There must be something else thats blocking your way. I did a round of interviews with top notch distributed systems teams that deal with the kind of scale youre describing. All FANGs or similar ranked companies, with 400-600k / year offers. I have no experience in backend programming of distributed systems and every interview I started with "I don't know much about DS: Ive only read a couple books, but here's how I'd solve this problem". Got offers from every company, some chased me for a few months after. Perhaps the trick here was my credentials (in an unrelated field), ability to bullshit my way thru and the skill to be likeable, which is really finding something in common with interviewers.
Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?
111–120 of 159 posts
Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I see you’ve asked similar questions to this since 2016 That's good context. And to OP's point, > I have been in the field for a few years...this field has never been my passion, just a profession I like. I've been programming professionally for 10+ years, 20+ when you add in college and what I did growing up. That, and computers are a hobby of mine, and I definitely have a passion for them, and I know a lot of stu…
> We're not a majority, but it's hard to compete with us, it's not helpful to compare yourself to us, but it's hard because that's what interviewers compare you against. This makes me so sad. I've prepped hard on leetcode for 6 years (since freshman year of college) and I haven't had much to show for it but a total compensation less than Stanford new grads despite two years of tenure. I wonder if there's any point of…
> I wonder if there's any point of even living most days.
This means you're valuing the wrongs things w/ the wrong weights. Compensation is to help you live more comfortably. If your pursuit of it is making you less comfortable (than the compensation received) you're doing it wrong.
Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yo buddy, no need to compare yourself with others. You should compare yourself now with your past self six years ago: are you a better person now? If you've spent 6 years doing leetcode and you're still bad at it, then perhaps realise that such problem solving games are not for everyone. Like sudoku. I prefer the word game where you find the word in a grid and I hate crosswords. We're all different and that's what ma…
> You should compare yourself now with your past self six years ago: are you a better person now? Kinda? I had more potential then, I could have done Facebook after sophomore year and had my career set for life. Instead I failed that interview and my career has been treading water because I had to join Amazon out of undergrad. Its apparent that I"m not good at these things...the problem is my happiness and financial…
> I had to join Amazon out of undergrad.
You're suffering for a lack of perspective or gratitude. If you're a millennial, realize that you were probably told that you could do anything (and thusly everything), and the effort it would take was trivialized... Both are incorrect. You most likely can do 1 thing super well and it's going to be a shit ton of work if you want to compete against those equally competent.
Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I ask questions beyond the job scope in interviews, but I when the applicant looks nervous, I tell them that's what I'm doing. I'm often pleasantly surprised at the answers and it's one of the more useful aspects of the interview for me.
I would much appreciate the info that that's what was happening. The context helps to calibrate correctly.
I'm sure it would make you less nervous (which is why I tell them), but would it actually help? Either the role is above your skill level, and it won't matter how you answer the questions, or it isn't and doing your best will be good enough.
Either way, there's no need to be nervous. IMO, you should focus on just answering the questions as best you can.
Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?
#115Recently i interviewed a guy that failed all the questions. During interview. I know he can do it. So we hired him anyway. He turns out to be really good and started contribution with in days. Corporations really needs to know what kind of problems they are trying to solve. And see if the candidate is right fit for the job.
What signals did you use to determine he could do it if he failed all the questions?
One of the most important things to discover as an interviewer is a candidates thought process. The actual solution is often not that interesting, but how the candidate rose to the challenge, what questions they asked of us to improve their understanding, and how they explained their solution tells us a lot about their work attitude. While it would be great to present them with problems from our everyday work, that often requires too much background knowledge to cover in an interview.
The aim with these questions is to discover what it would be like to work with the candidate.
Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's partly market conditions, but also I think the interview process changed a lot in the past five years and I didn't change with it. There are plenty of jobs out there, but a lot of competition. One place said they received over 1,000 applications for one role.
Can you expand on what you didn't change in the last five years? Or in other words: what should I focus on.
