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

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

#381

Post by nomel »

mindhash wrote: post #317
jcadam wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had the same thing happen to me. Simple problem: find out if two strings are anagrams of each other. My immediate solution: Sort the two strings and then compare them: (defn anagrams? [x y] (= (sort x) (sort y))) or some such. I was fortunate in that they didn't make me implement the sort (because it's been a long time for me) :) "Ok, what's the efficiency of that solution?" "Well, assuming the library sort functions…

on a tangent, one way could be assign a number code to each alphabet. Add the numbers that occur in the strings. IF the sum matches, they are anagrams.

You would have to make sure the sum of any combination of all characters was unique. For example, if the code was the character number, a=1, b=2, etc, both "abc" and "bbb" would have the same sum.

So I think something silly like: character_code = len(string)*len(alphabet)^character_index should work.

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

#382

Post by eastbayjake »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #255

Don't people get job offers anymore from someone they used to know that moved to another company and then like "hey I know this really great guy who works at XYZ, we should definitely get him here"? That is literally how every job I've moved to happened, except for the very first one right after being a student. That's the only job I ever remember having to "interview" for. The rest were just through established soci…

You're way ahead of the game, OP. We talk a big talk in our industry about hackers and meritocracy, but this is still a relationships business -- like every other business. At most companies if you're cold-applying to a position on a job board, you're already behind your competition.

I'd like to propose an alternative job hunt:

(1) Start thinking about your next move before you need a job.

(2) Send an email or DM to someone at a company you like, ask to buy them coffee/beer, and make it clear you don't want anything from them. Ask them questions -- or even better try to do them a favor... promote a side project, make a connection, etc.

(3) When you're ready to make a move, reach out again to all the people you've met and ask if they're hiring. Most people are happy to forward a resume -- especially because so many companies now offer referral bonuses. It's a win-win.

(4) KEEP MAINTAINING THESE CONNECTIONS EVEN AFTER YOU GET THE JOB!

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

#384

Post by liaocs2008 »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #171
geebee wrote: post #31

Thank you for writing this post. It was informative. A few comments from a fellow software developer who is approaching 50... I don't think the coding test isn't there because people think you're lying, it's there because we have no industry wide, respected entrance exam. Actuarial interviews don't (to my knowledge) contain a whiteboard vector calculus exam, but this isn't because people just sort of believe actuarie…

Last paragraph is a hidden gem, should be pinned at the top of the page. Perhaps a blog post? :D

Agree. The true story is actually sad.

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

#385

Post by warrenm »

pnathan wrote: post #139

I suspect OP is in a space both professionally and physically where the job market is poor and a ton of cruddy candidates show up. I relate though, although I'm in Seattle area, which is a great place - I interview really badly. I strongly agree that hoops are getting added. However, I have found that great companies do compete on hiring process. Microsoft remains the Gold Standard for me in how fast they turnaround…

>>You’ll never really know why you weren’t hired.

>That's because they don't want to be sued.

Because it takes far too much time to tell everyone who isn't hired than the few who are.

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

#386

Post by komali2 »

bulatb wrote: post #326
komali2 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "can they code test" for us has always been some variation of "fizz buzz." Anybody should be able to do that. It's not a bad test, especially because of how well documented it is. I agree there are terrible tests (why on earth would you have someone implement a search or sort? that's like rolling your own crypto, don't do it, don't bother learning how to do it unless it's your passion), but at the very least a si…

Story time! I've failed a FizzBuzz. While failing interviews is basically my superpower, I think my git repositories, college graders, previous and subsequent employers, coworkers and clients might be somewhat shocked to learn that all that code was written by a guy who "couldn't code" at all. (The autograders and CI accepting all that non-code must have been exceptionally buggy.) But still, I failed the test. I told…

Putting yourself in the shoes of the company interviewing you: If you collapsed into a puddle of goo under pressure, to the point where you were incapable of performing a task "you could do in your sleep," why are you still a good choice to hire?

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

#387

Post by warrenm »

pnathan wrote: post #139

I suspect OP is in a space both professionally and physically where the job market is poor and a ton of cruddy candidates show up. I relate though, although I'm in Seattle area, which is a great place - I interview really badly. I strongly agree that hoops are getting added. However, I have found that great companies do compete on hiring process. Microsoft remains the Gold Standard for me in how fast they turnaround…

> Every company believes they are snowflakes.

And yet...on average, companies are "average"

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

#388

Post by pm90 »

hfdgiutdryg wrote: post #377
pm90 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is proving self study ability relevant to a job? Doesn't my resume of wildly varying projects and my ability to competently talk about them prove that? People usually trust their own assessment of a candidate much more than that of others. While your projects might help generate interest in you and get you an interview, the actual interview process is meant to be an assessment by the Company conducting the inte…

While your projects might help generate interest in you and get you an interview, the actual interview process is meant to be an assessment by the Company conducting the interview. So you shouldn't automatically assume you have the jobs simply based on your past projects alone. That's insane. If you brought me in because you liked what's on my resume, your number one priority should be determining if I really did wha…

> That's insane. If you brought me in because you liked what's on my resume, your number one priority should be determining if I really did what I said I did. Your priority shouldn't be arbitrary, unrelated questions or coding challenges pulled off some website.

There generally is a component where you're asked about your past projects in detail. Its just not the only component.

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

#389

Post by collyw »

larrik wrote: post #99
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main point from a candidate perspective is that long, unusual or difficult interview processes are fine as long as we have already decided we really want to work for you (that is you are Trello or SpaceX or some amazing startup we love) otherwise, just as you are faced with picking a rose from a faceless mass of candidates so are we faced with picking a decent place to work from a faceless mass of mission…

We actually only do 2 interviews total, and for some roles a Hackerrank quiz. The only times we use coding tests, we use Hackerrank to administer them. That way you have a distinct time limit (we give an hour, which is honestly way too long) so you don't spend all weekend one something that doesn't matter. I definitely agree about the difficulty of picking a place to work. We reserve half of our final interview (and…

Hackerrank is terrible as well. The questions are worded in a way that takes ages to think about unless you are a mathematician. The time limit is pointless.It doesn't tell you why things are failing. For the type of problems it gives you a debugger would be really useful but you are coding in a web browser.

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

#390

Post by taco_emoji »

> Number 6: Outsourced Hiring Assessment Services Are Very Much in Vogue

I ran into this a few years ago. I bombed hard when they asked me some specific terminology question about the stages of the ASP.NET request lifecycle. I believe I just said "I have no idea" and the call was over shortly after that.

It was frustrating--why are they hiring based on esoteric trivia instead of general programming skill? This assessment would've filtered out an enthusiastic, genius-level Java programmer!

And is that sort of question actually effective at measuring ASP.NET expertise? I work with ASP.NET every day, and memorizing that information would offer me zero benefit since A) I rarely need it, and B) I can look it up whenever I do need it. It's doubly frustrating to think there's someone out there who believes I'm a weak engineer based on this misguided quiz.

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