Tech Interview Handbook • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech Interview Handbook

#211

Post by fogetti » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 2:30 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #204

fogetti wrote: post #200

There is something I cannot understand and this has already become a cliche: > Technology industry is an extremely fast-moving one. Many technologies used today didn't even exist/were popular a decade ago; in 2009, mobile app development and blockchain were pretty much unheard of. Engineers constantly need to upgrade their skills to stay relevant to the demands of the job market. Engineering is a great career for pas…

MBA holders is a bad example since many of them happily work many hours of overtime, so I am pretty sure that they work more hours than software engineers even if you include the time it takes to study for interviews. > It turns out that the median number of hours racked up by an MBA in his or her first year of employment is a whopping 54 hours a week https://www.forbes.com/sites/poetsandquants/2018/03/06/the-6...

I am confused. Why do you think software engineers stop working as much as MBAs when they land a job? That's when they have to start studying even more beside working.

54 sounds about average for an engineer anyway. In Germany for example it's not rare to have 9 hour working days, with 30 to 60 minute lunch breaks in between. If it's so then basically one week comes to about 45 hours / week. If you study 2 hours a day, read books or read the news, follow trends, watch recordings of past conferences, etc which are pretty standard things that you are supposed to do on your job then it easily comes to 54 hours / week. So that's not high at all.

Re: Tech Interview Handbook

#212

Post by namelosw » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 2:32 PM UTC

yumraj wrote: post #7

Given the current state of tech interviews, they have more or less become like standardized tests, such as SAT, ACT, GMAT, GRE... with guides, cheat sheets and perhaps neighborhood coaching institutes on the horizon with instructors who have cleared tech interviews in FAANGs. Are we going to see tech recruitment become more and more like college admissions where a top score in the interview is just one of the criteri…

I was against the algorithm tests or something more like exams before.

Until I interviewed a lot of people with my colleagues during these years. Interview processes are highly biased based on the knowledge of the interviewer's background and value, or even mood.

Some interviewers are too sloppy on interviewing, asking ill-defined questions, demanding answers they want, or just in a hurry and wanting to go back to work. I often feel bad and angry for interviewees - they spent time and patience preparing themselves carefully, then was treated very casually. It isn't fair at all.

I hate to say that, although standardized tests are bad, they are better than the most nowaday interviews.

Re: Tech Interview Handbook

#213

Post by bushido » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

fogetti wrote: post #200

There is something I cannot understand and this has already become a cliche: > Technology industry is an extremely fast-moving one. Many technologies used today didn't even exist/were popular a decade ago; in 2009, mobile app development and blockchain were pretty much unheard of. Engineers constantly need to upgrade their skills to stay relevant to the demands of the job market. Engineering is a great career for pas…

Why would anyone give this advice?

It seems relevant to getting a tech job. If one is looking for a job, chances are that things have changed since the last time they looked for a job, which on an average for most people these days is every 2-5 years.

This is not limited to engineering or tech, and extends to most specialized jobs in most industries.

Can we stop handing out this advice and encourage everyone to stand up for their rights instead?

In the right context absolutely. In general, its possibly a bad idea. You could always balance it out and educate the folks about the rights of an employer

If you were on my team, I would not expect you to sacrifice any of your rights. But if you kept falling behind your peers, to the determent of the team's performance, at some point you would be put on a performance plan. The unfortunate thing about performance plans is that by the time its enforced things are close to unrecoverable.

And if you did find yourself failing, I hope someone tells you that:

The technology industry is an extremely fast-moving one. Many technologies used today didn't even exist/were popular a decade ago; in 2009, mobile app development and blockchain were pretty much unheard of. Engineers constantly need to upgrade their skills to stay relevant to the demands of the job market.

Because, I will not.

Re: Tech Interview Handbook

#214

Post by chucksmash » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

sweetheart wrote: post #195

risubramanian wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You joke, but I've seen several applications where I've been asked questions like "What achievement are you proudest of?" and "How would you contribute to the diversity of our team?". Also cover letters cover some of this. Actually, I wouldn't mind a standardized test like the GRE, where a good score might actually keep your resume from getting thrown out immediately.

Maybe I stand alone in feeling this, but I don't see those questions are absurd during an interview. Especially at smaller startups, where early hires are going to be interfacing heavily with the majority of other employees. Maybe this should be filed under things that comprise "culture fit", but I also think it's different than that.

I think it's a little odd to ask directly. If you are evaluating an interviewee for "culture fit" as in your example, would you directly ask them "how would you fit into our culture?" or try to evaluate their thought processes, demeanor, etc to determine it for yourself?

Perhaps it's just the context from which this conversation arises and it wouldn't strike me this way otherwise, but asking these questions directly feels a bit too much like college application boilerplate to me.

If a team wants to prioritize a diversity of perspectives, I feel the team should spend the interview trying to understand my perspective, analyze how that compares to their own perspectives, then synthesize the answer to the question themselves rather than just adding a "How will you contribute to a diversity of perspectives?" question.

Re: Tech Interview Handbook

#215

Post by fogetti » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 2:35 PM UTC

gtirloni wrote: post #206

fogetti wrote: post #200

There is something I cannot understand and this has already become a cliche: > Technology industry is an extremely fast-moving one. Many technologies used today didn't even exist/were popular a decade ago; in 2009, mobile app development and blockchain were pretty much unheard of. Engineers constantly need to upgrade their skills to stay relevant to the demands of the job market. Engineering is a great career for pas…

I didn't read that as saying you have to spend hours outside of work to learn. Learning on the job is pretty much a given these days, no? At least in my experience. Even decades ago I was always given time to research/study new things and I really like that about our industry.

