Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job • Hacker News Board

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#561

Post by marcinzm » Thu, Dec 29, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

_jdzr wrote: post #520

marcinzm wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in life is absolute but that doesn't mean everything in life is equal. Some people will stab you in the back more likely than others. Other will be more likely to provide support for you in a difficult situation. Likewise competence isn't an absolute value but changes with times and there is both current and future competence. Consequence for actions and judgement of others does not mean absolutes. If you wan…

> If you want to actively aim to have coworkers that in your own judgement are more likely to stab you in the back and more likely to be incompetent for the job at hand then you do you. No need to be dismissive only pointing out that your valuation of people will likely cause you more grief than benefit (imo). Also, incompetent people would probably be far less likely to actually be a threat because, well, they're in…

There's no single way to define someone as incompetent or smart. It's all context and job specific rather than some blanket absolute judgement of someone. Someone not competent for the job at hand will have gotten that far in their careers for some other reason. A fairly common reason is being able to play office politics and sacrifice others for their own benefit.

>Having some coined judgemental framework will definitely cause oversights eventually.

Yes, nothing ever is perfect, everything is tradeoffs and likelihoods of certain outcomes. I'd like to note that judging something as broken because it is not perfect is in itself an inflexible judgmental framework.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#562

Post by steveBK123 » Thu, Dec 29, 2022, 2:18 PM UTC

jghn wrote: post #558

greedo wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about the 10x part. On my team I have roughly 15 coworkers. Two are pretty useless, or at least perform at a level dramatically lower than the other 13. So how do we deal with it? Like the Internet, we route around them. Sure they're a waste of company resources/money, but big companies often waste so much money in IT that it's not really a significant factor. Now if your team is very small, one or two b…

Most people don’t understand how bad “average” is. It’s true that a bad hire has a large impact. But people assume this means the folks like you’re describing. When not taking money into account I view those types of people as net neutral. A good litmus is to answer the question “would the team be any better off if we replaced them with no one”, and usually the answer is “no” or at least close to it. Factoring money…

Yup - there are actually net negative contributors that simply removing would cause in an increase in team output.

Whether it be rate of damage to codebase, manual interventions in prod, hurting morale, time suck in meetings/idle chitchat, causing drama with stakeholders that needs to be triaged, etc.

They are rare, but they happen, and the process of onboarding, feedback, giving a chance, documenting, and off boarding can take a year.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#563

Post by anon50118810 » Thu, Dec 29, 2022, 3:16 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #542

anon50118810 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's healthier to instead develop the social skills and confidence needed to answer any questions confidently while enforcing boundaries about what you will and won't answer. Outright lying can come from a place of weakness and fear which isn't good to encourage.

Let me give you an example: you're gay and your employer has a thing about gay people. They will not ask you outright 'are you gay?' because that, while legal might result in an anti discrimination suit upon rejection of the candidate which they could very well lose. Lots of other situations and questions like that which are strictly speaking none of the employer's business. When given the option between telling the…

Maybe you picked being gay as a hypothetical out of a hat but it's a terrible example. Unless we're talking about extremely repressive societies where there are literally no professional options available for LGBT people, almost no LGBT person would recommend going back into the closet to find work with a bigoted employer. LGBT people regularly run away from home as teenagers and become homeless to avoid bigotry, that's how serious it can be for LGBT people to live authentically. A key part of the emotional growth involved, what a lot of it goes back to is, as I said, having confidence in yourself and being willing to enforce boundaries.

Leaving aside this particularly bad hypothetical, lying about yourself to get a job probably won't set you up for long-term success. What's the end game of claiming you don't want kids when you really do, after you get the job and then become pregnant? Now you need the job even more and your employer both resents you being pregnant and for having lied to them.

