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The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

jarednelsen.dev

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Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#171

Post by leftyted »

umvi wrote: post #105
sciencewolf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who interviews, you'd be shocked how many "senior engineers" can't write a function with two for-loops.

I once interviewed a "senior engineer" who was nearly twice my age. I was very intimidated; his resume indicated that he should be the one interviewing me , not the other way around. We chatted for a while, and I felt really good about him. However, I had a gut feeling I should just check to make sure he could do the equivalent of fizz buzz. I said something like "Sorry for this formality, I know it might be seen as…

My team hired a guy like this.

At this point everyone knows he's a fake. He's not involved in anything technical despite being a "senior dev". It was quite uncomfortable when he was programming and we had to review his code but at this point he's just hanging out in the office and sitting in on meetings.

I wonder about his psychological state. He doesn't seem happy.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#172

Post by sibeliuss »

RangerScience wrote: post #18

I've been doing initial phone screens (small companies) this week (two just today, actually), and with all of them when the recruiter (internal or external) gets to the "we'd like to send you a coding challenge" I interject with: "Let's do a code exchange. I'll point you at some of my GH projects, and you send me some of your code". So far they've accepted ("I'll forward it to the hiring manager"), and it's far too s…

Curious how they respond, but I like this angle.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#173

Post by salixrosa »

vqc wrote: post #75
gonehome wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of reasons: - Comp: Total comp for a new hire with 3+ yrs dev experience is probably 300k -> 400k at a FAANG on average (with possibility to be higher). If you want to live and raise a family in your own house in the bay area (2.5 Million for a reasonable house), this matters. - Access: Few places have the kind of scale and resources of these companies, that can make them fun places to work. You also get to…

What kind of house is a reasonable house for $2.5M?

It's always... interesting... To look at SF on Zillow. There are a few nice-looking options in the ~1.5M range, mostly foreclosures, and it seems mostly in not-so-great areas. I don't know if there are any great areas in SF proper though.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#174

Post by ummonk »

mullingitover wrote: post #32

I honestly don't know why anyone gives FAANG recruiters the time of day anymore. I have yet to meet anyone who feels good about the prospect of working for them, anyone who works there who's super proud of their mission, and the competitors who are looking to hire at that level of talent pay roughly similar wages from what I've seen. My advice for this poor kid is to look around at startups and do more networking. FA…

I assume he is interviewing with the other top companies too (e.g. "payment processing company" would be something like Stripe or Square probably).

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#175

Post by _martamoreno_ »

Bad example really. There are many companies where you don't need to know this stuff, Google is not one of them. You want that 350k a year, but you don't know the basics about computer science to find the k-th highest element in a BST, well doh. What can I say...

To be honest, this is really a super simple question and I would be stunned if this was anything but a warmup for you, like the interviewer giving you a simple question to get you into focus. I haven't done anything with BST in years but still I could easily do this with a piece of paper. Back in the days, Google was asking to insert an element in a Red-Black-Tree. Well, this is a clusterfuck and far too specialized. But questions like those were rightfully banned.

Yeah sure, it's not what you do all day, but not being able to answer these questions has implications. There are many code monkey mills where you just write some JS code to hack a webpage together and it would seriously bother me if they would ask you such questions.

Just rethink what you really want. FAANG is not for everyone.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#176

Post by courtf »

ideal0227 wrote: post #90

When my classmates were preparing interview coding questions, I was working on a mini TCP implementation and a toy kernel. AWS rejected me since I failed to write prefect code to traverse a tree in level order. Google did not even give me an interview since I told the campus recruiter I have not prepared for the coding questions. Then I ended up with an internship at CoreOS and created etcd. I am glad that they did n…

I love these anecdotes, thank you!

The greatest programmer I've had the privilege of working closely with could easily pass most technical screens, but he's an odd fellow, and I don't think could handle the stress and anxiety of these crazy interviews. Lots of diamonds in the rough out there, but I suppose large companies understand that and just consider it acceptable loss.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#178

Post by tmpz22 »

samkater wrote: post #37
proximitysauce wrote: post #3

In addition to all of the very dystopian examples given in this post, there are other non-technical, super-dystopian things that have been popping up as "trends" in the tech industry. Ever heard of top-grading? It's the most oppressive interview technique of all time. A series of grueling multi-person interviews. A retrospective of all work experiences since high school . You also have to get multiple prior employers…

Also other trends that, thankfully in my experience, have not yet made their way to tech. I suspect it is only a matter of time, though... A lot of non-technical positions I have seen and heard about (including non entry-level positions) require a video of the candidate to describe themselves and why they would be a good fit for the position. That just sounds awful to me.

You'd think this would be a massive liability seeing the candidate's race, sex, attractiveness, etc. Unless that was the intention so that they could optimize for specific demographics they want to hire for - even if it is illegal.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#179

Post by agumonkey »

samkater wrote: post #122
agumonkey wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that different from a cover letter ?

For some people maybe not. A video would be far more stressful for me. I'm sure my voice would be up an octave (along with my blood pressure) trying to get the recording just right. Speaking aloud is also not my forte. One benefit of a cover letter is it is easier to re-use the base story and update the details as appropriate. Unless you want to spend time editing (which depending on your skill impacts the quality) y…

I find motivation letters to be stressful too and an emotional rape 99% of the time (I just want a job). Hence my question, a video would be just a tiny step lower in happiness compared to a letter.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#180

Post by inertiatic »

m0zg wrote: post #112
parsimo2010 wrote: post #33

Comedian Daniel Tosh had a bit about people that claimed to be smart, it's just that they were just bad at taking tests. He said, "oh, so you struggle with the part where we find out what you actually know?" I hear a lot of complaints about the "typical" software engineering hiring process, and it usually comes from the people that don't do well within the current system. Could the process be improved? Almost certain…

I'm bad at taking tests. I'm also bad at playing guitar when someone is looking or even when recording myself (and pretty good when playing without anyone looking). I get anxious and self-conscious and that gets in the way of good public performance. This does not translate to public speaking - I'm pretty good at that, and I'm not afraid of audiences of just about any size - my largest so far was ~1K people. I someho…

I'm the exact same in the guitar department, play a riff for 5 mins flawlessly, try to record it as a 10 second clip (or even try to put it on a looper), fuck up a couple notes in.

I also interview badly frequently but not due to poor test performance but due to my demeanor in an inherently awkward situation.

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