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Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

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Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#341

Post by Kranar »

icedchai wrote: post #310
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't teach pass by reference these days. Anyone you find in the real world under ~30 years old may not even be aware that you can pass a reference and modify it directly without having to make a method return a value. It's super cool to have someone explain to you side effects yet you show them a method with a null return and run it for them showing that the value has changed and they are mesmerized.

I don't believe this. Almost all mainstream languages use pass-by-reference by default. Java, python, javascript all pass objects by reference.

All those languages pass by value and it's kind of embarrassing that you mixed it up while criticizing someone else for not knowing it.

One necessary (but insufficient) test you can use to determine if your language has call by reference or call by value is whether you can implement a swap function. In the languages you list, a swap function is not possible to implement, whereas in C++ it is, which tells you that those languages do not implement pass by reference.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#342

Post by mrfumier »

nemo44x wrote: post #203
teux wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask if you know how average costs in Scandinavia hold up to that? Working in Norway atm making ~90k€ equivalent after some time, but I took the paycut from the US because of quality of life/healthcare/state pension, etc. Still, it’s a very good salary here, I’m in the top few % of all Norwegians. But it was a huge paycut. I’m definitely happier than I was in the US but I have been considering moving a bit furth…

I’m not sure about Norway but Sweden/Stockholm is in the same class as Berlin, Amsterdam, etc. I feel like Norway would be higher but I’m not certain. Premium areas are London and Paris. But even these salaries are closer to a middle rate USA city. Super-premium (on par with more expensive USA salaries like SF or NYC) is Switzerland. Very expensive to hire there and easily the highest salaries in Europe in my experie…

Paris ? Like, how much ?

When looking at offers there, there is absolutly nothing beyond 70k.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#343

Post by Retric »

jenscow wrote: post #221
dxxvi wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my own experience: if the recruiters don't call me back, that means I fail. Calling them just makes me more stressful/sad.

Yeah, exactly. Guess how many times anyone has called a recruiter and heard "Oh yes, you got the job - I've been waiting all week for you to call me about it"?

It’s useful to call back because if you did well but they picked someone else recruiters can often send you to some other interview with a different team. This common because a team will often say we want person X, but Y is also acceptable if X declines.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#344

Post by pizza234 »

icedchai wrote: post #310
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't teach pass by reference these days. Anyone you find in the real world under ~30 years old may not even be aware that you can pass a reference and modify it directly without having to make a method return a value. It's super cool to have someone explain to you side effects yet you show them a method with a null return and run it for them showing that the value has changed and they are mesmerized.

I don't believe this. Almost all mainstream languages use pass-by-reference by default. Java, python, javascript all pass objects by reference.

Passing a reference is semantically different from passing by reference (the latter being a functionality of the language); doing the former (behind the scenes) doesn't imply that the language supports the latter (if one wants to be rigorous, not even C supports pass by reference).

The canonical example is a function that swaps the variables passed to a function:

    a, b = 10, 20
    swap_fn(&a, &b)
    a == 20 # true
Since the above are primitive data types (ints), in order to make this work, the language needs to generically support passing the address (reference) of the variables. Java¹/Python² etc. are not able to do this; they copy the value of the variable and send it to the function, which will operate on the copy.

¹=at least, last time I've checked, which was long ago :)

²=funny to think that at least in Python, one can mess with the global register of the variables, and actually accomplish that

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#345

Post by [deleted] »

Kranar wrote: post #341
icedchai wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe this. Almost all mainstream languages use pass-by-reference by default. Java, python, javascript all pass objects by reference.

All those languages pass by value and it's kind of embarrassing that you mixed it up while criticizing someone else for not knowing it. One necessary (but insufficient) test you can use to determine if your language has call by reference or call by value is whether you can implement a swap function. In the languages you list, a swap function is not possible to implement, whereas in C++ it is, which tells you that tho…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#346

Post by trentnix »

yonaguska wrote: post #307
trentnix wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, and it’s flattering to think that. But I have to make my decisions based on the data I have.

I give "easy" interviews to people that have shown signs that I can trust their technical work. I far more interested in their communication and organizational skills once we get past the technical aspect of it. As well as their higher level "engineering" experience. What I mean by this is- when we're planning a complex feature, I want someone that has the experience and communication skills to stand up to the team a…

I can appreciate all of that. Maybe that’s the case I encountered and I wasn’t savvy enough to discern. But it’s also possible the interview simply wasn’t a good competence filter. And that possibility gave me pause.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#347

Post by nathias »

somenameforme wrote: post #291
inglor wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here (Israel) it's illegal, you can reject a candidate for pretty much any (non discriminatory) reason but you have to tell them about it pretty promptly. It's weird there are US states where it's not a requirement.

One practical problem is that there are a fair amount of people who are simply unstable, and if told why they were rejected (in very neutral to positive framing) they will actively challenge it and even go pseudo-stalker mode over it. Dealing with just a handful of these guys is enough to do away with providing any sort of feedback. Like many things, a few bad apples ruin nice things for everybody.

ghosting in no way solves this problem, it's universally acknowledged as worse than a simple 'no'

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#348

Post by ShroudedNight »

foepys wrote: post #340
icedchai wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I understand... But the result, practically speaking, is objects are passed by reference, just like I said. Methods/functions can modify their parameters.

But you cannot change the reference itself which is possible in languages like C, C++, C#, and many more.

It's been a while, but my understanding was that actual C++ references were immutable, and what you are describing can only happen as a result of passing a pointer by value.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#349

Post by trentnix »

endtime wrote: post #284
trentnix wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing I noticed (although small sample set) was that the interview processes are very slow (like 1 round per week). Yep. And almost everyone is hiring by committee now. Because if the committee hires the wrong person, nobody hires the wrong person. And with all of these people involved, now you are subject to the calendars of the various very busy “stakeholders”. One company I engaged with had me talk to 11 peo…

> And almost everyone is hiring by committee now. Because if the committee hires the wrong person, nobody hires the wrong person. At least in some cases, it's a reaction to some managers having made hiring decisions perceived by leadership as mistakes. Impersonal and bureaucratic as it might be, to the extent it keeps the bar higher I think it's a good thing.

I understand that reasoning, but I don’t think it bears out.

It results in frequently hiring the lowest common denominator. No risks are taken. Bold thinking is suppressed. It trains your managers, whom you don’t trust to hire their own team members, that leadership is done by committees.

And what’s the solution to a bad committee hire? A bigger committee.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#350

Post by krinchan »

bitbuilder wrote: post #325
icedchai wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe this. Almost all mainstream languages use pass-by-reference by default. Java, python, javascript all pass objects by reference.

I don't believe they're saying the feature doesn't exist or never gets used, but rather it's rarely something that's taught to junior developers, and rarely something you see highlighted as a best practice. I've been developing for 25+ years in any language you can imagine, and know how to use pass by ref just fine, and know there are situations where it might be the best solution. But I can't remember the last time…

It's like the other day there was a post where someone wrote an entire blog post about how they changed a tight loop with a function call in Golang to pass a pointer to a struct instead of by-value so they stopped allocating and copying on each call.

Like...duh?

I suppose that's why I find Golang less weird to work with than others in my cohort. I spent a semester in the depths of C and OpenGL so I'm intimately familiar with by-value vs by-ref.

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