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Not a real engineer (2019)

twitchard.github.io

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Re: Not a real engineer (2019)

#71

Post by henriquez »

digitalsushi wrote: post #52
henriquez wrote: post #28

I was recently unemployed and this hits home. The morons who rejected me had no fathom of an inkling of a tenth of what I’m capable of.

At my last interview, the much younger fellow interviewing me asked me to tell him about myself. I was doing to devote a single sentence to what I did before going to university, as a backdrop for what my motivations have been; this kid cut me off in the first sentence of my interview and told me he wasn't interested in any of that. It really taught me how much power we can have when we control timing. I was off for…

I’m sorry that happened to you. This world is stupid.

Re: Not a real engineer (2019)

#72

Post by ponector »

ido wrote: post #69
ponector wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really smart programmer will work x5 faster but report as if he did x1.3 faster than peers, using rest of the time for personal development or other activities.

I will probably not keep an engineer that performs at 1.3x of a mediocre programmer for long (unless they’re junior and I see potential, I.e. I’m investing in the future). It’s also not about “smarts” but about being a good fit for the job (which includes stuff like being motivated and interested in the work). That is - an “ok” developer that performs “adequately” is not actually sufficient and it’s have to be specif…

I said x1.5 of their peers. Meaning you will fire first other half of your developers.

Also, you may not keep, but there are million of other managers who will be happy to have someone reliable even at x0.9 performance.

Re: Not a real engineer (2019)

#73

Post by yongjik »

Candidate seemed like a good fit until I saw something inexplicable, a black tongue, dark as sin, slithering out of the candidate's mouth like a serpent, writhing about as if it had its own mind, and when it touched Tim (the shadow interviewer) he collapsed on the spot as if struck by a lightning. I don't remember how I got back to my seat. 1/10, DO NOT HIRE.

P.S. Please send someone to check up on Tim because he's now back wearing a strangely looking robe with a scythe taller than himself. Yes, the scythe seems real. No, I didn't test.

Re: Not a real engineer (2019)

#74

Post by ido »

ponector wrote: post #72
ido wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will probably not keep an engineer that performs at 1.3x of a mediocre programmer for long (unless they’re junior and I see potential, I.e. I’m investing in the future). It’s also not about “smarts” but about being a good fit for the job (which includes stuff like being motivated and interested in the work). That is - an “ok” developer that performs “adequately” is not actually sufficient and it’s have to be specif…

I said x1.5 of their peers. Meaning you will fire first other half of your developers. Also, you may not keep, but there are million of other managers who will be happy to have someone reliable even at x0.9 performance.

Sure but in my original example the “1x” guy was not actually an acceptable performer. I just meant someone great could easily be 5x better, not that 1x is the average (their average peer would be >>1x).

I’ve learned from experience that it’s not worth compromising on a mediocre developer (even if in some situations I’d have to). Better take the short-term hit of trying to find someone good.

Also the 5x ones would mostly not be genius level, just actually motivated and talented. I think a lot of people that can do well are stuck in jobs that aren’t a good fit for them.

Re: Not a real engineer (2019)

#75

Post by khaki54 »

ido wrote: post #69
ponector wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really smart programmer will work x5 faster but report as if he did x1.3 faster than peers, using rest of the time for personal development or other activities.

I will probably not keep an engineer that performs at 1.3x of a mediocre programmer for long (unless they’re junior and I see potential, I.e. I’m investing in the future). It’s also not about “smarts” but about being a good fit for the job (which includes stuff like being motivated and interested in the work). That is - an “ok” developer that performs “adequately” is not actually sufficient and it’s have to be specif…

It's the concept of "you don't need to be faster than the bear, just faster than whoever you're traveling with".

In this scenario, the 5x engineer (who probably isn't getting paid 5x) will do 30% better than their peers. Unlikely that you would fire the most productive engineer on the team. Moreover with better peers, 5x engineer will be inspired to rise to the challenge.

Re: Not a real engineer (2019)

#76

Post by mapasj »

I would argue that a good interview process will certainly reject some candidates that would in fact end up performing very well at their job. To really understand if someone is good for the job, it would be very costly in terms of time spent in the interview process, both for the employer and for the prospective employee. It’s a poor allocation of resources by the employer and the candidate wouldn’t stand for it either. To judge a candidate, I wish they could come to our office and they have a full day to work solo on completing a small coding project. It’s just not practical.

