Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role • Hacker News Board

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#141

Post by luch » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 5:01 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #82

crdoconnor wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird, I've heard plenty of stories about this kind of thing but when I sat on the hiring side and interviewed for intermediate roles (couldn't even afford senior) I didn't come across anybody who was stumped and simply couldn't code. There were people who were bad at (possibly some because they were under pressure), it but nobody who couldn't do it at all. I wasn't giving out a trivial question either.

It's such a weird hiring market. 1. There are a lot of imposters out there applying for programming jobs who can't program, and 2. There are a lot of very talented programmers out there who are being rejected by overly picky companies. Both can be true, and I'd argue that both are true. I don't know what the solution is. Current interviewing methods don't seem to be solving the problem. I'd suggest a widely-accepted…

certifications are plentiful in the infosec sector. They absolutely do not solve the hiring problem.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#142

Post by deedubaya » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

Technical hiring is very much broken.

I took a stab at improving it, but found that tech has a very extensive workforce built around it being broken that doesn't want it to change.

Sure, they want tools that help perpetuate the junk show they've built up, but not to make the process quicker/more effective on both ends. Most that I talked to openly disliked that idea.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#143

Post by pm90 » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

rambossa wrote: post #77

Side note/rant: I hate the Cracking the Coding Interview style... studying for these type of interviews is annoying. Trying to find a good video on youtube, where they aren't just naively coding up the bruteForce->optimal possible solutions, especially is irritating. It is literally a landscape of college kids with thousands of viewers who treat these interviews like the SAT. Even the author of the book produces vide…

They are not just testing your analytical skills but also, I believe, your ability to self-study for something, even as "annoying" as algorithmic coding problems.

I kinda agree with you that it doesn't make sense much of the time if you have to specifically prepare for the coding interview; stuff you may never use in your job. But its not a lot of stuff: I bit the bullet and spent some time solving those questions and now can make past mostly any screen.

Its really not that hard, especially if you have a CS degree. Probably would take 1 week of dedicated effort to get better at it.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#144

Post by warrenm » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

annexrichmond wrote: post #114

rambossa wrote: post #77

Side note/rant: I hate the Cracking the Coding Interview style... studying for these type of interviews is annoying. Trying to find a good video on youtube, where they aren't just naively coding up the bruteForce->optimal possible solutions, especially is irritating. It is literally a landscape of college kids with thousands of viewers who treat these interviews like the SAT. Even the author of the book produces vide…

and then some interviewers have the nerve to ask, "have you seen this question before?"

As bad as coding interviews are, at least they're better than riddle/lateral-thinking questions

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#145

Post by notyourloops » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

spamizbad wrote: post #133

haskellandchill wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is a myth, what do you estimate the figure is? I think under 10%, maybe under 5%. I have significant experience interviewing senior, junior, and mid-range candidates. 99% of my candidates can code, as in iterate over collections, write case statements, and call functions. I've only had one junior candidate who couldn't code at all. Sloppiness is rampant, but sloppy code that gets things done is what…

We set our in-house recruiter up with a coderpad question that screens candidates with a simple question: "Write a function that counts the number of vowels in a string" Candidates are allowed to run it multiple times and just have to produce a correct result within 10 minutes. It's not a trick question -- the test case in place makes sure you pay attention to case. Success rate for mid to senior devs? Only 60%.

What's your process like after that screening measure? Because to me, that's honestly trivial, and a lot nicer than dealing with an extended (8+ hours) homework problem as an introduction to a company's hiring process.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#146

Post by autokad » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 5:07 PM UTC

vthallam wrote: post #122

phaedrus wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once got knocked out of the running by a whiteboard-coding interview question that went something like "How would you find all triples from a list of a million integers, where the first two numbers add up to the third?" I said, "Hmmm that sounds like an O(N^3) problem." Interviewer: "Can you think of any way to do it in smaller big-O?" Me: "Not off the top of my head, no." For some reason that company insisted on o…

Or you could do top 100 questions on leetcode or hackerrank and you would have solved the question in a minute. It's kinda sad that you could remember the top 100 solutions and clear interviews in almost all big tech companies.

its kinda sad you think professionals should memorize useless tricks that dont generalize to the profession in order to be considered for a job.

