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For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

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Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#41

Post by logfromblammo »

kafkaesq wrote: post #5

So, how did you get to where you are today? I’ve always been passionate about coding, starting from my early days at Olympiad teams in high school and ACM teams in college. Anyone who's made it onto an Olympiad team[1] of any significant geographical scale, in any category, shouldn't have to deal with this whiteboard nonsense. Maybe a few lightweight-to-medium rounds to verify that they are what they say they are. Bu…

If only that were true. I'm a U.S. national event champion in Div. C Science Olympiad (Road Scholar), and I not only have to deal with whiteboard nonsense all the time, but also, the spouse never really believes that I know how to get anywhere from anywhere else. (Sure, argue with Siri/Google, rather than allowing that I might possibly know which direction north is.)

Credentials are only as good as the trust other people put in them. And I'd guess that a good portion of interviewers are completely unaware that non-athletic Olympiad competitions exist.

And anecdotally, it seems like tech interviewers wouldn't believe you could code your way out of a paper bag even if you walked into the interview over rose petals thrown on the floor by Kernighan and the ghost of Ritchie. I've had plenty of them remark "you are the only candidate that has answered that question correctly" and then never speak to me again.

It really makes me wonder what the point of the technical portion of the interview really is. I have had only one interview where the interviewer actually cut short a technical screen because "clearly, you know your stuff". But no offer there, either.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#42

Post by speeder »

dsmithatx wrote: post #32

One very important thing strikes me about this. Getting 38 job interviews is very much a sign of the times. In 2002 I was a highly skilled senior linux/aix/hp-ux/Solaris admin and PHP programmer and I got laid off. I submitted my resume more than 1000+ times in the first year and ZERO interviews. I hate to sound alarmist but, I fear many younger tech people may not realize how lucky they are currently. If the economy…

I am in Brazil.

I graduated in 2009, never had a legal job (according to Brazillian laws).

Also I too sent thousands of resumes since then, and since 2009 I got like 6 or 7 interviews in total (some that landed me a contract instead of a job...)

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#43

Post by blklane »

I applied to around 100 jobs over the course of 9 months when starting to learn how to program. For the startups I would get to a phone screen and potentially a technical challenge then be turned away. At the job I am at now, was contacted by CTO online, and had phoned/on-site/started within 5 days of initial contact.

I've seen a bunch of blog posts recently about some companies priding themselves on who they turn down versus who they accept and I feel that is one of the bigger problems we have as an industry in hiring.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#44

Post by p4wnc6 »

Any time a company asks me to do a HackerRank test, I immediately reject them. It's just not possible to have a quality engineering team and to also believe the results of HackerRank tests correspond to on-the-job success.

HackerRank is an attempt to commoditize software labor (literally reducing evaluation of your labor fitness to standardized examples). It communicates immediately that creativity is valued less than standardization, and that your uniformity and compliance are more valuable than your experiences.

It's also a way to position developers as lower-status employees -- you essentially have to capitulate to the judgement of higher-status employees. Even if you ace the code test, it puts you in a defensive position to justify yourself, which inherently reduces your negotiation power. If you submit something that is even slightly unconventional (even if it's provably just as or more accurate than conventional submissions), then your negotiation power is extremely damaged.

For example, think of the difference between actors who must audition and actors who are "offer only" -- they won't respond to your inquiry about hiring them unless you're prepared, based on their previous work, to make an offer already. If you ask Robert De Niro to audition, you'll get laughed out of the room. HackerRank is often like asking Robert De Niro not only to audition, but to do some kind of two-bit community improv class warm up exercise for his audition, then grilling him because he didn't enunciate clearly. Ridiculous.

Employers often say they want to "see how you think" -- when they say this, it's a good idea to run the other way. No one can grok some whiteboard code or some timed code test on standardized examples and draw any meaningful conclusions about "how you think" or how it will relate to job success. Someone who believes they can "see how you think" from narrow, time-constrained examples is going to be a terrible colleague or, worse, a very dysfunctional boss.

I think the trend of cultivating "full-stack" developers (instead of benefiting from specialization and separation of concerns) is the number one problem facing the software industry right now (and folks are largely in denial about it).

This nonsense with commodity interviews via HackerRank is the number two problem, followed closely by the prevalence of open-plan offices and the prevalence of Agile-like workflow management processes.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#45

Post by jkyle »

EricScottTaylor wrote: post #10
exabrial wrote: post #3

Nearly every silicon valley interview is based on whether or not you are as hipster as the interviewer. Keep your head up and don't subscribe to the culture. You can be excellent and live as different as you want.

Full disclosure, I work for HackerRank, but I really wanted to comment for two reasons: (1) Reading this article and seeing the comments, really helps me see how my daily work helps level the playing field and as Alibek says, change people's lives. Very fulfilling and thankful for that. (2) Re: exabrial's comment above, where do you think culture fit should be evaluated in the process? Lots of interview processes tod…

> Lots of interview processes today deal with culture fit at the end, but should it be item 1 and then coding skill item 2?

