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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”

#191

Post by wolco2 »

dnautics wrote: post #102
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…

oddly (if you see my sibling comment) I just got a job where they didn't ask me any technical questions. They just asked me about my coding philosophy. I guess they just looked at my github? Dunno.

Congrats on the new position. Some people can spot talent.

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

#192

Post by jariel »

voodootrucker wrote: post #180
jariel wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 on 'Code Archeology'. I wonder if interviews should consist more of reading a pile of open source and just trying to make sense of it. There's some crusty open source I've had to deal with whereupon it took quite some intelligence just to get it to compile and work - absolutely nothing to do with 'algorithms'. I'm half inclined to just say: "Here's a git repo, build it, modify this thing to do that" and if they ca…

I'm not sure what language you work in the most, but based on the build issues I might guess c++, in which case I'd say check out conan central. It's still sad compared to other package managers, but if you're building c++ all day, it's a game changer. https://github.com/conan-io/conan-center-index/tree/master/r...

Thanks for that - you guessed it - C++. It's like you think you speak English but then you walk into a pub in Pembrokeshire and you absolutely cannot understand a word anyone is saying, even though ostensibly they are speaking English. C++ will forever be a 'distant second language' that is different in every project. It's very frustrating.

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

#193

Post by voodootrucker »

lambda_obrien wrote: post #181
voodootrucker wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a teacher for a laughably short time, and I think what you are talking about would be called an "authentic performance task". Also, I think what interviewers are attempting is called "assessment", and I can say these tests are the absolute laziest version of it. Genuine assessment is very hard. I worked at a leading bootcamp you would know the name of and was asked by $BIGCO to create a one dimensional assessme…

I am not expert enough to weigh in heavily on what's the best way to do that, but I feel like "software engineer" is just a title to make us feel great while we assemble our components much like the workers on an auto manufacturing line, but with a tiny bit more education and day-to-day work differences. However, with all the low-code and other tools which make it easier to write software and deploy it (crappy softwa…

Lol. I took the teaching job because I was bored with "software assembly" (nice name). It was fun to get drop shipped into a random location in the world and go toe-to-toe with their best and brightest.

I've since moved on to embedded development, and it is as you say. I've recently got to work on tensorflow light, pytorch, rust, object detection, compute shaders... it's amazing.

The big company stuff can be a bit boring, but I can also say there's some pride even in the "glue". The team I was most proud of implemented Heroku-flow in their proprietary cloud using some kick-ass devops skills, figured out some innovative ways to solidly test their creation, and also got to write a genuinely comp-sci database diff tool to migrate data nightly from the original thing into their re-write.

If you can build the trust, there's most often a good route to turn a terrible, untrusting, corporate monstrosity into something decent. But that being said, it takes a ton of passion and also sometimes it will just be dull and a hobby project is probably a necessary relief valve.

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

#194

Post by bit_logic »

andrew_ wrote: post #88

Tech hiring is severely broken. 22 years in and it's only gotten worse. We still tolerate PhD Comp Sci algorithm questions for frontend developer gigs, endless series of array shuffling and sorting, canned problems intended to "measure your problem solving ability," ridiculous hypotheticals (e.g. whiteboard how you would build Slack), and a litany of other tactics that recruiters or old school management thinks are r…

This is a good strategy for senior engineers to avoid the leetcode interviews. And to any recruiters and hiring managers reading this, there’s the other side of this. If you want responses from high quality senior engineers, then start your LinkedIn email with “NO Leetcode”. Response rates will likely increase by a lot.

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

#195

Post by worker767424 »

I'm not sure sure the author is coming from. I have a similar amount of experience, but wouldn't say I had to "relearn coding" when I did my last round of interviews.

I've landed enough jobs without crazy amounts of studying, but knowing what was coming, I did ~100 Leetcode questions over a month. I also read an algorithm book knowing it's one of my weak points. I got a FAANG offer from my first interview, and even got feedback that I'm good at algorithms.

There's a comment here about someone who's in their 40's and can't get anyone to look at their resume. Maybe that'll change for me, but I get lots of recruiter emails. It definitely helps that I have four well-regarded tech companies on my resume.

Hate the system all you want, but you know what's expected. Either suck it up and do your leetcode and be an expert and the language you're using or stop complaining about being stuck somewhere.

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

#196

Post by welearnednothng »

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,…

Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Over 20 years of really solid experience here doing some awesome stuff for recognizable employers. I’ve had the exact experiences as the author.

One recent interview run by ex-FUAANG folks started with a non-trivial take home that represented their actual business. I come in, am told it’s one of the best they’ve seen. Which was great, because I was genuinely proud of it. Now let’s find all of the combinations on a boggle board. Which wasn’t even the worst of it.

So far, that’s been pretty par for the course for me. It’s been discouraging.

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

#197

Post by sixdimensional »

ConcernedCoder wrote: post #68
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…

I go "above and beyond" all the time, but not because I think it's going to get me "somewhere". It's the type of person I strive to be, and that's good enough for me.

As much as I sometimes wish I could be rewarded just a bit better for going above and beyond, I have to agree with you here. I appreciate your philosophy.

Ultimately, intrinsic motivation won’t always make us rich, but it might help us be happy and fulfilled. And in the rare occasion that health, wealth and happiness all align, what a good life we can enjoy.

Here here!

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

#198

Post by samdamsamma »

ip26 wrote: post #100
echelon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our industry feels like it's in the decline of the Roman Empire right now. Our craft is becoming arcane: Microsoft is building VSCode for the cloud. Few people own desktop computers anymore. Apple is locking down MacOS to signed binaries. Soon we'll all have thin clients and will write software in the cloud for the cloud. Few will be able to learn how to engineer at home anymore - you'll have to go to a university or…

Companies are trying to hire more outside of California in order to lower wages across the board This could turn out to be a very good thing for the country. It's a social & economic problem if all the money & opportunity are squeezed into just one metro.

They’re not hiring people in the US.

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

#200

Post by lambda_obrien »

voodootrucker wrote: post #193
lambda_obrien wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not expert enough to weigh in heavily on what's the best way to do that, but I feel like "software engineer" is just a title to make us feel great while we assemble our components much like the workers on an auto manufacturing line, but with a tiny bit more education and day-to-day work differences. However, with all the low-code and other tools which make it easier to write software and deploy it (crappy softwa…

Lol. I took the teaching job because I was bored with "software assembly" (nice name). It was fun to get drop shipped into a random location in the world and go toe-to-toe with their best and brightest. I've since moved on to embedded development, and it is as you say. I've recently got to work on tensorflow light, pytorch, rust, object detection, compute shaders... it's amazing. The big company stuff can be a bit bo…

I love your comment, thanks, it gave me a bit of hope, which is more valuable than most other things in the world (my son gave me the hope needed to get out of depression, maybe you will give me the spark to make my company better?).
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