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Ask HN: Been writing code for 40 years and can't get hired

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Re: Ask HN: Been writing code for 40 years and can't get hired

#61

Post by irvingprime »

gregoriol wrote: post #29
icsa wrote: post #8

The churn rate of current software development practice is quite rapid. When you took several years off, you "fell out of the job market". In effect, you need to reboot your skill & tool set to make current. In addition, you must reboot your interviewing skills. I've been a professional software interviewer (600+ interviews) and have seen most very experienced software developers do quite poorly during interviews. Th…

If you "have seen most very experienced software developers do quite poorly during interviews" then you are the problem. Change the way you interview.

+100

Re: Ask HN: Been writing code for 40 years and can't get hired

#62

Post by wackget »

As a web developer who works almost exclusively in PHP/SQL and devops, if I was presented with a "Leetcode" challenge or any other intentionally esoteric / purely theoretical bullshit interview technique I would immediately but politely excuse myself from the process.

That nonsense is utterly non-representative of what the average programmer will be doing on a daily basis.

Even Leetcode's most "easy" problem just seems utterly ridiculous to me: https://leetcode.com/problems/two-sum/

What next? "Vim golf" scores in interviews?

Re: Ask HN: Been writing code for 40 years and can't get hired

#63

Post by dragonwriter »

wackget wrote: post #62

As a web developer who works almost exclusively in PHP/SQL and devops, if I was presented with a "Leetcode" challenge or any other intentionally esoteric / purely theoretical bullshit interview technique I would immediately but politely excuse myself from the process. That nonsense is utterly non-representative of what the average programmer will be doing on a daily basis. Even Leetcode's most "easy" problem just see…

> Even Leetcode's most "easy" problem just seems utterly ridiculous to me

Generalized slightly from the specifics, “return the indexes of the elements, one from each list, constituting a tuple satisfying a predicate” is not an utterly ridiculous task unrepresentative of things real programmers need to understand how to do. Yeah, usually it won't be lists of integers or the sun operation returning a particular value as the predicate, but none of that is particularly significant to the task.

Re: Ask HN: Been writing code for 40 years and can't get hired

#64

Post by musesum »

Have been writing code since the mid '70s. But, that has been mostly with startups. YMMV

Two years ago, I ran out of money. So, I started interviewing. One example was interviewing for the Apple Watch team. My experience included the design and code lead of an Apple Watch product, which was featured by Apple. But, I failed the Coderpad. Why? The interviewer wanted me to use a new Swift generic syntax, which I had never seen before. With an unfamiliar code editor. In under 10 minutes. Did it matter that I had an Apple Watch product, which he could download from the AppStore and ran super fast on a Series 0? Nope. Did it matter that he could download a 29K Swift based functional ontology that I wrote? Nope.

The point is that there are two skills: writing code and getting past the interview. The latter is often conducted by a 20-something, just out of college. So, there is more emphasis on tacit knowledge of the tools and techniques. It feels more like passing a finals exam.

A few years ago my CEO hired Gayle Laakman to prep the team for an acquisition by a FAANG. I loved the puzzles and read her book [1] cover to cover. But, I hated the premise of avoiding "false positives". A famous false negative is Max Howell [2] (who went on to write Apple's Swift Package Manager)

So, how did I get a gig? I kept trying. Learned new frameworks. Focused on jobs interviews which had a take home. During the on-site, I insisted on using my own laptop. An often overlooked factor in achieving a coding flow-state is muscle memory.

I've been told that some companies are shifting from whiteboard to take-home -- particularly during covid. Post covid, if the option is available to you, try moving to the Bay Area or Austin and attend every single hackathon that looks interesting. If you don't want to leave HI, maybe contribute to an open source project in some way.

Or perhaps, start a company. Maybe there's an opportunity in refactoring Aerospace code? I dunno. Now, I'm guessing ...

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9695102

Re: Ask HN: Been writing code for 40 years and can't get hired

#65

Post by dave333 »

I was in a similar situation in 2007 having been out of programming work since the dot com bust in 2001. I got hired at a small startup where I happened to do well on the interview - I aced a couple of brain teaser like interview questions and just happened to be a cultural and personal good fit with the interviewers. I then got to choose the front end framework for the company and chose ExtJS and that keyword on my resume got me headhunted into a major tech firm 6 months later. So pick some current hot tech stack/framework and get some experience with it even if you have to work on open source or pro bono for a bit.

Re: Ask HN: Been writing code for 40 years and can't get hired

#66

Post by therealdavesky »

wackget wrote: post #62

As a web developer who works almost exclusively in PHP/SQL and devops, if I was presented with a "Leetcode" challenge or any other intentionally esoteric / purely theoretical bullshit interview technique I would immediately but politely excuse myself from the process. That nonsense is utterly non-representative of what the average programmer will be doing on a daily basis. Even Leetcode's most "easy" problem just see…

I don’t remember the problems Google asked me to solve, there were 5 of them during a daylong interview in Mountain View. WRT Facebook, the problems were a schedule organizer (iOS) and a contact tracer (iOS). The FB second problem was a NSRange intersection problem.

I agree that leetcode-esque problems used to decide aptitude are a poor judge of overall performance, and it may show a bit of desperation (and slacker behavior) coming from the HR departments of MANGA companies

Re: Ask HN: Been writing code for 40 years and can't get hired

#67

Post by globular-toast »

wackget wrote: post #62

As a web developer who works almost exclusively in PHP/SQL and devops, if I was presented with a "Leetcode" challenge or any other intentionally esoteric / purely theoretical bullshit interview technique I would immediately but politely excuse myself from the process. That nonsense is utterly non-representative of what the average programmer will be doing on a daily basis. Even Leetcode's most "easy" problem just see…

You think finding two numbers in an array is ridiculous? How do you think software like the OS, web browser etc. is made? Someone has to do stuff like this...

Re: Ask HN: Been writing code for 40 years and can't get hired

#68

Post by therealdavesky »

Flankk wrote: post #4

Big tech is very much ageist. It goes beyond discrimination during the interview process. Companies like this will take steps to weed older folks out of their company for good, it's awful. What programming languages and skills do you have on your resume?

I didn’t expect so many replies, thanks for the help! Over the years my skills have been spread across a variety of platforms: >>Most types of UIs: text based, old school assembly code, weak in react but strong in iOS >>2D / 3D interfaces and data visualization: 3D simulators and demos for aerospace >>Multimedia / Transmedia : After Effects plugins, music videos, analog studio expertise >>VRML visuals: did lots of live EDM shows on Maui in the nineties, the app is called SpacePark, but only runs in VRML

My “real world” resume i.e. "what have you done for me lately?" can be seen on the app store (iOS)

     huedoku  (its a color game)
     huedoku pix  (sharable games)
     oogiecam  (synaesthetic app, converts colors to sounds)
again thanks for the input

Re: Ask HN: Been writing code for 40 years and can't get hired

#70

Post by therealdavesky »

austincheney wrote: post #27

Think like an insecure beginner. Learn to write React JavaScript framework. Don’t overthink this and don’t think like a technologist. If you can write small declarative code islands to put text into a browser you can get hired for six figures. You have to be willing to be trendy and preference tools over code while working with people in their lower 20s who may or may not value programming experience.

i hear you, but i need to think more iOS for the time being, what about swiftUI? is it still too early in swiftUIs life to write real apps?
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