261–270 of 387 posts
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Yep. I've had a portfolio of full video games I've coded and released on my own, as the sole programmer, that could be played on the web, had my name credited on the title screen, and you could even see the code on some of them, and I proudly included the link on my resume. Never brought up during the interview process, I was still expected to take the coding tests, and if I did a little poorly on one question I almo…
I've made lots (thousands? hundreds at least) of commits to the Linux kernel and have been working on it since pre (git) history, have developed a number of novel concurrent data structures / algorithms for it. I decided to talk with a FANG recruiter a couple of years ago who must have scraped my name from mailing list or commit histories. Despite first making it clear by email I wasn't interested in a job interview…
Guess which one gave me a good impression of their company and who I might work with again?
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Yep. I've had a portfolio of full video games I've coded and released on my own, as the sole programmer, that could be played on the web, had my name credited on the title screen, and you could even see the code on some of them, and I proudly included the link on my resume. Never brought up during the interview process, I was still expected to take the coding tests, and if I did a little poorly on one question I almo…
I've worked in gamedeve since 2007 and interviewed a lot of people. Small games portfolio doesn't matter, because small games, just like beginner tutorials from Unity, don't teach you skills necessary to work on a large-scale project with multiple developers. When you're working on small-scale projects, you can follow bad practices and don't hit their limitations. However, if I would be interviewing a game designer a…
In fact, practices in competitive coding are almost the opposite of what you need in large projects. You need to get a result as fast as possible, and the code is thrown away in the end. Readability, robustness, reusability, none of these matter, descriptive names are a waste of time, so is freeing up resources. Competitive coders are usually good coders in general, simply because they care, but so are people with side projects.
This is one of the key things I pointed out in a post I made after going through a lot of co-op resumes and interviews[1]. A little documentation and attention to detail goes a long way! If someone looks promising I DO look at their LinkedIn/GitHub/Website because it gives me some indication into their capabilities and whether they're willing to go a little above and beyond (to learn or present themselves more professionally online). I know not everyone has the time to do this (I have a 7 year old and don't have a great online presence) but if you're trying to start out in this industry it should be the minimum you're willing to do.
1 https://www.samuelrussell.net/posts/developer-hiring-dos-and...
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I am similar (putting my WebGL games on my portfolio) and I've found it's actually a pretty good filter of employers for me. If they bring it up and are willing to have a discussion about it, it's always a good sign. There's a wide range of topics to talk about that can relate to the possibly more boring requirements of the job. If they are dismissive of them, it tends to be an early sign that they are unable to thin…
If you are over qualified, like having published several games on your own, it's not like they don't think you can do they job, they might think you will get bored and miserable.
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> while presenting the appearance of being passionate about what you do during work Why would anyone want this? It's fake. Let's try to keep the IT world free of as much BS as we can please. Don't follow this nonsense trends.
Why? You don't need to be passionate about your work to be a great employee. Many days I don't feel like working and I'm not motivated. But I still do (I think) a great job and try my best. Passion is bullshit. Passion is useful in some cases, but it's not requirement to do a great job.
In my experience, for a pure engineering role, nobody seems to care. I had credits at large companies, posted talks online (interviewers rarely looked at them), but if I forgot how to write binary search in 10 minutes in an interview it didn’t matter. This actually made me realize being just an IC wasn’t actually my goal though. Once I started interviewing for management and sales, all of those things _really_ matter…
> In my experience, for a pure engineering role, nobody seems to care. I am interviewing a lot of people. I look very suspicious at these kinds of moves to try to impress me. I don't necessarily ignore, but I try to figure out if this is some kind of shallow engagement. It impresses me if you can stick to something meaningful and do it regularly for years but you can just as well hurt your chances if you propose 5 si…
Blogs are simple media to share one's thoughts, because one likes to write and... to share---that is it. If you don't care for my writing and my sharing then you're free to move on.
The beautiful thing about knowledge is that it's free and open to anyone, implying that junior engineers shouldn't have blogs is next level elitism and conceit. That is what I find worrying.
I feel sorry for the people having to interview with you or working under you, that need to code themselves "out of a paper bag" to impress you.
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For a pure engineering role things like credits at large companies, online talks, side projects, etc. are all really great ways to get an interview. I can't really remember the last time I was turned down for an interview. You're totally right about the other part though. I've lost a lot of jobs I think I could have been great at because I'm really bad at whiteboard coding interviews.
Does this mean that the whiteboard coding interviews are flawed, or that guys like us, who has made a ton of more or less great projects are flawed? Why would a company rather have a guy that can solve binary search in five seconds, than one that has showed continuous progress with several finished projects over the years? Do they think accomplished guys somehow are a liability? Or is it that they want a blank sheet…
In the absence of that, why might I ask you to implement a binary search or maybe a linked list: I want to give you a problem that you (should, for senior folks) understand and will show me that you understand pointers and dealing with memory with something basic. I don't expect perfect on a whiteboard interview, I'm just looking for red flags.
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Most small companies copy the bureaucratic hiring processes of the larger ones at this point.
I'll never understand why business owners want to fail so badly. The principal advantage of small business is that you can happily ignore bureaucracy when it makes sense to. Some of our best employees are the ones who came in with the fewest credentials and the most to prove. There is no candidate I would refuse purely on the grounds of credentials. We are much more interested in side projects and work ethic than for…
This policy backfires in many ways. It entrenches the existing culture and often doesn't easily allow to raise the seniority level of an existing company. I've been in many interview where only junior members where perplexed about some minor shortcomings about the candidate but they were the majority and the general sentiment was that if the devs noticed a red flag, it must be because manager and senior staff focused too much on high level stuff that was easy to fake, but luckily the juniors caught the impostor!...
I was looking in dismay how one good candidate after another got rejected. Fixing this kind of problem took a tremendous amount of effort.