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An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

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Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#211

Post by BeFlatXIII »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #92
davedx wrote: post #6

Feels like in some sections of the US like big tech, the talent vetting process has evolved into some adversarial battle of attrition where the idea is to grind down the pool of candidates until only a few are left rather than find some potential new colleagues. Tools like this have emerged as a direct response to that process. What a bizarre way to begin a working relationship.

I've recently been studying leetcode (for reasons) and went through an interview process. It was, by far, the most boring interview I've ever had to participate in. The leetcode problem was easy (detect if two strings are anagrams; solved with O(n) solution in talk about non-functional requirements -> write some API routes -> draw a load balancer (because of course, there's always a load balancer) -> draw a service -…

from collections import Counter

if not Counter(str1) - Counter(str2): # success, they are anagrams

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#212

Post by tetraodonpuffer »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #92
davedx wrote: post #6

Feels like in some sections of the US like big tech, the talent vetting process has evolved into some adversarial battle of attrition where the idea is to grind down the pool of candidates until only a few are left rather than find some potential new colleagues. Tools like this have emerged as a direct response to that process. What a bizarre way to begin a working relationship.

I've recently been studying leetcode (for reasons) and went through an interview process. It was, by far, the most boring interview I've ever had to participate in. The leetcode problem was easy (detect if two strings are anagrams; solved with O(n) solution in talk about non-functional requirements -> write some API routes -> draw a load balancer (because of course, there's always a load balancer) -> draw a service -…

As somebody that gives systems design interviews most weeks, you’d be surprised how many candidates don’t put the api gateway but magically go from the TCP load balancer to the services inside the cluster, or how basically nobody is ever able to explain how a CDN works (as in, put the CDN behind the API gateway, note I have seen this in a company in production too). Or how some candidates will have redis and Postgres and do magical cross storage transactions.

And these are all candidates with 5+ years experience, sometimes 10+. I hate the leetcode gauntlet, but I also am really surprised how much worse candidates are now on average that they used to be (I’ve been around for about 25 years now), and how the minute you try to dig a little deeper to see if they know how things really work, the more it seems that they have no understanding whatsoever of the basics and somehow treat computers as magical black boxes.

I do understand I am privileged by having grown with the technology, starting in the 8-bit era, through an electronic engineering degree, and now in k8s etc. but with so much educational material available for free you’d think that even people in their 20s/30s now should be able to have a better idea of how things work.

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#213

Post by xethos »

gotoeleven wrote: post #140
stego-tech wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And while I sympathize with your frustration, workers are caught between companies who can't even be bothered to send a rejection form letter anymore, companies posting "ghost jobs", and companies who post such broad salary ranges (if any at all) that they're unusable. Then you roll in the "resume farms" abroad (shady recruiters submitting candidates without approval and who don't match the requirements, so they can…

How do employers fix being blasted with resumes from unqualified morons?

Employers used to promote internally, train and up-skill their people, and strive to keep them around for longer than the two to five year stint that seems to be the average in tech

Hiring low-level employees requires less vetting. Upskilling for more senior roles within your own company means you get to skip things like cultural fit (because they presumably already are), work history (it's in the employers own records), and references (that would be the coworkers and managers they already have).

Pay enough to keep the ones worth keeping (and increase it with time, to match inflation at minimum), upskill employees, and promote from within, and this problem should pretty well fix itself

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#214

Post by xigoi »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #211
CharlieDigital wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've recently been studying leetcode (for reasons) and went through an interview process. It was, by far, the most boring interview I've ever had to participate in. The leetcode problem was easy (detect if two strings are anagrams; solved with O(n) solution in talk about non-functional requirements -> write some API routes -> draw a load balancer (because of course, there's always a load balancer) -> draw a service -…

from collections import Counter if not Counter(str1) - Counter(str2): # success, they are anagrams

  str1 = "a"
  str2 = "ab"

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#217

Post by maxnevermind »

deadbabe wrote: post #123
davedx wrote: post #6

Feels like in some sections of the US like big tech, the talent vetting process has evolved into some adversarial battle of attrition where the idea is to grind down the pool of candidates until only a few are left rather than find some potential new colleagues. Tools like this have emerged as a direct response to that process. What a bizarre way to begin a working relationship.

Literally all the engineers at the company went through the same process. For all the bitching and complaining an interviewee does, there’s probably a hundred people who just went through the process and got hired. Suck it up, it’s part of the job. If you can’t do it, you don’t belong. Simple as that.

That's actually a good point. I believe that BigTech these days look for conformists, not superstar SWEs. If you agree to waste your time on preparation to meaningless LeetCode style interview then you are one of them and ready to be a part of the company. I do believe that is actually one of the things that being tested by such an interview, it's not a proxy for IQ, it's a proxy for candidate's readiness to eat dull corporate BS and not complain about it.

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#218

Post by cleanerbob »

vunderba wrote: post #170

Great job on further eroding the trust from a prospective employer. Require a formal degree in CS? That's gatekeeping. Need to pass a whiteboard exam? Not representative of the actual work. Live coding session? Biased against people who don't perform well under pressure. Take home project? It's too much work to do for free. Showcase a personal portfolio? Not fair to people with families or other obligations. Either y…

[dead]

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#219

Post by archagon »

tail_exchange wrote: post #113
tmpz22 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah tech has always been a meritocracy built on ethics and we need to remember that.

Trust. Some people think that trust just means a someone blindly trusting another, but of course that's not how it works. People will be trusted to an extent that they can be trusted, and this goes for company-employee relations too. If people prove they cannot be trusted with remote interviews, companies will take remote interviews away. This was a luxury given to us during the pandemic, and it's now being rolled ba…

This is still not data.

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#220

Post by __turbobrew__ »

stego-tech wrote: post #197
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot use recruiters to reach out to talent, that is how I got my current job. I applied directly and got ghosted but a month later a 3rd party recruiter reached out to me and I got the same job I applied for. Lots of other jobs have funnels through referrals and networks, people can make recommendations of past colleagues. The only way to stop people from blasting resumes is to make it cost them something, for examp…

> The only way to stop people from blasting resumes is to make it cost them something, for example charge $5 — which goes to charity — to apply for the job. That's just more short-termism. It ignores the desperation of the masses for the Middle Class lifestyle they've been promised, in favor of yet-another-hurdle to be jumped over for a chance at a job they need to survive. All you'll end up doing is encouraging furt…

> All you'll end up doing is encouraging further fraud with such a proposal

How do you plan to defraud the banking system when you need to pay $5 to send in your application?

The issue is that it takes almost zero effort to apply for a job so there needs to be proof of work on the applicants side. The easiest proof of work in through our banking system because there is massive amounts of effort to prevent fraud and ensure interoperability.

Alternatively that proof of work could be that you need to physically drop off your resume like in the pre-internet days.

The same need to go for the company side, they need to have skin in the game too when interviewing a candidate. This is why I am against automated tests which are used at places like Amazon.

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