If you're really saying it's okay to lie to employers if you're truly desperate, then sure, why not. If you're actually starving then a lot of things become options, but this isn't really good long-term career advice.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#564

Post by naasking » Thu, Dec 29, 2022, 3:28 PM UTC

marcinzm wrote: post #510

naasking wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loyalty is not a quality that should be selected for. Someone could be "stabbing you in the back" because you're doing something wrong, either morally or because your choices are not good for the business, which is ostensibly what you both should be working towards. Demanding or expecting loyalty blinds you to important signals. Loyalty is a huge failure of human reasoning, and it's frankly bizarre that people see it…

You're confusing giving feedback or pushing back with stabbing in the back. Someone loyal will tell you the truth to your face or confront you directly understanding that you mutually trust each other. In fact the people I consider most loyal are the ones most likely to call me out in situations and give me a different perspective.

Loyalty is defined as devotion to a person, institution or idea. I think"devotion" is somewhat stronger than what you're describing.

I'd say someone calling you out is not exhibiting loyalty to you, but more like integrity, or loyalty to some other ideal, like truth, or business success, that you also value. Devotion to ideals is better than to people, though devotion by definition can still be blinding and dangerous (religion? Laissez-faire free markets?).

I'd say that what you're describing is a respect for people with who will fight for principles that you agree with, and that generates a kind of camaraderie, but don't confuse camaraderie for loyalty.

Anyway, not to go down a rabbit hole, the danger of loyalty as a concept is just something I happened to be thinking about lately. I just can't think of any valid instances of loyalty that didn't have very bad failure modes, so I'm inclined to write it off entirely as a value one should aspire to develop.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#565

Post by akamaozu » Thu, Dec 29, 2022, 3:31 PM UTC

jayceedenton wrote: post #28

> Hard Truth #6: Honesty can only hurt you I think the author has come away with the wrong lesson here. Many engineers, particularly those that don't pay too much heed to social mores, think they have some God-given right to share details of all their private interactions publicly. Every tech test they do is pushed to GitHub with an accompanying blog post. Every interview has a transcript (somewhat one-sided) publish…

Hard Truth 6 does not rhyme with my experience.

Just got back into the job market, and every potential employer has expressed gratitude for my level of honesty and transparency.

I'm "weaker" at negotiations since I've laid out my cards on the table upfront. The other side of the coin is companies are less likely to waste my time unnecessarily, or play hardball too much when you appear to roll over so easily.

My take on Hard Truth 6 is to be careful and strategic with your honesty. It may not always be interpreted the way you intended, so be honest but be wise about what you're disclosing.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#566

Post by scatters » Thu, Dec 29, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #519

scatters wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Submit a sample of their work? What employer lets their ex employees do that?

So far it hasn’t been a problem. Junior candidates have shown code from a school project and others have submitted code from a personal project or from something they contributed to an open source project. I think the personal projects are the most interesting to talk about.

Expecting people to have personal projects outside work is very much selecting for a certain type of person. You're ruling out people who devote their time outside work to their families, or sport, or hobbies that don't involve programming.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#567

Post by anon50118810 » Thu, Dec 29, 2022, 4:50 PM UTC

doix wrote: post #555

anon50118810 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may be talking past each other. I'm talking about applications for unremarkable positions at large corporations where the application forms are either branded by the company or done through something like iCIMS, Taleo or Workday. You create an account and then you're faced with several steps asking for who knows what. The experience question might be "List all past jobs starting with the most recent" with no date…

> List all past jobs starting with the most recent" with no date limit. Later on you'll have to agree that you answered everything fully and honestly or you can be fired. Maybe I'm a fool for taking that seriously but the meaning is straightforward to me. This is the most standard thing ever. The ycombinator job board[0] works the exact same way. No one is going to fire you if you leave out that you worked at Pizza H…

Resumes are like sales brochures, but for applications you should follow the instructions, see https://www.thebalancemoney.com/do-you-have-to-include-all-j....

