Panic at the Job Market • Hacker News Board

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#381

Post by Stratoscope » Wed, Jul 17, 2024, 7:52 PM UTC

downrightmike wrote: post #373

Stratoscope wrote: post #370

The best part of this piece is the link to the Wired article about The Melt: https://www.wired.com/story/how-the-trendiest-grilled-cheese... If you hit a paywall, clear the site cookies and reload, or read it here: https://archive.is/GmXWM Oh, The Melt has a location in Stanford Shopping Center near where I live. I am almost tempted to try it. Almost. Nah, I am certain I can make a better grilled cheese at home. Here…

"Stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni" level vibes coming off of this.

You may be pleased to know that The Melt does offer a grilled macaroni and cheese sandwich:

https://www.themelt.com/menu/melted-classics/mac-daddy

Hopefully no feathers.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#382

Post by atomicnumber3 » Wed, Jul 17, 2024, 7:52 PM UTC

bmitc wrote: post #308

rafaelmn wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As in, a person who has used and learned a dozen plus languages but only tacitly used C++ suddenly will be a complete invalid when trying to write in C++? I've switched at least 5 languages professionally and used probably 5 more for extended periods of time and wrote a decent chunk of C++ "back in the day". I'd say C++ is the least suitable for "learn on the job" approach out of any language I can think of (I'm lu…

I generally agree with you, but I think it depends on the team. If the team is just "using" C++ but aren't good software developers, then yea, I totally agree that having a non-C++ expert join the team is going to be a rough ride for everyone. But if the team's software architecture and coding practices are solid, which probably means they use a subset of C++'s vast feature set in a very clear way, then one probably…

"But if the team's software architecture and coding practices are solid, which probably means they use a subset of C++'s vast feature set in a very clear way"

So... C? =P

Sorry. But my point is I think there's really very very few C++ places that could say their code is described by your statement. Not helped by the fact that I think there's really very very few C++ places at this point in the first place.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#383

Post by titanomachy » Wed, Jul 17, 2024, 7:52 PM UTC

ro_bit wrote: post #163

> Now I’ve got nothing to show of my life of work, while other people who just picked a better company to work at 20 years ago and never left have been growing their wealth by a couple million dollars per year every year for almost their entire career, all working as just some rando middle manager at multi-trillion-dollar companies. The authors repeated insistence on incredibly inflated salary numbers makes me questi…

"Middle manager" means you're managing managers (i.e. director/vp). Those people do often make $1M+ at FAANG.

But he is certainly still exaggerating, as most people with 20 years experience didn't spend "almost their entire careers" making $1M+.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#384

Post by gosub100 » Wed, Jul 17, 2024, 7:52 PM UTC

not_wyoming wrote: post #171

mavamaarten wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood why people hate them so much. From the employer side of things it only makes sense to get a feeling for someone's abilities other than an impression based on words alone. You can't believe the amount of shit solutions we've gotten from candidates. We just let you make a very simple kata. A tiny program that generates some console output, you have to refactor it to make it prettier and you need t…

> From the employer side of things it only makes sense to get a feeling for someone's abilities other than an impression based on words alone. I'd like to believe this is true, but it fails to explain why candidates for other business functions don't receive the same scrutiny. I'm not aware of analogous evaluations to get hired to other business roles (e.g. marketer candidates aren't asked to demonstrate a working kn…

SE is different because those other professions generally aren't creating anything. If SE had a program where it just writes the code for you, then we wouldn't have to test them, just like an MBA can work off existing Excel sheets because what matters is the output of that application. Most new code and bug fixes require extremely detailed abstract knowledge that (so far) hasn't been able to be commoditized into an application. The next few years may be a game changer for that though.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#385

Post by JonChesterfield » Wed, Jul 17, 2024, 7:55 PM UTC

ricardobayes wrote: post #283

The worst thing I've heard lately is they started to "pit" people together and the "salary expection" is the real last round. You take five people who all passed the technical rounds and the one asks for the least amount wins.

On the bright side that's going to be a terrible company to work at while it trends towards ruin.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#386

Post by tdesilva » Wed, Jul 17, 2024, 7:56 PM UTC

Well this was an entertaining take on the job market.

tl;dr he's salty other people ended up better off doing the same work for other companies, based on views of tech compensation that are very divorced from reality:

> I look at my own place in the world compared to people who just started at Apple or Microsoft 20 years ago then never left, and now they have made eight figures just over the past 4 years while my life path has lead me to… practically nothing. Then the tech inequality continues to compound. Imagine joining a company where the teenage interns have already made a couple million off their passive stock grants and other employees have been making $2MM to $6MM per year over the past 5 years there, while you’re starting over with nothing again for the 5th company in a row so what’s the point in even trying

Nevermind that there aren't really any interns making a couple million off stock grants, and this part:

> Do we just sit here and die in our overpriced studio apartments where rent increases 7% every year while other ICs doing the same work at better companies are buying 5 vacation houses from doing the same work?

