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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

#331

Post by reallydontask »

bwoj wrote: post #69
reallydontask wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

What i meant is that they are cargo culting in their interviewing method but this does not necessarily mean that they don't know what they are doing day to day.

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

#332

Post by siscia »

mikeash wrote: post #314
siscia wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But code like that pass your unit tests, integration test, CI, and LINT? If it does, you may consider to improve the quality of your tests. If you don't have all of those it is your fault since you are cowboy coding instead of doing engineering and at this point he is playing along.

How are tests supposed to help when someone writes atrocious code that works? The posted pseudocode probably gets the job done.

I answer to brother below.

Anyhow, if it get the job done, just carry on.

The importance of a random snippet of code of a random company is so small that is pointless to discuss about it.

Just don't let him do any design work and be quick to throw away bad code and refactor.

You got all your tests and procedure in place so it should not be that hard.

We are really overestimating the importance and difficulties of our work.

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

#333

Post by naveen99 »

pault wrote: post #307
naveen99 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For loop syntax is unnecessarily complex when you first encounter it. A simple if then control flow is much easier to understand and is how it’s done in assembly anyway. Unfortunately he used both. Maybe an opportunity to teach him about goto and labels...

When you first encounter it sure. After you've been writing code for more than a few months I would expect you to have mastered it. If you don't understand the fundamental behavior of a for loop after ten years of professional experience, something is very wrong.

I wasn’t disagreeing. Just adding that their code shows they don’t understand goto and labels either.

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

#334

Post by neilv »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #325
holtalanm wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm not sure why location has anything to do with code quality. imo, it doesn't.

It doesn't, but it does. We all know small businesses don't care about code quality. Ditto that best practices take a long time to trickle down from ivory towers to business, academia, to bootcamps. Companies pushing the status quo tend to cluster. Poster probably shouldn't have picked on the midwest, it could be anywhere outside "cutting-edge" software centers.

This pushing of best practices you speak of is clustering especially in the geographic area where the norm is frequent job-hopping (before you fully reap what your practices sow), and where many also celebrate "move fast, and break things" during each employment stopover?

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

#335

Post by ikiris »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #285
pault wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

Entrepreneurial engineer here... If I ever hire an engineer for my business -- I hope it'd be someone I've already worked with and know -- but if it had to be someone random, I'd pursue this method: 1) Solicit Resumes 2) Pick N candidates 3) Phone screen to make sure they aren't complete assholes 4) Stack rank & pop top candidate 5) Pay them to develop a feature on contract 6) If satisfied, repeat step 5 until ready…

You will never get most good talent to go contract to hire. This market is far to competitive to have to put up with that kind of risk.

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

#336

Post by mixmastamyk »

kevstev wrote: post #300
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entrepreneurial engineer here... If I ever hire an engineer for my business -- I hope it'd be someone I've already worked with and know -- but if it had to be someone random, I'd pursue this method: 1) Solicit Resumes 2) Pick N candidates 3) Phone screen to make sure they aren't complete assholes 4) Stack rank & pop top candidate 5) Pay them to develop a feature on contract 6) If satisfied, repeat step 5 until ready…

This seems good on the surface, but I can't imagine top tier talent at a FANG or equivalent ever leaving their job to do this. I feel this filter will only leave behind those who are currently contractors that are interested in maybe going full time, and the unemployed/employed who are desperate enough to go along with such a scheme. Foregoing the typical crappy interview process is one thing, but working, even for m…

> top tier talent at...

Must be looking to get out for some reason. Doing a small side-project shouldn't be a big impediment.

> I would avoid ever getting myself put into that position.

Extreme risk-averse behavior can cause problems on the other side. Easy enough to give a small-project a try and cut out early when red-flags are actually encountered.

Just the cost of doing business, IMHO.

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

#337

Post by fizzbuzz123 »

ryandrake wrote: post #225
caymanjim wrote: post #85

Interviewing people is hard. Most people suck at it. I've interviewed over 100 people in my life, and I've been interviewed about ten times. I know I still suck at it. The code test is one of the more annoying facets of interviews. On the hiring side, it's an efficient way to screen and vet candidates for basic skills. It's relatively low cost to the employer to have a recruiter issue the test. If you come up with yo…

When you need a doctor or lawyer or pilot, because they are certified, you at least know that they all have at least a bare minimum amount of competence. You may not know if they are elite ninja skilled, but you know they know the basics. Literally anyone can say they know how to program, and there is nothing on the resume that can confirm or deny this. I’ve interviewed Senior Software Engineers with years of experie…

I'm sorry but this is such BS. There are what, a dozen other engineering industries out there? EE, Civil, Mechanical, Aeronautical etc. and in not a single one of them do they do this monkey dance. It would be absurd to ask a Aeronautical Engineer to do something like derive the Navier-Stokes Equation on a whiteboard and its equally absurd to play the same game with SWE's, you all have just been bamboozled and strong-armed by employers into accepting it as a valid practice. I doubt you would be willing to say that those other industries are failures or hire low quality engineers because they don't torture their employees with essentially pointless trivia games.

In fact one might say that the Aeronautics industry is in far better shape than the Software industry, a failure in one of their systems results in people dying but I can go to any major tech companies websites and experience a bug on any given day.

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

#338

Post by hjk05 »

docker_up wrote: post #280

I am preparing myself for a week of onsite interviews as we speak. Of course I hate them, but what other choice do I have? The biggest problem is that the questions are so random and span almost anything. Will I get asked: a pthread question? implement mergesort or quicksort? implement a Read/Write lock? implement a smart pointer? a bit manipulation question? topological search? dynamic programming? graph question? b…

> It's utterly insane the expectations that interviewers have.

Not really though. They always manage to fill the position. Interview’s see the system as unfair because they think their interview happens in a vacuum. You get x questions answer all correctly and your awarded with a job. So naturally you complain when you feel half the questions are too advanced or that more brain understanding is enough. In reality the interviews are just a sorting, and when everyone can answer the relevant questions you start asking harder ones because “we picked a candidate at random from those who got the questions right” is just not a satisfying endstate.

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

#339

Post by neilv »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #285
pault wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

Entrepreneurial engineer here... If I ever hire an engineer for my business -- I hope it'd be someone I've already worked with and know -- but if it had to be someone random, I'd pursue this method: 1) Solicit Resumes 2) Pick N candidates 3) Phone screen to make sure they aren't complete assholes 4) Stack rank & pop top candidate 5) Pay them to develop a feature on contract 6) If satisfied, repeat step 5 until ready…

> 6) If satisfied, repeat step 5 until ready to hire; else repeat step 4.

How do you mean "ready to hire"? You're interviewing and giving audition gigs before there's an actual job opening?

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

#340

Post by ikiris »

pault wrote: post #270
sokoloff wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's a competitive salary for your area (you would know better than me, but that range in the middle of the country certainly seems competitive), then have a look at your recruiting sourcing funnel. If you're only sourcing the same 75% of active job seekers who are bombing most of their other interviews [thus leaving them available to come in and bomb yours as well], start advertising your positions elsewhere or…

You're correct. The problem is that the positions we have open are for front end developers, and for a variety of reasons (mostly that the scale of complexity on the front end has increased so rapidly that the industry still has a lot of people in it that were writing mostly HTML and CSS a few years back) the supply of competent developers is far lower than the demand, and anyone worth their salt is already happily e…

... so you're not paying enough to entice them.

Which is what was said three posts up.

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