“I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews” • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by emeraldd » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 2:17 PM UTC

st1x7 wrote: post #380

- It's an anonymous source claiming 15 years of experience and technical proficiency but somehow still had to relearn basic concepts. I'm not buying it. - I would much rather do general computer science problems than have to answer questions about the framework that happens to be trendy this year or have to spend days on evaluation projects. General CS questions also allow people to transition between domains and sub…

I'd buy it. - 17 years ago I was pretty good with Microchip PIC microcontroller assembly. (Haven't touched it since.) Today, I'd have to pull the datasheets and spend a few days re-reading them to remember much of any of it. - 9 years ago I worked heavily with a large, legacy perl code base and wrote a bunch of internal web apps in perl. Again, I haven't touched it since and again it would take me a while to get back up to speed on that language stack. - As recent as 3 years ago I was heavily into a 200~300k loc PHP code base that did some pretty complex stuff (think ERPish ). Again, I haven't touched it much since then and again it would take me a few days to a week or so to get back into the swing of working on that code base.

This kind of knowledge is highly perishable if you don't use it everyday. You quickly find yourself moving from "knowing" something to "knowing how to find" an answer to "how did that go again?". It's just the nature of the business.

It doesn't mean you aren't good at or capable of picking those things back up, it just means you may need a quick refresher. Not being allowed to use references makes that artificially worse.

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

#392

Post by landtuna » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 2:18 PM UTC

mtberatwork wrote: post #371

landtuna wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the technologies I've used are all over the place, but the niche is defense contracting. Until now, I don't think I realized that processing lots of data really fast locally (i.e., not in the cloud) wasn't more generally in-demand.

> the niche is defense contracting That's not exactly a small niche. Edit: Just saw your LinkedIn profile below, have you applied to DC area companies? I think you would have much more success in the DMV metro area.

No, I know more defense would be easy. I'd love to try other stuff, though. There's so much out there to learn, and it's more fun to do things that push me.

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

#393

Post by krageon » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 2:19 PM UTC

abj wrote: post #386

bananaface wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't work because there's a giant incentive to defect and no way to effectively police it.

Great point - there will be a giant incentive to defect. I'm not interested in policing it. I'm interested in raising the incentive for people to say no. I'd do this by offering another job board for people who aren't likely to leetcode anyway. I would tailor it to people with great open source projects/ experience that might get looked over in a more traditional interview.

I would give this at least a cursory glace. This is how SO careers was marketed to me back in the day (regardless of whether or not that was true) and it ended up landing me in an interview process that was not as terrible as it could have been.

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

#394

Post by skeeter2020 » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 2:19 PM UTC

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…

IF yopur #1 skill is grinding leetcode and continually jumping by being an expert interviewer, when & why would you ever stop? Have you not in fact discovered that this is your endgame? The parallels with how we envision hell are obvious...

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

#395

Post by Shared404 » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

workthistime wrote: post #385

Shared404 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hoping the best for you. I'm hoping to either follow a similar path, or dodge computing entirely as a career path, find an interesting job, and keep it as a hobby where I have the chance to work on interesting problems. Don't know that I would describe myself as talented though, but definitely driven.

> Hoping the best for you. I'm hoping to either follow a similar path, or dodge computing entirely as a career path, find an interesting job, and keep it as a hobby where I have the chance to work on interesting problems. I’m at the point I’m seriously considering this, and I’m just not sure I can do it. Everytime I run through the possibilities in my head nothing adds up. The only viable careers for me to switch int…

Check out this thread [0] I started the other day, there are a couple of recommendations there.

One of the jobs mentioned is free time rich and money OK, and the other I don't know what the payment is like, but would require credentials.

If you haven't worked in foodservice yet, I actually highly recommend it as an experience, at least in a short term sense.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25243187

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

#396

Post by the-dude » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

abj wrote: post #370

What if we form a group/site that refuses to do leetcode interviews? This seems like a classic coordination problem. If enough people refuse, companies will have their talent pool limited. We could use this group to help match companies and developers who don't want to leetcode. If it's true that leetcode filters out great developers, than companies who 'can't find talent' should be able to use our group to find some…

You are describing a labor union.

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

#397

Post by treis » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 2:25 PM UTC

_9omd wrote: post #73

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…

Yup, I jumped into the if you can't beat em, join em camp with leetcode. I Did 160 problems (likely low for many people) before my last job search, and I now make 3x what I used to. I gotta admit it's a hell of an ego boost to crush coding questions in interviews; being completely in the flow and cranking out flawless code. It makes me wonder how much money I left on the table the last 10 years, because I went the ro…

Can you give some specifics about salary, previous & new role, and location? I see these sorts of stories a lot on here but it seems like they're all concentrated in SF or NY.

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

#398

Post by danilocesar » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 2:25 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #387

okareaman wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - it's not enough to be able to solve the problems, you need to be able to solve them on the spot, without much thinking, in an interview context Sounds like they're looking for assembly line programmers - crank out the code, pass it off, then on to the next piece of code without pause. This would be a nightmare for me. The high salaries and prestige of these companies definitely would not be worth it. I'm not neur…

I think what is required for the interviews is very different than the actual work you do once you are hired. It 's also very team dependent. The reason why you're expected to be fast during the interviews is that you're competing with people who are fast (either because they are smart, or because they've practiced a lot). That being said, this type of interviews is clearly not for everyone. There are tons of skilled…

Not at FAANG

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

#399

Post by sharker8 » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 2:26 PM UTC

IanSanders wrote: post #318

alltakendamned wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I feel it is hard for me to disagree with the overall sentiment of what you are describing. But I'd like to offer a little glimmer of hope from someone with too many gray hairs to count. Computers are still machines, and we still tell them what to do by programming them. It is still possible to stay out of what you describe above, it is still possible to work on low-level code, on real products, on thin…

> Computers are still machines, and we still tell them what to do by programming them. It is still possible to stay out of what you describe above, it is still possible to work on low-level code, on real products, on things that matter to people and companies. Yes it is possible, but in practice one will (sometimes have to) spend most of the time with devices/technologies that make one die inside a little. Part of th…

Some of the most inspirational stories in tech are along the lines of "I had this terrible job where we had to use tech X so I wrote adapter Y in more cool tech Z and automated the whole thing and took long lunches."

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

#400

Post by learc83 » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 2:26 PM UTC

alisonkisk wrote: post #344

learc83 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doctors _should_ be a dime a dozen. They should not cost so much - because their services are valuable and therefore, more of them should be produced to make medical costs lower. Physician salaries make up about 8% of medical costs. And even if you doubled medical school class size, you wouldn’t get 2x the doctors because there aren’t enough resident slots available. And even if you had enough slots available, you’…

You're assuming the bugs are required. Residency as it is now is a terrible system that had no need to exist in its life destroying form. The industry had already figured this out and is moving work from doctors to nurses and PAs and offshore radiologists who don't need a residency.

Moving work to lower level practitioners is functionally equivalent to reducing physician requirements.

Of course companies are going to do anything they can to reduce prices. And of course the industry is going to put out flattering white papers in support of their cost cost cutting measures. Yet those reduced costs haven't been passed on to consumers or measurably improved medical care, so the argument merely that the industry is doing something is a poor argument in favor of it from a consumer/public health/societal standpoint.

Some companies love to outsource labor to countries with relaxed labor laws. That isn't a convincing argument against the need for labor regulations.