“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”

#521

Post by davidjnelson » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

jdreaver wrote: post #54

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…

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…

Is this faang / levels.fyi pay range?

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

#522

Post by karaterobot » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

llukas wrote: post #175

ip26 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why did you assume those jobs will stay in US?

Many of them definitely won't, but daylight and the location of management's homes are still limiting factors to off-shoring. Synchronously managing people in distant time zones is no fun, and trying to do it asynchronously is really inefficient. There may be a solution to this 'problem', but until they come up with it, letting people work remotely from their homes in the same city isn't a slippery slope to all jobs being off-shored.

Or, probably more accurately, it is a slippery slope, but not a very steep one. I do believe that jobs (and wages) are going to get distributed differently in the future. But, I'm hopeful that it'll be an improvement over having every high-paying job be in the same 5 dystopian cities.

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

#523

Post by data_spy » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #511

mywittyname wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus the prestige of being able to walk into your next job and captain the ship. I've been at a few places that hired former Googlers, and they were all treated like gods.

Yeah, the ex-Googler's I've met have always been average; but I guess if no one will say the emperor has no clothes it doesn't matter

It used to mean something more than it does now. I noticed ex-Googlers were well above average in 2012, now they can be below avg. I have a colleague of mine at my current job that makes a point of being an ex-Googler but they only worked there for 6 months, so it is kind of meaningless.

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

#524

Post by _9omd » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

gofreddygo wrote: post #239

_9omd wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Glad it worked out for you. I'm sure it wasn't easy (as it has been for me). I'd appreciate some advice from your experience on how it went for you.

See my response below to polishdude20 for some advice.

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

#525

Post by bradlys » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #482

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…

> my ~40 hours of interview-specific coding prep. Where did you find time to do 40 hours of prep, and how many weeks did it take?

40 hours seems low to me if one wants to enter FAANG. Even if you’re familiar with the process and have prepped before. I’d expect 100 hours minimum for most candidates. Only exception would be those who interview regularly, do competitive programming regularly, and those who have to do algorithmic work regularly.

Most people I know spend nights and weekends prepping for at least a month to a quarter.

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

#526

Post by SavageBeast » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #500

yodsanklai wrote: post #359

I've just landed a job at a FAANG company. Some random subjective comments based on my experience: - it was hard work - there was no way I could have passed these interviews without all the work. - my past experience and education barely helped me for the interview - 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 - I pass…

I really appreciate your candor here. I've long been opposed to the Leetcode battery interview processes, to the point that I started asking FAANG recruiters that several years ago, and saying that was a showstopper for me, like a signal for how they treated people. Though I otherwise wanted to work at a couple of them. After consulting levels.fyi, however, I've revised my opinion: if an employer is willing to pay a…

"That said, for people who've frittered away their discretionary time on things like open source, hobbies, family, etc., rather than drilling for FAANG interviews, the well-known "test prep" commitment for Leetcode-oriented companies is a barrier to even applying there."

Salary aside - this is the truth right here. I interviewed at a few FAANGs and I didn't have what Id call a good experience. Neither resulted in an offer. To even prepare for them was a monumental time investment. I tried it and now I can have an informed opinion on the subject. Id rather have a life than drill for random interview questions.

Side note: I have yet to personally hear or read anything about why its so great to work at one of these places where someone DOES NOT mention the money. Frankly, were it not for the money Id have never even considered interviewing at these places at all. I have come to the opinion that if it's just money, there are other more tangible ways to invest my time that will result in money. Drilling For Interviews as a money accumulation seems to me a bit like heading to the casino on the 28th of the month because you're short a few bucks for rent.

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

#527

Post by FlaSheridn » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

snarf21 wrote: post #470

yodsanklai wrote: post #359

I've just landed a job at a FAANG company. Some random subjective comments based on my experience: - it was hard work - there was no way I could have passed these interviews without all the work. - my past experience and education barely helped me for the interview - 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 - I pass…

This process is all theater. We really need some kind of certification process instead. I'm a while out of school and one interview I went on had a requirement for a live coding session. The ask was to implement red/black trees from scratch despite the fact that they have an Angular app with MySQL on the backend. I took this as a blessing. I don't want to work at a place where they think this is a good way to hire pe…

A certification exam wouldn’t survive a disparate impact challenge. Google stopped asking for SAT/ACT scores long before universities did. And long before that (according to my father, who actually used them), telegram companies had to stop giving spelling tests to telegraph operator applicants. Add to that difficulties with preventing cheating during a pandemic, and I see no alternative to rolling your own live examination. (Not that I’m defending the often dumb choice of trick tree recursion coding problems; I didn’t learn a lot about a candidate by watching him not get the trick.)

