151–160 of 232 posts
i prefer messaging folks on linkedin or finding recruiters.
step 0: send email
step 1: wait for phone call
step 2: interview
step 3: negotiate offer
step 4: get job
Tech interview threads appear constantly on HN and Reddit.
It's a symptom of a process that is completely broken. I have given up entirely on interviewing for SV companies, and work 100% remote now.
>> I have given up entirely on interviewing for SV companies, and work 100% remote now.
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Are you triggered?
It's an interesting thought experiment, if the original poster had qualified every statement in a different way... "you just start working with a white person , giving the white person basic isolated tasks, and as the white person successfully progresses with their work, task are getting more and more complicated (salary, permissions as well). After few months of such freelance-ish work you can know for sure that thi…
My experience with initial stage of recruitment to Amazon, Google, and other "we can afford false negatives" jokers. Write O(n) algorithm for bus ticket allocation. Use yellow unbalanced binary tree, you have 40 minutes. Then we will run it against exhaustive tests our engineers have been working on for the last couple of weeks. Uhhhh... what's that?... your algorithm melted down... We wish you good luck in your job…
During the part where I get to ask them questions I always ask about their current project and whats it built in. Even at the big guys they always reply with the same frameworks everyone else uses etc. Then I say something like oh so your project is using framework x so you're not coding your own libraries from scratch using graphs etc. One interviewer took it personal and hung up on me haha.
As a senior engineer who already has a good job, here's how I've adapted to the stupid tech interview and plan on doing for future jobs: - Stay at my job longer and push for more raises/promotions. So far this has worked well. I may not get more in raw $ amount vs job hopping, but when risk adjusted (the risks of any new job such as bad manager, etc.) it's worked out ok so far. I think some job hopping is still good…
I like your first point, though your 2nd and 3rd points tell me you haven't applied for a while :) They've all adopted the google model, small or big companies it doesn't matter. You start with a 45 minute technical phone screen (algorithm/data structures), sometimes a second tech phone screen, an onsite of at least 5 hours with at least 3 to 4 45-minute technical screens (algo/data structures) as if it wasn't enough…
I think it's just a weird California thing, kind of like "thinking In-n-Out is better than Five Guys", or "driving your state into bankruptcy".
I failed a technical interview recently. I was asked to write a rule engine, so I opened up Google and read about all the best ways about doing that for about 15 minutes of the interview. They weren't a fan. In the rejection email, they said I wasn't technical enough to fit in. I replied with my offer letter from Google.
I once had to do a take home project... the spec said I could write either a console application or a GUI. Fast forward to the in person meeting, they go through my solution and nitpick random things like "why use NuGet packages" or "why no test cases" (I had written them but they got mysteriously removed from the solution). Finally the CTO speaks up and asked why I didn't write a GUI, as many other candidates had (m…
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That sounds pretty awful. I've been programming for half my life and I'd fall over on that stuff.
I've been programming 3/4 of my life and I'd fall over on that stuff. I'm a CTO of 12 years and I'd fall over on that stuff. I have a successful open-source project [1] which is all algorithms and data-structures , and I'd fall over on that stuff. At some point interviewers must get it, that these artificial test environments bear no relevance to how we write code in the real world, and putting these false constraint…
I keep hearing this, and perhaps I'm not part of the problem. But at a prior company I worked for (which was quite good), our go-to phone screen was "implement min()". This screened an absolutely staggering (to us) fraction of the candidates. I don't see how asking someone who claims to have years of experience in engineering write a for loop is stressful, and anything but real world; I write for loops all the time, and I don't consider that the hard or core part of my job.
(One of our followup questions, usually on-site, amounted to: "can you write a for loop that involves two pointers?"; too many candidates would give them absolutely terrible names like "i" and "j", and not be able to mentally maintain what they actually meant, or were for.)
> Always start off by asking the candidate, "Is this still a good time?" Is there a better way to ask this? It would be relatively awkward for the candidate to bring up on their own, so it seems like a good idea to make sure nothing unexpected has occurred since the call was planned. > Alright, that's enough chit chat. Curtly prod them to submit to the interrogation. Assuming it's still good to have the call, why wou…
I agree. Phone tech interviews are usually low level screens to see if the candidate has the minimum technical chops to come on board. Short and sweet is what I prefer, especially since I'm usually doing the phone interview on a lunch break and would like to have some time to actually wolf down my lunch. Collaborative code editors are an unpleasant modern addition to the interview process. Plus I'm usually writing th…
Speaking from the other end of the phonescreen line and collab editing session, that behavior looks a lot like googling and pasting in the first answer you find on stackoverflow. We use a collaborative environment because I kind of want to see you typing, sorry. I know, it's degrading, but... it's a screen, it's not designed to find out how great you are, just prove you're not going to waste our time.
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During the part where I get to ask them questions I always ask about their current project and whats it built in. Even at the big guys they always reply with the same frameworks everyone else uses etc. Then I say something like oh so your project is using framework x so you're not coding your own libraries from scratch using graphs etc. One interviewer took it personal and hung up on me haha.
LOL. You have to have guts, to ask such question.
I caught the punk red handed asking a question he did not know very well.