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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

#511

Post by reinhardt »

jasode wrote: post #496
thegayngler wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most engineers would not hire themselves. That has been apparent to me for awhile now. I’m not sure why they expect people to be to be better than they were when they were hired. I don’t expect engineers to be better than me. I have but one qualification. Can they do the job? Are they strong enough that I can guide them into the position I need them at if it is required. So much focus has been put on 10x this and hig…

>I don’t expect engineers to be better than me. I respect your opinion but I find this strategy very strange. (Or maybe I don't exactly understand what you're saying.) In my view, it would be a dream scenario if the next 10 programmers I hire were all superior to me . If I was the worst programmer on the team, that would be an ideal outcome. Yes, I've been programming for 30+ years but I'm also self-aware of my limit…

You actually agree with each other. You're saying "it would be a dream scenario if the next 10 programmers I hire were all superior to me"; it's an ideal outcome, even if unlikely. The parent's "I don’t expect engineers to be better than me" merely points out the unlikeliness, you point out the desirability.

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

#512

Post by wsy »

komali2 wrote: post #386
bulatb wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because you don't hire firefighters. Senior devs should be able to reason about complex problems and come up with good solutions after a few hours or even days, depending on the problem at hand.

You test their skill of solving trivial problems in 10 minutes under pressure. I can accept if people defend that as the best proxy measure they have for the amount of effort they want to invest into each candidate. But do you seriously believe that this proxy filters the good senior devs from the bad ones?

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

#513

Post by ryanianian »

twodave wrote: post #444
ryanianian wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure - my point is that asking them to solve a problem on their own that you already know the answer to isn't a realistic environment of "playing nicely" either and is only going to show you how they deal under pressure, not how well they collaborate with somebody who genuinely wants to find the answer and can build off of. If you need proof they can "actually code" and use DS/algos etc, use their GH if it exists. An…

So I'm supposed to spend my time researching your GH instead of just letting you spend 5 minutes proving it? There isn't enough time in a day to research every candidate's code they wrote on their own time (and personally I'd rather not be judged by mine). And, if people lie on their resumes already, what makes me trust their GH? It's like saying here's an essay I wrote, you don't need to talk to me in person, I"ll j…

Yes. It's a lot of work on both sides to interview and be interviewed.

If you don't take a candidate's prior art into consideration, you're wasting everyone's time. You're also eliminating candidates who may excel in ways that aren't solving riddle-problems out-loud in front of new people when their livelihood is on the line.

Start with the GH and if you have doubts fall back to portions of old model.

> So I'm supposed to spend my time researching your GH instead of just letting you spend 5 minutes proving it?

I've never seen a worthwhile programming q take only 5 mins to answer. And the candidate is supposed to waste an hour of her time proving to you what you could see in 5 minutes on GH?

> There isn't enough time in a day to research every candidate's code they wrote on their own time

Yet there is enough time to spend with whiteboarding problems that prove the same things the candidate has already proved on their GH?

> (and personally I'd rather not be judged by mine).

Sure - only use the candidate's GH if they prominently put it on their profile and/or own an "intended to be used/seen" public repo.

> And, if people lie on their resumes already, what makes me trust their GH?

Not a replacement for conversation! It's a way of indicating they can code without solving an arbitrary riddle in a high-pressure situation. If you're not convinced they wrote or understand the code you're looking at, ask them about it or ask them how they might change it slightly.

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

#514

Post by marcosdumay »

lainga wrote: post #303
hermitdev wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, expectations of coding tests should be upfront. E.g. we're looking for the most optimal solution, not the one that is most convient. I was declined for a position at a trading shop for a C# backend role because I used linq to do something. I didn't have unlimited time for the tests, so I went with expedient over performant, for which they did not care. Fuck that, set clear expectations for interview "tests".

Were you able to talk to them and ask questions during the test?

If you tell me "here, do this, you have 2 hours" I won't even think about the possibility that you want anything that isn't quick to write.

If your priorities aren't aligned with the environment you set up, you are the one that must say so. On a real world project that means once in a while I'll take a project back for small fixes, instead of wasting unending hours thinking about every possible problem up-front... if you expect something different, well, that's not optimal.

