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For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

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Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#21

Post by Scarbutt »

fapjacks wrote: post #12
sotojuan wrote: post #7

Luckily in my current job search I've only been told there would be a whiteboard once (this Friday!). This article made me nervous though—as a busy student I don't have time to sit down and review/learn all those tree and linked list operations as well as their complexities. Best interview I've had was pair programming with a team member and fixing a bug.

Yep! I have been interviewing for fun for the last few years (averaging maybe one or two interviews every few months), and I've seen all kinds of stuff. Way too many whiteboards. In fact, even after all these years, whiteboards still make me nervous, and basically makes it impossible to get into flow, or have a reasonably nice mindset for solving problems. And if I do this for fun, you can bet that people who depend…

nice hobby you got there ;) What do you if the company wants to hire you?

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#22

Post by [deleted] »

fapjacks wrote: post #12
sotojuan wrote: post #7

Luckily in my current job search I've only been told there would be a whiteboard once (this Friday!). This article made me nervous though—as a busy student I don't have time to sit down and review/learn all those tree and linked list operations as well as their complexities. Best interview I've had was pair programming with a team member and fixing a bug.

Yep! I have been interviewing for fun for the last few years (averaging maybe one or two interviews every few months), and I've seen all kinds of stuff. Way too many whiteboards. In fact, even after all these years, whiteboards still make me nervous, and basically makes it impossible to get into flow, or have a reasonably nice mindset for solving problems. And if I do this for fun, you can bet that people who depend…

[deleted]

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#23

Post by bgribble »

fapjacks wrote: post #12
sotojuan wrote: post #7

Luckily in my current job search I've only been told there would be a whiteboard once (this Friday!). This article made me nervous though—as a busy student I don't have time to sit down and review/learn all those tree and linked list operations as well as their complexities. Best interview I've had was pair programming with a team member and fixing a bug.

Yep! I have been interviewing for fun for the last few years (averaging maybe one or two interviews every few months), and I've seen all kinds of stuff. Way too many whiteboards. In fact, even after all these years, whiteboards still make me nervous, and basically makes it impossible to get into flow, or have a reasonably nice mindset for solving problems. And if I do this for fun, you can bet that people who depend…

While I appreciate that this process has been great for you, I would think that it probably sucks for all the engineers and managers whose time you took up interviewing "for fun". Have you ever tried to hire engineers? It is a pain in the ass, and giving serious consideration to every candidate takes up a huge amount of time even before the interview, much less taking a significant chunk of a day for a significant chunk of the team to actually do the interview.

If I found out someone had interviewed with me "for fun" I would be very tempted to send them a bill for "employment search consulting services" at my team's market rate per man hour!

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#24

Post by busterarm »

EricScottTaylor wrote: post #10
exabrial wrote: post #3

Nearly every silicon valley interview is based on whether or not you are as hipster as the interviewer. Keep your head up and don't subscribe to the culture. You can be excellent and live as different as you want.

Full disclosure, I work for HackerRank, but I really wanted to comment for two reasons: (1) Reading this article and seeing the comments, really helps me see how my daily work helps level the playing field and as Alibek says, change people's lives. Very fulfilling and thankful for that. (2) Re: exabrial's comment above, where do you think culture fit should be evaluated in the process? Lots of interview processes tod…

Given the trend I'm starting to see in my peer group of (non-asian) minority developers having difficulty finding work at their skill level or with appropriate compensation combined with the number of white developers I know who get turned down and told things "well, you just don't look like a developer" because they aren't frat-bro/hipster enough, I think that matching culture fit at the end instead of the beginning is (consciously or unconsciously) because people don't want to get sued.

You can always say that some other candidate was 'objectively better' if you bring everyone in and give them a bunch of arbitrary challenges to complete.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#25

Post by basseq »

kafkaesq wrote: post #19
bgribble wrote: post #16

There's too much missing information in this article. In today's environment, a qualified programmer with the background this guy appears to have should get offers at a much higher percentage of companies.. IF everything is on the level: decent communications skills, applying for jobs whose requirements match skills, realistic compensation expectations, and (my guess in this case) already authorized to work in the US…

The H1B factor certainly has weight - I can imagine it leading to a 2x factor in his rejection rate. But not the 5x rate he's apparently had to suffer through.

I would also have to imagine most of the H1B fallout is at the initial screen, not after multiple interview rounds.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#26

Post by sotojuan »

bgribble wrote: post #23
fapjacks wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! I have been interviewing for fun for the last few years (averaging maybe one or two interviews every few months), and I've seen all kinds of stuff. Way too many whiteboards. In fact, even after all these years, whiteboards still make me nervous, and basically makes it impossible to get into flow, or have a reasonably nice mindset for solving problems. And if I do this for fun, you can bet that people who depend…

While I appreciate that this process has been great for you, I would think that it probably sucks for all the engineers and managers whose time you took up interviewing "for fun". Have you ever tried to hire engineers? It is a pain in the ass, and giving serious consideration to every candidate takes up a huge amount of time even before the interview, much less taking a significant chunk of a day for a significant ch…

A lot of people do this though—my finance friends have been interviewing for internships and jobs there's no way they could get for fun and practice. Essentially they've wasted people's times for 2-3 years so by now that they're seniors any interview is a piece of cake.

