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I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

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Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#51

Post by vinceguidry »

> It really feels like there’s no connection to the reality of the role whatsoever anymore.

There's not going to be any reality to your role once you start either. Your devops role might suddenly become an IC role on their line of business app. It might become a support role. You might be asked to skill up on a stack you've never even considered without any notice or slack before you're expected to produce results in that stack.

The tech landscape changes too often these days. I have a friend of mine who was hired for his Magento experience but soon found himself learning Java after Adobe bought Magento. The things department heads think they want are rarely what they still want by the time you get hired.

It's ridiculous but there really isn't anything anybody can do about it right now. Tech is eating its own tail, the pace is accelerating, soon there won't be any snake left.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#52

Post by rjf72 »

This is a natural consequence of an increasing supply of qualified labor. Do you need a college degree to serve coffee? No. Does it have anything at all to do with serving coffee? No. Yet, it's now something sought after among new baristas, who generally earn a hair more than minimum wage. [1] Why? Because there enough people who have a degree that be willing to do this job at these wages to make it a requirement.

The consequence of 'get [anybody with a pulse] into coding' is to help increase the supply of people with some coding ability. Out of curiosity I just searched for 'QA job listing' and found stuff like this [2]. A 'senior QA engineer' requires, among other things, a masters in computer science alongside a willingness for unanticipated travel/relocation for "long and short term assignments at client sites." Starting salary? $73k. That's probably an H-1B angle-shoot (H-1B employment requires not displacing American workers, and if nobody applies you're obviously not displacing anybody!) but even then they still have to be able to argue that their request was not entirely unreasonable.

[1] - https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/why-that-barista-has-a-col...

[2] - https://www.indeed.com/rc/clk?jk=5d42d374514328da&fccid=d045...

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#53

Post by toomuchtodo »

vinceguidry wrote: post #51

> It really feels like there’s no connection to the reality of the role whatsoever anymore. There's not going to be any reality to your role once you start either. Your devops role might suddenly become an IC role on their line of business app. It might become a support role. You might be asked to skill up on a stack you've never even considered without any notice or slack before you're expected to produce results in…

> It's ridiculous but there really isn't anything anybody can do about it right now.

This is patently false. If your role changes drastically, and you don't want to stay in it, quit. But it does a disservice to workers to say, "You're trapped and this is just the way it is". It is not "just the way it is" unless you tolerate it.

Always Be Interviewing. Always Be Ready To Walk. You are a mercenary, and your job is to command top dollar for your skills while building your network so you always have your next opportunity at the ready.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#54

Post by icedchai »

dijit wrote: post #38
icedchai wrote: post #36

Good DevOps engineers are software engineers that can also do infrastructure work. They should be able to code. Unfortunately, many are "cloud sysadmins", for lack of a better term.

_Good_ DevOps engineers are anyone on either side of the discipline spectrum who can work with the other side. DevOps are teams, not people. https://devops.com/is-devops-a-title/

And people work on those teams. We are talking about the expected abilities of such individuals. How do you assess these abilities? What is expected?

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#55

Post by aiisjustanif »

0xEFF wrote: post #26

I expect a person in a devops role to not just write code, but write code with unit tests, integration tests, documentation, deployment automation, to the style guide etc... I also expect them to work well on a team, especially in design reviews and code reviews. The main difference between a software engineer and a devops engineer isn’t writing code, it’s the kind of code they write.

> The main difference between a software engineer and a devops engineer isn’t writing code, it’s the kind of code they write.

The other main difference is on your team. At my company we would expect that from a software engineer working on the platform, creating tools or shared libraries. A DevOps Engineer at my company would handle the orchastration of shared tools, (i.e. where is Jenkins hosted (VMs or Docker), how it scales, upgrades from Nexus to Artifactory, setting Dynatrace on prem with hooks into multiple cloud providers, the list goes on forever.)

Let's not assume all companies are the same, when probably half of DevOps roles are not about programming in an OO language and you can't easily or usefully unit test something that is like a configuration for mount locations across cloud provider

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#56

Post by scottLobster »

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #46
scottLobster wrote: post #12

In a few months I'm going to be sniffing around for embedded software engineering positions (c on microcontrollers, DSP, maybe even some PCB or FPGA design). I'm still buying a copy of cracking the coding interview and doing leetcode in the weeks leading up to applying for precisely this reason. It's dumb but I'm not going to give up an otherwise promising opportunity in protest, although in the interview I might pol…

actually, i would think leetcode interview problems would be more relevant for embdedded development jobs. in embedded, you're less likely to have access to libraries that implement advanced data structures, sorting and searching, string manipulations, etc. so you'll need to do more of it by hand.

To a point, but like most things in software my experience is you look up someone who's already figured it out and copy them :) Granted you have to understand the code a little more and be able to apply it to whatever system/hardware constraints you're working with.

But just as higher level Software Engineers rarely have a need to implement recursion/graph traversal/etc, in embedded its even rarer due to the relative expense of such operations. I'd say knowledge of signal processing and how to power/performance/memory-optimize code would in general be much more valuable.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#57

Post by vinceguidry »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #53
vinceguidry wrote: post #51

> It really feels like there’s no connection to the reality of the role whatsoever anymore. There's not going to be any reality to your role once you start either. Your devops role might suddenly become an IC role on their line of business app. It might become a support role. You might be asked to skill up on a stack you've never even considered without any notice or slack before you're expected to produce results in…

> It's ridiculous but there really isn't anything anybody can do about it right now. This is patently false. If your role changes drastically, and you don't want to stay in it, quit. But it does a disservice to workers to say, "You're trapped and this is just the way it is". It is not "just the way it is" unless you tolerate it. Always Be Interviewing. Always Be Ready To Walk. You are a mercenary, and your job is to…

Sure, walk away. How sure are you that the next role is going to be better? Another friend of mine changed jobs six times in two years. Now he's having trouble getting taken seriously.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#58

Post by jcadam »

icedchai wrote: post #36

Good DevOps engineers are software engineers that can also do infrastructure work. They should be able to code. Unfortunately, many are "cloud sysadmins", for lack of a better term.

I can certainly do infrastructure work. You better believe I hide that fact from my employers :P

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#59

Post by toomuchtodo »

vinceguidry wrote: post #57
toomuchtodo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's ridiculous but there really isn't anything anybody can do about it right now. This is patently false. If your role changes drastically, and you don't want to stay in it, quit. But it does a disservice to workers to say, "You're trapped and this is just the way it is". It is not "just the way it is" unless you tolerate it. Always Be Interviewing. Always Be Ready To Walk. You are a mercenary, and your job is to…

Sure, walk away. How sure are you that the next role is going to be better? Another friend of mine changed jobs six times in two years. Now he's having trouble getting taken seriously.

You're not. You have no guarantees. Is staying in a volatile role where you're not sure what your job will be next week better? You are in control of your own destiny. Don't let someone else be.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#60

Post by maxxxxx »

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #46
scottLobster wrote: post #12

In a few months I'm going to be sniffing around for embedded software engineering positions (c on microcontrollers, DSP, maybe even some PCB or FPGA design). I'm still buying a copy of cracking the coding interview and doing leetcode in the weeks leading up to applying for precisely this reason. It's dumb but I'm not going to give up an otherwise promising opportunity in protest, although in the interview I might pol…

actually, i would think leetcode interview problems would be more relevant for embdedded development jobs. in embedded, you're less likely to have access to libraries that implement advanced data structures, sorting and searching, string manipulations, etc. so you'll need to do more of it by hand.

That’s my impression too. I would expect more handcrafted code on embedded systems and you need more awareness of computational complexity and memory needs.
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