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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

#421

Post by wyclif »

kamarg wrote: post #271
threwawasy1228 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a bigger problem is that they probably weren't lying or fabricating their resume. They probably weren't trying to trick you in some way, they probably just have actually programmed like this for the last 10 years! In a lot of work environments especially in the midwest, it isn't surprising to encounter people like this that don't know basic best practices. The standards for what a company wants from their pro…

As someone from the Midwest I can assure you that we don't have a larger percentage of crappy coders than the coasts and tech hubs do. We spend just as much time fixing the code from your terrible developers as you do from ours. It's really a lack of training provided by companies and that most 4 year degrees don't actually prepare people to write good maintainable code so new developers have to luck into finding a m…

It's true that many devs aren't trained to write maintainable code, but there needs to be some responsibility on the part of the individual dev too. If there's no training, they need to be made aware of resources like Code Complete and Clean Code, so they can take some initiative and work through those books.

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

#422

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

pjscott wrote: post #420
tene wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Haskell doesn't force anything, but it does make some pretty strong suggestions. Haskell suggests immutable data, pure functions, and algebraic thinking. You can make your data mutable, do everything in the `IO` or `State` monad, etc., because Haskell doesn't force structure on your code -- but the suggestion is still there, whispering in the back of your mind. (This is what I love about Haskell, BTW, so please don't…

This is what I was thinking: if I just want to sit down and design myself an object system, Haskell’s type system gets in the way of the necessary parts. (Unless you want to limit the interaction between your object system and haskell’s types in annoying ways). I’ve implemented CLOS-style mutimethods as a handful of functions basically translated from the Common Lisp in the art of the meta-object protocol. And the multimethods work transparently with any ja type.

This isn’t a criticism of Haskell: there are plenty of benefits to forcing declarative IO and limiting the language (roughly) to features that don’t break type-inference, but those advantages of Haskell make it much less enjoyable to experiment with programming paradigms in.

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

#423

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

skinnymuch wrote: post #374
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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].

No, usually with sagas, your action creator stays synchronous and you yield your actions from a generator function that contains all the asynchronous bits.

It’s a beautiful system that brings a lot of the benefits of a Free-monad style effect system.

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

#424

Post by cryptozeus »

liveoneggs wrote: post #19
cryptozeus wrote: post #7

They can, it depends on the role. Not referring to you but I have never understood why DevOps at many companies can’t program and are just hired to copy paste files. “DevOps is a set of software development practices that combines software development and information technology operations to shorten the systems development life cycle while delivering features, fixes, and updates frequently in close alignment with bus…

yeah it's weird. I never understood why we hire developers to copy and paste stackoverflow all day either.

Ha its a good point but hey atleast they build and publish files.

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

#425

Post by cryptozeus »

opportune wrote: post #10
cryptozeus wrote: post #7

They can, it depends on the role. Not referring to you but I have never understood why DevOps at many companies can’t program and are just hired to copy paste files. “DevOps is a set of software development practices that combines software development and information technology operations to shorten the systems development life cycle while delivering features, fixes, and updates frequently in close alignment with bus…

Most of the devops (side question, is SRE technically devops?) people I work with are programmers who know a lot about test+build frameworks, CICD, cloud resource management, etc. I don't think it would be appropriate to call someone copy-pasting templates, manually adding VMs, etc. "devops"

This is exactly the kind of role my company has. They didn’t even know how to restart web server from command line.

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

#426

Post by OldHand2018 »

pault wrote: post #348
ikiris wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... so you're not paying enough to entice them. Which is what was said three posts up.

Thanks. Unfortunately we can't afford to pay front end developers $300k/year. And what we are paying is more than competitive. It's not an issue of pay, it's an issue of availability and not having the resources to stalk and poach developers from other companies. We also have a generous internal referral bonus, and various recruiters sourcing candidates. Is there something else I'm missing? Edit: I don't think you ar…

> Is there something else I'm missing?

Yes, probably. Why do you need a supply of new front end developers? Is your workplace exceedingly lethal?

Have you considered that paying $2XX/year is a signal? It attracts a certain type of candidate and you can't extrapolate the talent level of the entire market just based on your experience with those that would try to land a $2XX/year job. Where I live, trading firms can pay that much and more, with potential bonuses that would make your eyes pop out of your head. Yet many extremely talented people I know would never submit a resume: "No thanks I like having a life." Many people I know that used to work in that environment think of it as an insurance policy: "at least I know that if I ever need money I can go back."

> We are offering higher than average pay for a job with average requirements

A lot of people will pass you by and assume that something is really wrong at your company to need to offer so much money for an average job.

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

#427

Post by [deleted] »

pault wrote: post #302
aianus wrote: post #287

Earlier 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.

[deleted]

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

#428

Post by scarface74 »

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…

Resumes lie. You can’t imagine the number of times I’ve interviewed someone with $years of experience who were actually no more than “expert beginners”.

Older developers come in two forms. Those who aggressive learn, have matured beyond “just developers” and those who are set in their ways. I’m 45.

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

#429

Post by scarface74 »

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.

If you heard about all of the bad code at Twitter pre-IPO, large companies don’t care about code quality either.

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

#430

Post by wyclif »

tptacek wrote: post #346
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…

The problem is, your resume doesn't speak for itself, or, more accurately, resumes in general don't speak for themselves. It's not because people lie on their resumes, but because there's a pattern in this industry of people failing laterally and upwards. It takes much longer than people assume to get a dysfunctional team member off the payroll. In most shops, new hires spend months in a (reasonable!) reduced-expecta…

For a technical/IC role (really, any role), I'd be alarmed if I wasn't given practical tests to verify I can actually back up my talk

Agreed, and let me offer an anecdotal, real-world example. Before I was in this racket, I used to be a land surveyor. Because it's both technical and licensed (and btw, I'm not going to make an argument for licensure, just mentioning it as a qualifier), you had to take a written test and pass a rigorous interview before you were accepted as an apprentice land surveyor. The test involved trigonometry, plane geometry, algebra, property law, and basic statistics. The sit down involved attempts to surface red flags all the way down to testing if the candidate was afraid of dogs.

And after passing that, then you were hired on as an apprentice which meant that all your work had to be reviewed and signed off on by a licensed PLS while you learned on the job and could eventually take the PLS exam yourself.

Too often in software engineering, a candidate can jump through the hoops and get hired but even if their role is junior, they're essentially on their own except for code reviews. There's very little mentoring, because senior people are neck deep in work and nobody's got time for that. The company has to be committed to mentoring and carve out space and money for it in order for it to happen.

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