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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

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The only thing that puts you in control of your destiny is not having a job at all.

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

#62
I feel like interviews are more of a legal IQ test than anything else. If you are smart and spend a couple weeks grinding LeetCode, you should be able to solve most of those types of problems pretty quickly, so those types of interviews filter out those who either aren't willing to spend time on LeetCode to get the job, or those who aren't smart enough to quickly match up the interview problem with the ones they have seen before. And of course it also filters out people who get really nervous during interviews, or who just happen to get a problem they haven't seen before, but if you are a big tech company you can generally afford false-negatives. IQ is a pretty good predictor of job performance, so from the employers perspective it makes some sense imo, and it also avoids a lot of room for bias accusations.

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

#63

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…

Although embedded is possibly one of the few software positions where these questions might be somewhat relevant- aside from embedded who is writing a sort by hand anymore; although even in embedded it isn't that common of a problem. I just find the questions especially egregious for an average software dev working on something like a web app, since in that case hand-coding something like a sorting algorithm or BST i…

Oh I completely agree, but like it or not such questions have become the unofficial Software Engineering SAT. Part of being an engineer is working with/around other peoples' bullshit. If the furthest that extends is a dumb interview question or two, that's a dream job. :)

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

#64
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

_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?

The whole point is to make your team heterogeneous*, so in terms of skills you need to staff for all your needs.

"We'll use python on GCP with PostgreSQL as a backing database"

Well, then you need an expert in GCP, Python and postgresql. This can be as many people as it takes to have those skills covered.

As for responsibility, well, that goes for where your skill is. If you're the resident postgresql expert then you're expected to be responsible for supporting people with it.

It's likely you'll need to worry about patching the OS and stuff like that, but I don't think you need a dedicated person to be responsible. The point of DevOps is mostly to bring down the silo'ing, not to eliminate a particular role.

But it certainly appears employers are salivating over the idea of hiring less specialists, or simply rebranding sysadmin to "devops".

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

#65
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

_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?

Based on the role you expect them to do in the team?

Hire the software engineers with an appropriate interview process covering development practices and coding.

Hire the system administrators with similarly appropriate interviews.

Hire the database administrator with their own appropriate interview.

Is this that hard?

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

#66
post #31

Complaining about leetcode is unproductive. Leetcode is not even that hard, tons of material and key to the answer is on the internet. Another benefit is, its streamline job searching. You practice once and you can use the same skill to interview for many companies.

I find things like Leetcode very hard and my memory on it does not keep at all. I have to relearn all the relevant things every single time I start studying for interviews.

Don't assume something is easy or straightforward for everyone because it was for you.

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

#68
post #31

Complaining about leetcode is unproductive. Leetcode is not even that hard, tons of material and key to the answer is on the internet. Another benefit is, its streamline job searching. You practice once and you can use the same skill to interview for many companies.

I find things like Leetcode very hard and my memory on it does not keep at all. I have to relearn all the relevant things every single time I start studying for interviews. Don't assume something is easy or straightforward for everyone because it was for you.

As with anything, its hard in the beginning but with practice, it get easier.

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

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they generally do require programming knowledge Yes > probably an algorithm here and there No Even Amazon doesn't ask about algorithms for DevOps. When I interviewed with them for a DevOps position, they asked me to write a Python script to parse logs files. They also asked about various linux commands that you would use to work with those same logs. Pretty relevant. But the interviewer never once asked about algor…

>Companies that ask leet coding questions for DevOps probably have no idea what they're looking for and probably don't know what they're doing. I think it's a more a case of cargo culting rather than not necessarily knowing what they are doing, although that might also be the case in some instances.

Cargo-culting is literally not knowing what you're doing.

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

#70

I feel like interviews are more of a legal IQ test than anything else. If you are smart and spend a couple weeks grinding LeetCode, you should be able to solve most of those types of problems pretty quickly, so those types of interviews filter out those who either aren't willing to spend time on LeetCode to get the job, or those who aren't smart enough to quickly match up the interview problem with the ones they have…

At the same time big tech companies are always complaining about not being able to find qualified engineers.

A portion of those people who were filtered out because they get nervous during interviews or got stumped by a riddle or esoteric question, could have been entirely qualified to be a good or great engineer.

Big tech companies should be designing interviews that don't find just people who are awesome at interviews and riddles.

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