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I Am a Bad Developer

eewz0z.pen.io

201–210 of 223 posts

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People really need to stop lumping fizzbuzz into their hatred of "trivia" questions. You don't do variations of fizzbuzz. Fizzbuzz is not a challenge, it is not trivia, it is not a trick question or a brain teaser. It is the simplest, most inane function you can ask someone to write. It exists purely to filter out people who simply can not write any code at all. It is a test of "does this person understand the concep…

I agree that Fizzbuzz isn't a trick question or a brain teaser. If I disagree with you about "trivia", I think it's because I disagree what the word "trivia" means, not because I disagree about Fizzbuzz. Whatever. However, I do meaningfully disagree about "variations of Fizzbuzz". It does make sense to vary fizzbuzz, if you suspect that your candidate will have literally memorized the solution, character for characte…

>However, I do meaningfully disagree about "variations of Fizzbuzz".

What I was responding to was "variations of fizzbuzz until your brain bleeds". Which I interpret to mean doing a fizzbuzz, then the interviewer changes it a bit, and a bit more, and keeps dragging it out, having misinterpreted its purpose. Certainly the one and only "fizzbuzz" test you give a candidate can vary from individual to individual.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#202
> exercise to write a function which returns a boolean in

> response to the question of whether sequence A is a sub-

> sequence of sequence B.

If you can't solve this really fast it means you haven't practiced enough for the interviews.

> of course calculating the permutations of a list is n-

> squared

If I understand you correctly, it is actually n!, because there are n! permutations of n objects.

Basically, your problem seems to be lack of preparation. You study a lot but you haven't studied things that are asked in the interviews well enough.

I would recommend "Cracking the Coding Interview" book. Of course you need to actually solve problems from it. There is lots of valuable advice there. Courses on algorithms on Coursera are also pretty good.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#203
post #45

First world problems. Amirite? :)

Word!

I guess people aren't too happy that I dislike thinly veiled attempts at trolling for a job on HN, wherein the author has failed to plan properly for a four month vacation ("sabbatical") and thus requires validation from complete strangers. It's pretty clear here that OP wasn't affected at all by the recent recession if he's complaining about not being able to find a job after only a month and a half. OP clearly needs to burn off his baby fat, and it's likely that this situation might be just what he needs to grow up.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#204
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word!

I guess people aren't too happy that I dislike thinly veiled attempts at trolling for a job on HN, wherein the author has failed to plan properly for a four month vacation ("sabbatical") and thus requires validation from complete strangers. It's pretty clear here that OP wasn't affected at all by the recent recession if he's complaining about not being able to find a job after only a month and a half. OP clearly need…

Regardless of OP's actual intent it definitely is a first world problem. I'm sure OP is smart and a capable programmer but I also wonder, he did say he's 10 years into programming. If it's not that he's a bad programmer, or that his social skills are not lacking, maybe ageism could be an issue?

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#205
post #159

Ask. For. Feedback. Seriously, this is what annoys me most about people I've interviewed - they rarely ask why they didn't get the gig. Sometimes because they didn't answer the coding questions, sometimes its because we found lies on their CV, or we had 3 candidates who were better qualified. If you don't ask, you'll never know the reason.

No point usually, any company large enough to have HR isn't allowed to answer that. Frustrating, because I'm not going to sue you, I just want to know if there is something I need to work on.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#206
I am from India and recent survey said that 90% of college graduates in IT/Software in India are incapable of professional programming. Indian companies still hire these bad developers and train them for up to a year before letting them loose on the IT industry(gulp). Why don't you move to India and get into one of these training programs. You will have a job waiting for you in corporate India even if you don't improve.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#208
I am from India and recent survey said that 90% of college graduates in IT/Software in India are incapable of professional programming. Indian companies still hire these bad developers and train them for up to a year before letting them loose on the IT industry(gulp). Why don't you move to India and get into one of these training programs. You will have a job waiting for you in corporate India even if you don't improve.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#209
I am from India and recent survey said that 90% of college graduates in IT/Software in India are incapable of professional programming. Indian companies still hire these bad developers and train them for up to a year before letting them loose on the IT industry(gulp). Why don't you move to India and get into one of these training programs. You will have a job waiting for you in corporate India even if you don't improve.

Re: I Am a Bad Developer

#210
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did interviews for 5+ years at Google... the real problem is that there's no uniformity to the hiring process. I was allowed to just make up my own questions and judge candidates based on those. And I did so. And admittedly, the questions I asked were so difficult that I seriously doubt I myself could've answered them when I first got hired. But I didn't give a crap, because hiring is something you're kind of coerced…

> And admittedly, the questions I asked were so difficult that I seriously doubt I myself could've answered them when I first got hired. Would you be willing to share any of the questions you asked? Your description here has piqued my curiosity.

No, but I would like to hastily assure you that it is solely because I am a coward when it comes to NDA issues.
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