Hasn't anyone else commented this is for devops FFS
I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today
371–380 of 497 posts
Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had interviews start very positively with such an approach of questions, but then "just to be thorough" I have them code something simple on the whiteboard and they completely fail. Some of them couldn't even get nested for loops to work correctly. If you're hiring someone to write code for you, you need to have them write code in the interview. There's no substitute for it. Obviously, you can improve the experi…
This disproportionally filters for those who can think/code and perfom while under pressure/observation... i.e. the "porn stars" of software development, if you will. Similar to how not everyone is able to perform well while having sex-on-demand in front of a camera -- these same people are more than likely able to have sex when not under pressure and observation, and probably are quite adequate while doing it. My pe…
By the same logic you might say that we shouldn't interview at all because it selects for people that are good at being interviewed. Obviously this is true but I think it would be pretty crazy to not interview people.
Frankly I think most people suck at being interviewed initially, but you can definitely improve with practice. The same as public speaking and interviewing candidates.
Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My interviews at the latter place eventually devolved into basic IQ tests... The problem is that this doesn't scale with talent and/or experience. Industrial psychology has consistently found that IQ is a better predictor of job performance than experience. The reason being is that intelligence is defined as the ability to acquire knowledge and skills. Intelligent people literally learn faster than others. The skil…
> Industrial psychology has consistently found that IQ is a better predictor of job performance than experience. If hiring managers are aware of this, then it might be a good idea to apply to Mensa. If you're able to get in, maybe putting "Mensa" down on your resume isn't that bad of a thing. (I've always felt it would make one come off as a douche, but maybe that's not so true.)
Definitely comes off as douchy. I wouldn't discount someone for it but it would definitely make me wary of them (probably a know-it-all who doesn't listen to other people and always knows best).
Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
The crux of the problem is that we've interviewed dozens of applicants and none of them have been able to pass the sniff test. We are setting the bar pretty low, but the average skill level of the people we've had access to is shocking. There just isn't a supply of good developers for companies that aren't FAANGs or unicorns. And before anyone says we aren't paying enough, or we are being unfair, the reason these int…
This question is really tricky, though: depending on your frontend stack, the answer could be in an event handler prop (e.g. onClick). In mapDispatchToProps, in a thunk, in a saga, etc.
Thunk, saga (as far as I know), etc have you put the code in an action [creator].
Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have ~4 hours to judge a candidate. Like it or not, we are going to have to choose :) The complex questions, if I can get answers are awesome. They are also the ones that are hard to objectively describe. Based on the number of blogs read, candidate charisma, my own work pressures - there is a big chance a senior enough person can wave their hands through those. Hence the tilt towards the surety of coding. Also TB…
I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum. I work for small companies mostly and I’ve conducted interviews for small companies. We have a limited budget for a limited number of positions. One developer can be working on a project that can individually move the needle. We need to hire “engineers” in the truest sense of the word not “coders”. For instance, currently my title is “senior software engineer”. But I am the “D…
I don't know your scale for small, but my current org is tiny compared to AWS (my previous).
So yes - we have to do all those things. I am directly responsible for ALL of data analytics infrastructure in snapchat. Pretty much most senior engineers have a similar scope.
We might be talking over one another though: I am not saying any of that is useless: I am saying they're hard to measure. We still do it though. We also do the coding round as something that gives a more definitive datapoint.
Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to provide an alternate perspective here, this seems to tilt the incentives towards people that are not working already. I wonder how many folks have time to take a week or more off from their current job to participate in this exercise. I understand this is paid but its still a huge risk that candidates would be taking.
> huge risk Folks do side projects all the time. How often do they describe it as a "huge risk?"
No, some folk do side projects all the time. Mostly very young folks without families or substantial hobbies.
Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
Javascript sucks. I work with lots of really, really good developers who struggle a bit with JS. Most of it is because they come from a totally different background, and the other part is Javascript in general just makes things difficult.
This is just false: there are a bunch of sharp edges in JavaScript, but once you know them, the language itself is one of the more pleasant languages to use: this can be a bit of a problem, since the languages itself doesn’t force a particular structure on your code like Java or Haskell do, but on the other hand, JavaScript is an amazing language for experimenting with new programming paradigms and application archit…
What structure do you believe Haskell forces on your code?
My experience with Haskell is that it's the most expressive and flexible environment for exploring different ways of structuring code that I've ever used. I've seen everything from extremely-imperative code carefully managing memory allocations and munging bits, to very abstract high-level libraries that declare abstract computations that can be interpreted or executed in a variety of ways.
I'm very confused and surprised to see someone assert that Haskell forces a particular structure on your code.
Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've done well over 200+ interviews myself, and been on hiring committees where I have had chances to review other interviews. This kind of behavior usually trashes the following ones and aets the candidate up for failure.
To be fair I have "fessed up" to not knowing about a subject that was mentioned on my CV where I had used the tech a little bit 5+ years ago. Been offered the job both times. Though I could see if you hadn't had that experience it wouldn't be the answer that you would want to give.
I don't know about others, but I expect people to have some fluff on their resumes. I don't blame them because recruiters and HR types love fluff, so fluff gets your foot in the door. Recruiters might skip over a person who has MongoDB on their resume instead of Elasticsearch because they don't know they are similar technologies. So it's reasonable that a candidate hold the recruiters hands.
If candidates come out and say such when I ask them questions about it, I'll just move on. I won't hold it against them unless it happens excessively.
Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you not hire someone smart who doesn't already know react/redux and teach it to them? Or give them a couple of weeks to do some tutorials? I knew almost zero about web dev (I had been a decent C++/Java/Scala backend programmer) when I was hired to work in a web dev role -- I spent the first two weeks doing RoR tutorials on the internet and was just as productive as anyone else a couple of months after that.
This is what we've resigned ourselves to, but it's very expensive. We're building crud apps, not doing cutting edge research, so I assumed we would be able to find someone that is already up to speed on the language and frameworks. You also have to factor in the cost of senior developer time spent coaching, the lost productivity, and the code quality suffering in the meantime.
You might be shooting yourself in the foot by having not picking an ecosystem that better supports your business case. No one I know who's good at React+Redux would pick a CRUD app as the domain they'd like to exercise those skills in.
Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but I’m not writing code everyday on a whiteboard, I’m writing it in an IDE with access to Google. When I am at a whiteboard I am drawing very crude architectural diagrams.
It's a great point we hear often, so I incorporated it into our last round of hiring. Some still couldn't do it with an IDE, their language of choice and access to Google. (sorting an array, with any algorithm you want)
I must have written a couple dozen sorts, but only in high-school or when preparing for interviews. It's the one thing that is very well supported in most programming languages. C++ has stable/unstable sorts, partial sorts, whatever you want.
Accepting things like bubble sort also makes the exercise doubly pointless.