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I Am a Bad Developer

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Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#41

Post by igul222 »

mseebach wrote: post #27
barce wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, I've been the victim of "couldn't balance a B-Tree fast enough so you're not hired but you'll never see a B-Tree at work." You mention that there isn't a better solution. IMHO, I disagree. I think Github has figured out a way. They've been around 5 years and haven't fired anybody and nobody has quit. Most firings are due to a job / job skill mismatch. At Github, they do a week long paid interview so both sides re…

Github and many other high profile companies have the benefit of a much larger talent funnel than more average companies. They can literally sit back and wait for the proverbial rock-star ninja to make a passionate appeal to come and work for them. They can filter anyone without a 4.0 from a top school (not that they would, but that's not the point) and still be working with a bigger pool than lesser companies do, pr…

True, they have a bigger talent funnel than smaller companies, but don't forget that they also need far more new hires than smaller companies. I wonder which factor dominates.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#42

Post by bfung »

No sympathy here. "I am a bad developer"... so? At least you have recognition of a problem, now time to improve.

Why the rejetions? Has any company told you what exactly were the reasons for rejection? Ask for a reply from the interviewers and the specific questions. Don't get those questions wrong again.

  I contribute to a plethora of open source projects in a range of languages such as 
  C++, Perl, Python, and even various Lisp-like languages.
How about a link to the contributions? Perhaps you can get some better feedback from people looking at those.

  Well my bookshelf is stocked...
  ...
  I enjoy mathematics. ...
  ...
  And for all of this I still blunder my way through...
  ...
  I still draw a blank when asked what the magnitude of complexity is for the guests
  function I just wrote.
Why the blundering? It's not a memorization exercise, it's an exercise in counting and math:

  My input is N, and I loop from 0 to N, hence complexity is O(N).

  I loop twice, so complexity is O(2N).

  The input is M and N, my function has nested loops, 0 to M, 0 to N,
  complexity is O(M * N).
  
  My input is N and I divide and conquer recursively cutting in half... 
  that's (N/2)/2)/2)/2... lg N!
I think most good interviewers will be ecstatic if you can reason your algorithm out loud, even if you're a little off. It's the reasoning and thinking that matters more.

I'd also recommend studying for interviews seriously. Cracking the code interview, http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-..., it helps quite a bit.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#44

Post by vinceguidry »

I don't understand how one can draw that conclusion from that dataset. Getting turned down during the hiring process says absolutely nothing about your ability to develop software because job hunting isn't a software development activity.

In fact, reading your post, I get the feeling that you're a better dev than me. You probably have more experience and a better grasp of the high-level concepts as well as the ability to translate that understanding into better, more bug-free code.

Even despite this, were we competing for the same job, assuming I'm qualified for it, I would probably get hired over you because confidence matters and I have no problem conveying confidence in my abilities during an interview. Job hunting has nothing to do with software development.

You don't need to work on your coding skills. They're fine. You need to work on your social skills.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#47

Post by iguana »

It isn't the technical skills that are lacking, it is confidence and the ability to sell yourself. If you have the experience and code samples, you can still get technical questions wrong, so long as you're able to admit defeat in a confident, intelligent way. You're not asked esoteric CS questions to see if you understand CS, you're asked them to demonstrate your critical thinking skills, ability to communicate, ability to ask smart questions, and, most important of all, ability to ask for help when needed.

Personality goes a long way to getting a job, technical chops go a long way to keeping it. The hiring managers that reject you based on answering technical questions incorrectly are probably not being honest. It's an easy thing for them to fall back on when making such a difficult decision; often just saying "we don't like this guy" is difficult for HR to reconcile, especially if they interview a lot of people.

TL;DR be confident in your abilities, listen more than you talk, and learn how to ask the interviewer the right questions (known in sales as Questions that Sell). Getting any job is an exercise in marketing and sales. Getting through even the most technical interview is an exercise in sales.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#48

Post by mseebach »

igul222 wrote: post #41
mseebach wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github and many other high profile companies have the benefit of a much larger talent funnel than more average companies. They can literally sit back and wait for the proverbial rock-star ninja to make a passionate appeal to come and work for them. They can filter anyone without a 4.0 from a top school (not that they would, but that's not the point) and still be working with a bigger pool than lesser companies do, pr…

True, they have a bigger talent funnel than smaller companies, but don't forget that they also need far more new hires than smaller companies. I wonder which factor dominates.

I didn't say "small", I said "lesser".

Also, GitHub just have 166 employees (https://github.com/about) - presumably not all engineers. Any ten random selected medium sized software companies easily eclipses their volume.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#49

Post by iguana »

boyter wrote: post #33
arghbleargh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear that the author is very motivated and probably pretty smart, but I wonder if there might be some gaps in his knowledge foundation. I was surprised for example that he was learning about information theory, and yet he had trouble analyzing the computational complexity of a function that he coded.

Not sure if that's really relevant. Unless you are applying for a job where time is money stock trading or some such I don't see how knowing a method you are writing is O(log N) rather then O(N2) is useful. Its something to keep in mind sure, but I would rather have the slower method integrated into the code base faster. Yes performance is a feature but realistically you can get away with some fairly awfully performi…

Although understanding the difference is important, the specifics are typically far more relevant in a high performance language than a dynamic scripting language with lots of "magic". OP is interviewing for a C++ gig, so performance was clearly a motivating factor.

Not nearly as relevant for someone using scripting languages and building UIs.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#50

Post by ahknight »

BasilAwad wrote: post #16

Only 10 applications? How many applications do y'all typically apply before accepting an offer? I've been told around 40.

Well, I did four last time ... and selected from four offers.

Learn iOS. Live in a tech city. Eat three meals a day.

(Which is to say, that's a comment on the market, not me.)

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