231–240 of 306 posts
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Wise words: "You are not going there to get a job, you are going there to present what you do... then walk away." I think if more people took this attitude of employment being an arrangement of mutual benefit that both sides are engaged in, the world would be a better place.
I think this could be applied to many encounters; dating seems to be the most obvious.
I realized something a while back... My entire career, if I've made it to an on-site interview, I've only had one company NOT make me a job offer. That interview, I was asked to do something using recursion. (Ug.) The next interviewer asked me to reverse a singularly linked list, and because my brain was still in recursion land, I tried to do it recursively. Blame the jet lag, okay? Immediately after I sucked at that…
Except ... reversing a singularly-linked list recursively is trivial. If you can't do this, you are not qualified at basic manipulation of data structures and you should fail the interview if they want someone with basic competence in data structure manipulation. Sorry but that is how it is.
I wouldn't even bother implementing this myself in the real world and I have a degree in computer science and 10 years experience doing dev work. I would type the problem into google, survey a couple of solutions and pick one I liked. Done. Next problem please.
This is pedantic crap that is a waste of anyone's time. I can't believe people actually get asked shit like this at interviews? Well, at least none that I've ever been to. They look at my resume "Oh, CS degree at well respected University." and you can deduce that this person can probably work out trivial crap like this or look it up in a book or the internet. At most ask them for their academic records. What a complete waste of time in an interview..
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> I think "A" players are the best bargain in the world... They are, but try explaining to your average PHB who doesn't even begin to understand the complexities of the 'simple' piece of software they intend to write that Charles here can do the job in 3 months and will cost 50K and that the five guys over there in the corner will take the job for 30K and will take a month longer (or so they think). Then, after 30K b…
Two issues: 1) The market has imperfect information. The expensive developer could be great or terrible, but the same is true for the inexpensive developer. Even if there is theoretically some way to tell the difference, most employers don't have the skills to do so. 2) Bad management is at least as likely to kill a project than bad developers, so even a developer who is 10x in theory will on average deliver much les…
(2) Very true.
The current state of the hiring process in tech companies has really affected me. I'm, by nature, a very shy person who doesn't deal with rejection very well. Because of this, I tend to apply at jobs where my hiring is a slam-dunk because it's so routine and easily within my skill-set. It results in jobs that aren't particularly fulfilling but gives me plenty of time to work on technology I'm interested in my spare t…
I had stage fright. In several weeks I'll do my second public show, for a small audience. It can really turn your view of yourself around.
You can read books about it, but you have to do it, experience it. It's much less frightening when you do it then you think, because of the small steps. But you need a good teacher here, one that knows what he does and has done it for years. In general, it's really fun!
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>Getting 38 job interviews is very much a sign of the times. I've noticed that many employers have copied google and have stated to interview with as many people as possible. Lots of them take pride in their acceptance ratio, some even advertising that on their careers page. Def a sign of times but might not in a way that you are suggesting. Getting an interview is not all that hard these days, you can get an intervi…
Many companies are swimming in cash and can afford to have 5 high paid Engineers sitting in interviews for hours each week. When stock prices go down that luxury fades. We saw this in the late 90s. Yep getting an interview isn't hard at all these days. The economy is great and jobs are dime a dozen. My point exactly, it's 1997-1998 all over again. I've practically stopped using my phone and had to get a new email add…
Plus, companies expect you to work more hours if interviews have delayed a must have feature.
> "Job interviews are difficult by design." In the tech-sector at least they're not "difficult by design." They're obtuse and absurd due to laziness and lack of rigor applied to the problem space by individual firms as well as the aggregate marketplace. Almost nobody applies anything remotely resembling a scientific method or includes the massive body of research available in sociology, psychology, and/or neurology f…
The current state of the hiring process in tech companies has really affected me. I'm, by nature, a very shy person who doesn't deal with rejection very well. Because of this, I tend to apply at jobs where my hiring is a slam-dunk because it's so routine and easily within my skill-set. It results in jobs that aren't particularly fulfilling but gives me plenty of time to work on technology I'm interested in my spare t…
Sounds interesting! Did you try to give presentations on these things? Start with small conferences/hackathons/user groups. Use YouTube if there is nothing local available.
Also, theater worked really well for me as well.
One very important thing strikes me about this. Getting 38 job interviews is very much a sign of the times. In 2002 I was a highly skilled senior linux/aix/hp-ux/Solaris admin and PHP programmer and I got laid off. I submitted my resume more than 1000+ times in the first year and ZERO interviews. I hate to sound alarmist but, I fear many younger tech people may not realize how lucky they are currently. If the economy…
And, it's not like the job market is that rosy now either. Sure, every tech company on earth is interviewing, but few of them are actually hiring. Getting 38 job interviews these days with companies that are not serious about hiring is fairly easy, but pointless. Companies have a lot of cash and it's fairly cheap to interview people, so they all seem to be kind of playing the market and fishing for the bargains.
The job market in Ireland is nuts :)
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If only that were true. I'm a U.S. national event champion in Div. C Science Olympiad (Road Scholar), and I not only have to deal with whiteboard nonsense all the time, but also, the spouse never really believes that I know how to get anywhere from anywhere else. (Sure, argue with Siri/Google, rather than allowing that I might possibly know which direction north is.) Credentials are only as good as the trust other pe…
They're not looking for good people, they're looking for cheap people. 1 good person will cost as much or more than 5 bad ones and somehow it got into managements head that 5 'B' (or even 'C') players is better than one 'A' player for the same money. Which of course isn't true but good luck convincing people otherwise. (Source: regular clean up jobs after all the money has been spent and the company is on the skids a…
Unfortunately, the only solution I found for this is "charge more", which seems to be psychologically difficult for programmers, with all of patio11's efforts :)
"I got turned down by 38 companies, nobody wants to pay me 100k mimimimi" Murican Coders of the 21st Century at the biggest whiners ever...And honestly if you fail to get a job within 3-4 interviews then you are a) doing it wrong or b) applying for the wrong jobs.
I somewhat agree with your statement. Mainly because I personally put a LOT of effort into each job application and I would not be able to apply to more than 2-3 jobs a week. Takes time to find the right company, do research, make a perfect personalized application etc. As a result to that pretty much all applications I have ever made have at the very least gotten back to me. I would never be able to apply to 38 jobs…