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“I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

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Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#121

Post by ra7 »

kmonsen wrote: post #112
ra7 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with his, as someone who has recently completed several interviews for senior level. I used to think everything depended on Leetcode questions, but I was surprised to find out how much of the focus was on design, past experience and leadership. Leetcode is "easy" to crack with some (considerable) amount of hard work and they know that. But you can't make up past experience in behavioral interviews…

Yes, but in my experience you need both. If you are not willing to put in some time at leetcode it might not go well. Of course you can still get lucky, but better to be prepared.

Oh, you definitely need both. But there is a misconception that Leetcode skills alone is enough, but for more senior roles you get judged on more than that.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#122

Post by dleslie »

free_rms wrote: post #103
dleslie wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have any technical quiz as part of our interview process. We look at experience, education and creative outlets; then folks sink or swim upon being hired. So far we're batting fairly well. Folks don't generally lie about their experience.

In my youth I wound up in charge of hiring at a low-end shop due to a funny set of circumstances and absolutely got burned by people straight up lying to me. If I were more experienced, I'd have been able to ask the right questions about their alleged experience and smell the BS.

We tend to catch the liars when we talk to them about the particulars of their experience; it becomes quickly apparent that they are being dishonest when they cannot answer technical queries.

I've used this process for about ten years now, and it hasn't really burned me yet.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#123

Post by manesioz »

agumonkey wrote: post #108
jdreaver wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is inconsistent with my experience in my most recent round of interviews. I interviewed at a few places at a senior/staff level, and most of my interviews were behavioral, architectural, or discussions about past work. The few leetcode-style or coding questions I had were easily prepared for from my ~40 hours of interview-specific coding prep. There is zero chance I would have gotten those interviews or passed t…

I think we need a leetarch

https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/system-desig...

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#124

Post by aszen »

decafninja wrote: post #12

Unless you've made it to your "endgame" company that you're happy to stay at for a while, I feel investing anything more than the bare minimum to get your assigned work done is worth less than just grinding leetcode and otherwise studying for interviews. Doing an actual good job, above and beyond, is not going to be worth much when you're looking for your next job. Thus we're now seeing the rise of Professional Inter…

And what about job satisfaction, not doing an actual good job and spending miserable time doing leetcode is not going to add much worth to my day to day happiness.

I instead always suggest to do a good job regardless (note that doesn't mean doing long hours just working with care).

There are more important things than career ladder like integrity, honesty, work ethic and meaningful work.

Don't let societal policies compromise your inner values.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#125

Post by tomcat27 »

landtuna wrote: post #107
millstone wrote: post #57

The author has been working as a developer for 15 years, and claims very strong technical skills. Why are they learning/re-learning Python, C++, SQL, C#, college math? Nobody will be fooled by that; at 15 YoE they will be evaluated on what they have done over a career, not over the last month. > it's all about how much time you can spend on Leetcode. The author is playing a game built for new grads. Here's a secret,…

That's nonsense. I've got 20 YoE, an elite college degree, tons of experience in Python and C++, have single-handedly put together mission critical software systems, and I can't get my foot in the door outside my small area of expertise. The teams I've worked on are tiny, so I have no career network to draw from. I'm missing machine learning and cloud experience, and my resume gets no hits because of it. Age 44, and…

Perhaps a bad suggestion.

competitive programming can be really fun, addictive and great learning experience, and incredibly frustrating and takes lot of time (> 3 hours/day for 1 year to do it the right way).

If you want to learn algorithms for the sake of learning, perhaps specialize in some weird algo sub-topics, places like TopCoder, SPOJ, CodeForces that train for ACM ICPC might be a great place to start. These are different from LeetCode.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#126

Post by primroot »

dleslie wrote: post #4

Generally, I'm more likely to hire someone with interesting hobbies than someone who has completed HackerRank tests. I don't find it compelling to see that a candidate has accomplished standardized metrics; but I am swayed by non-computing hobbies. Synthesizers, painting, rock climbing, volunteering, and so on are indicators of a curious mind that's happy to apply itself.

