71–80 of 223 posts
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.)
damn...
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…
You get to decide what to put up with in your life. You should be your biggest advocate.
Maybe you could ask yourself what your definition of a 'good developer' is. I'm sure we all have our unique take on what that means. For me, communication and being able to work with others is a key part of being a good developer.
I think it's good to have a better definition of a 'good' and 'bad' developer. I don't mean the dictionary.com definition, just a definition that you are satisfied with.
From reading your article, those terms are not well-defined and the fact that you weren't hired could be reasons other than your technical proficiency.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Knowing the time complexity a given function you write is generally not important. However, the skill to analyze the complexity is an important one to have, because when performance issues to come up, it is often a very powerful tool to have.
interviewer : "what's the time complexity of blah"
me : "hmm... O(1)"
interviewer : "what's the space complexity?"
me : "fuck, oh, I don't know"
interviewer : "well, think about it. no stress"
me (2 seconds later) : "oh, right, yeah, O(n)... of course"
Not saying I'm proud of not taking the time to think a problem through, but sometimes people act really weird when under the gun.
You know what's worse than ennui? Being broke and jobless is. Going into debt because of a radical misunderstanding of job markets is worse.
I'm sure you are a perfectly decent dev, OP, and I'm sorry that the system isn't very well built. I wish you weren't in such an unpleasant situation (though this was definitely a solid approach to getting a bunch of conversations started). This rant is not really directed at you - No doubt you have learned the lesson already.
DO NOT QUIT YOUR JOB BECAUSE YOU ARE UNHAPPY. Find another job first. I do not care if you are a Jedi ninja code tycoon, there are no sure things. Your friend does not have the pull he thinks he does. The market is not good. Your savings burns faster than matches.
I could have written this piece. It hit that close to home. I'm 15 years into my IT career and I can honestly say it's not getting easier. I don't believe it's an ageism thing, but just a symtom of something I still cannot put my finger on. I put myself on sabbatical after realizing that my needs were not being met on a regular basis by my job. While I'll allow short-term ROI to be negative, I will never allow my lon…
On Friday I had a remote interview where I was asked to search for the value closest to X in a sorted 2D array (columns and rows are both sorted in increasing order). I came up with a trivial solution to find a specific value, but got tripped up modifying it to find an unknown value that could be higher or lower than the target. I have not heard back from the company. On Saturday/Sunday, I went to AngelHack SF and di…
Right on the spot I was told I wasn't a perfect match. Not directly saying it but definitely implying it, they said they needed someone who can actually code.
I guess having deployed multiple projects and code to show for it isn't worth anything if you can't code a variation of fizz buzz.
The hiring practice is a little off. If anyone ever asks me for advice on job hunting, I'll definitely tell them to exhaust all networking outlets e.g. programing meets, hackathons, friends of friends, before applying directly.
I just turned someone down today who was by all accounts competent, but just came across as the kind of person I wouldn't want to work with. You might want to take a lot more time working on that personality if yours. Everything you wrote in your post and your post's general tone screamed to me "humorless with a chip on his shoulder." And dump the self deprecation bit. No one's gonna hold your hand here. I doubt you'…
I think the guy was just being honest. I've never been in his situation before, as I subscribe to the notion of not leaving an opportunity until you have another sure fire opportunity (I know this isn't a popular outlook here), but I bet he's scared and just did a brain dump of his feelings. I don't know the guy, so I'm not qualified to comment on his personality. From the several paragraphs I have to decipher his pe…
I think you really hit on something here.
I think the concept of "scared money" applies here. He's interviewing from a position of weakness (not having a job in hand to fall back on) and that causes him to perform in a way that could be coming of as desperate and dejected to interviewers. Some people are better at hiding that than others, but i'm thinking the author might have an issue with it.
On Friday I had a remote interview where I was asked to search for the value closest to X in a sorted 2D array (columns and rows are both sorted in increasing order). I came up with a trivial solution to find a specific value, but got tripped up modifying it to find an unknown value that could be higher or lower than the target. I have not heard back from the company. On Saturday/Sunday, I went to AngelHack SF and di…