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I Am a Bad Developer

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Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#91

Post by jng »

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…

The real value of someone being able to respond on the time-complexity of a given arbitrary function is that it shows they can build a good mental model of what goes one when the function is run. Building a good mental model of a program is the most important thing when designing it, building int, extending it, or fixing it. So it's not about performance - it's about understanding and abstraction skills. All good things to test for in an interview.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#92

Post by masukomi »

redact207 wrote: post #32
dpiers wrote: post #22

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…

Or is the hiring practice of reducing someone's technical competence to a handful of esoteric questions arbitrary and broken The irony is whenever someone posts some esoteric "gotcha" programming trick here on HN, inevitably there'll be comments like "have to include this in our next interviews." So what would you do differently? This is a genuine question after I came off 3 months of interviewing daily. I'm curious…

I look for relevant experience, personality, and problem solving skills. I start off with questions that'll get me an insight into the person then I give them a written problem that'll take them 10+ minutes to answer. I want to see them work through it, see what they get stuck on, see when they ask questions and what questions they ask. I ignore syntax errors, and similar minutiae. If you don't have good problem solving skills I don't see how you can be a useful member of my team.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#93

Post by dtjohnnymonkey »

I also feel like I'm not very good at in-person interviews because I'm not very good on-the-spot. I mitigated this by using a variation of "The Briefcase Technique" which I learned from Ramit Sethi.

The company I interviewed with is in the SAAS email space, so to get their attention I created a mini web app combining SMTP and web technologies. This took me about 3-4 hours tops. I was trying to demonstrate a few things:

1. I can code 2. I can work with technologies relevant to their company

That landed me the phone interview, which got me the on-site interview. For the on-site interview, I prepared a 1-page mini white-paper outlining some ideas I thought would be useful to their company. The idea was to show that I could bring value to the company.

I ended up getting the offer, as well as another offer using a similar technique.

Think about what the company's problems might be, how you can solve them, and how to communicate that to them. Work around your weaknesses instead of trying to brute-force it.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#94

Post by krmboya »

mynameishere wrote: post #20
nixy wrote: post #17

Anecdotally I have come across developers that match the description the OP gives of himself. They read a lot of papers, they know a lot about the inner workings of many common and obscure programming languages. Many know and love development process theory and they contribute to open source projects. Here is the but: when push comes to shove, they can't deliver to production. I've seen many smart coders falling shor…

Tend to agree (though it's impossible to say about any particular person.) Mentioning TAOCP and SICP at an interview (as he did in the post) would raise some alarms with me. They're not useful books in most jobs, and bringing them up just makes you look like the kind of person who doesn't understand that.

Steve Yegge calls it "The Awful Place Where People Make Money With Software"

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rich-programmer-food...

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#95

Post by kamaal »

michaelochurch wrote: post #58

Being a good programmer is not the same thing as being a good engineer or developer. Also, there are the true and corporate varieties of each. True Developer: builds technical assets (apps, scripts) based on business needs, often by self-initiated awareness of what the company's needs are. Corporate Developer: turns managerial ideas (with no audit of whether those are good ideas) into apps that sorta work, very quick…

>>I could coach him on that.

Will be nice if you write something on that. Will be beneficial to many people.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#96

Post by nilkn »

rubinelli wrote: post #37
dpiers wrote: post #22

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…

First, congratulations. Good luck wherever you choose to go. It may be counter-intuitive, but the more qualified you are, the longer you have to look for a job. A fresh-faced junior developer just out of college can be hired pretty quickly, because he/she isn't a big risk: the salary is lower, the responsibility is lower, and it's assumed there will be some adult supervision from an experienced developer. A senior de…

My uncle is a senior marketing executive and I can confirm that whenever he conducts a job search it is an epic undertaking. So this tends to be true in many industries, not just software engineering.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#97

Post by [deleted] »

rubinelli wrote: post #37
dpiers wrote: post #22

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…

First, congratulations. Good luck wherever you choose to go. It may be counter-intuitive, but the more qualified you are, the longer you have to look for a job. A fresh-faced junior developer just out of college can be hired pretty quickly, because he/she isn't a big risk: the salary is lower, the responsibility is lower, and it's assumed there will be some adult supervision from an experienced developer. A senior de…

[deleted]

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#98

Post by army »

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…

I find it comforting that a coworker isn't going to unknowingly hide lots of superlinear algorithms in the codebase that will blow up without warning when data sets get significantly larger than the test data.

Sometimes you have to make a decision to just go with the inefficient solution, but I'd like it to be an informed decision if the codebase is one I have to work with and maintain in production.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#100

Post by cl8ton »

Personally I am very proud of the community support shown here on HN to the OP’s post. I saw it earlier today and didn’t have time to respond so I up voted it just before it slid off the new posts fold hoping it would make it the FP.

Recognize that you are bad at interviewing (as I am) and strive at improving the process through choosing better suited jobs aligned with your skillset and practicing the process (which means more interviewing).

Write down immediately after interviewing your gut feelings on what you think worked and didn't work during the process and prepare for the next interview.

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