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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

#341

Post by scarejunba »

new_realist wrote: post #244
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…

Google had the equivalent of etcd a long, long time ago.

True, but its a very technically sound product. Authoring it as an intern cannot be anything but a sign of prodigious skill.

As an amusing anecdote, I didn't drill for internship interviews either and I ended up at a successful startup by sheer luck. I did well there, but I never achieved the level of technical brilliance that OP did.

I feel like there were far more opportunities like this 8 years ago when I was doing that, though.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#342

Post by nomel »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #295
_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.

To look at another way, you would immediately be the domain expert and go-to person!

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#343

Post by scarejunba »

mLuby wrote: post #308

> 23 interviews and I didn’t get a single offer That's… an unusually consistent signal. Suggests to me that either this person is getting into the wrong interviews (eg junior interviewing for senior role—though they say that's not the case), or more likely there's some hidden variable, like a bad reference, bad BO, really noticeable "culture" misfit, or other "red flag". Regardless, the general points are spot on; it…

I think OP should use interviewing.io and take the feedback seriously. It's likely to be helpful if they want to actually pass those interviews. But there are other ways for a non-traditional candidate to make it.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#344

Post by alteria »

ummonk wrote: post #182
lkrubner wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most programming jobs wages are lower now than in 1995. Back then, I had many friends who were charging $100 an hour just to build VisualBasic apps and they had more work than they could handle. And Phillip Greenspan has written that his company, from 1996 onwards, offered $100,000 to recent college grads. That was really good money back then, especially if you wanted to buy a house. Wages right now only look goo…

100k then would be 170k today, in line with (if not slightly lower than) entry level comp at FANG companies.

That's a TC number that includes vesting RSU right?

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#345

Post by andrewprock »

glofish wrote: post #202
mattmanser wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A column orientated file? What format? Excel? CSV? What is cut, sort or head? Are you only accepting Linux candidates then, a tiny percentage of users? This sort of utter nonsense question, heavily loaded to your "standard" experience, which is anything but, is even worse than the questions cited in the article. All you're doing is filtering for people who are in your tribe, who followed the same path as you and thin…

Interesting how negative your reaction is. Also how far off target all that anger is. I am not selecting for a tribe, I am selecting for a job. The questions are loaded, of course. Among the many duties, the jobs do require processing large files, sometimes with cut, Python or C. I want the candidate to use the most appropriate tool as needed. I'd rather not have people implement functionality that already exists in…

Can I just use csvcut?

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#346

Post by DoreenMichele »

nomel wrote: post #342
DoreenMichele wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

To look at another way, you would immediately be the domain expert and go-to person!

That's not how toxic environments work. They typically want your head on a platter for outshining the people already in power.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#347

Post by Psychlist »

EpicEng wrote: post #124
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…

Wow. I don't have as prolific a tale as that, but I'm in the looking stage right now and the idea of cramming for a test I haven't taken in 12 years annoys the hell out of me. I've done some pretty interesting things in biotech in my career, things that required learning about motion control, digital imaging, signal processing, and biology... but if I want a job as a web dev I apparently need to memorize how to imple…

This is part of the reason why I've only consulted into big companies, and only briefly. It's not just that I am not that sort of person, it's that I don't like being around that sort of person.

Software engineering is also another field where there's no effective upper limit on difficulty. In other words, no matter how good you are you (should) always feel that you're barely capable of understanding what you're supposed to be doing, let alone doing it.

That's right from "make a single static web page" to "submit binary fix to close-source compiler" or whatever the high end of your particular field is (Win a technical argument with the C++ standards committee? Shave 0.001% off the load time of the google homepage? Discover a new way to monetise users?).

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#348

Post by taeric »

ajross wrote: post #306
taeric wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it? Because their strong data haven't helped them not screw up their messenger space. Or to have a fast email web client. Indeed, they seem to be going backwards on that chart. They flopped on wave and Google plus, hard. Those are the kinds of mistakes that kill most companies. Even Google glass still somewhat rankles and has left me with no confidence in any of their consumer things. And I say this as a happy G…

> their strong data haven't helped them not screw up their messenger space. Or to have a fast email web client. That second example seems to invalidate your whole point, doesn't it? Yeah, they've had flops, but gmail has been an outrageous success, to the extent that more than a decade after launch it completely dominates internet email. I mean, yeah, I'm sure it could be faster (not a user, which makes me painfully…

Gmail, the client, has gotten noticeably worse as the years have gone on, sadly. It is laughable how long I have to wait for the page to come up just so I can start drafting an email to my wife.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#349

Post by Psychlist »

_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…

Grr! That's how you should be interviewed, but then they fscked it up at the end. How frustrating.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#350

Post by VHRanger »

octoboto wrote: post #263
Benjammer wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, the people who pass the grueling gauntlet will still be dumped on a fringe feature team with a first- or second-time engineering manager within 2 years of your age, and a PM that's fresh out of college (or worse, just finished MBA) who is spending 100% of their time learning how to use Jira instead of how to build product.

This new trend of hiring PMs straight out of college seems like insanity to me

MBAs ruining another industry
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