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Always Be Coding – How to Land an Engineering Job

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Re: Always Be Coding – How to Land an Engineering Job

#121

Post by geebee »

codex wrote: post #70
kanzure wrote: post #43

Hiring is entirely broken. I don't think anyone is listening to developers. I took some data about this (tracking pixel in a Developer Auction profile), but someone did an even better job than me and posted in these comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5730843 I want a company that treats me with dignity and respect, even before and during the interviewing pipeline. How a company treats people during interv…

Bootcamp in the Marine Corps is an example of a tough hiring practice. Are your friends and family doctors or lawyers, per chance? Both professions use grueling hiring marathons which are much, much worse than a software engineering interview (residency and the bar exam). All other engineering professions require a rigorous licensing process, whereas software engineering is one of the cushiest jobs on the planet. In…

I think engineering is a tougher path than you do. It's as if physician had to pass a whiteboard exam on a randomly chosen topic from organic chemistry every time he or she interviewed for a new job.

While I agree that the premed curriculum and med school are rigorous, attrition rates in engineering are very high. It's tough to get into med school, but it's tough to major in CS or engineering, and getting into a top grad school in engineering is very selective. Attrition rates at top med schools are typically below 1%. In engineering PhD programs, attrition rates are above 35%.

Re: Always Be Coding – How to Land an Engineering Job

#122

Post by allsystemsgo »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #66
archer174 wrote: post #48

Every time I read the word passion in one of these articles I cringe. This has to be the most overused word in silicon valley. It's really just a convenient way to abuse people. Can't work 90 hours? Not passionate enough. Have a family commitment? Where's your passion? Passion. We get it already.

Ha, you forgot this list: "disrupt!" "only the beginning" "ninja" "agile" "seamless" "social media"

Disrupt is a good one. I love how organizations will use it, and then when you join said organization you're encouraged to do anything but that.

Re: Always Be Coding – How to Land an Engineering Job

#123

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

jwoah12 wrote: post #101
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Most true startups are in need of developers who can actually ship something of value in an efficient manner. The last thing they need is an "engineer" obsessed with algorithms and data structures who turns a practical development task into a computer science challenge.

That's a false dichotomy. It is certainly possible to know your algorithms and data structures and still be able to ship code. I can implement quick sort for you, but I know well enough not to actually do it in practice.

That's fair, but when your entire interview process is focused on algorithms and not real-world implementation, you're far more likely to hire the person who can implement quicksort but little of real value. And make no mistake: these engineers exist.

The truth of the matter is that most startups aren't Google or Facebook. A good percentage, perhaps the majority, have a CRUD application of some kind that, even if relatively complex or widely used, will realistically never require engineers to reinvent the wheel, let alone even understand the internals of the programming language the application is built on.

These startups should absolutely fear hiring an engineer who can't knock out a simple internal dashboard, integrate with a third party API, create a half-decent database schema or customize an instance of [insert popular open source CMS or ecommerce platform] more than they should fear hiring an engineer who can't implement his own quicksort.

Re: Always Be Coding – How to Land an Engineering Job

#124

Post by fvox13 »

Why do so many people advocate reinventing the wheel? As far as I can tell, it wastes a LOT of time, especially in the interview process. One of the companies I interviewed with before I landed at my current job asked me to use pencil and paper to re-implement a bubble sort in Python. Why? My job is to build a house, not forge a hammer. And the fact that it was a bubble sort instead of something... better... was like using a rubber mallet to pound in nails.

I understand that, when you're learning algorithms and such, that there's no substitute for implementing them, to learn them. But when someone with several years of development experience comes in, with a portfolio to show, why waste their time?

Re: Always Be Coding – How to Land an Engineering Job

#125

Post by kamaal »

smtddr wrote: post #115
zaphar wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at Google. My opinions in this comment are my own and not my employers. Google gets thousands of resumes and they have to whittle them down. Some are easy to rule out just based on the resume. Others are easy to rule out in the phone interview. But a large amount of them make it to the full in person interview. Now Google could just take it as first come first served and hire the first people that look decent.…

Hey there, I just want to say I interviewed at the Googleplex in June 2012 and it was an amazing experience. When I got the "rejection"(5 days later, which is standard in my experince), I didn't feel bummed or angry - I felt that I was defeated fairly in a challenging game of chess with people better than me. The programming questions I got weren't out-of-bonds ridiculous like I'm always hearing about. While the proc…

Every one must interview once in a while. Its just to ensure you don't catch rust.

