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Aging programmer

world.hey.com

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Re: Aging programmer

#331

Post by weatherlite »

cortesoft wrote: post #284
w4ffl35 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the thing that gets frustrating as i age are interviews and code challenges. i'd really prefer a certification that proves i can do xyz which i take once (per year? in my life?). then just decide if you like me based on personality and communication. i have over 200 repositories etc. its redundant, and random code challenges that differ from employer to employer prove next to nothing. 20 years ago it was the norm for…

I have avoided this problem by not interviewing anymore. Every job I have had after my first one has been going to work with someone I worked with before, and they recruited me so I didn’t have to do any formal interview process. It has worked for me so far in my 15 year career.

Dang those are amazing connections. Even with good connections I can only get my CV to the top of the pile and maybe some more leeway from the interviewers (which is a lot!), but never was I just skipped through the whole thing and gotten an offer.

You have some good friends are they are high up the chain I guess.

Re: Aging programmer

#332

Post by weatherlite »

mike_ivanov wrote: post #243
iepathos wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've interviewed people with computer science phd's from schools with good reputations that couldn't program worth a damn when it came to some simple algorithm and practical coding questions in person so, I don't have a lot of faith in certs/degrees for this.

These types can't usually think clearly under pressure. Besides, answering coding questions is very, very different from inventing those algorithms. It's a completely different way of thinking. That's why.

> this.

It's almost certain some of then (maybe most of them) would have fared just fine if they were left with the problem alone, not in a high pressure setting like a job interview.

Re: Aging programmer

#333

Post by sgerenser »

malthuswaswrong wrote: post #305
kbcool wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an older engineer too and I am very aware of how frustrating this can be for techs of all ages so I made our screening test less fizzbuzz, do my work for me and gotcha questions and more real world, challenging, engaging and most of all interesting. Examples include: How would you solve this at a high level, here's some code we know is broken, how would you both fix and improve it etc. After all, both parties are…

over the years I have seen a good 30% refuse to do it I'll do reasonable take homes, but I'll often pass on interactive coding sessions. I don't like coding in a browser, and I use my dev tools as a major crutch. "Why did you store that value as a string instead of a long?" "Because it's a string from standard in and I have no idea what bullshit inputs there will be so I can check it before casting it." "But the user…

A take home that can be done in an hour or two is fine in my book. It’s problematic when they assume way too much background on the part of the interviewer. I had a take home from a small local embedded devices company want me to write a 2D DCT algorithm from first principles in C (absolutely no use of external libraries or code copied or based on any existing code) and I noped out pretty quickly. Unless it’s something I’ve done before, doing it honestly without consulting any existing code would probably take me days.

Re: Aging programmer

#334

Post by weatherlite »

dominotw wrote: post #197
w4ffl35 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the thing that gets frustrating as i age are interviews and code challenges. i'd really prefer a certification that proves i can do xyz which i take once (per year? in my life?). then just decide if you like me based on personality and communication. i have over 200 repositories etc. its redundant, and random code challenges that differ from employer to employer prove next to nothing. 20 years ago it was the norm for…

I think Leetcoding is a worthy investment for career. Why not . I understand that it feels like its waste of time with no practical use but the upsides are that they make job hopping trival because you know what to expect and feel confident. I think its a tiny investment for big returns. unparalleled to any other activity you could invest your time in.

Totally agree with this, although I do see some more alternative methods used by non FAANGS (e.g with f5 it felt like they actually tried to determine my actual knowledge as a SWE). But solving a few Leetcodes every now and then (even outside of interviewing season) is probably a very profitable habit.

Re: Aging programmer

#335

Post by weatherlite »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #245
shakezula wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree with parent comment. Leet code interviews, while sometimes obnoxious, are still good exercises. I have learned a lot of nuanced takes from a leet code interview with an interesting question.

OK, fair 'nuff. Right now, I'm working on a data parser for a backend API that fetches a JSON response, using the built-in NSURLSession stuff, turns it into a Swift Dictionary, then I sort through that Dictionary, and emit a bunch of Swift struct instances for use by the API consumer. The reason for this, is because the API that I wrote about seven years ago, is giving us performance problems. I wrote about that in t…

> But maybe I'm doing it all wrong, and I should stop working on this to practice leetcode.

