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We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

danluu.com

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Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#191

Post by doublement »

rumanator wrote: post #164
doublement wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should I learn Node instead? Node is a gateway to Javascript fluency for people that get a headache dealing with the DOM in the browser. You can write command-line scripts, run them with "node [scriptname]", and learn. Having done that, I've found that Node is great for fast prototyping of servers, even if those are going to be written in C/C++ ultimately. In not-super-formal work environment, you can very quic…

> Node is a gateway to Javascript fluency for people that get a headache dealing with the DOM in the browser. Honestly, to me Node always sounded like the exact opposite of your description: a way for frontend development experience to leak into the backend at least in appearance so that people who were able to hack around DOM updates could argue that they could develop for the backend as well, thus paving the way to…

I think it can work both ways, but I was looking at it from the perspective of the parent post.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#193

Post by mcguire »

traderjane wrote: post #73
alfalfasprout wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly go to any large unicorn or many FANGs and those T-Shirt and jeans are often a $200 "hypebeast" style shirt, $200 raw denim jeans, and $400 sneakers. I mean, I'm guilty of owning more than one of those items but I think it's dumb to claim that wearing t-shirt and jeans is much better in this regard.

> I hate the anti-suit thing in SV. Suits look great, you feel great wearing a good tailored suit... Tailored suit? Seriously? Does that not smell like luxury? Why is that part of the discussion for workplace uniform? A college student wearing a hoodie given for free by TripleByte doesn't look bad at the world's largest software firm. If you wear a t-shirt I cannot tell if you graduated from Stanford. But if you're a…

1. We're talking about interviews, not daily wear.

2. Right. Luxury bad. Class bad. But what you are wearing has no bearing on your skills. Even if you are wearing a suit.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#194

Post by bojo »

mcguire wrote: post #133
plughs wrote: post #45

One frustration I've had recently is the number of companies encouraging or requiring code in the public sphere. They want to see open-source contributions or an active and impressive personal github page. If your employer is protective of their IP ( mine is ) and/or you are not willing to spend evenings and and weekends on pet projects, you are out of the running. Also >But if you think programmers aren't elitist, t…

Re: public code, don't get me wrong, I'm sympathetic, but honestly there are very few ways to separate a good programmer from a good bullshitter. The alternative is interview coding tests; suggest that and see how much love you get. (And some don't even know they're bullshitting. They honestly think that being marginally associated with a project means they did the work.) As for suits? Yeah, those are the same people…

> The alternative is interview coding tests

I've all but given up considering finding a new job at this point because even with a solid github project in the target company's language of choice which goes above and beyond their "homework" and/or pair programming interview, they still ask you to do their ridiculous coding test.

Too old for this shit.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#195

Post by wescarpenter »

mcguire wrote: post #162
fzeroracer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please please please P L E A S E keep in mind that a lot of developers literally cannot work on many projects in their free time because the company they work for owns everything they do on and off company time. Even contributing to open source efforts can become an issue because you're expected to ask for permission first and it can become a sticky legal issue of ownership. Companies expect and want people to work o…

In 25 years of signing employment agreements, I've never seen one that said, "the company ... owns everything they do on and off company time." Yes, if you're working on a Foo and you write a Foo on your own time, you'll have an issue. Do you have any specific lawsuits in mind?

Every job i've had has had something to this extent in the contract.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#196

Post by Filligree »

plughs wrote: post #45

One frustration I've had recently is the number of companies encouraging or requiring code in the public sphere. They want to see open-source contributions or an active and impressive personal github page. If your employer is protective of their IP ( mine is ) and/or you are not willing to spend evenings and and weekends on pet projects, you are out of the running. Also >But if you think programmers aren't elitist, t…

If she interviews with me, she absolutely will. Appearance? Who cares.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#197

Post by aeruder »

mcguire wrote: post #162
fzeroracer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please please please P L E A S E keep in mind that a lot of developers literally cannot work on many projects in their free time because the company they work for owns everything they do on and off company time. Even contributing to open source efforts can become an issue because you're expected to ask for permission first and it can become a sticky legal issue of ownership. Companies expect and want people to work o…

In 25 years of signing employment agreements, I've never seen one that said, "the company ... owns everything they do on and off company time." Yes, if you're working on a Foo and you write a Foo on your own time, you'll have an issue. Do you have any specific lawsuits in mind?

In California it is illegal. If you work in trendy software companies, startups, etc - it probably isn't common because so many people have Githubs.

As a embedded software engineer, I've had specific language claiming rights to everything (one even called out "songs or other copyrightable works") I do while employed at the company at 4/4 of my post-college jobs.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#198

Post by edwinjm »

BubRoss wrote: post #176
rumanator wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your point is taken although I wouldn't say Node qualifies as the latest trend at this point. Honest question: does Node offer any advantage other than CV points wrt established backend tech stacks?

Javascript is a flexible and fluid language in my opinion. Using modern JITs gets you a scripting language that is many times faster than other languages, but Node.js itself is based around async callbacks for the simplest stuff with no easy way out, which makes it worth avoiding. Lua JIT however is sane, simple and even faster, but the infrastructure and tools surrounding it are bare in comparison.

"but Node.js itself is based around async callbacks for the simplest stuff with no easy way out, which makes it worth avoiding".

Huh? Async code is so powerful. You can use promises instead of callbacks. And you can easily make a async call "synchronous" by adding the await keyword in front of it.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#199

Post by raxxorrax »

scottlamb wrote: post #183
hyperpape wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may enjoy a tweet of Dan's, where he says his open source code has been completely irrelevant in most of his interviews: https://twitter.com/danluu/status/806222862663053312 . Lest you think he's just a superstar who doesn't care about interviews, he says he's quite bad at them https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1058029337923014656

From later in that second twitter thread: > I was at a party tonight and someone asked me what my favorite book was. Couldn't answer. They relaxed the constraint and asked about "a good book". Couldn't answer. They relaxed the constraint again and asked me about "any book, good or bad". Couldn't answer. From his blog, Dan is obviously a great engineer. I'd love to say as an interviewer I'd recognize this and say "str…

Don't know the party, but it would be a weak question in an interview in my opinion.

Re: We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)

#200

Post by andor »

BubRoss wrote: post #173
asdfman123 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a C# developer at what I think is a really good dev environment. Tons of smart people here and we're highly productive. I like C# and I honestly feel boring software is better. I can't get behind chasing the latest trends. Why should I learn Node instead? Does writing backend Javascript mean you're a better developer?

Node is a total nightmare even if you like javascript. The async everything nonsense makes basic tasks impossible without nesting callbacks within callbacks within callbacks.

Promises and async/await fix this.

The Node API unfortunately is built around callbacks, but can be turned into a Promise-based API using the built-in "promisify" tool: https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v8.x/docs/api/util.html#util_...

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