141–150 of 286 posts
Be the change you want to see in the world. I refuse to interview at places that are Leetcode-heavy. Never prevented me from getting 7 figures offers at FAANG-type companies. Similarly when I interview candidates, I don't ask them Leetcode questions either. I like to get a sense of whether or not a candidate can reason in semi-unknown territories and has good intuition, not if they can parrot a textbook.
Be the change you want to see in the world. I refuse to interview at places that are Leetcode-heavy. Never prevented me from getting 7 figures offers at FAANG-type companies. Similarly when I interview candidates, I don't ask them Leetcode questions either. I like to get a sense of whether or not a candidate can reason in semi-unknown territories and has good intuition, not if they can parrot a textbook.
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> Because adults with hobbies and families have better things to do If you really valued your time you would spend a week studying for the interview that gives you a 50pct or more increase in salary so you can work that many fewer years
To be fair grinding Leetcode to the point of proficiency takes longer than a week. With that said I agree on your other point, putting in the work and sacrificing time, even months, will pay dividends long-term with a salary that allows someone to retire early.
Be the change you want to see in the world. I refuse to interview at places that are Leetcode-heavy. Never prevented me from getting 7 figures offers at FAANG-type companies. Similarly when I interview candidates, I don't ask them Leetcode questions either. I like to get a sense of whether or not a candidate can reason in semi-unknown territories and has good intuition, not if they can parrot a textbook.
"I interview at FAANG companies and refuse to interview at FAANG companies"
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It's great that you quickly notify candidates if they aren't a fit! Wish more people did that. But.... > Bring a side project, show us how it works. What do you do if someone doesn't have a side project (or want their side project to be reviewed by someone they don't know)? Some people code to live, not live to code.
I'm not defending the practice of requiring that a side project be presented. I think that's over the top and wouldn't do it -- however, if a candidate volunteers one, that does give a huge advantage to that candidate. > Some people code to live, not live to code. Totally fair. But there are lots of companies who prefer people who code because they love coding over those that do it just for the paycheck, and that's a…
Sometimes a side project catches my eye. But I have more than a singular interest. And kids. And to be honest, when a side project catches my eye, work suffers a bit because those tiny moments I have to fill with thoughts are spent on my side projects rather than work projects.
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"Bring a side project, show us how it works." Can people in the industry stop this please? You have to be mentally sick to ask people to code review their side projects. It doesn't make any sense. "Average developer tenure is two years, company is three years old." Got it. I don't think this statement says what you think it does.
> You have to be mentally sick to ask people to code review their side projects. Could you expand why? We allow people to substitute a tech interview round with side project showcase. Don't see why it doesn't make sense in your view. > "Average developer tenure is two years, company is three years old." Got it. I don't think this statement says what you think it does. So what does it say?
Part of it is like a sibling comment said, if an interviewer's interests lie more in line with devops, then a devops project that solves a problem he's acutely aware of will be given much higher praise in his mind, and allows him to engage with the candidate more. If the interviewer rarely does any devops and isn't totally sure of the problem space, he may be biased towards thinking it's overengineering a problem that doesn't exist, or may not fully grasp the problem in the time allotted. The candidate could articulate the side project exactly the same but have completely different interview outcomes in both outcomes.
And an argument could be made that "it's a test to see if the latter candidate can articulate a problem and peak the interviewers interest" but in this case the former didn't even have to do that, and thus you are judging candidates by different subjective metrics. And it's especially an issue if the side project isn't directly related to the role (e.g. video game vs cli tool vs database vs website, etc...).
It also means that some candidates will be judged on system design (if a side project is wide scoped) while some candidates will be judged based on algorithmic design (if the side project is very narrow scoped with the details in the implementation).
It just adds so many variables to the interview project that you are no longer comparing "which candidate is the best fit for the job I am actively hiring for" and instead "which gave me the best vibes", specifically because you did not actually measure all candidates by the same measure.
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Not him but 1.) DS and Algo knowledge are way overrated in day-to-day job functions. I have yet to have to implement a single DS or Algo from those classes (they are almost always available to the framework, standard library, or language), runtime complexity has literally never once come up in my life, and the most I've ever needed to know about data structures is "which one should I use here?" and 99% of the time it…
I think if you don’t know it, you are blind to it. We had some AWS lambda function timing out and the person working on it kept adding more and more resources to get it to complete on time but it would inevitably slow down again. I took a look at it and realized that they were building a huge array and performing a lookup in it each time. Converting the array to a set immediately dropped the runtime and fixed the iss…
I found that the biggest performance increase came from async downloads. By sending multiple http requests at once it went from 10 to 2min. After that, optimizing the queries sent to the API reduced the amount of data that had to be downloaded. Finally, I found the best way to bulk upload data to mysql was to use file based uploads which simply copy themselves into the database. Sending 500 inserts at a time was wayyyyy slower. Managed to get it down to 30s. I also switched from python to Java but I never measured the difference between the two
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> You have to be mentally sick to ask people to code review their side projects. Could you expand why? We allow people to substitute a tech interview round with side project showcase. Don't see why it doesn't make sense in your view. > "Average developer tenure is two years, company is three years old." Got it. I don't think this statement says what you think it does. So what does it say?
> So what does it say? It depends on the definition of tenure... if tenure is defined as a closed interval (i.e. defined only for developers who've joined and then left) then it means that, of the developers who have departed, none had wanted to grow with the company, or the company had let them go. For a startup company this might not be a good sign. If tenure is defined as the length of time the developer had worke…
What. Of course that "of the developers who have departed" all have left/been fired, that's a tautology. How is it "not a good sign"? Or is it supposed to be a bad sign that there even is a person who is not working there anymore?
We use this process, and it has helped us hire some great developers without having to use third party staffing and headhunters: 1. Post well written job post on major job boards. 2. Immediately reply via text to every applicant (yes, we have opt in on the application) 3. Initial screening including several knock-out questions via text. Immediately let candidate know if they are not selected and why. 4. 30 minute can…
> we occasionally have to let someone go on background issues What kind of issue would that be?
What tips would you have for doing this?