41–50 of 336 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The trick is these companies arent hiring top 1% talent, they're hiring top 1% interviewing talent.
Do the 1% apply to jobs with such descriptions? I’m not in the 1% in my domain and I wouldn’t touch a job with those words or phrases in the description.
I finally got two offers, dropped the ongoing processes and accepted one, but before I had some dark days thanks to these negative experiences. My takeaway from this is that interviewing sucks, but one company will realize what you can do and happily accept you as-is. I was lucky that I was not forced to take a sub-par offer by giving it enough time.
You shouldn't walk away from a good interview feeling like you nailed it. An interviewer should push you to your limits and the more you know, the more they should push. It doesn't mean you failed, it means you reached the limits they could push you in the time you had.
If you're rejected from the role, most likely you didn't reach the bar they needed you to be at, or you failed at the behavioral parts. Or, the interviewers you had weren't properly calibrated, which isn't to say anything about you other than bad luck.
The practice interview point strikes me as odd. In large, because I have never done one. Do folks really typically do that many practice interviews? I don't even know how to study. I sometimes consider it, but have never spent more than an hour prepping for an interview. :( It worries me, because I know that interviewing is a skill. But are we not setting folks up to over index on that skill such that they have diffi…
I've been successfully employed the valley for over a decade (and other tech work before that). I've never done a practice interview, I don't worry about my GitHub. I agree with the cargo culting comment. Work on your network. Apply for jobs that interest you. Interview. Get job.
Interviews are subjective, and what I've seen recently is the expectation is that you solve Leetcode questions within 10-15 mins with the optimum solution (yes, this was told to me my several recruiters). Sure, so basically you're asking me to memorize as many Leetcode optimum solutions as I can.
No thanks, if you want to hire Leetcode monkeys go ahead and see how that works out. On top of this, when you add concious and unconcious bias what are your chances of being hired?
The practice interview point strikes me as odd. In large, because I have never done one. Do folks really typically do that many practice interviews? I don't even know how to study. I sometimes consider it, but have never spent more than an hour prepping for an interview. :( It worries me, because I know that interviewing is a skill. But are we not setting folks up to over index on that skill such that they have diffi…
Ideally, no professional should have to practice a skill that has such a low correlation with one's actual job duties as a software engineering interview. It's mostly cargo culting, IMO.
So, as is normal in life, I expect it is complicated.
The practice interview point strikes me as odd. In large, because I have never done one. Do folks really typically do that many practice interviews? I don't even know how to study. I sometimes consider it, but have never spent more than an hour prepping for an interview. :( It worries me, because I know that interviewing is a skill. But are we not setting folks up to over index on that skill such that they have diffi…
Instead of literature go read some of the top posts at /r/cscareerquestions . Students are expected to put in tons of hours "grinding" study sessions for interviews. Recently there was a post about a new grad who felt he wasn't doing very well at his job because he spent to much time practicing for interviews
It doesn't help that job ads are wanting "Top 3% only!" or "Only top 1% Ninja Rockstars need apply!". Kind of reminds me of the market for singers or concert pianists, you absolutely need to be the best, even imperceptibly worse makes you unemployable. Should those of us who aren't top 5%/didn't go to a top school just find another industry, one where sub-perfect work doesn't actively make other people's jobs harder?
Notice that, when they say they only hire the top 1%, there's a vicious sampling bias at work: even in a worst case where they're being literal they're actually hiring the top 1% of their applicants , not the top 1% of engineers . Think about how many jobs you usually apply for before getting one. Now imagine someone that's less successful than you at getting hired and think about how many times they're interviewing.…
It doesn't help that job ads are wanting "Top 3% only!" or "Only top 1% Ninja Rockstars need apply!". Kind of reminds me of the market for singers or concert pianists, you absolutely need to be the best, even imperceptibly worse makes you unemployable. Should those of us who aren't top 5%/didn't go to a top school just find another industry, one where sub-perfect work doesn't actively make other people's jobs harder?
There's another similar problem that I'm seeing that I don't think has been pointed out before. Recently, I've been applying for web developer positions and am coming across applications with these sorts of questions: - What's the coolest thing you've done both in life and at work? - What are your dreams? - Where do you see yourself in 10 years? I certainly do have answers for these questions, but I can't tell if the…