You're not "wrong" per se. If you want a pure Swift job it would be very reasonable if the hiring company tested you on your very broad and deep Swift knowledge. However, if you ever wanted to do anything else job wise you'd be screwed. Leetcode gives you a chance to become a Java/PHP/C++ dev somewhere. That's the only plus for me. I'm mostly a Ruby/Rails dev experience wise and I get a real chance at different stacks because their hiring process is Leetcode (or something of the sort) and general design questions. So sure I'll never know as much about Swift as you but I do think that a hard working engineer who takes his craft seriously can pick it up and become productive in a couple of months. Not an expert, productive. I can join your company/team and then someone like you can make sure my code doesn't suck. For many companies that's good enough. Others can't or don't want to mentor anyone for more than a week or two so they only accept someone who fills all the requirements of their stack. Mostly startups, and in general not my cup of tea.

Re: Aging programmer

#336

Post by weatherlite »

Tolexx wrote: post #315
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, fair 'nuff. Right now, I'm working on a data parser for a backend API that fetches a JSON response, using the built-in NSURLSession stuff, turns it into a Swift Dictionary, then I sort through that Dictionary, and emit a bunch of Swift struct instances for use by the API consumer. The reason for this, is because the API that I wrote about seven years ago, is giving us performance problems. I wrote about that in t…

>But maybe I'm doing it all wrong, and I should stop working on this to practice leetcode. Junior here and not as experienced as you are but I resonate with a lot of what you have written so far. I'm more of let my work and projects speak for itself. I also hate leetcode or code challenge kinda interviews. So far I haven't have to take any to get a job and I plan on never taking or doing any. If I see that an intervi…

Bad move imo. You're only a junior, you have your whole career ahead of you. You're ruling out more than 50% of companies by deciding not to do live coding on an interview.

Re: Aging programmer

#337

Post by weatherlite »

remote_phone wrote: post #285
mixmastamyk wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get thru the endemic leetcode stuff?

I studied my ass off! I did 300 LC questions and could finish LC mediums pretty easily and I found that most companies concentrated on easy and medium.

Dang that's impressive determination.

Re: Aging programmer

#338

Post by scarface74 »

YZF wrote: post #299
scarface74 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, three jobs ago back in 2015, I had two interviews. The first hiring manager asked me to do a merge sort on the whiteboard. The second company’s new director told me what problems he was having and that they were on an acquisition spree and what their plans were. He asked me how I would go about helping them. Both interviews were about half a day, I got offers from both the company that asked me to do a merg…

I interview a lot of people and I ask all of them to write code (standard for our company). There's plenty of people that can talk about all sorts of stuff but can't code. Who do you hire to write software? Also do you want to work somewhere where software engineers can't write software? Do you want to work somewhere where the people doing the planning can't write software?

I keep hearing this like there are millions of experience developers that have spent an entire career fooling company after company without being able to code well enough to do your typical line of business CRUD app and let’s not fool ourselves. That’s all most of the 2.7 million developers are doing as far as coding.

I’m not saying the jobs are simple just that the complexity is figuring out what to write, how to organize it, how to deploy it, etc.

And before the gatekeeping starts, I programmed in assembly on four processors as a hobby by the time I graduated in 1996 and my third job around 2007 was to maintain a complete proprietary tool chain (compiler, VM (language VM), IDE) for Windows mobile. I spent my first decade plus out of college bit twiddling in C.

Re: Aging programmer

#339

Post by closeparen »

w4ffl35 wrote: post #171
StevePerkins wrote: post #97

I'm approaching 50. Just a scant decade away from being old enough to tap my retirement accounts and have the OPTION to retire. These next couple of years look like they might not be fun, but overall it looks like I'm actually going to make it. For most of my career, I've been told (and I believed) that I would probably get forced out of a hands-on individual contributor role as I aged. During the late-2000's, I even…

the thing that gets frustrating as i age are interviews and code challenges. i'd really prefer a certification that proves i can do xyz which i take once (per year? in my life?). then just decide if you like me based on personality and communication. i have over 200 repositories etc. its redundant, and random code challenges that differ from employer to employer prove next to nothing. 20 years ago it was the norm for…

I think interviews and code challenges have to be be decentralized and unscientific. Assessing likelihood of success in a software engineering role is genuinely difficult; any single well-known credentialing program is going to generate experiences of its graduates being incompetent in the wild. And then no one will trust it anymore.

People's own interviewing styles aren't any more valid, of course, but they operate at small enough scale to escape the kind of scrutiny that a standardized test would attract. People also don't like to admit they're wrong, and might be applying a kind of halo effect to colleagues who have passed their personal interview questions. Whereas people love to dunk on prestige, and will eagerly seize on anything they can count against someone with a prestigious credential.

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