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

#515

Post by mratzloff »

yodsanklai wrote: post #177
vthallam wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I recently interviewed at a big tech company (phone interview). I spent quite some time practicing on leetcode (completed at least 150 problems). During the interview, it took me a few minutes of thinking before completing the assignments with what I think was the expected solution. We discussed the complexity and a few possible variations. The interview sounded satisfied and I really had the feeling that I had naile…

I wonder if my age is an issue (40+)

The answer to that is almost always yes.

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

#516

Post by ljw1001 »

reinhardt wrote: post #511
jasode wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don’t expect engineers to be better than me. I respect your opinion but I find this strategy very strange. (Or maybe I don't exactly understand what you're saying.) In my view, it would be a dream scenario if the next 10 programmers I hire were all superior to me . If I was the worst programmer on the team, that would be an ideal outcome. Yes, I've been programming for 30+ years but I'm also self-aware of my limit…

You actually agree with each other. You're saying "it would be a dream scenario if the next 10 programmers I hire were all superior to me"; it's an ideal outcome, even if unlikely. The parent's "I don’t expect engineers to be better than me" merely points out the unlikeliness, you point out the desirability.

When I was at one company (later acquired by Google), one of the developers created a model to show just how unlikely it was that every new hire would continue to raise the average level of competence for the team as a whole (as our hiring traditions espoused). After years of hiring very good programmers, it just wasn't going to be possible to hire many more who could pass that test.

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

#517

Post by marcosdumay »

sharemywin wrote: post #247
pm90 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For all the claims of companies that they only hire the "top 10%" or whatever of engineers, the interview process is often optimized to the benefit of the median engineer. This really seems out of necessity. There are going to be a lot more qualified median engineers rather than superstar coders, so it makes sense to optimize your hiring pipeline to assess these folks. In my experience, most of the "top 10%" hires…

I can just imagine a room full of top 10% engineers/architects...No we need to do it like this...Well, no did you think of this obscure use case... what about performance? I think...should we...fast forward a year later and the company went belly up because everyone was trying to be best and piss on each other to prove who was top...top. At least when middle managers do it they're only interested in who gets credit f…

People with top competency rarely go out of their way to display it. Are you sure you are correctly assessing those people?

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

#518

Post by jasode »

reinhardt wrote: post #511
jasode wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don’t expect engineers to be better than me. I respect your opinion but I find this strategy very strange. (Or maybe I don't exactly understand what you're saying.) In my view, it would be a dream scenario if the next 10 programmers I hire were all superior to me . If I was the worst programmer on the team, that would be an ideal outcome. Yes, I've been programming for 30+ years but I'm also self-aware of my limit…

You actually agree with each other. You're saying "it would be a dream scenario if the next 10 programmers I hire were all superior to me"; it's an ideal outcome, even if unlikely. The parent's "I don’t expect engineers to be better than me" merely points out the unlikeliness, you point out the desirability.

>You actually agree with each other.

It doesn't seem like it. The next 3 sentences from the thegayngler:

> I have but one qualification. Can they do the job? Are they strong enough that I can guide them into the position I need them at if it is required.

In my mind, programmers superior to me have abilities that would be beyond my knowledge to "guide" them. They can come up with programming solutions I could never think of. It's very realistic that "the qualification to do the job" essentially means they are a better programmer than me.

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

#519

Post by mratzloff »

d1zzy wrote: post #260
yodsanklai wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently interviewed at a big tech company (phone interview). I spent quite some time practicing on leetcode (completed at least 150 problems). During the interview, it took me a few minutes of thinking before completing the assignments with what I think was the expected solution. We discussed the complexity and a few possible variations. The interview sounded satisfied and I really had the feeling that I had naile…

As someone that does lots of coding phone interviews I can say that yes, time is a factor. But it's relative, ie I'm comparing you to the time it took other candidates to solve the same problem. After all, we have to evaluate you, over the phone, in the course of less than an hour. If 2 candidates arrive to the optimal solution, the one that did it much faster is the better candidate. It sounds to me like you did pre…

If 2 candidates arrive to the optimal solution, the one that did it much faster is the better candidate.

How did you arrive at that conclusion? Is it based on data or does it "feel" right based on an easily-measured metric?

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

#520

Post by [deleted] »

aquateen wrote: post #343
mindhash wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see how the sum would be unique to a particular combination of letters.

[deleted]
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