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The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

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Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#361

Post by jacobsenscott »

whack wrote: post #301
LordFast wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience as both a 50+ hiring manager and as a candidate tells me that we are collectively living in an illusion of whacked up expectations. Yes, it's super hard to hire good people, but most of the time it's because "good enough" isn't good enough anymore, and while we may think our company is a 9 and we deserve 9s, we are probably more of a 4 based on what people are actually working on. Yes, interviews suck,…

> we are collectively living in an illusion of whacked up expectations. Yes, it's super hard to hire good people, but most of the time it's because "good enough" isn't good enough anymore, and while we may think our company is a 9 and we deserve 9s, we are probably more of a 4 based on what people are actually working on. You're essentially implying that companies like FAANG can get by just fine, even if they hired "…

It is absurd to think that any more than a small fraction of the 20+ thousand engineers at Google are "exceptional". When you get to those numbers you are just seeking warm bodies to push buttons.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#362

Post by new_realist »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #358
new_realist wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Was it general and polished enough to get traction though? What’s its name?

etcd didn’t work initially; I wouldn’t call it polished.

https://aphyr.com/posts/316-call-me-maybe-etcd-and-consul

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#363

Post by markbnj »

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…

> but they run a lot of my code in production :P.

We run your code in production too! Thanks!

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#364

Post by mixmastamyk »

_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…

Nice work, I learned just from your post.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#365

Post by mnm1 »

allovernow wrote: post #11

In my admittedly limited experience, there's one way to avoid such nonsensical interviews - run away from bureaucracy. Seek smaller organizations (startups in particular) and if you're lucky enough to have a minimally cross-disciplinary background, you can seek out niche organizations where you'll interview with technical specialists who'll ask reasonable questions that are actually related to your work and your inte…

You mean there is any other reason to work at FAANG other than compensation? I find that hard to believe except for truly exceptional outlier cases.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#366

Post by SkyPuncher »

_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…

My company does a takehome project, but are completely understanding if dependencies don't work on different systems.

Basically, if the code looks right and you can show it working on your system, we're pretty understanding. The goal of a takehome isn't perfection - it's to demonstrate underlying abilities.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#367

Post by novok »

nhumrich wrote: post #302
codingslave wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are completing 500+ problems on leetcode before heading into interviews at google. Don't believe me? Go read the teamblind forums. People might spend six months studying, after which they pass a bunch of interviews and get good comp. Getting just one offer from a FAANG company often doesnt pay well enough, you need multiple competing ones. If you think this has anything to do with incompetent people complainin…

Then its working. Big companies love it when people spend time studying for their interview process. It shows commitment and means that person will feel like they "earned" that job, and should stay longer. This reduces churn, which is the thing they screening out the most. To the big tech companies, this isnt a problem, its a sign of success. Think how whiny this sounds to any law firm/medical practice. People spend…

Lol doctors change jobs and get jobs with relative ease compared to us software engineers. They go work part time at this clinic or that clinic quite frequently.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#368

Post by Frost1x »

eyegor wrote: post #315
LordFast wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience as both a 50+ hiring manager and as a candidate tells me that we are collectively living in an illusion of whacked up expectations. Yes, it's super hard to hire good people, but most of the time it's because "good enough" isn't good enough anymore, and while we may think our company is a 9 and we deserve 9s, we are probably more of a 4 based on what people are actually working on. Yes, interviews suck,…

Having helped non-cs managers hire for technical roles, I feel your pain. Usually I start getting worn down around candidate 5-10 for in person interviews, and stop looking for colleague grade employees and more for "yeah, I could train them". Nowadays I've tried to tailor my interviewing style more in that vein; I ask for their approaches to problems I don't expect them to be able to solve alone, and then try to gui…

What qualifies as a 'colleague grade' peer? Do they need to know your specific set of technology choices and be able to solve problems specific to your business during an interview that has essentially developed as a skill by those working with your group for a long period?

Technology is so diverse anymore and so dependent on specific sets of technologies a business chose mixed with internal work tailored around a specific business and its processes/problems that I think it's completely unreasonable to expect someone to walk in and solve the specific types of problems under the specific constraints any arbitrary group is faced with--especially in the span of an interview.

All these factors mix to make very unique problem spaces. Factor in that positions evolve by folks who formerly filled a role and that their specific set of skills are likely unique. You should be expecting to train people from the start to some reasonable degree unless the role is doing incredibly vanilla work (in which case I find it hard to believe there aren't qualified candidates).

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#369

Post by ampdepolymerase »

paxys wrote: post #115
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…

Hah! Reminds me of https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 . Cynical answer though — Google does not want people like you. They don't want to hire entrepreneurs or inventors. They want people who can churn out code when given specific instructions, and that is what their interview process optimizes for.

It is actually pretty well known that the second way into FAANGs is through acquisition.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#370

Post by Aperocky »

daenz wrote: post #286

If all you care about is money, go bust your butt on leetcode and ace a FAANG interview. If you care about a work-life balance, and having a big impact on a small team, work for a medium-small startup and negotiate a flexible schedule. Personally I get a huge kick out of making massive improvements to a small business's tech and infrastructure. The lack of bureaucracy is a freedom that is often taken for granted. If…

> I'm going to work somewhere, it's going to be because I want to be with those people, working on those problems, and having a big impact.

There are teams in FAANG that are like that. And I'm going to say mine, as we're a new team building a top level public service for a very large cloud company. It does mean sometimes there's lots of work though.

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