I don't want to assume anything about the parent background. When I see things like "1000 applicants" I assume these are likely to be either generic roles, or well publicised roles. Even then, most of those 1000 people are unlikely to pass phone screens.
If you go for the long tail of jobs which need specific backgrounds or unusual combinations of tools, or are simply in "unpopular" or non-technical domains, there is much less competition. It doesn't take much to put yourself ahead of other candidates, but to do this well it's a long play and it make take a few moves to get into the job you really want.
Asking what you should focus on requires more context about you - what's your background and what job do you want? Are you currently failing to get jobs (and do you know why)?
I don't think anything has changed in the last five years in terms of what a whiteboard "structured" interview is. It depends on the company. It's well known that lots of places just crib from leetcode.
Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, having worked in a twitter-like domain is a valid selection criterion for any internet company planning to handle lots of traffic. It is possible that working on wordpress servers would not prepare you very well for such a job. Being unable to even articulate a basic strategy for handling a problem like this would be something I would consider a yellow flag for a potential teammate. It would make me quest…
If someone's resume was only wordpress sites, and they somehow made it into a technical interview for a team that managed twitter-like systems, I'd consider that a critical failure of the selection process. As an interviewer, I would try and make that experience as painless as possible for the candidate, and if not totally shocked by their abilities, have very direct conversations about the shortcomings of the select…
> I'd consider that a critical failure of the selection process.
Me too. Unfortunately, I have no control over recruiters or the questionable candidates they sometimes choose to send in. I just have to do my best to ascertain whether the person is a good potential teammate.
Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
For sure, and it’s definitely something I never would have planned or expected for myself. It was also partly influenced by COVID, and further compounded by pretty rough break up. But the funny thing is, I really feel more comfortable and confident than when I was “succeeding”. I used to feel so guilty about a one line code fix taking weeks to deploy, or I used to feel so guilty and terrible for not paying attention…
I never had anything to do with farming but I can imagine its appeal. Living from the fat of the land and not caring about planning and preplanning and retrospectives and all that. Best of luck! Will look up Gabe Brown & Chris Trump. About the three nonlinearities, I'm afraid I'm missing some context - never read up about chaos theory...
If nothing else I can imagine the hard work, hours and constant threat of bankruptcy of farming would make me very happy to get back behind that keyboard again!
Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?
#119For the system design interview I would blame your recruiter for not preparing you for what to expect in the interview. Larger companies like FAANGs actually do a very good job at that. The Kleppmann book others have mentioned is of course excellent for these interviews, but here are a couple of other resources for a crash course:
1. https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer
2. https://www.educative.io/courses/grokking-the-system-design-...
Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?
#120Sometimes, the interviewer will purposely give you a question beyond your reach. There are a few reasons. - To zero in on what you already know. - To see how you react in a situation where you don't have all the information. What is your attitude when you are in this situation? Do you shut down? Walk out? Or are you able to form open ended questions to get the missing information? In any type of job, you're always in…
I ask questions beyond the job scope in interviews, but I when the applicant looks nervous, I tell them that's what I'm doing. I'm often pleasantly surprised at the answers and it's one of the more useful aspects of the interview for me.
One of my best interview experiences was when I was asked a few relatively simple questions, looked over a class of their code and describe what it does and some mistakes that might be in there, and went over a code sample I brought in.
Then he said, "Okay, I know you can do the job, now I'm just curious how much you really know."
And then the really hard, low level questions came out. I said I didn't know a few times, and struggled even when I sorta knew the answers, and he took it in stride and played the role of teacher and taught me a few things that I still remember today. I didn't feel pressure like I did in other interviews, despite being much harder questions than I get asked elsewhere.
If you do it that way, I'm cool with it. If you start right out the gate with the hard questions, and you make no indication that you're not expecting right answers, I have no choice but to assume I better get them right, or else (especially considering I haven't moved on to the next stage of interviews before for getting one question wrong, or saying I didn't know for one of the questions, or the HR person was looking for a particular keyword I didn't say, quite a few times).