to.

I also felt limited in my development role like you stated, I was so focused and concentrated on one or two applications and not even the entire application, I never got the chance to expand and learn other applications and systems. I suppose each has its advantages and disadvantages. But at least in this new role, I'm able to provide QA support with development on the side which should satisfy my development thirst long enough to see if I want to go back to pure development down the road.

 

C yes, C++ not so much. I did write a number of functions and methods in C++ for our API library but we were using C++ to interface with C so that was pretty easy.

 

I don't see myself going back to coding at all. Not after doing this now for a couple of years. Being able to identify issues and / or question the business rules of why things are working a certain way is much more satisfying than adding another control break into a report. And there is an absolute satisfaction knowing that something I brought up has now gone to the development shop to be implemented. It's probably just more the result of me getting fat and lazy in my old age as I said earlier though. I don't want to be the guy digging the ditches anymore, I'll just sit here and tell you where to dig.....