“I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews” • Hacker News Board

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#491

Post by llbeansandrice » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

abj wrote: post #484

llbeansandrice wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> getting a large group of people to say no to leetcode. I assume you mean LC to be a stand-in for the types of interviews that focus on LC-style questions? LC didn't invent these and they're certainly not to blame when companies ask senior SWE candidates to invert binary trees.

That's a great point - LC didn't invent binary tree questions. Leetcode might be the wrong term to use. Is there another, more general term I could use? I'm looking for a term that would be as clear to as most people as possible.

I'm not aware of one. I've always said LC-style interviews.

I don't think LC is entirely useless, I've seen people graduate with CS degrees but couldn't do fizzbuzz. But the prominence of it for certain interviews is frustrating in many cases.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#492

Post by rsynnott » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

okareaman wrote: post #461

brightball wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my big impressions of Go is that it's designed to facilitate exactly that. I've also heard comments in that vein.

Exactly: (from https://arto.s3.amazonaws.com/notes/go ) "The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they're not researchers. They're typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They're not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for…

This sort of "programming language designed for people we apparently have a very low opinion of" approach also greatly informed the design of Java, though Java has spent the last 20 years slowly retreating from it. It looks like Go might be following the same path; it's apparently getting generics at some point!

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#493

Post by chrisseaton » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

okareaman wrote: post #376

yodsanklai wrote: post #359

I've just landed a job at a FAANG company. Some random subjective comments based on my experience: - it was hard work - there was no way I could have passed these interviews without all the work. - my past experience and education barely helped me for the interview - it's not enough to be able to solve the problems, you need to be able to solve them on the spot, without much thinking, in an interview context - I pass…

> - it's not enough to be able to solve the problems, you need to be able to solve them on the spot, without much thinking, in an interview context Sounds like they're looking for assembly line programmers - crank out the code, pass it off, then on to the next piece of code without pause. This would be a nightmare for me. The high salaries and prestige of these companies definitely would not be worth it. I'm not neur…

> Sounds like they're looking for assembly line programmers

Sounds like the exact opposite - they're specifically looking for people who can actually solve algorithmic problems, rather than just code them up.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#494

Post by hnrodey » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

snarf21 wrote: post #470

yodsanklai wrote: post #359

I've just landed a job at a FAANG company. Some random subjective comments based on my experience: - it was hard work - there was no way I could have passed these interviews without all the work. - my past experience and education barely helped me for the interview - it's not enough to be able to solve the problems, you need to be able to solve them on the spot, without much thinking, in an interview context - I pass…

This process is all theater. We really need some kind of certification process instead. I'm a while out of school and one interview I went on had a requirement for a live coding session. The ask was to implement red/black trees from scratch despite the fact that they have an Angular app with MySQL on the backend. I took this as a blessing. I don't want to work at a place where they think this is a good way to hire pe…

+1 for some type of formal certification process.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#495

Post by jolux » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

alltakendamned wrote: post #306

jolux wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the only way it could possibly go away for good is database libraries that don’t support dynamic SQL. But you almost always need the flexibility at some point, and SQL is so powerful that taking it off the table is hard to justify.

just use prepared statements instead of string concantenation to build your SQL statements.

Absolutely, but most database libraries still allow concatenation.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#496

Post by palerdot » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

pickledcods wrote: post #346

echelon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our industry feels like it's in the decline of the Roman Empire right now. Our craft is becoming arcane: Microsoft is building VSCode for the cloud. Few people own desktop computers anymore. Apple is locking down MacOS to signed binaries. Soon we'll all have thin clients and will write software in the cloud for the cloud. Few will be able to learn how to engineer at home anymore - you'll have to go to a university or…

And then age... I'm an eighties whizz-kid, educated hardware and software background with borderline epiphanic understanding of computer technology. From firmware to systems where peoples lives literally depend on. In 2000 jumped on a plane to Taiwan to develop the first Arduino/RaspberryPi class devices. Still up to date and currently busy polishing a ShowHN which will blow you off your socks. Everything nowadays is…

> It is so bad that I have now seriously considered leaving the field, taking 40+ years experience with me.

