“I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews” • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by slumpt_ » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:28 AM UTC

svrb wrote: post #176

tinkertamper wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently I started trying something new for our interviews. I start with a phone interview that is more about discussing their background, expertise, what they need to feel productive, and explain the role. If I think they’d be a good culture and expertise fit, I send them something like this (I’ve made a few): https://gist.github.com/tywalch/cf60e4c942ab6a80e481f4ba6754... . It’s a small “api service” that represent…

TL;DR: you're testing for likability and other emotional response.

I disagree. This taps into a lot of technical know-how and communication skills.

It’s a well-rounded examination of how someone can contribute to the development of a product. That such a well-rounded assessment happens to include examining your likability or “other emotional response” is just a byproduct of testing how well someone interfaces with other humans - part of the job almost always.

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

#262

Post by runawaybottle » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:29 AM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #58

Ragib_Zaman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming you have never needed to practice these problems as you already have basic programming skills and are thus able to do every Leetcode Hard within 30 minutes of first seeing the problem?

I typically do assignments from prospective employers in half the alotted time. I don't waste my time trying to build a leetcode / hackerank profile. Edit: Compative coding has very little to do with industrial strength software development.

Honest question. Do you take adhd medication?

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

#263

Post by asdff » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:29 AM UTC

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…

There was a time where you would just hire someone and fire them if it wasn't working out. Why make the barrier to entry so high and prone to bias when you can always just let people go who aren't doing the work?

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

#264

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:31 AM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #115

chii wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the "best" endgame is to obtain enough saved capital to found your own (small?) business to which you can generate and capture value directly.

I think the best endgame is financial independence... having enough invested capital so you can live off the proceeds. FIRE.

[deleted]

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

#265

Post by tonyedgecombe » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:32 AM UTC

asdff wrote: post #254

throwaway_goog wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did that and found that I hated it. There's a lot of bullshit that you have to deal with in a small business: incorporation papers, taxes, staying away from the zillions of people who try to scam or extort small business owners, sales, finances, etc. If you're wealthy enough that you don't really need revenue and can pay people for that, you'll likely find that being wealthy just exposes how money won't make you ha…

I feel like the people who say money won't make you happy need to have their eyes checked. Sure, piles of money don't do anything, but money among many things gives you opportunity to have experiences with other people, and a buffer from stressful situations, and imo that is the crux of happiness. Now you can take that flight to see your family members regularly. You can now have a house large enough where if you hav…

I think when people say that they are assuming you have reached a level where you can meet your basic needs. We are talking about programming jobs here, not cashiers in the local supermarket.

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

#266

Post by onion2k » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:32 AM UTC

asdff wrote: post #241

adrianN wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaming is a pretty latency sensitive application, and yet Amazon is working hard on moving that to the cloud: https://www.amazon.com/luna/landing-page While there are some things that are even more latency sensitive, I think that could become a very small niche in the near future.

I've tried out Google's beta with assasin's creed, and the results weren't promising. I had gigabit fiber and while it worked pretty well for the most part, I still got quite a few gamebreaking lag spikes and fps slowdowns. It stuttered like a youtube video: freezing, then resuming in 144p quality which made the in game text completely unreadable on my screen. And that's on a beefy internet connection, imagine the si…

People can scarcely tolerate playing a game with high ping as it is.

People who classify themselves as "hardcore gamers" perhaps, but those people will also drop upwards of $1000 on a graphics card. They're not the majority in gaming. Most people will happily play a game even if there are a few problems if it's cheap and entertaining.

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

#267

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:33 AM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #255

It's easy to complain without giving a better alternative. I see these kind of articles on HN all the time. But nobody really gives a better alternative. Same in this article: "In the past, when I was interviewing myself, I would come across large numbers of really smart candidates all the time." So how did he know they were smart? So anyone with experience in interviewing candidates have a better alternative than le…

The same way you size up anyone else's aptitude, really: by making them feel comfortable, speaking with them honestly, trying to quickly figure out what excites them and asking lots of follow-up questions. When someone is eager and bright, and they've been made to feel relaxed, it's usually obvious.

Conducting a great interview is hard. It requires some mentorship and a ton of practice. Not everyone's cut out for it. But when a technical interview is led by an experienced technical person who knows how to interview well, the candidate knows they're being assessed fairly, and you get far more valuable information than you would from these coding challenges.

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

#268

Post by warpech » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:34 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #137

echelon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our industry feels like it's in the decline of the Roman Empire right now. Our craft is becoming arcane: Microsoft is building VSCode for the cloud. Few people own desktop computers anymore. Apple is locking down MacOS to signed binaries. Soon we'll all have thin clients and will write software in the cloud for the cloud. Few will be able to learn how to engineer at home anymore - you'll have to go to a university or…

> Our industry feels like it's in the decline of the Roman Empire right now. .... And here I am, writing a desktop native app that targets a small niche of users, with no marketing, no advertising, and we've had our strongest year yet, and overall usage just grows slowly year over year. Maybe it's how you think things ought to be that is misaligned with reality, rather than "the decline of the Roman Empire".

> And here I am, writing a desktop native app that targets a small niche of users

What is it?

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

#269

Post by slumpt_ » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:35 AM UTC

_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.

“Not good enough” is not an accurate description.

There is an abundance of people more than “good enough” for roles at FAANGs. They may simply not be stellar at the examination process used by FAANGs to assess candidates.

As much as many folks at those companies might want to partake in some fart-huffing and call that a predictor of engineering excellence, it’s not. It’s an optimization to shovel candidates at scale, and intentionally throws out ton of exceptional and even over-qualified individuals to instead hire a predictable style of engineer with as little investment as possible.

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

#270

Post by asdff » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:36 AM UTC

Rebelgecko wrote: post #215

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re saying that as if social skills were worthless, and likability unimportant for working together. I wonder where that sentiment comes from.

"Culture fit" is one of those things that seems to be used as a proxy for traits that are illegal to take into consideration during the hiring process.

At its worst case, sure. But it also means, can I work with this person? Can we be productive together? Are they picking up what I and the rest of the team will be throwing down?

Everyone has had to do a terrible group project in school where the group dynamic was just not there and the whole thing suffered, despite all the smarts being at the table. This is to attempt to avoid that exact same thing from happening, because often you just don't have the time to flub around telling someone how to document something properly for the 10th time.