Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.efinancialcareers.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 731 posts

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

#471

Post by SamuelAdams »

dilyevsky wrote: post #105
tomcat27 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simple for-loop? that's ridiculous. If that's really the case I wonder the screening abilities of recruiters more than candidates.

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).

So basically a FizzBuzz, Jeff Attwood discusses it here. This article was really eye-opening to me.

Problem: Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print "Fizz" instead of the number and for the multiples of five print "Buzz". For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print "FizzBuzz".

https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

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

#472

Post by cableshaft »

vmception wrote: post #308
cableshaft wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You created the digital currencies and sold them? So you came up with your own coin then? When was this and how did you convince people to buy it, unless you had an active project for it (or you were intentionally fleecing them)? You could possibly get away with that a few years ago when people were throwing a bunch of money away on vaporware ICOs, but it's getting cracked down on more now.

The key for US compliance is to build a form of consumptive utility before the sale and never talk to your actual or potential buyers about the things they want to talk about (future prices, exchange listings). Look at IMVU’s no action letter for the kind of guidance US lawyers have been giving but nobody has been able to talk about. The SEC publicly agreed and I can confirm it matches the guidance given to many proj…

Huh. Okay, I'll take your word on it, I haven't done the research. Is this still a project you're actively working on, or have you moved on to other things?

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

#473

Post by killtimeatwork »

alisonkisk wrote: post #352
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…

If you ever met an assembly line worker or even watched a "how it's made" video you'd realize how absurd this claim is.

Agreed. There's one in my family. She's literally putting the same kind of sticker on the same kind of car 8 hours a day for months or years (they rotate positions in factory so that people don't go crazy - but retraining for the new position is a matter of a couple of hours). She's basically a biological machine augmenting the factory pipeline and the company has her only because for now she's cheaper than a robot arm. I see zero parallels between that job and software development.

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

#474

Post by xhrpost »

I feel like there is a missed opportunity here. Some companies are going to start ditching the traditional leetcode interview questions and switch to more experience based coding questions. Will be interesting to see if it gives them a leg up in the hiring competition amongst other tech firms and allows them to scale quicker than normal.

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

#475

Post by [deleted] »

fabatka wrote: post #445
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…

Why not just publicly collect the companies that are known to not ask applicants to "invert a binary tree"? This would generate an incentive for companies. The data could be community-driven, but of course that risks sufficiently big players fudging the input data (sort of like the fake reviews on e.g. Amazon). Even so, it may be possible to detect which companies are faking it.

[deleted]

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

#476

Post by angarg12 »

Leetcode is the current meta of the developer career. As all metas, you can choose to ignore it, but if you want to maximise efficiency, you need to play by the rules.

Also many companies have systems that encourage this. For example, currently I am a mid level developer at some large software company. To get a promotion to senior level, I need to "consistently prove I can work at senior level". In practice this means spending about 2 more years of assuming the responsibilities of a senior, delivering large impact projects, coordinating team members, writing endless documents, and get a committee to approve my promo. After all that effort I will be given a new title and a meager raise.

Alternatively I can spend 3 months grinding Leetcode and Systems Design, interview around with a few companies, and cross my fingers. If I'm lucky I'll get a senior level offer. If I'm really lucky, I'll get several, engage them in a bidding war and substantially increase my compensation.

Draw your own conclusions.

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

#477

Post by neverminder »

vsareto wrote: post #441
neverminder wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because when companies get that big and famous they no longer need that many creative individual thinkers, they need obedient drones. With disproportionately large numbers of applicants they get, they are able to make you jump through all the hoops they put in front of you, because if you won't there are thousands of others who will.

NGL, I'd jump through hoops for 250k + other compensation Part of why this has stuck around for so long is that so many people are willing to do that because it's a life-altering amount of money

Well, there are also counter-examples to your thinking. Brian Acton was rejected by Facebook, then went on founding WhatsApp and eventually selling it to the same Facebook for $19B. "Life altering amount of money", wouldn't you agree? Probably one of the most expensive rejections in history.

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

#478

Post by mrlala »

vsareto wrote: post #441
neverminder wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because when companies get that big and famous they no longer need that many creative individual thinkers, they need obedient drones. With disproportionately large numbers of applicants they get, they are able to make you jump through all the hoops they put in front of you, because if you won't there are thousands of others who will.

NGL, I'd jump through hoops for 250k + other compensation Part of why this has stuck around for so long is that so many people are willing to do that because it's a life-altering amount of money

Greed is basically all of humanities problems, isn't it.

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

#479

Post by llbeansandrice »

abj wrote: post #413
the-dude wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing a labor union.

I agree, I avoided using the word union. In an ideal world, this would be a union. In (what I worry might be) the real world, the word union conjures unhelpful barriers to action. I'm less interested in fighting idealogical battles. I'm more interested in achieving a practical goal - getting a large group of people to say no to leetcode. My guess is more people will say no to leetcode if they think of it as a general…

> getting a large group of people to say no to leetcode.

I assume you mean LC to be a stand-in for the types of interviews that focus on LC-style questions? LC didn't invent these and they're certainly not to blame when companies ask senior SWE candidates to invert binary trees.

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

#480

Post by lokar »

I read things like this all the time, but it's not been my experience at all. In the last year in had on-sites 5+ FAANG companies and some late stage prominent startups, all for a Sr (L8) IC role. They had a bit of of basic code and algo analysis, but not much. Mostly design.
Post reply on HN