Please don't. We need more people like you to infuse much needed energy in a field/profession that is becoming mundane and steadily going downhill day by day.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#497

Post by emeraldd » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

st1x7 wrote: post #409

emeraldd wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd buy it. - 17 years ago I was pretty good with Microchip PIC microcontroller assembly. (Haven't touched it since.) Today, I'd have to pull the datasheets and spend a few days re-reading them to remember much of any of it. - 9 years ago I worked heavily with a large, legacy perl code base and wrote a bunch of internal web apps in perl. Again, I haven't touched it since and again it would take me a while to get back…

I think that you're being to generous to the author. Your examples are true but a job interview doesn't ask you to refamiliazire yourself with a codebase or a tech stack, it asks whether you're familiar with algorithms, data structures and basic logic in any C-style language. That's a way more general skill than the details of your old assembly codebase. The article omits what the author's experience is and when they…

That's only partially true. Having dealt with these from both sides, I'd say you need to be familiar enough with some language (not necessarily c-style) to be able to write code on the fly ...

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#498

Post by _benj » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

anon9001 wrote: post #303

asdff wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed this a few times in my career and have had to start slowing myself down at times. If I deliver in a day instead of the expected two for example, I don't get that second day off, I get twice as much work and get paid the same for it. The harder I work, the less I make. If they want me to bust my ass and sacrifice sleep I need to be given hazard pay.

You're right, and as a result I try to work no more than 4 hours a day, preferably less. I take every possible opportunity to extend timelines, create buffer, and reduce scope. I'm highly incentivized to farm as much time as possible, so that's what I do. I try to target obscure projects that I already know how to do, where there's an assumption that nobody really knows how to do it because it's obscure. Complexity a…

I SO agree with this comment! Nowadays the only place in which I'm incentivized to deliver as quickly as possible at my personal project/micro-ventures. But at work I also work 4 hours or less, and those 4 hours are after I have worked and given my most productive/creative time to my projects.

So, if less than 4 hours and whatever is left of my brain is enough for my company, that's all they'll get

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#499

Post by shawnz » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

ghostpepper wrote: post #463

abj wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I avoided using the word union. In an ideal world, this would be a union. In (what I worry might be) the real world, the word union conjures unhelpful barriers to action. I'm less interested in fighting idealogical battles. I'm more interested in achieving a practical goal - getting a large group of people to say no to leetcode. My guess is more people will say no to leetcode if they think of it as a general…

To be blunt, most of my observations of traditional unions have given me the impression that they prevent the hardest workers from advancing and protect mediocre workers who do the bare minimum. The incentives appear to create a negative work environment for those who do want to excel, even in traditional union careers such as teaching and nursing. I agree with you that the trend of asking Leetcode (or any rote-learn…

A union that disincentivizes leetcode problems will reduce the ability of candidates who are best at rote-memorization problems to advance while protecting the ones who are mediocre at rote-memorization problems.

In this case it happens that people who are good at rote-memorization problems probably aren't the best people to lead the industry. But the union doesn't exist to serve the industry, it exists to protect the people working in it.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#500

Post by neilv » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #359

I've just landed a job at a FAANG company. Some random subjective comments based on my experience: - it was hard work - there was no way I could have passed these interviews without all the work. - my past experience and education barely helped me for the interview - it's not enough to be able to solve the problems, you need to be able to solve them on the spot, without much thinking, in an interview context - I pass…

I really appreciate your candor here.

I've long been opposed to the Leetcode battery interview processes, to the point that I started asking FAANG recruiters that several years ago, and saying that was a showstopper for me, like a signal for how they treated people. Though I otherwise wanted to work at a couple of them.

After consulting levels.fyi, however, I've revised my opinion: if an employer is willing to pay a higher-level software engineer 2x the total comp they'd make most other places... whatever interview process they want suddenly becomes a rich and honored cultural tradition, to be treasured, and approached with the utmost reverence and humility. :)

That said, for people who've frittered away their discretionary time on things like open source, hobbies, family, etc., rather than drilling for FAANG interviews, the well-known "test prep" commitment for Leetcode-oriented companies is a barrier to even applying there.