Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Developer Skills Report

research.hackerrank.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 198 posts

Re: Developer Skills Report

#91

Post by collyw »

onion2k wrote: post #65
dvt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It might not give you a very good insight in to an applicant. I'd argue pointless whiteboard trivia doesn't give you good insight into an applicant, either. And yet, 90% of companies do it. > Most people's public code is of roughly equal quality (eg 'not great'). I disagree with this. Unless you're looking at a toy or unfinished project, most code that's released (on npm, maven, or something similar) is actually fa…

I'd argue pointless whiteboard trivia doesn't give you good insight into an applicant, either. And yet, 90% of companies do it. The fact that some companies use bad practises for hiring doesn't change how hard it is to judge someone's code from their Github repo. I agree that whiteboard tests are horrible, but switching to a different bad idea wouldn't help. Unless you're looking at a toy or unfinished project, most…

"As he says himself, Homebrew is a successful product but not necessarily great computer science. He 'failed' a computer science question. "

Maybe Google is different but I usually need to do computer cine type stuff about one a year.I have used recursion on maybe 4 different occasions in my carreer, but that's the sort of thing that comes up regularly in coding tests. Why not test for things that are actually being used on the job?

Re: Developer Skills Report

#93

Post by scarface74 »

dvt wrote: post #58
onion2k wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of a dozen reasons for that, but here are a few of the most salient ones; 1. Reading and evaluating code in an unfamiliar context is really £@#&ing hard, especially on a complex project. Understanding someone's commits requires knowledge of the project as a whole, the problem space, the environment, etc. That's not possible to do for a large number of candidates. It might not give you a very good insight…

> It might not give you a very good insight in to an applicant. I'd argue pointless whiteboard trivia doesn't give you good insight into an applicant, either. And yet, 90% of companies do it. > Most people's public code is of roughly equal quality (eg 'not great'). I disagree with this. Unless you're looking at a toy or unfinished project, most code that's released (on npm, maven, or something similar) is actually fa…

I've had to do one whiteboard coding exercise in my entire career. I knew two other devs that had interview at this company, so I knew what to expect. I accepted the in person interview on a whim. I already had accepted an offer as the dev lead for another company.

The whiteboard interview was to write out algorithm for a merge sort. I thought it was the silliest thing in the world. I had already accepted a position to basically create a development department, and he wants me to write a sort algorithm? Once he described how it worked, I wrote it without much difficulty but that was a turn off and I got an offer that was permanent (as opposed to contract to perm for the offer I accepted), making more money, with a signing bonus.

It was such a turn off, I declined the offer for a chance to build a department that would not expose developers to this foolishness and thought that the interview process tells you a lot about the company.

A year later. I'm glad I made the choice I did.

On the other hand, I've done quite a few pair programming type of interviews where there was a skeleton of a program with a lot of failing unit tests you had to make pass. I enjoy those.

Is there a DoctorRank or SecurityGuardRank or WaiterRank?*

Doctors have to go to school 8+ years and do a 2-4 year residency before they can practice without supervision. Lawyers have to go to school 7 years and pass an exam. Software Engineers only have to watch a couple of YouTube videos and they can call themselves "programmers". Doctors can't say they are qualified because they have been doing brain surgery since 6th grade in their bedroom.

Re: Developer Skills Report

#94

Post by scarface74 »

expertentipp wrote: post #57
rattray wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, they don't want to have to pay you to do the learning. It's usually not "how to get a simple task done with React" – many engineers can get there very quickly – but rather having an understanding of best-practices in terms of architecting your application. Angular, well, can take a while to learn how to use properly.

The problem is that in the most of the Europe they dont’t pay market wages. Way below them. Certainly not enough to keep up to date with the the JS framework brainfuck.

Statistically, how can most of a market not pay market wages?

Re: Developer Skills Report

#95

Post by collyw »

TheCowboy wrote: post #22

> The biggest gap in knowledge is with JavaScript frameworks > Most often, employers want developers who know AngularJS, Node.js, and React. Am I overthinking this? When I've been looking for jobs, I've found the emphasis on JavaScript frameworks slightly perplexing and frustrating. I would assume that a competent web developer should be capable of quickly learning a framework. Having to know JavaScript, CSS, etc. to…

Yes, I got given a "full stack" test. Entirely in JavaScript. No database element. Required to use React. Screw that, its going to take me a couple of days to get up to speed in a framework that I don't know, and I likely won't make a good job of my first attempt.

Re: Developer Skills Report

#96

Post by collyw »

flukus wrote: post #69
rattray wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, they don't want to have to pay you to do the learning. It's usually not "how to get a simple task done with React" – many engineers can get there very quickly – but rather having an understanding of best-practices in terms of architecting your application. Angular, well, can take a while to learn how to use properly.

> It's usually not "how to get a simple task done with React" – many engineers can get there very quickly – but rather having an understanding of best-practices in terms of architecting your application. Perhaps I'm being too pedantic here, but the UI library used has very little to do with how you architect an application. Knowing how to write half decent sql or not reinvent your own message queue is far more import…

Completely agree, but have rarely had that asked about in interviews

Re: Developer Skills Report

#97

Post by expertentipp »

scarface74 wrote: post #94
expertentipp wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that in the most of the Europe they dont’t pay market wages. Way below them. Certainly not enough to keep up to date with the the JS framework brainfuck.

Statistically, how can most of a market not pay market wages?

The entire market being low cost, or at the bottom of corporate outsourcing chain. Market rates == they have higher recruitment requirements than in developed markets where there are higher wages.

Re: Developer Skills Report

#99

Post by scarface74 »

expertentipp wrote: post #97
scarface74 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistically, how can most of a market not pay market wages?

The entire market being low cost, or at the bottom of corporate outsourcing chain. Market rates == they have higher recruitment requirements than in developed markets where there are higher wages.

I'm still trying to parse that. If the market in question is paying low wages for the industry, that is the market rate. The entire market can't pay below market rate.

Are you sure that the rate is below market or are you just looking at the inflated rates of the west coast in the U.S.? I don't live on the west coast, I live in a major metropolitan area in the south, with good wages for developers (90-140K with experience) and even that would be considered below market compared to the west coast.

Re: Developer Skills Report

#100

Post by kumarvvr »

lobo_tuerto wrote: post #52
kumarvvr wrote: post #50

Sidenote : The background images are '3D' fractals, I remember reading about in HN itself a few years back. There was a fascinating article about a programmer writing about the steps he went through to get a 3D fractal.

I'd love to get my hands on that article/link, do you have it handy? --- Found this free software for 3D fractals: http://www.mandelbulber.com/

http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/2mandelbulb.html

This is the closest reference I could google.

The article I am talking about had the author explain the various steps he went through, starting with rotating a 2d fractal, and move up the process to finally get the math equations to generate a truly 3d fractal.

Post reply on HN