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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

#291

Post by parsimo2010 »

petagonoral wrote: post #149
parsimo2010 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time pressure, foreign environments, and people watching/judging your work are all exactly the things that happen when you're developing stuff that hasn't been done. You run into problems. You find out that requirements or an API spec weren't perfectly written and have to deal with change. You have to work with other people, and they will judge you. Hard coding exercises with a time limit that have an answer that can…

You're speaking as if you have experience with this but looking at your LinkedIn and previous comments, you have zero years professional software dev experience? Yet, you speak so authoritatively and decisively in this comment and your parent comment. The other people responding (including me) all have multiple years experience in actual software companies of all sizes.

I never claimed to work at a FAANG company, but I must have hit a nerve if people are going through the effort of looking at my LinkedIn profile and looking at more than the first page of my comments.

Believe it or not, you don't need to have passed the tests or have software development experience to make the observation that people complaining about a process are the ones that don't perform well. I've written and graded many exams, but only ever received complaints from students with C- grades or lower. Funny how that works.

And it's not like software engineering is some magical pony that is different from other white collar jobs. To get into my current PhD program I had to interview with multiple people, take a 4-hour written exam, do a week-long exam at home, and I wasn't compensated for my time. So I'm not that sympathetic to people that complain about tech job interviews.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#292

Post by nickitolas »

_bxg1 wrote: post #279

A few months ago I interviewed with Major CDN Company for a front-end dev position. They sent me a take-home React/NextJS project stub with dependencies and such already defined, and instructions to finish building out the full app. "Perfect!", I thought. No stage pressure, plenty of opportunities for going an extra mile. They encouraged me to get creative and I did; it met all the requirements and then some. I proud…

That's hilarious

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#293

Post by jophde »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #272

If you work at a FANG too much of your income is hoovered up by rent anyways. Especially factoring in the hours and stress. Promises of a career ladder are breadcrumbs for most people. Why bother. Big Tech has been captured by finance and professional management. In other words those companies are now political bureaucracies where workers, as opposed to connected operators, are exploited. Workers now need to go elsew…

Hard to save money in the Bay if you aren't making FANG money.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#294

Post by doh »

> Hierarchies are real - I am rather confused with the advertised rankings of a software engineer. There seem to be only two rankings: non-senior and senior.

This one greatly differs between large and small companies, but I think for small companies there are only two positions they can interview for, junior and senior. Anything beyond that, be it Director, VP or SVP, the company is no more interviewing a candidate but rather is doing everything in their power to convince them to join.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#295

Post by DoreenMichele »

_bxg1 wrote: post #279

A few months ago I interviewed with Major CDN Company for a front-end dev position. They sent me a take-home React/NextJS project stub with dependencies and such already defined, and instructions to finish building out the full app. "Perfect!", I thought. No stage pressure, plenty of opportunities for going an extra mile. They encouraged me to get creative and I did; it met all the requirements and then some. I proud…

It's hilarious, but I think you dodged a bullet. Imagine for a minute actually working there.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#296

Post by tenryuu »

I feel this personally. But I suppose the author is doing a lot better job that I could of as I typically just don't receive a response at all to anything I would apply for. Finding work here feels quite tough, and even with recently graduating with a bach in CS, I ended with contract work writing English content for Japanese websites. It's not demanding and pretty breezy, but at the very least keeps me from turning up homeless.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#297

Post by nhumrich »

glofish wrote: post #257
minimaxir wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, that's not an appropriate question for a data scientist . Maybe it's better for a data engineer or a SRE.

Basically you are saying that you cannot think of a way of doing this, other than the most inefficient way --> hiring a new person This answer would make you fail the interview :-)

Or pass the interview if it was a management role

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#298

Post by Mountain_Skies »

betaby wrote: post #208
vqc wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. Palo Alto is a nice area, expensive market.

Why ceiling is sow low in US/Canada homes?

That's not universally true. US homes in warm climates had high ceilings until the advent of central climate control. Homes in cold areas tended to have low ceilings to keep the warm air where it was most useful: at the level of the occupants. Eight foot ceilings are very common in tract homes built between the introduction of air conditioning and the start of the McMansion trend in the 1990s. Common areas with higher ceilings are not rare in newer homes.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#299

Post by glofish »

overgard wrote: post #277
glofish wrote: post #45

In my personal experience, having interviewed dozens of candidates (data science), I believe that asking "easy" and "simple" questions is the most effective way to probe the problem-solving skills of a candidate. Fun and interesting solutions to easy questions are hallmarks of great individuals. The question would go like this: Suppose I have a column-oriented file and I want to print out a column in a reverse-sorted…

I feel the need to nitpick your example. > does the candidate want to code it up or understands that they could do: cut | sort| head Piping together commands is undoubtedly programming, just in ancient shell script. So in a sense you're really testing for bash expertise. Which is maybe really relevant to you but I wouldn't say you're really "avoiding" coding by knowing to use those commands together, you just decided…

sqlite answer - excellent, that is exactly what I am looking for, things people did, potential solutions let me understand the candidate's real background - not the buzzwords

what is not well received is the judgmental tone, passing judgment about me for things you cannot possibly know, no need for that either, simple questions also irritate some, very important to weed those people out too,

I expect you would fail the test because of the attitude, even though if this were a real job interview you'd do your best to suppress it, it would come out

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