Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

jarednelsen.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 851 posts

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#461

Post by AlexCoventry »

jrempel wrote: post #108
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…

In my experience, startup interviews are even less personal and more leetcode based than FAANG. aka solve leetcode hard in 40m on a whiteboard

My experience has been the opposite of yours.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#462

Post by biglost »

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #116
gonehome wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of reasons: - Comp: Total comp for a new hire with 3+ yrs dev experience is probably 300k -> 400k at a FAANG on average (with possibility to be higher). If you want to live and raise a family in your own house in the bay area (2.5 Million for a reasonable house), this matters. - Access: Few places have the kind of scale and resources of these companies, that can make them fun places to work. You also get to…

I must admit I always feel weird when I see numbers like that mentioned for software engineers. In Germany a more reasonable number with a few years of experience might be in the €50-55k ballpark. Granted, the cost of living is significantly lower in most cities here than it is in the bay area, but still it just feels... weird. Edit: Fixed a typo.

Here in Chile, swe coworkers earn about 25k after tax if you are not a manager, boss or the like.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#464

Post by f2000 »

I'm in my late 50s and after 10+ years at same company I found myself on the job market. 1998 was the last time I had any real interviews - after that point it was all networking with no real tech interviews. After much cursing at the advent of white boarding and code tests, I finally just caved and bought a leetcode subscription and starting working problems I hadn't seen since the late 80s in college. Long story short, After 8 interviews I landed a great job with Big Company. At the end of the day, it's a game. You can play it or complain about it, but it is what it is. Has leetcode made me a better programmer? NO. What has helped though is stackoverflow and github.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#465

Post by jrjarrett »

I start a new position Monday. I expected my search to be exactly like this, so I started early.

Within a week of setting the "would hear from recruiters" flag on my admittedly-thin LinkedIn profile, I had 3 solid leads from 3 companies.

I had 3 in-person interviews, and even feeling like I flailed a bit on a couple of the coding exercises (I had the exact panic about writing The Game of Life in 60 minutes), I had two offers and one almost-offer. (The almost was more due to they wanted a principal engineer vs. senior engineer).

Maybe around where I am companies are learning their lesson.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#466

Post by kyllo »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #291
petagonoral wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

I've held many other white collar jobs in my career. Software engineering is different, the interviews are at least an order of magnitude harder.

Google knows and admits that their process has flaws and their HR team does internal studies on it. Just because Google does something, and Google is big, doesn't mean what they do is optimal.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#467

Post by cortesoft »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #415
cortesoft wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might not even have reached the management team... who knows if the recruiter passed this on or not.

If you have ever been in a situation where things were done to a standard of excellence, this type of excuse is simply unacceptable. People who have first-hand experience with environments that pursue excellence in earnest have little patience for such nonsense. Kind of like the movie line "Failure is not an option." The line involves a bit of creative license, but was based on the movie people interviewing someone f…

I wasn’t implying that it was ok... just that it might not be the hiring managers doing the ignoring.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#469

Post by friendlybus »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #33

Comedian Daniel Tosh had a bit about people that claimed to be smart, it's just that they were just bad at taking tests. He said, "oh, so you struggle with the part where we find out what you actually know?" I hear a lot of complaints about the "typical" software engineering hiring process, and it usually comes from the people that don't do well within the current system. Could the process be improved? Almost certain…

The hiring process at Google has a different function at a start up. Google needs to weed out hundreds, thousands of applicants and the good jobs people tend to want to stay in. Google needs to filter more than it needs to hire. I don't know why people see being rejected for a job at Google as a testament to their worth as a programmer.

People who see their worth as a programmer in creating good valuable software and are willing to sacrifice a lot for it tend to make startups. People who want to mark their skills as a programmer in receiving a large number of skills and working their way up to the top of the tree tend to join a large corp.

I don't get this comparative, 'my job is tougher' mindset. Resting your families' livelihood on the back of your startup programming skills is as pressure filled as being the backbone of a highly strung project in the heights of a large corp.

When the startup wins, the large corp licenses it. When the large corp wins, it opens an API to the smaller devs. Too much sour grapes around lately.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#470

Post by alfiedotwtf »

When I was young and free the FAANGs were my ultimate dream. I even saw the interview process as a cool pissing contest. However living in the US wasn't for me, so always had to regrettably pass on interviews... but now as time passed and we've seen the FAANGs go from good guy to Bond villain, I'm forever glad I never hauled my family across the world to be part of the cool gang.

Talking to friends who now work for the FAANGs, I've heard stories of having to spend 40+ hours (re-reading Sedgewick and practicing programming questions etc) to just prepare for the first round.

Fuck that...

FAANG interviews might be dystopian, but if you look outside the Silicon Valley bubble, you can find interviews that are far more enjoyable than spending days in front of whiteboards just to move onto the next round. The most common pattern of past interviews for me has been beer/coffee/coke and a 30 minute chat about the company's future goals and see if I fit might in. That should be how it's done.

Post reply on HN