Re: Not a real engineer (2019)

#77

Post by ido »

khaki54 wrote: post #75
ido wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will probably not keep an engineer that performs at 1.3x of a mediocre programmer for long (unless they’re junior and I see potential, I.e. I’m investing in the future). It’s also not about “smarts” but about being a good fit for the job (which includes stuff like being motivated and interested in the work). That is - an “ok” developer that performs “adequately” is not actually sufficient and it’s have to be specif…

It's the concept of "you don't need to be faster than the bear, just faster than whoever you're traveling with". In this scenario, the 5x engineer (who probably isn't getting paid 5x) will do 30% better than their peers. Unlikely that you would fire the most productive engineer on the team. Moreover with better peers, 5x engineer will be inspired to rise to the challenge.

Yep I agree with both :) underperforming coworkers are a negative effect not only due to their own ineffectiveness but also their affect on the rest of the team and their motivation (it’s very demotivating to constantly have to pick someone else’s slack). It’s a tough rut to dig a team out of if it sets (which makes it that much more important to solve early enough).

I just think that it’s not really a benefit for the better engineer to underperform either, I know I’ve always found doing well at work (which was usually more my subjective feeling about myself than anything some else told me) less stressful than doing badly (and not any less work than pretending to be busy but not working).

Being a programmer myself I also know what you can roughly get done (I still program maybe 30-40% of my working hours these days). It could be that someone I hire is magnificently productive (relative to myself/my experience elsewhere in the last 15-20 years) and is managing to hit that while also doing other things, if that’s the case good for them.

Anyway part of what makes someone a good fit is that they want to do well and find the work interesting and fulfilling. We work 4 day weeks so they still have time for other projects in their free time (and I know most/all of them have such projects).

Re: Not a real engineer (2019)

#78

Post by shantnutiwari »

rewmie wrote: post #44
shermantanktop wrote: post #39

I’ve lived both sides of this. I’ve been subjected to the mysterious whims and casual insults of the job-seeking process. I’ve also interviewed and rejected experienced candidates who talked a great game but couldn’t demonstrate the ability to code FizzBuzz-level problems in any language. It’s not a choice between “the tech interview sucks” and “the job market has many unqualified candidates.” Both can be true, and i…

> I've lived both sides of this. I’ve been subjected to the mysterious whims and casual insults of the job-seeking process. I've grown to learn that it's important to understand that interviewing in particular and job-seeking in general is not an objective and impartial process, and the output is not deterministic or reproducible. You can be hired even when there are objectively better people in the race, and you can…

>I know a guy who applied for a backend position who was rejected because even though he rolled out a Spring service from scratch that passed all integration tests, the interviewer complained about how the service did not commented the controllers

yeah, and though the job advert says "spend 1 hour on this", you find that 1 hour isn't enough. And yet, the interviewer will pick up faults "you didnt finish this"

Re: Not a real engineer (2019)

#79

Post by rewmie »

john-radio wrote: post #50
rewmie wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've lived both sides of this. I’ve been subjected to the mysterious whims and casual insults of the job-seeking process. I've grown to learn that it's important to understand that interviewing in particular and job-seeking in general is not an objective and impartial process, and the output is not deterministic or reproducible. You can be hired even when there are objectively better people in the race, and you can…

> I personally know FANG engineers with half a dozen years of high-profile work who had to spend weeks training coding golf and algo&data structures trivia before passing the first round of interviews, all because these trivia games bear no resemblance with real world software engineering. In fact, I will go as far as to claim that they serve more as ladder-pulling than actual technical assessments... FizzBuzz is a t…

> FizzBuzz is a trivial technical problem (...)

No, it is not. The term fizzbuzz doesn't refer explicitly to the loop with the modulus example. Fizzbuzz is an umbrella term for tests that are used to assess proficiency, but in practice they tend to have weird gotchas that get you disqualified for random reasons.

Case in point, there are online coding challenge tests where you do fizzbuzz tests that flag you as disqualified for cheating if you move your focus away from the page. That's one way to fail fizzbuzz tests: you start the test, switch your browser window, boom you're tagged as an incompetent moron.

Re: Not a real engineer (2019)

#80

Post by ursakhiin »

rewmie wrote: post #79
john-radio wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally know FANG engineers with half a dozen years of high-profile work who had to spend weeks training coding golf and algo&data structures trivia before passing the first round of interviews, all because these trivia games bear no resemblance with real world software engineering. In fact, I will go as far as to claim that they serve more as ladder-pulling than actual technical assessments... FizzBuzz is a t…

> FizzBuzz is a trivial technical problem (...) No, it is not. The term fizzbuzz doesn't refer explicitly to the loop with the modulus example. Fizzbuzz is an umbrella term for tests that are used to assess proficiency, but in practice they tend to have weird gotchas that get you disqualified for random reasons. Case in point, there are online coding challenge tests where you do fizzbuzz tests that flag you as disqua…

Why wouldn't FizzBuzz refer explicitly to the challenge that shares its name?
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