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How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

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Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#111

Post by koolba »

dbcurtis wrote: post #69
lettersdigits wrote: post #22

> What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. Maybe I just almost never work on REAL hard things. So my question to you, HNers, is : What is the hardest technical problem YOU have run into? I am really interested to know what you would consider 'hardest'.. It's probably not going to be something like 'I changed the css property value from "display: block…

> I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. So do what polititions do -- answer the question you wished they had asked instead of what they actually asked. In my case, at most places I've worked I end up being one of the go-to people for gnarly bugs that have stumped the regular crew. So part of my interview prep is to condense a war story into something short and coherent that illustrates why people should…

Bingo.

"Well I'm not sure I can pick just one as the "hardest", but one very interesting problem that ended with an elegant solution was ..."

And you fill in the ... with a tale of you slaying a dragon^W prod issue with just your wits and a default .vimrc.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#112

Post by ruleabidinguser »

koolba wrote: post #111
dbcurtis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. So do what polititions do -- answer the question you wished they had asked instead of what they actually asked. In my case, at most places I've worked I end up being one of the go-to people for gnarly bugs that have stumped the regular crew. So part of my interview prep is to condense a war story into something short and coherent that illustrates why people should…

Bingo. " Well I'm not sure I can pick just one as the "hardest", but one very interesting problem that ended with an elegant solution was ... " And you fill in the ... with a tale of you slaying a dragon^W prod issue with just your wits and a default .vimrc.

I don't know why this has to be framed as a manipulative 'politicians' move, this is just being honest and helpful like you ought to be.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#113

Post by GoToRO »

cletus wrote: post #81

Let's translate shall we? > What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? "Tell me an unverifiable story in which you're the hero." I really hate this question: > Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Any post on HN about interviews draws a ton of comments, and they're usually the same comments as every other post on the subject. Honestly at this point having gone through a reasonably large number of inter…

Also, how bad they need to fill that position. You will get waaay less bullshit if they are in hurry.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#114

Post by bitwize »

lettersdigits wrote: post #22

> What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. Maybe I just almost never work on REAL hard things. So my question to you, HNers, is : What is the hardest technical problem YOU have run into? I am really interested to know what you would consider 'hardest'.. It's probably not going to be something like 'I changed the css property value from "display: block…

Tryna reverse-engineer the bit-banging protocol for a network card using the specs and a Linux driver.

Eventually I just gave up.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#115

Post by gshulegaard »

lettersdigits wrote: post #22

> What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. Maybe I just almost never work on REAL hard things. So my question to you, HNers, is : What is the hardest technical problem YOU have run into? I am really interested to know what you would consider 'hardest'.. It's probably not going to be something like 'I changed the css property value from "display: block…

Honestly it's a vague question. I don't really know what I would consider "hardest"...but one comes to mind as being really difficult:

Debugging memory leaks in a Python 2.7 asynchronous (gevent) daemon.

Aside from memory leaks supposedly being improbable at worst in Python's reference counting managed runtime...the GC interface and STDLIB tools for such debugging are anemic in Python2 (improvements have been made in 3 although I can't comment on them since I haven't used them yet). Not to mention that C extensions (gevent is just one) add complexity to debugging.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#116

Post by DonbunEf7 »

planteen wrote: post #100
DonbunEf7 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In no particular order: * GPU drivers are a buffet of terrible things. My best moment was either hand-compiling shaders to GPU-specific assembly in order to implement video playback filters, or deducing how the GPU vendor's drivers managed to fake a particular GL extension and implementing that same fake trick in the MesaGL version of the driver. * Self-applicable partial evaluators are cool. I've tried several times…

Sounds like you do some embedded graphics work. On multiple occasions, I've kicked off BitBake to run overnight. I come in to find it failing from running out of disk space. And I'm usually perplexed - does this really need over 200 GB of space!?!

I once slept in a lab in order to monitor a BitBake project for a few weeks. I would wake up, check BB's progress, tweak it and start it going again, walk across the street and get a snack, then come back to the lab and go back to sleep.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#117

Post by wccrawford »

unimpressive wrote: post #101
dahart wrote: post #25

I see some criticism on this point, but for me this passage is a gem. > In general, real stories are told chronologically backwards. This is why we start off with a punchline. In contrast, practiced stories are told chronologically forwards. It’s a solid indication as the interviewer that the person is reciting something they have committed to memory if they tell the story forwards, and in turn it’s significantly mor…

I'm pretty sure I tell my stories chronologically forwards. What a strange accusation. (This is one of those things that's going to bug me for a while every time I tell a story.)

Yeah, same here. Sometimes I might give away a bit of the punchline by asking if I've told them about X, before launching into the story. But generally, it's left for last, like all good stories. Otherwise, it's the definition of anti-climactic.

When giving information to someone, sure, lead with the important stuff. But when telling a tale? Pff, no.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#118

Post by wernercd »

pc86 wrote: post #66
wernercd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? >I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. Real easy: Overcoming technical debt/bad decisions of the previous group of programmers. At my current company/position, our group basically replaced an outside company - two programmers. You name something you should do and they did it: Code in the behind, logic in triggers, plain text passwords, direct d…

> Overcoming technical debt/bad decisions of the previous group of programmers. This is often a gold mine, just make sure your interview doesn't become a discussion about how bad other programmers are.

Absolutely. I try not to bad mouth the individual - because the two guys seemed like good people.

Secondly, programming - to a degree - is "art". My version of a masterwork is different than yours.

But the framework decisions? Lack of documentation? Lack of source control? No dev environment? etc. Decisions and foundational information that is demonstrably wrong and needs fixing? And what we have done/are doing/will do? THOSE are the things to focus on.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#119

Post by bitwize »

I find I'm more willing to talk about myself if engaged in meaningful dialogue.

For example, I get this a lot as an opening question, mainly from crooters (actual hiring managers almost never do this): "What are your skills?"

You mean like numchuck skills, bow-hunting skills? If you don't know what kind of skills I have that could possibly be germane to the positions I'm looking for, you obviously didn't even read my résumé, which means you don't have a clue, which means I am hanging up on you because obviously you can't help me.

If you say "Can you tell me about your role at company X, what sort of challenges you had, etc." I'm more willing to open up.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#120

Post by wccrawford »

sweezyjeezy wrote: post #20

> If you give them a resume, expect questions about stuff you worked on at your past jobs. If you gave them a link to your Github profile, expect questions about your projects. If you gave them a link to your Stack Overflow account, expect questions about some of your answers. On my Linkedin (and also resume etc.) I give a link to my blog / github. Every time I've been asked about it in an interview setting, it was a…

I've only asked questions about Github projects when they have something on there wasn't obviously from schooling or just garbage they threw on there to keep for later. I'm pretty certain we're in a different industry, but I'm still surprised nobody has asked about your Github stuff, assuming you've put decent things on there.
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