Culture fit should be focused on areas of professional interest, general preferred work modes, and possibly professional ethos (e.g. you're a big open source shop, are they an advocate?).

Many interviewers and companies think culture fit applies to non-professional aspects like do they like bicycles, wear the same clothes, like the same music. Unfortunately, this is easily filtered through unconscious and unintentional racial, gender, and age biases because what the interviewer is really doing is determining if the candidate is "like me".

It's the second interpretation that annoys and intimidates candidates and is probably a root cause to much of the diversity issues faced by the tech industry.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#46

Post by afandian »

EricScottTaylor wrote: post #10
exabrial wrote: post #3

Nearly every silicon valley interview is based on whether or not you are as hipster as the interviewer. Keep your head up and don't subscribe to the culture. You can be excellent and live as different as you want.

Full disclosure, I work for HackerRank, but I really wanted to comment for two reasons: (1) Reading this article and seeing the comments, really helps me see how my daily work helps level the playing field and as Alibek says, change people's lives. Very fulfilling and thankful for that. (2) Re: exabrial's comment above, where do you think culture fit should be evaluated in the process? Lots of interview processes tod…

If you work for the site, do you think you could get the it fixed? The social media buttons obscure the text and zoom is disabled for some reason so it's impossible to read.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#47

Post by edabobojr »

NTDF9 wrote: post #31

I read the article as: "It's not enough to be a mediocre engineer for a mediocre paying job. If you want to play in the local tennis league, you better be Roger Federer (without his pay)" I think software engineers should counter-question the interviewers. Interviewers should be allowed to judge the candidate only if they can answer the candidate's questions to them. If the interviewer cannot, he/she is not qualified…

I have done this and have done interviews I did most of the questioning as the interviewee. In my experience, this approach turns off a lot of people.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#48

Post by p4wnc6 »

logfromblammo wrote: post #41
kafkaesq wrote: post #5

So, how did you get to where you are today? I’ve always been passionate about coding, starting from my early days at Olympiad teams in high school and ACM teams in college. Anyone who's made it onto an Olympiad team[1] of any significant geographical scale, in any category, shouldn't have to deal with this whiteboard nonsense. Maybe a few lightweight-to-medium rounds to verify that they are what they say they are. Bu…

If only that were true. I'm a U.S. national event champion in Div. C Science Olympiad (Road Scholar), and I not only have to deal with whiteboard nonsense all the time, but also, the spouse never really believes that I know how to get anywhere from anywhere else. (Sure, argue with Siri/Google, rather than allowing that I might possibly know which direction north is.) Credentials are only as good as the trust other pe…

I did not do Olympiads, but I did score highly in math modeling competitions and won a competitive PhD fellowship.

I have had the exact same experience. I will get comments like, "That's the best submission we've seen for that take-home test" followed by literally no response of any kind after that. I've had places say, "you are absolutely perfect for our needs on Team X and you will help us meet our deadlines by the end of the year" and then make a job offer with a salary less than 80% of my current salary, worse equity, and worse benefits.

Companies sometimes want on-paper credential, but they almost never care about actual productivity or talent.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#49

Post by dominotw »

dsmithatx wrote: post #32

One very important thing strikes me about this. Getting 38 job interviews is very much a sign of the times. In 2002 I was a highly skilled senior linux/aix/hp-ux/Solaris admin and PHP programmer and I got laid off. I submitted my resume more than 1000+ times in the first year and ZERO interviews. I hate to sound alarmist but, I fear many younger tech people may not realize how lucky they are currently. If the economy…

>Getting 38 job interviews is very much a sign of the times.

I've noticed that many employers have copied google and have stated to interview with as many people as possible. Lots of them take pride in their acceptance ratio, some even advertising that on their careers page. Def a sign of times but might not in a way that you are suggesting.

Getting an interview is not all that hard these days, you can get an interview with google/facebook ect pretty easily.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#50

Post by logfromblammo »

busterarm wrote: post #24
EricScottTaylor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full disclosure, I work for HackerRank, but I really wanted to comment for two reasons: (1) Reading this article and seeing the comments, really helps me see how my daily work helps level the playing field and as Alibek says, change people's lives. Very fulfilling and thankful for that. (2) Re: exabrial's comment above, where do you think culture fit should be evaluated in the process? Lots of interview processes tod…

Given the trend I'm starting to see in my peer group of (non-asian) minority developers having difficulty finding work at their skill level or with appropriate compensation combined with the number of white developers I know who get turned down and told things "well, you just don't look like a developer" because they aren't frat-bro/hipster enough, I think that matching culture fit at the end instead of the beginning…

Except when the person you don't really want is objectively best at your arbitrary challenges. Then you just send that person home and pretend they didn't exist, apparently.

If I wanted to make suing companies my job, I would have been a lawyer. I'm not going to sue you, even if you deserve it. It takes too much effort. What you should really be afraid of is me posting such a negative interview report on Glassdoor that you start having trouble finding candidates who want to talk to you, and then going to interview with your competitors.

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