For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by kbart » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 9:54 AM UTC

xvolter wrote: post #127

I've seen articles about technical interviews too many times to count, and while I personally don't believe whiteboarding is a good tool for interviewing and don't use it when I perform interviews, I do believe that any good engineer should be able to whiteboard answers with relative ease. The gripe really is dependent on the specific questions, however if you've worked with a technology stack you should be able to r…

"if you've worked with a technology stack you should be able to recall the function names, parameter order, and basic pseudo code syntax to write answers to questions."

That's not true unless you work with very narrow technology or single framework. For example, good luck trying to remember all these POSIX API functions. I don't even try to remember mundane things by heart, because it takes a precious and very limited resource (brain memory) for a very small gain (few seconds saved that would cost to look it up).

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

#252

Post by kbart » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 10:21 AM UTC

tomnikl wrote: post #9

Excelling in an online programming competitions sounds like a fun, exciting way to showcase myself to multiple companies all at once. Way better than white boards, for sure!

That might sound "cool" if you are straight out of a college with plenty of time to spare, no full-time job and family to support. Otherwise, it's not so compelling.

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

#253

Post by p4wnc6 » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 12:34 PM UTC

frcknfrckn wrote: post #216

p4wnc6 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that candidates face that exact same problem when trying to weed out bad employers. That's why good developers reject the employers who try to use commodity tests like HackerRank. We do it for the same reason that the employer wants to use the commodity tests to weed out bad candidates. But somehow the employers don't understand they are just signalling how bad they are (apart from a very rare few compani…

Don't be so quick to speak for all developers. Most good developers I've encountered are willing to put some effort in to find the right job.

HackerRank-like lazy, commodity evaluation is not remotely close to "put[ting] some effort in to find the right job." It's very critical that we don't allow people to make the false comparison between actual interview effort and daft HackerRank time-wasting.

In fact, doing the emotionally difficult task of rejecting an employer who tries the HackerRank commodity nonsense represents putting in more legitimate effort to find the right job and to judiciously choose to complete code evaluations for companies that aren't being lazy and wasting your time.

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

#254

Post by stuxnet79 » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 1:10 PM UTC

chvid wrote: post #175

chvid wrote: post #171

This is just an ad for hackerrank. And yes; it is hard to find a job in Silicon Valley if you are sitting in Kazhakstan and need a visa too. Duh.

And honestly; don't spend you time practicing silly brain teasers and programming quiz questions. Write meaningful software that you into production.

I've been struggling with this issue for months. I really want to be hired by Microsoft, Amazon or Google, but I feel like the time required to prepare for the inevitable "hazing" would be better served exploring new technologies and creating new software.

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

#255

Post by emodendroket » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 1:13 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #24

EricScottTaylor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> (e.g. you're a big open source shop, are they an advocate?).

After reading this a few times I think you meant to say "you're a big open-source advocate; are they an open-source shop?" or something similar.

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

#256

Post by smm2000 » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 1:15 PM UTC

lostcolony wrote: post #180

cbhl wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies interview multiple candidates looking for the best one, and they'll solicit applications from candidates that will never make it past a phone screen. Why wouldn't you do the same with companies?

Companies don't go into the interview saying "we'll never hire this person, we're just talking to them for the practice". It's fine to interview at multiple companies that you might consider taking an offer from, but interviewing at a place you know you'll say no to strikes me as, yes, wasting their time (and money, as we usually have a few people interviewing one candidate at the same time).

It's never "I will never take the job". I am sure if offered 2x current salary (or 3x if work is especially unpleasant), most people will jump.

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

#257

Post by artmageddon » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 1:27 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #242

mooreds wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ice always treated interviews as a way of getting to know a bit about the place I might work. I haven't had a whole heap but had always assumed that it was a two way street.

> I haven't had a whole heap but had always assumed that it was a two way street.

It absolutely is a two-way street, as you describe. When I go on interviews, I get into the mindset that I should interview them as much as they interview me. It's actually saved me from taking on a couple of bad roles.

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

#258

Post by logfromblammo » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 2:09 PM UTC

crispyambulance wrote: post #170

logfromblammo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I've had plenty of them remark "you are the only candidate that has answered that question correctly" and then never speak to me again. Stop right there :-) I think that's where you need to do some deep introspection. There's A LOT more to a job than technical aptitude. It appears that you're excelling in one aspect of the evaluation but failing in another. There's a reason WHY they're not following up. Find out wh…

I'm pretty sure that if a company cuts off all contact after an interview, there is at least one problem on their end that I cannot fix, no matter how hard I try.

Believe me, I have tried to find out why they vanished from the face of my planet. But there's only so much effort I can put into throwing politeness and courtesy into the void of unimaginable rudeness.

You have to do mock interviews to get real feedback. Real interviewers are so absolutely terrified of telling you even one thing that might help with your next interview that I have never heard anything, good or bad, about myself in the wake of a real interview.

This is not an occasional problem. This is epidemic in every city I have tried looking for full time employment, to the point where I am actually shocked--shocked--if someone follows up with me after an interview when they do not want to extend an offer.

The only reason I can think of for this is that someone out there is actively counseling companies and HR managers to conduct their interviews in this manner. Perhaps it is to cut costs. Perhaps it is to minimize liability exposure to workplace discrimination laws. Perhaps I am on some sort of blacklist. Maybe something on my credit report is bad. There is literally no way for me to find out, because I am already blackholed by the time I might get a chance to ask, and I have no expectation that they would answer honestly if they would even answer at all.

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

#259

Post by vonmoltke » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 2:18 PM UTC

tsax wrote: post #194

vonmoltke wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is highly location-dependent. I get a fraction of your volume even when posting mine on careers sites and constantly tweaking my LinkedIn profile. Of course, I'm in Dallas and wee seem to be invisible to most of the tech world.

Just wanted to say - cool handle! World War 1 history fan?

Wrong von Moltke. General military history fan, mostly 19th and 20th centuries.

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

#260

Post by vonmoltke » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 2:24 PM UTC

jlees wrote: post #182

kafkaesq wrote: post #5

So, how did you get to where you are today? I’ve always been passionate about coding, starting from my early days at Olympiad teams in high school and ACM teams in college. Anyone who's made it onto an Olympiad team[1] of any significant geographical scale, in any category, shouldn't have to deal with this whiteboard nonsense. Maybe a few lightweight-to-medium rounds to verify that they are what they say they are. Bu…

Just because you are smart enough to compete in an Olympiad doesn't mean you can function practically on a software engineering team. Whiteboard coding helps the interviewer see how you think and function as well as "can you solve this problem"; though I agree that it's not necessarily the best way to evaluate those capabilities, it's the best tool some companies have.

I don't really see that. I think whiteboard coding is one of many ways a team could function and that how a candidate performs on it is not generalizable. For instance, I have never written code, pseudo or otherwise, on a whiteboard outside of an interview in over eight years of writing code full-time. Hell, I used a whiteboard more in my four years as an EE and two years as a SysE than I have as a SysE/SwE.