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

#528

Post by m000 » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

colinmhayes wrote: post #411

m000 wrote: post #373

> If I'd had the opportunity to read-up on it, I would have been fine. This highlights the paradox of Hackerrank-style tests. They would make sense in an age where the overhead to refresh your knowledge about something took time and effort: Find a relevant paper book, read it, perhaps type-out the examples. But in that age. where they would make sense, we didn't have the technology to make them available to the masse…

The point of hacker rank isn't to tell apart the code-monkey from the expert who is rusty. It's to find the people who are willing to spend hundreds of unpaid hours grinding leetcode. The thought process is that you only need two things to become a successful developer. Baseline critical thinking skills and the willingness to spend 60 hours a week reading up on best practices. If you can pass leetcodes interviews you…

Still, it makes little sense if the applicant holds a BSc/MSc/PhD on the subject. These degrees require many more hours of commitment than the time you need to master leetcode. Moreover, the scope of leetcode assignments is rarely broader or deeper than an advanced-course assignment. Just take 5' to go through their academic record, take their professional experience into account, and you're done. No need for dubious "magic" solutions and useless charades. Even if you include cheaters, what makes the recruiters believe that someone who has cheated their way through a comp-sci master's program will have trouble cheating to inflate their Hackerrank?

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

#529

Post by cbozeman » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

zwarag wrote: post #296

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…

Could it be that this is a very SV problem? I'm from a European state, I know some people doing programming in Asian regions. What you are describing to me sounds like a bubble. Or I am in a bubble, IDK. Yes devices can do less than 10 years ago (less arbitrary thing), but they can also do more than 10 years ago. Of course the market in this segment might give you the feeling that everything is dumbed down. These dev…

Yeah, a lot of posts here seem to be trying to say the following, but they don't want, or don't know, how to word it:

Technology was made accessible for the masses. That means 100 IQ people. And then it was refined so the 85 IQ people could work most of it. I have no doubt that if you gave standardized IQ tests to every reader of Hacker News, you would not see much of an overlap with the bell curve of the American, or even world, population.

The people coming here are generally very technical, very smart (I'm defining this as at least one standard deviation above the norm, so 115 and higher IQs).

Most people aren't going to build their own enormous media server from used enterprise gear. Most people aren't going to build their own home surveillance system even though the hardware and open-source software out there exists. I could list another hundred projects for which we have specialized "consumer-friendly" devices.

Watch the YouTube video where Jordan Peterson talks about working with an 85 IQ individual and how it was a struggle for that person to consistently and accurately fold a sheet of paper into thirds and put it into an envelope. And now realize that for many of you, that's someone for which you're developing.

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

#530

Post by dvtrn » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

throw1234651234 wrote: post #507

dvtrn wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: not sure why you're down-voted. Ageism is a thing and a legitimate source of concern. There’s some folks here who REALLY don’t like talking about true ways our industry can fail and in some cases has failed at being decent and fair and ethical to people of protected classes, or just in general.

I think it's generally what he said. We age in one or two ways - get old and decrepit, or get overwhelming experience/skill which is tremendously useful. The first scares people and a lot do assume it's just the first part - maybe they think I am unaware of the second. Thanks for your reply! For full context, I am older too, that's why I asked.

I think it's generally what he said.

Oh I grokked it ;) but I felt very it needed a very fine and hyper-specific point to it because I'm older too, I also happen to be a racial minority, and it's a frustrating and sore point of mine-the way these topics sometimes (though in my honest opinion: far too often) get blunted and watered down so that whomever can avoid the uncomfortable sensation of staring a reality they don't suffer from, but might (operative word: might) be an unwitting participant of in the maw.

Let it be said now that your eyes are on this line, dear readers: that's not me suggesting or intimating that the person I replied to above is doing this. They're not. But it is a trend that some would be more than happy to pretend doesn't exist because they haven't had a reason to tune their cognitive receivers into the broadcast frequency people like me are sensitive to and have been bombarded with for far longer, with far worse outcomes.

And I will speak out about it.

Every time.

Downvotes be damned.