191–200 of 447 posts
There's this class of engineer. They're remarkably successful. Essentially, they mechanize the process of the job hunt: - Optimize for comp at all costs - Work at full professional capacity for the 9-5 - Excel at interviewing, often also fairly competent at their jobs - See the job as "just a job" Personally, I think that if you're a startup you shouldn't hire any of these people. But at big companies they will proba…
It's wild to me that his way of figuring out what companies to apply for was to make a list of the top-paying ones and just pick the top 10 highest-paying. Is that a common strategy? No thought about product, industry, impact on the world, just $$$. It looks like it worked out for them though, since I guess they got like a million dollar offer, so maybe I'm the one approaching this the wrong way?
It’s wild to me that the only reason his wife gave him 30 mins/day of personal time was because of the financial payoff. Bizarre dude and story.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are plenty of passionate software engineers who think those problems are actually fun. Independently of that (I don't think it's an immediate red flag if those problems are not fun for you, or not fun for you in that specific setting etc.), a lot of it is actually a glimpse into how working with that person might be. I.e. what ideas do they form, how do they communicate them, how do they respond to feedback, ho…
> There are plenty of passionate software engineers who think those problems are actually fun. There are plenty of passionate software engineers who don’t. Competitive programmers maybe. I like writing naive code that does something useful, where useful sometimes mean performance. When you revisit or just step away from the problem, you’ll have an aha moment of how to solve it more efficiently, or more elegantly. The…
I do have fun with computer science problems, and it translates into an appetite to solving tricky technical problems in my job. I have peers that are similar, given that pre-COVID I remember us discussing other people's interview questions purely for the fun of discussing them.
If the job specifically calls for tricky problem solving on a regular basis then, yes, I think a certain passion and appetite visible in the interview helps, but I'm well aware that that's not universal. For example, I assume (not that I know, feel free to correct me) that in frontend development of websites, something I can see is a lot of work and which I respect, other qualities are more important than a passion for intricate technical and/or computer science puzzles.
(In fact, I think you are right that there certainly are subfields where trying to come up with an intricate solution, instead of a known and proven one, can be rather detrimental.)
It's wild to me that his way of figuring out what companies to apply for was to make a list of the top-paying ones and just pick the top 10 highest-paying. Is that a common strategy? No thought about product, industry, impact on the world, just $$$. It looks like it worked out for them though, since I guess they got like a million dollar offer, so maybe I'm the one approaching this the wrong way?
Reading these responses is pretty upsetting. No wonder big tech is so evil. So many talented developers willing to sell their soul for more money. No thought to whether what they’re doing is causing harm to the world.
It’s basically working for the cigarette company of tech.
I'm forcing myself to write my own programming language and then solve leetcode with it to stand a chance in today's interview rodeo. If you're interested: https://github.com/glouw/rr/tree/master/examples/leetcode
It's wild to me that his way of figuring out what companies to apply for was to make a list of the top-paying ones and just pick the top 10 highest-paying. Is that a common strategy? No thought about product, industry, impact on the world, just $$$. It looks like it worked out for them though, since I guess they got like a million dollar offer, so maybe I'm the one approaching this the wrong way?
Reading these responses is pretty upsetting. No wonder big tech is so evil. So many talented developers willing to sell their soul for more money. No thought to whether what they’re doing is causing harm to the world.
Who's writing network drivers these days? Who's pushing streaming technologies to the max? Who's designing a cool iot framework/automated driving?
Some people are...but most are write a microservice type tasks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reading these responses is pretty upsetting. No wonder big tech is so evil. So many talented developers willing to sell their soul for more money. No thought to whether what they’re doing is causing harm to the world.
The irony of the article is that Meta isn’t even that hard to get into because so many candidates hard no on them because they know Facebook is evil. I read an article that said how Meta has to pay well above market rates to acquire talent due to their negative perception. It’s basically working for the cigarette company of tech.
This is not the first time I've heard this at all and each time it is equally relevant. Unless meta gets everyone goggled up fast I think that there will be so much negative stigma nobody will want to be part of it.
I'm forcing myself to write my own programming language and then solve leetcode with it to stand a chance in today's interview rodeo. If you're interested: https://github.com/glouw/rr/tree/master/examples/leetcode
Is something wrong with software engineering interviews that one could reasonably need to spend months prepping for interviews? Leetcode problems can be fun and interesting, but seldom represent problems and skills I employ daily as a more senior software engineer. Studying these problems won’t help me much at my current employer and likely wouldn’t after I passed the interview gauntlet at another firm.
The very last bit of the article interestingly stated that they author wouldn't spend time doing prep again, they would only make sure they applied with a referral. I definitely agree, it's kind of a blight on our industry that the interview process is so contorted compared to the actual work we're supposed to do.
How is referral useful in general. You still have to go through the whole song and dance anyways?