The skill takes a long time to practice, and quickly evaporates once you stop doing it. Yet none of our work is anything like that. a more real world situation is reading documentation or SO for the function concat_ws that will turn an array column to a concatenated string.

however, the system that is, and one that you seem to think is ok, is one that discriminates people on many levels. Its a skill you do not get good at by working, so you must practice this in your free time. Now you just discriminated against men and women with families, people from less fortunate backgrounds, and others who otherwise do not have the time in the day to dedicate to a skill that is only useful to coding interviews.

as far as a comment above, I was a DBA for 10 years and can do pretty complicated queries off the top of my head, know how to optimize my indexes, worked with both structured and unstructured data in the multi tb size, ect ect, but I have no recollection on what ACID stands for. I dont really care. Sure, you may hire someone who memorizes useless crap, but then they have no idea why the IO has gone through the roof when inserting IDs out of order on a clustered index.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#147

Post by pascalxus » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

It's official. We now definitely have a vast oversupply of engineering talent available in the marketplace.

This post is a great report and a must read of all engineers.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#148

Post by jldugger » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

cema wrote: post #89

zeroxfe wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it just our industry where you have to prove you aren't a complete impostor every time? Basically we treat every applicant like they are Frank Abagnale [0]. The problem is that a large majority of candidates lie on their resumes. This means that hiring managers have to work harder to qualify a good candidate -- which often ends up turning into a process that hurts and annoys those that are actually qualified.

Quote: a large majority of candidates lie on their resumes Is it really true? I do not think it has been my experience (some, but not the majority).

I've definitely seen candidates stretch the truth. Like Jenkins babysitters who list every technology the Jenkins server uses in builds as a skill. So they list Chef as bold item on their resume, but can't explain what a Chef server is, or how a file resource differs from a cookbook_file resource.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#149

Post by cortesoft » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #115

calcifer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 99% of my candidates can code, as in iterate over collections, write case statements, and call functions. Honestly, that's way too trivial to call "can code". I usually ask something less trivial, yet still extremely easy like "a function to check if a string is a palindrome" (I explain what a palindrome is) or "check if a substring exists in a given string". You wouldn't believe how many people "with 10 years expe…

How often do you need to write palindrome functions for your job? Checking substring in a string is a 1 liner in languages like python. I was at a final interview with FAANG. One question asked was to load a csv. I used pandas, it's a 1 liner. You could see the wretched face of the interviewer since he was expecting a with open() as f: do_some_shit and kept pushing me to write this on the board. I looked at him and s…

So what is the interviewer supposed to do to find out if you can code? They want to give you a simple, straightforward task to see how you code. Of course, every simple, straightforward task is going to have an existing tool to do the job, but they aren't looking for a solution to parsing CSV, they are looking to see you code.

They can't ask you a complicated problem, because they don't have the time (nor do you) to solve a real problem that requires coding.

You are totally missing the point of what they are trying to ask you if you insist on using pandas for parsing CSV. Understanding the point of what you are being asked to do is critical to being a professional software developer.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#150

Post by web007 » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

This feels spot on.

Having been on both sides of the table, I understand why these are true, but still don't like a lot of these interactions. The worst one is ghosting, there's no reason for an interviewer to leave you hanging, at least they should be following up to say "You're still in contention but..." and do the same regularly every few days until they can make a decision. The only thing missing from your writeup is the observation that the hiring process usually reflects the organization. If your interview and followups were chaos / overly-complicated / streamlined, the company is probably chaotic / bureaucratic / well-organized, too.

Also: @fuzzygroup built my job tracking idea! It's fantastic to see that my laziness has paid off, and I want to hear more about how JobHound works out for you. Please post a follow-up in a few days / weeks / months of what you've learned or what you wish you'd done differently.