>>Everyone should go through Google's interview process at least once

No, and this is precisely the reason which gives them that 'We are super special so its our way or the highway' attitude.

What every person must do is stop what they are doing, and give themselves a brief moment of introspection. And they should ask, if they problems they are solving are most demanding, challenging or their times. Are those problems something important for which people are going to pay good money? Or at least they must ask how difficult the problem is on a technical scale. And then pick what is most important both in terms of learning technical stuff and money parts of it.

You must do this routinely. Probably every Saturday night. Based on what the outcome of that is, you must have one long term plan and one short term plan. Something that can be broken down to small parts, put in a todo list and tracked next Saturday night.

Getting into Google or any other big web company won't automagically catapult your career to the center of the universe. Its a good brand to carry on your resume, beyond that nothing much. Bulk of Google, is a large company. Its legacy systems + incremental development all over the place.

So any good to your career will come if you do something about it personally.

Re: Always Be Coding – How to Land an Engineering Job

#127

Post by taude »

One of the problems that I have with this list is some of the stuff I just haven't had to deal with since college, like implementing all those data-structures like bubble sorts//binary search, linked lists, etc...In 15 years, I've never had to implement one (when I was a C/C++ coder in the '90s, we used 3rd party libraries like Dinkumware). Interviews that ask these type of questions are really skewed at hiring young people just out of school, and favor people who memorize things by rote, not necessarily create/problem solve. Even the author almost admits this by stating he solved problems for two weeks prior to his interviewing...

Re: Always Be Coding – How to Land an Engineering Job

#128

Post by taude »

rdtsc wrote: post #44
kamaal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding to that its not ever worth that much trouble. 1. Master algorithms. 2. Get a job at . 3. ??? 4. Get rich. What exactly is 3) ???. Really if you are joining a big company. Whatever that company is. Way to financial safety is not mastering algorithms and data structures. Its more like knowing how to do politics, being your manager yes men etc. And very rarely are you ever going to get some work where its going t…

For CS graduates from some big name colleges that go to work on Wall Street or other "finance" it is: 1. Master algorithms 2. Get a job at & Co. 3. Use Excel all day everyday 4. Get rich.

I interviewed at 7 investment banks on Wall Street after college. Never took any of the jobs, however, I had friends who worked on Excel spreadsheets that managed 100s millions in capital. This always amazed me.

Re: Always Be Coding – How to Land an Engineering Job

#129

Post by mason55 »

ap22213 wrote: post #100
codex wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bootcamp in the Marine Corps is an example of a tough hiring practice. Are your friends and family doctors or lawyers, per chance? Both professions use grueling hiring marathons which are much, much worse than a software engineering interview (residency and the bar exam). All other engineering professions require a rigorous licensing process, whereas software engineering is one of the cushiest jobs on the planet. In…

In a certain state of the economy, you're right. But, at least here in the US, we currently have way more demand for good developers than we have supply. Basic economics says that your model will not work. For example, the company for which I work bills me out at $250 / hr. I get something like 15-30 job requests from other companies a week. It would not make any economic sense for me to pursue any of these other com…

> But, at least here in the US, we currently have way more demand for good developers than we have supply. Basic economics says that your model will not work.

The problem is that hiring someone who can't code doesn't help me. And a bad engineer is worse than no engineer at all.

It's not like a grocery store where a bad employee is just really slow and a really bad employee steals things costing me a percent of a percent on my margins. A single bad engineer could theoretically destroy a company if they were savvy enough.

Pretty much anyone who does technical hiring will tell you that it's way worse to hire a bad candidate than to not hire a good one and interviews are tuned for that. It's the opposite of the American criminal justice system. A no-hire doesn't mean you're a bad candidate but a hire recommendation is very likely to mean that you're a good one.

Re: Always Be Coding – How to Land an Engineering Job

#130

Post by taude »

nitrogen wrote: post #56
hippee-lee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forget the exact details but my current employment agreement has a paragraph saying I won't do contract or consulting work while I am a full time employee here. Ethically, I would never be able to interview for your company. Don't most companies like tech companies operate in a similar manner? If so, aren't you limiting your hiring pool to either programmers without those types of agreements or thise whom are ethic…

Interesting. Many (if not most) of the engineers I met in my earliest jobs were moonlighting. How common is such an anti-moonlighting clause in employment contracts?

Most companies even try to own your "thoughts" while employed at them, even for your after hours stuff.
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