Where did you work if I may ask? In the companies where I worked there was never such a thing. I worked in 2 companies in Hungary, 2 companies in Germany, 3 companies in Japan and one in the US.

It was always basically assumed that you will study all the necessary things on your own time and when you sit in the office then you make productive things, a.k.a. as you deliver. You always had to code and show some progress of a specific development task each week. There was never such thing as time to research/study.

Re: Tech Interview Handbook

#216

Post by DrJones1098 » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 2:36 PM UTC

fogetti wrote: post #200

There is something I cannot understand and this has already become a cliche: > Technology industry is an extremely fast-moving one. Many technologies used today didn't even exist/were popular a decade ago; in 2009, mobile app development and blockchain were pretty much unheard of. Engineers constantly need to upgrade their skills to stay relevant to the demands of the job market. Engineering is a great career for pas…

There are no employee rights in modern capitalism. In the 19th century, they worked 80 hours a week in mines, had child labor, no vacations, women were ignored, indentured servitude existed. All this and more until unions and labor laws.

Karl Marx's entire philosophy was based on the abuses of workers he observed.

Nowadays people mock progressive causes as 'socialism', mock unions and worker protections, demonize progressive politicians, and idolize oligarchs. Even though it's all against their own best interest.

Your idealistic notion of 'rights' doesn't exist and will never happen. You have no rights as long as someone controls your purse strings, which with booming inequality is more and more people nowadays as well.

I can't wait until most jobs are finally automated and we're done with this whole capitalist system entirely and have to figure out what to do next.

Re: Tech Interview Handbook

#217

Post by shagie » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 2:36 PM UTC

winrid wrote: post #110

DavidWoof wrote: post #11

I realize everybody's going to jump in and rant about algorithms in interviews, but I wish you'd all add something constructive as well. I just had to conduct a round of interviews in a non-SF large US city, and it was a hellish crapshoot. Resumes are meaningless, and often re-written by recruiters to match the job anyway. Everyone has the same canned answers to the stupid behavioral questions. And as for the code, w…

Phone screens should prevent those candidates from ever getting onsite. You'd be surprised (or maybe not now) how many applicants for a senior frontend position can't build a progress bar for the phone screem.

I've given phone screens to individuals who turned out to be a different person when they showed up onsite. Not "nice on phone, jerk in real life" but rather "Bob does the phone screen for Charlie (and passes), Charlie shows up at the onsite."

Re: Tech Interview Handbook

#218

Post by fogetti » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

bushido wrote: post #213

fogetti wrote: post #200

There is something I cannot understand and this has already become a cliche: > Technology industry is an extremely fast-moving one. Many technologies used today didn't even exist/were popular a decade ago; in 2009, mobile app development and blockchain were pretty much unheard of. Engineers constantly need to upgrade their skills to stay relevant to the demands of the job market. Engineering is a great career for pas…

Why would anyone give this advice? It seems relevant to getting a tech job. If one is looking for a job, chances are that things have changed since the last time they looked for a job, which on an average for most people these days is every 2-5 years. This is not limited to engineering or tech, and extends to most specialized jobs in most industries. Can we stop handing out this advice and encourage everyone to stand…

I don't know what is a performance plan. Can you elaborate? I have never worked in a company where there was such a plan.

Is this public to employees or you just simply whip everyone until they work themselves to death without telling them the reasoning?

Also I assume you are in the US. In most European countries you can absolutely do nothing about someone who works full time on your team unless they let's say causes you financial losses or punch you in the face, so you can basically shove up your plan to your bottom part in other cases.

Re: Tech Interview Handbook

#219

Post by shagie » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 2:42 PM UTC

leovander wrote: post #20

yumraj wrote: post #7

Given the current state of tech interviews, they have more or less become like standardized tests, such as SAT, ACT, GMAT, GRE... with guides, cheat sheets and perhaps neighborhood coaching institutes on the horizon with instructors who have cleared tech interviews in FAANGs. Are we going to see tech recruitment become more and more like college admissions where a top score in the interview is just one of the criteri…

I went to a Cal State, and I recall in the last few years Google has taken professors to their campus and pretty much preach Cracking the Code Interview. So it looks like schools are already making that their standard. I have yet to see what classes look like but I could see there being a required technical interview course you have to take in order to increase school’s numbers on where their alumni work.

That would be Stanford CS9 : https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs9/

> This course will prepare students to interview for software engineering and related internships and full-time positions in industry. Drawing on multiple sources of actual interview questions, students will learn key problem-solving strategies specific to the technical/coding interview. Students will be encouraged to synthesize information they have learned across different courses in the major. Emphasis will be on the oral and combination written-oral modes of communication common in coding interviews, but which are an unfamiliar settings for problem solving for many students.

Re: Tech Interview Handbook

#220

Post by visarga » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

DrJones1098 wrote: post #216

fogetti wrote: post #200

There is something I cannot understand and this has already become a cliche: > Technology industry is an extremely fast-moving one. Many technologies used today didn't even exist/were popular a decade ago; in 2009, mobile app development and blockchain were pretty much unheard of. Engineers constantly need to upgrade their skills to stay relevant to the demands of the job market. Engineering is a great career for pas…

There are no employee rights in modern capitalism. In the 19th century, they worked 80 hours a week in mines, had child labor, no vacations, women were ignored, indentured servitude existed. All this and more until unions and labor laws. Karl Marx's entire philosophy was based on the abuses of workers he observed. Nowadays people mock progressive causes as 'socialism', mock unions and worker protections, demonize pro…

> I can't wait until most jobs are finally automated and we're done with this whole capitalist system entirely and have to figure out what to do next.

We have to figure that out much sooner than all jobs are automated.