I guess that's more useful than just for fun though.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#27

Post by Zigurd »

sotojuan wrote: post #7

Luckily in my current job search I've only been told there would be a whiteboard once (this Friday!). This article made me nervous though—as a busy student I don't have time to sit down and review/learn all those tree and linked list operations as well as their complexities. Best interview I've had was pair programming with a team member and fixing a bug.

That's an excellent approach. It's quick enough to get meaningful results, it's interactive, and it's not artificial in the wtf-coding-without-an-ide way that whiteboard coding is like.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#28

Post by exabrial »

EricScottTaylor wrote: post #10
exabrial wrote: post #3

Nearly every silicon valley interview is based on whether or not you are as hipster as the interviewer. Keep your head up and don't subscribe to the culture. You can be excellent and live as different as you want.

Full disclosure, I work for HackerRank, but I really wanted to comment for two reasons: (1) Reading this article and seeing the comments, really helps me see how my daily work helps level the playing field and as Alibek says, change people's lives. Very fulfilling and thankful for that. (2) Re: exabrial's comment above, where do you think culture fit should be evaluated in the process? Lots of interview processes tod…

My answer to #2:

Being from the midwest, doing interviews in silicon valley was like stepping into Charlie's Chocolate Factory at a few places in LA and SF. It made me smile to see people using their freedom to do whatever they wanted, but I really felt like -I- was being judged: you know for not wearing skinning jeans, feeling comfortable in my (literal) boots, being clean shaven, dressed in a long sleeve, and of course I have a soft spoken midwestern accent. You can't fake sincerity, and despite knocking the coding interviews out of the park, I felt like some (not all) of the interviewers were threatened by me somehow and mocked me gently with "well you did a really good job despite..." like they were talking to a three year old.

Really left a sour taste in my mouth how it seems the region preaches equality and acceptance, but that's only equality and acceptance of the non-traditional.

TL;DR: It's easy to say "We have a great culture" at your job if you hire hipsters homogeneously. The company I want to work for is color blind: we grow to appreciate each other. People of all walks, western, eastern, european, russian, christian, cat worshipper, whatever, just respect each other believe something different and learn how to communicate across these boundaries.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#29

Post by busterarm »

bgribble wrote: post #23
fapjacks wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! I have been interviewing for fun for the last few years (averaging maybe one or two interviews every few months), and I've seen all kinds of stuff. Way too many whiteboards. In fact, even after all these years, whiteboards still make me nervous, and basically makes it impossible to get into flow, or have a reasonably nice mindset for solving problems. And if I do this for fun, you can bet that people who depend…

While I appreciate that this process has been great for you, I would think that it probably sucks for all the engineers and managers whose time you took up interviewing "for fun". Have you ever tried to hire engineers? It is a pain in the ass, and giving serious consideration to every candidate takes up a huge amount of time even before the interview, much less taking a significant chunk of a day for a significant ch…

You go into this process knowing that it consumes time and that not everything is going to pan out. If you had the data and processes to identify the perfect candidate, you wouldn't need to bring people in to interview.

It's not waste, it's data collection. If you're not building usable data out of your interview process, your hiring process sucks.

My team was interviewing candidates recently and we brought in a guy that was great on paper and in the interview but we had other candidates scheduled and two of them ended up blowing the first guy away. I'm glad we delayed that hiring decision until we had an appropriate amount of data.

Also, think of it like dating (or any other matching market). Being outcome-dependent says nothing about your candidates but a lot (that's unattractive) about you.

The best way to do things is to build good relationships. Your company and your developers should have a network of people you can bring in at any time to interview for a position. As a developer you should also have a network of contacts to know who needs developers. Instead you're waiting till you're desperate and coming off as needy. If I see that, I'm going to ask for a lot more money or as an employer offer less.

Thankfully for my wallet, almost everyone else is in the same boat as you.

...and if I'm out interviewing for fun and find a better fit, I'm probably going to take it.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#30

Post by craigyk »

pklausler wrote: post #18
craigyk wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Google interview in 2008, one guy asked me to write a binary tree structure and implementations of depth and breadth-first search (maybe also balanced insert?) on the whiteboard in C, which I blew through in no time. He then immediately said it was wrong and let me wither for a few minutes trying to figure out what the problem was before pointing out I forgot a semicolon.

I hated seeing that kind of crap when I was on the hiring committee, and I think that it's less likely that you'd run into it today.

Thanks, it does sound like things have changed. I probably would have been a better hire back then than today though. I was younger, cheaper, and had an almost OCD drive to learn everything CS since I had a complex about getting into the game a little late. Today I feel like I wouldn't be able to maintain my current lifestyle with a wife, two kids, two dogs in the bay area. Occasionally I think about it though...
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