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“I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

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Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#231

Post by ketanhwr »

worker767424 wrote: post #195

I'm not sure sure the author is coming from. I have a similar amount of experience, but wouldn't say I had to "relearn coding" when I did my last round of interviews. I've landed enough jobs without crazy amounts of studying, but knowing what was coming, I did ~100 Leetcode questions over a month. I also read an algorithm book knowing it's one of my weak points. I got a FAANG offer from my first interview, and even g…

so you're just saying that if the system sucks, then instead of talking about it and trying to raise awareness about how bad it is so that we can possibly come up with a solution, your solution is just to "suck it up"?

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#232

Post by arvinsim »

ra7 wrote: post #121
kmonsen wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but in my experience you need both. If you are not willing to put in some time at leetcode it might not go well. Of course you can still get lucky, but better to be prepared.

Oh, you definitely need both. But there is a misconception that Leetcode skills alone is enough, but for more senior roles you get judged on more than that.

Leetcode skills are something you need to do in your free time. That's why it is the most talked about.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#233

Post by ornornor »

joeax wrote: post #56
alpha_squared wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if there were a certification authority that could claim that professionals are, indeed, competent in X, Y, Z within software? And, of course, that authority would need to be recognized by A, B, C companies. That'd certainly skip the endless, often mind-numbing, repetitiveness of technical interviews (especially for those with many years of experience) and can jump straight to culture/team/behavior fit. This is…

I have several certifications from Microsoft and Google and, for the most part, mean jack to an interviewer. I am still forced to leetcode and answer mind-numbing questions. On a side note, of all the choices I prefer a take-home, as long as it is timeboxed to no more than 1-2 hours.

It never is one or two hours though. It might be if you designed the thing and know exactly how to get there and handle all the corner cases. Oh and also we always underestimate.

I have yet to see a 1–2h take home test actually be doable in that amount of time. It’s more like 8–10h to get going, have something meaningful, and code that isn’t inscrutable.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#234

Post by notmars »

Some of the thread can be a bit depressing, so I want to try to cheer it up a bit by enpowering us :-)

I’ve been building tech hiring processes for a bit now, and here is one far-fetched corollary of Conway’s law I believe in: tech hiring processes reflect the value and internal behaviour of companies. So pick the process you get recruited by wisely.

You have to go through a whole slew of leetcode questions and double-indirection array inverting tricky loops to get a foot in? Expect the same mindset to apply to mentoring, promotion and getting any big thing done. At the opposite side of the spectrum: if you’re hired no question asked with a 3to5 letter language in your CV and blabbing about having done some HTML at some point, expect some very fuzzy internal politics and decision making flow...

Here is the thing though: in most countries I recruit in, tech people are in demand.

Pick the process that reflect the type of company you want to work in.

Maybe there’s a tech job crisis I don’t know about, but we, as recruiters and recruitee, dont have to accept this state of affairs. If people stop applying to some type of interview, or gently refuse to participate in the p*ssing-contest part of the flow (pun intended), company will adapt ...or die. Tell them, no sorry, you won’t be doing whiteboard-coding with comma validation.

And if mediocre candidate learn rote leet-answers and spit them out to go and crash down BigCompanyX every 2-weeks, I can assure you the the company will soon learn and change (Google did, I believe MS did too). Or go bankrupt. Or outsource to a more sound-minded company.

Build the world you want to live in!

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#235

Post by gofreddygo »

zug_zug wrote: post #8

A rather tired conversation in my opinion. Everybody likes to complain about interviews, but every single alternative I've heard is even worse: Take-homes are biased toward those willing to work hours for free, a "track record" is biased toward those who inflate their resume, a casual conversation is biased toward the likable and native english speakers, high-level whiteboarding is biased towards people who are good…

I don't think so.

Other orgs don't have recruiting problems that FAANGs do. They can do better than imitating FAANG processes. They can afford to go wrong and self correct more. They can find a strategy that works for them which can combine whiteboarding, pairing, casual conversations, references, real life problems, letting the candidate showcase their work.

