171–180 of 189 posts
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 nev…
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> people don’t care what you’ve done. They care about how you perform in the interview. I think OP is expecting a level of competence from interviewers that simply doesn’t exist anymore. He’s from a time when the initial conversation would be engineers only and absolutely focused on past projects.
Well, yeah, tough luck. There are people out there who keep complaining about talent shortage, and not finding people to do anything at all. But you go through their hiring process and it's all about 10 rounds of questions on OJ sites like LC. Plus they have a bar raiser round which is just basically more of the same. This actually makes the problem much worse because the only people who are acing these tests are peo…
Just recently two of my friends switched their jobs. They may have spend maximum of 30 mins to prepare for their interviews in total. One is a manager and other is recruiter. Their interviews were quick and didn't take more than 3-4 hours each. Not only that they claim they enjoyed the interview process.
Our interviews are so grueling, we need to spend hours preparing for our interviews. We are treated like liars and need to proof that we are not lying. I don't know why we take this abuse and how we can fight it. It has been really frustrating for me lately.
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I was referring these common interview skills: Understanding the problem Stating one's assumptions Verifying one's assumptions Selecting a data structure appropriate for the problem Selecting or describing an algorithm appropriate for the problem Selecting test cases appropriate for the problem Writing the code Verifying the correctness of the code Understanding & communicating the time & space complexity of your sol…
I don't see anything special in this list >It provides many built-in data structures and methods that make one's solutions brief and eliminate the need to write a lot of boilerplate code. Could you name some? the most important / handy in your opinion?
vector/list
dictionary/hashmap/hash table
queue
priority queue
heap
Methods/Algorithms:
min/max
insert/delete
contains key
list comprehension
N.B. I've done most of my interviews in C and watching me code has been referred as "watching paint dry" because of all of the boilerplate code that I have to write.
Getting hired is a numbers game. If you really want a job, you need to go on 5-10 interviews PER WEEK for months. Even people in their 20s have to deal with this. That's just how it is.
> anyone who seemed interested, most notably Google and Facebook
Google and Facebook aren't interested. They have massive amounts of cash and earmark a huge amount of it to pay recruiters and junior engineers to interview literally every engineer they can find. Getting a first interview with FAANGM is easier than falling off a log. Getting a second interview is harder. A lot harder.
> impossible to get even a junior developer job
To many managers (not me), "junior" means "we're going to give you all of the shit tasks no one else wants to do, and we expect you to work insanely hard, AND we're going to not pay you that much, because there are others willing to take your spot". So vanish any thoughts of applying for "junior" jobs from your mind. You're not the target market.
> after my skills no doubt became somewhat outdated
The best piece of advice I can give is this: A lot of things that were once done manually are now handled by an open-source project. You don't make a search engine, you use Solr or ElasticSearch. You don't configure Linux, you use Docker configuration files. Become an expert in some project that companies actually use.
Figure out how to re-frame your experience in a way that it applies to modern development. Did you spend years in the early C++ days, then C# or Java is probably the way forward. But you have to know it, and know the difference. You have to research. You can't say "I only know C++, I can't do Java" and you can't say "I knew C++ at one point, so I can do Java".
Just interview with random companies, and ask THEM what they need. You have a fantastic free resource in front of you. Companies are looking to hire people, and they're willing to let you waste their time to ask them questions. Take advantage of it.
One last thing. Don't take it personally if a company declines to continue interviewing you. A lot of companies (web and app startups) have zero need for someone with experience. They just want someone who can do a little HTML and CSS (and do it quickly). Experience just gets in the way. Learn what you can from them during the interview, but move on. You're looking for companies that are doing hard things, and can benefit from someone who's seen a lot of things before.
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> How does this serve the company trying to hire someone? The interviews are designed to evaluate algorithm & data structure knowledge and proficiency. Most experienced software engineers have not kept up to speed with such knowledge since they were in school. It is not their fault, as most jobs/projects don't require maintaining such knowledge in order to be effective on a day-to-day basis. N.B. The interview firm I…
Like you said, > most jobs/projects don't require maintaining such knowledge in order to be effective on a day-to-day basis. This is common knowledge to any developer - you really don't need the academic angle most of the time. So... how does rejecting on that basis serve the company trying to hire someone?
One way to describe the rationale is that the hiring firm is hiring for 2-sigma capabilities versus 0-sigma or 1-sigma capabilities.
The ability of a software engineer to "shift gears" to the 2-sigma skill set when outlier conditions (e.g. debugging rare events, performance issues et cetera) occur is a form of insurance against having to contract outside resources.
N.B. I am one of those outside resources that gets called in when none of the FTE staff can resolve a difficult (aka "burning platform") problem.
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WTF! It's your job to find people who can do the work. It is NOT the applicant's job to fit your preferred interview design. Talk about arrogance!
Maybe it is his job to execute the interview design.
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I don't see anything special in this list >It provides many built-in data structures and methods that make one's solutions brief and eliminate the need to write a lot of boilerplate code. Could you name some? the most important / handy in your opinion?
Data structures: vector/list dictionary/hashmap/hash table queue priority queue heap Methods/Algorithms: min/max insert/delete contains key list comprehension N.B. I've done most of my interviews in C and watching me code has been referred as "watching paint dry" because of all of the boilerplate code that I have to write.
C# has all of this + LINQ (very handy list comprehension?)
Java probably too + it has streams
Idk about other
Despite various laws etc, don't mention your age on your resume, and only list a few previous roles (perhaps the last 5-8 years max with "more details available on request" or something vague). Don't put your graduation date etc. Don't list job history going back decades. Basically don't give people any ammo to think you are "old". Bias - unconscious or otherwise - is real. It sucks but you may need to try to work ar…
It isn't necessarily bias against age; it's bias against "overwhelming experience" that scares hiring off, for various reasons. But the result is the same.
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Data structures: vector/list dictionary/hashmap/hash table queue priority queue heap Methods/Algorithms: min/max insert/delete contains key list comprehension N.B. I've done most of my interviews in C and watching me code has been referred as "watching paint dry" because of all of the boilerplate code that I have to write.
It feels very standard, don't all language have it in their standard libs? C# has all of this + LINQ (very handy list comprehension?) Java probably too + it has streams Idk about other
Many do. However, ease of use is an issue.
Some interviews don't allow you to look up the names of types & methods nor use IDEs that provide pop-up lists of types & method names.
You have to everything in a basic editor w/o IDE support.
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> people don’t care what you’ve done. They care about how you perform in the interview. I think OP is expecting a level of competence from interviewers that simply doesn’t exist anymore. He’s from a time when the initial conversation would be engineers only and absolutely focused on past projects.
Well, yeah, tough luck. There are people out there who keep complaining about talent shortage, and not finding people to do anything at all. But you go through their hiring process and it's all about 10 rounds of questions on OJ sites like LC. Plus they have a bar raiser round which is just basically more of the same. This actually makes the problem much worse because the only people who are acing these tests are peo…