There are many tech jobs out there that just ask you to send in a resume and cover letter and answer some questions. Saying it's technically possible to get an interview from sending out an unfocused 5-10 minute application to a big corporation using something like Taleo is not a strong argument in itself to do that.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#568

Post by tom-_- » Thu, Dec 29, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

iLoveOncall wrote: post #205

scarface74 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing that I work at the alphabetically sorted first “A” in FAANG, I don’t think it could be considered a “tier 3” company. When a recruiter from Amazon Retail reached out to me about an SDE position, I wasn’t interested in either relocating, working as a software developer at any large company or doing the prerequisite DS&A monkey dance. We kept talking and she suggested that I apply for a fully remote role consult…

That's a long story to hide the fact that by refusing to do LeetCode interviews you were not offered a software engineering position. You most likely are an SA, which is a position open even to business degree holders and is barely technical, no wonder you didn't have to LeetCode.

You seem to be implying "software engineers" require much more than a business degree, in which case I believe you to be a young person (SWE is not a profession that requires deep education in math and science, like a physicist or neurologist. Having anything beyond a bachelor's in CS is not worthwhile outside of maybe ML..maybe.

A person with business degree who grinds toy problems on LC will almost always do better on FAANG coding interviews than a CS new grad with no grinding full stop.

The degree is just a stamp for junior engineers to get their foot in the door, which is no longer needed once you have a stamp from a reputable tech company.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#569

Post by tinodb » Thu, Dec 29, 2022, 6:18 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #544

kelnos wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lying is always risky, though. If the truth comes to light, you are screwed. Even if it doesn't, you have to remember and internalize your lie, and make sure anything you say in the future is consistent with it. That requires extra work and can be stressful. (And if you mess it up: again, you are screwed.) I don't buy the "you don't want to work for a company that would ask you XYZ anyway" line. Sure, in some cases t…

"Are you married?" "What is the name of your spouse?" "Have you ever been a member of a union?" "Do you have children?" "Do you want to have children?" "Do you have a chronic illness?" "Have you ever been arrested?" "Which bathroom would you like to use?" "How large is your household?" "Are you the sole breadwinner?" "What are your hobbies?" "Do you have pets?" "What is your current salary?" And on and on...

The right answer to those questions is: Sorry but that’s quite a direct question, why do you ask? (And how is it relevant to this interview?)

Those are bad questions to ask as an employer, and you should probably move on to the next opportunity anyways. Still, faking to have children when you don’t, or the other way around, is worse.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#570

Post by didibus » Thu, Dec 29, 2022, 7:11 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #463

didibus wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you opposed to leetcode? While it annoys me as well to have to brush up a little, someone who has both the discipline to review their fundamentals, and that can demonstrate they have the smarts to be good at it, that's a great sign of being a good candidate. It serves as a great arbiter, if two people seem to have the same experience, how do you pick between the two? And when hiring a junior, out of school, t…

> Why are you opposed to leetcode? > It serves as a great arbiter I'm opposed because I don't think it serves as a great arbiter. At best, it selects for logical/academic ability, whereas IMO the most important skill as engineer is pragmatic decision making and building an appropriate solution. In practice it just selects for people who have studied leetcode (and to a lesser extent, those who have a CS degree) > if t…

> Perhaps creating a single view of a website/app for a frontend role. Or creating a few API endpoints for a backend role

Those things are relatively trivial, and easy to coach as well. If someone never did it before, you can easily show them how on the job. You also wouldn't have time to have them work that in an interview, so you'd need to do a take home, and then you can no longer validate they truly did it themselves, how much time they spent to do it, how much googling they had to do, how they approach the problem or delt with issues, etc.

I also find they tend to be framework/language specific, some companies even have internal frameworks and all that so they'd have to relearn part of it anyways.

> Or whiteboarding through a technical architecture

This is normally included as part of a "leetcode" like interview.

It tends to be a half day, where you're asked one or two system design questions, which are of the format you describe, and are asked one or two data structure and algorithms questions, and one or two small programming questions that checks your ability to write readable and maintainable code that is well structured, well organized and well factored. Sometimes the latter two are combined into one bigger question that tests both code design quality and requires an algorithm or special use of data structures to solve.