Also love the part where he implies he's too smart to pass coding interviews:

> According to all the interviews I’ve failed over the years (I don’t think I’ve ever passed an actual “coding interview” anywhere?), the entire goal of tech hiring is just finding people in the 100 to 115 midwit block then outright rejecting everybody else as too much of an unknown risk.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#387

Post by viridian » Wed, Jul 17, 2024, 7:59 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #294

evrimoztamur wrote: post #23

I will add my two cents for people who believe that this might be related only to the SWE and tangent industries: It's really not. I have many friends (in Europe) who are trying to get through to different jobs in unrelated industries ranging from finance to fashion, or just trying to get promoted vertically (or horizontally), failing rather miserably. Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideratio…

> Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideration your particular profile or the contributions you can make. I’ve done some mentoring of CS grads for the past few years. We some times get people with unreasonable interview demands, like companies asking them to make an entire app or website for the interview process. We advise them to decline the really excessive ones. However, it’s rare to see tha…

Are you paying me for that 4-5 hours of my time? If not, you'd better be a damn sight better in terms of what you offer as an employer, versus the rest of the market.

I get that it's different for the unemployed, but we shouldn't let people do this to us if we are in a position to help it.

I personally have only ever dropped a potential employer mid interview pipeline once, and it was when they sprung one of these on me. Even worse was, I was told it should only take 3-4 hours to do. Just eyeballing it, it seemed like 8 hours of work at least, which made dropping out of my candidacy an even easier decision.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#388

Post by linotype » Wed, Jul 17, 2024, 7:59 PM UTC

gosub100 wrote: post #322

bmitc wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideration your particular profile or the contributions you can make. This is really key. I have applied for jobs before, and then get questions like: "what's your experience with C++ or advanced graph algorithms?". Only that, none of that shows up in my profile or resume. But they act surprised and completely shrug off how a decade of software and other relev…

Does that company hire or recruiter hire h1b? In order to get h1b approval, you have to make the case that "we interviewed x,000 people and we just can't find any qualified applicants! ". I'm starting to suspect that the industry has learned to set salaries low and churn enough applicants in order to reduce costs. One way to churn them is to do a phone screen and find a quick way to legally get rid of them. Then once…

This is sometimes done by asking for five years of experience in a library that has only existed for three. Don’t bother applying at companies like that if you’re not on a visa.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#389

Post by ajkjk » Wed, Jul 17, 2024, 8:01 PM UTC

joha4270 wrote: post #348

ajkjk wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo, there are two kinds of programmers: people who can write code to build stuff, and people who can write code to build stuff and are also conversationally fluent in the theory behind writing code. The second group is 5x more useful than the first, and coding interviews are testing which group you're in. Often the first group doesn't think the extra skill of fluency is important, which is fine, think what you want,…

Could you expand on what > conversationally fluent in the theory behind writing code means? It might be my insufficient command of the English language, or I might be outing myself as being outside said group, but I'm unsure what that means . Is this just referring to a vocabulary for discussing the structure and creation of software, or is there a deeper mystery I have not yet grasped?

I mean that if someone asks you questions about code, you can respond intelligently and "think on the fly" about the subject in question. For instance you haven't just memorized something like e.g. the big-O time to access a hash table, but you have reasoning behind it: you know how it works in a few cases, your knowledge about it comes from an understanding of the implementation, and you can extrapolate that knowledge to new cases or variations of the problem, etc. Maybe your knowledge ends at some point but you could keep going if you had to: like maybe you don't know how hash tables interact with page tables or CPU caches but if that starts to matter you would be able to understand it and keep going.

The same way of thinking applies to design patterns (single responsibility principle->but why, and when is it okay to break?) or to architectures (OOP / dependency management -> yes but why? can you make a version yourself? can you work around problems with it?) or to libraries (React components->what are they trying to do? how do you keep that contract simple?) or to languages (JS->what are the tradeoffs? what features do you need? how important is upgrading or polyfilling?) etc.

All beyond-basic intelligence takes this form: not memorization but having a working understanding of how something operates that you can use and apply to new situations and investigate and drill into and wieldy flexible. I would call that "fluency". To be conversationally fluent in a subject is not necessarily to be an expert but to be able to "think" in terms of the concepts, and usually it means you could become an expert if the situation demanded it.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#390

Post by JonChesterfield » Wed, Jul 17, 2024, 8:01 PM UTC

jabowery wrote: post #93

Replace the 16th Amendment with a single tax on net assets at the interest rate on government debt, assessed at their liquidation value ... and use the revenue to privatize government with a citizen's dividend. https://ota.polyonymo.us/others-papers/NetAssetTax_Bowery.tx... When we got a law passed to privatize space launch services back in 1990 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boLdXiLJZoY we were in the midst of a qu…

Schemes like this tend to move assets to a better location and otherwise cause widespread restructuring to minimise the loss. Taxation is inherently complicated.