That sounds interesting. I would have a job by now if someone valued the fact that I like memorizing Ancient Greek poetry :) Instead I failed my last interview because I took longer than half an hour to implement JSON indented stringify in JS and did not use template literals and a switch statement. It was my first technical interview ever after 10 years of developing software. I did not expect how much being watched and trying to fulfill several unclear expectations would hinder my performance on a problem, which I would otherwise consider very easy.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#127

Post by runawaybottle »

sn41 wrote: post #3
runawaybottle wrote: post #2

We’re just simply at scale. There’s too many people at scale so the dumb tests show up. Take a look at public school standardized tests. That’s basically where we are at with tech because we can’t handle scale.

I will not say I don't know why you are downvoted, since such remarks get downvoted here. But can't we look at an alternative model where some such standardized test is used to test basic competence, and then trainees get 2 week training on the job? Afterwards, we can select a subset based on specific tests designed for the job, rather than the usual interview questions. How many of us have actually used dynamic prog…

Eh, again, it’s a scale problem. When there’s too many people, the only respectable way to say ‘it’s crowded here already’ is to make the entrance criteria tough.

Take a look at skilled migration in western countries. We want to maintain a sane(sustainable) population in our society.

The problem is no other profession fucking pays or provides a decent desk job career.

The only positive of this level of gate keeping is that it’s keeping salaries decent. If the gate keeping disappeared, the metric fuck ton of downward pressure on developer salaries would be catastrophic.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#128

Post by hypervisorxxx »

What's even worse is when you have a different way to get the desired results and can defend runtimes but you're rudely interupted the second you deviate from the predecided best approach.

If there was a brilliant kid with a unique approach to solving the problem he would certainly be excluded by these systems.

Even worse, they say "don't worry we just want to see how you think" but I've been interupted multiple times during interviewes where the person presumes, without knowing what path I'm on, I'm on the wrong oath the literal second my answer deviates from the cracking the coding interview book. Then I'm asked to explain and I ask to just code and show it.

This is even worse imho. So I have learned to literally not think outside of the box when I interview and give them the memorization of the cracking the coding interview equivalent in my preferred programming language.

Trying to solve it your own way even if you have a good solution despite what they say is too risky the interviewer feels threatened by this new approach because they cannot follow you and are trained to rapidly rank you based on a very specific expectation.

Even worse as a female I've learned to begin all my interviews by asking the interviewers to please...PLEASE not jump in and interrupt me to try to "help me out"

I also have to provide a disclaimer that I'm about to think. If I'm silent for more than three seconds that's not thinking about how I want to approach the solution before I begin talking through my thought process it's interpreted as being completely lost. Ultimately then jumping in will count against me.

I'm serious.

Multiple interviews I'm terrified of being silent for more than two seconds but I've learned to literally instruct my interviewers to actually give me 3-10seconds to think before I speak and also please do not jump in with the answer.

The only thing more infuriating is when they jump in and say exactly what I was about to do so when I code it they think I couldn't do it without their help.

I have banned all interviewers from speaking or giving hints without my explicit permission before the interview.

This is my preferred method and it has worked well. I've gotten through interviews for top tech companies twitter facebook etc etc and work for a top tech firm as a software developer from senior to Staff and I love my job but wow....

Some companies really concern me the kind of people they are filtering for these days. Regurgitating cracking the coding interview without a moment's delay is the only acceptable way now.

I also agree with this guy. I was an engineer but not software for yrs and spent months practicing these tests to move into software and the moment I did I havnt used any of that since.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#129

Post by dilyevsky »

tomcat27 wrote: post #114
dilyevsky wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally a scan of string with some basic logic and three cases inside. People would take 30 mins+ and create a giant mess. This was easily 50%+ cases during phone screen and resumes all looked good so not recruiters fault (most of the time).

Hard to believe. Actually I am surprised companies even asks such a simple question anymore. When was that? I have done several LC easy and mediums, have done internships and published papers and didn't even make it to phone screen at every FAANG or other companies whose names carry some weight in future interview opportunities.

5-10 years ago. If you ask questions not from LC you have to make them easy or no one would make progress. My goal was to have at least something coded up so that candidate wouldn’t feel like they totally bombed, then I would calibrate my score based on quality of solution - basically secondary traits. Not everyone used this strategy =)

> have done internships and published papers and didn't even make it to phone screen at every FAANG

I recommend finding someone who works there through your network, conferences or open source projects and asking for a referral.

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