The problem isn't that they don't work and they gave up, problem is they aren't trying.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#236

Post by jwmoz »

You don't have to do it. Depends on how desperate you are for it. I've had a successful 10+ year career in web dev in the UK. I've always avoided places that had a technical interview, it's a phobia of mine.

I've landed multiple contracts without any technical interview, a couple of them from just an informal chat. I once kept rejecting an interview for a company that specified a tech test, then 6 months after they first contacted, the recruiter said they'd dropped the tech test, I phone interviewed then went in and got the job.

Granted these are not the FAANG type places that Americans seem to be so obsessed over, but they look good on a UK CV and every contract I worked on was >£100k pa. I have never had any desire for prestige-type positions, what matters to me is an interesting project where I can develop skills, good rate, and good working environment. Ultimately the high rates of these contracts allowed me to work less and ultimately enjoy freedom which is my main goal.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#237

Post by jolux »

_9omd wrote: post #93
zug_zug wrote: post #8

A rather tired conversation in my opinion. Everybody likes to complain about interviews, but every single alternative I've heard is even worse: Take-homes are biased toward those willing to work hours for free, a "track record" is biased toward those who inflate their resume, a casual conversation is biased toward the likable and native english speakers, high-level whiteboarding is biased towards people who are good…

Yes, it's extremely tired. FAANG companies are not dumb, they hire at scale and know how to find talented engineers using a rigorous/repeatable interview process. I think most of the complaints come from people who fail these interviews (I used to be one), and don't want to admit that maybe they're not good enough.

It takes a talented bullshitter to convince themselves that a 30 minute whiteboarding session can determine anything of worth about a person’s first month at a company, let alone year or two. “We only hire the best” is just marketing.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#238

Post by abiogenesis »

Thorrez wrote: post #202

I agree with a lot of this, but not this part: > Young people aren't benefiting from these tests either. To succeed in the testing process, you need to code defensively against edge-case problems. I think coding defensively against edge cases is good. It helps prevent security problems. I am a bit of a perfectionist so I know I lean this way more than others, but it just seems like a good idea to me, especially any c…

Author's point is it's neither an indicator for senior developers (too much CS stuff) nor for new graduates (finding edge cases requires real world experience).

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#239

Post by gofreddygo »

_9omd wrote: post #73
decafninja wrote: post #12

Unless you've made it to your "endgame" company that you're happy to stay at for a while, I feel investing anything more than the bare minimum to get your assigned work done is worth less than just grinding leetcode and otherwise studying for interviews. Doing an actual good job, above and beyond, is not going to be worth much when you're looking for your next job. Thus we're now seeing the rise of Professional Inter…

Yup, I jumped into the if you can't beat em, join em camp with leetcode. I Did 160 problems (likely low for many people) before my last job search, and I now make 3x what I used to. I gotta admit it's a hell of an ego boost to crush coding questions in interviews; being completely in the flow and cranking out flawless code. It makes me wonder how much money I left on the table the last 10 years, because I went the ro…

Glad it worked out for you. I'm sure it wasn't easy (as it has been for me). I'd appreciate some advice from your experience on how it went for you.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#240

Post by ma2rten »

landtuna wrote: post #107
millstone wrote: post #57

The author has been working as a developer for 15 years, and claims very strong technical skills. Why are they learning/re-learning Python, C++, SQL, C#, college math? Nobody will be fooled by that; at 15 YoE they will be evaluated on what they have done over a career, not over the last month. > it's all about how much time you can spend on Leetcode. The author is playing a game built for new grads. Here's a secret,…

That's nonsense. I've got 20 YoE, an elite college degree, tons of experience in Python and C++, have single-handedly put together mission critical software systems, and I can't get my foot in the door outside my small area of expertise. The teams I've worked on are tiny, so I have no career network to draw from. I'm missing machine learning and cloud experience, and my resume gets no hits because of it. Age 44, and…

Do you want to work at FAANG? I could try to make a referral.
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