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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”

#641

Post by rsynnott »

okareaman wrote: post #544
rsynnott wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of "programming language designed for people we apparently have a very low opinion of" approach also greatly informed the design of Java, though Java has spent the last 20 years slowly retreating from it. It looks like Go might be following the same path; it's apparently getting generics at some point!

Can you imagine how many times Google was burned by junior devs writing C++ no matter how smart they were? Memory bugs at Google scale must be expensive. They had to come up with Go.

But given that they were making their own memory managed language anyway, they didn't necessarily have to leave everything out.

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

#642

Post by 2sk21 »

mav3rick wrote: post #14
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…

What's your endgame ?

I just "won" my endgame :-)

I recently retired after working 29 years in software development. I was always very well paid but a notch below the FAANG-level. I always focused relentlessly on achieving financial independence by saving and investing as much as I could using Boglehead techniques. I can now do whatever I want.

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

#643

Post by weRnotU »

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

The ex-Googlers I’ve worked with were managers.

It was clear they were hired on title and magical beliefs than capabilities as project after project fell apart.

Rather like Google product portfolios

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

#644

Post by disambiguation »

randomNumber7 wrote: post #332
AmericanChopper wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working hard for a raise/promotion is a losing strategy. Working hard so you can change jobs every 18-24 months with big salary jumps is rather easy to do consistently. Trying to get a promotion is deciding to compete for one position in one company with essentially every qualified candidate in the world. It’s easy to see how looking for a better job every so often has better odds for success.

A friend of mine just doubled his salary. He wanted to resign and look for an other job, but his company offered him double salary. If your work makes you an important person in the company, you have a strong basis for negotiation. Most people just don't use it...

kudos to your friend, but signalling your intent to leave is red flag for management

often times companies will opt to pay more as a stop-gap until they find a cheaper replacement

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

#645

Post by viraptor »

thrower123 wrote: post #369
viraptor wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the offers for remote work? Almost every one is "remote (us citizen)", "remote (same timezone)", "remote (monthly onsites)". Unless the companies are prepared to open whole divisions with colocated management in other countries, the jobs are staying local.

Anyone who has worked with remote programmers, unless they happen to have hit the jackpot on them, really has no desire to ever do it again. Timezone differences, language differences, cultural differences, communication differences, etc, etc, all combine to chew up so much more time and money than the nominal savings of hiring someone local. And the good remote people don't cost appreciably less anyway.

After a decade or so working remotely I'd describe that differently. If someone working remotely finds a company with culture where remote work is fully functional rather than something odd that people have to work around, they hit jackpot. Unless everything's documented online, every meeting is online, every water-cooler chat has a link published, etc. then remote work is going to suck for everyone.

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

#646

Post by WildGreenLeave »

QuesnayJr wrote: post #583
ldng wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, now that you've started working. Have you actually applied any of it ? To make an analogy, I'm always perplexed at how you're asked to build an EPR on the spot and then all you do is general electricity mundane work. I've seen a lot of EPR builder beeing incapable of simple wiring ...

What's an EPR? I did a search, and none of the meanings I found seem to fit.

I think it is "Earth Potential Rise"

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

#647

Post by throw1234651234 »

dvtrn wrote: post #530
throw1234651234 wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

Glad there are people on here who "get it".

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

#648

Post by jolux »

pb7 wrote: post #613
jolux wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any empirical data demonstrating that this “works well” or are you just assuming? What is your definition of “works well?” Low false positive? Low false negative?

Empirical data that it works pretty well? I think the fact that this has been the de facto way of interviewing at the top tech companies during the time that tech has absolutely exploded in ways never seen before, I'd say yeah, it's working pretty well. I think you're seeking an explanation where one is not owed. If it wasn't working well, it would be changed, just like the brain teaser questions of the early 2000s p…

> I think you're seeking an explanation where one is not owed.

Forgive my curiosity and desire to make things better.

> If it wasn't working well, it would be changed, just like the brain teaser questions of the early 2000s pioneered by Google.

This is a gigantic assumption, though. Tech has been exploding for a long time and basically all companies are ravenous for engineering talent. It’s not at all clear to me that this interviewing process is the cause of this growth or in spite of it. If I had to guess I would bet they’re wholly unrelated.

> And look, I get it, it's frustrating. I share in that frustration as someone that wants to switch companies but knows that I will have to put in the effort outside of work to prepare for that.

I have no problem passing these interviews, I just think they’re silly. Their prevalence in the industry frustrates me because I think they give an unrealistic portrayal of what’s important in software engineering. But then again my greatest area of expertise is legacy software maintenance, which is the work that nobody else wants to do.

> But I still think the process is much more meritocratic and predictable than virtually every other industry.

That’s an extremely low bar.

My favorite approach that I’ve seen is Latacora’s hiring process, in which they give you a work sample problem that can be graded quantitatively in stages as well as any prep materials that you need for it.

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

#649

Post by gonehome »

hiq wrote: post #635
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't written a sorting method in years and couldn't remember it on the spot in 10 minutes, despite having analyzed the big ones 6 years ago. Yet, I have no problem creating a giant, modular, cookie-cutter enterprise structure, which is generally more sought after and something many hardcore leets seem to struggle with, especially once it comes down to doing more than just a fancy UML graph. We really don't need…

Again, you can make it a newbie question by just accepting any sort, including one you come up with on your own (so no need to remember). I'm sure you can design your own sort given enough time, granted 10 minutes might be too short to get it nice and clean, but with a bit more you're on the level of difficulty of fizzbuzz. To make my point clear, you can implement a dumb and inefficient sort by implementing a min fu…

That's reasonable to me if that's the standard.

The reason I jumped to quicksort in my initial reply is any sort short of quick or merge sort (or some other nlogn variant) would fail you at FAANG.

You could do the naive n^2, but it better only be in the first two min and hand waved off as obviously inefficient, almost a joke that you implemented it at all on the way to writing the nlogn version, bonus points if you talk about how merge sort is nlogn in worst case and quicksort is n squared in the worst case, but in practice often faster.

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

#650

Post by user5994461 »

throwaway201103 wrote: post #282
koonsolo wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't believe how many people are unable to do the basic things like sort an array. These kind of questions is not to see how smart you are, it is to weed out all the ones who don't event get the most basic parts of programming. And I can assure you as someone doing a shitload of interviews, that a huge part of candidates doesn't understand the basics of programming such as sorting an array. If all candidates had…

Why would any company want me to write an array sort instead of calling the .sort() method on the standard array class? Is that really the sort of thing they want their devs to code and debug and maintain by hand?

You should use sort() and ask whether it's okay to use the built-in?

They will always say it's fine and move. It would be extremely uncommon in the current decade to come across an interviewer who minds using the standard library.

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