Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role • Hacker News Board

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#531

Post by thegayngler » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 10:13 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #496

thegayngler wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most engineers would not hire themselves. That has been apparent to me for awhile now. I’m not sure why they expect people to be to be better than they were when they were hired. I don’t expect engineers to be better than me. I have but one qualification. Can they do the job? Are they strong enough that I can guide them into the position I need them at if it is required. So much focus has been put on 10x this and hig…

>I don’t expect engineers to be better than me. I respect your opinion but I find this strategy very strange. (Or maybe I don't exactly understand what you're saying.) In my view, it would be a dream scenario if the next 10 programmers I hire were all superior to me . If I was the worst programmer on the team, that would be an ideal outcome. Yes, I've been programming for 30+ years but I'm also self-aware of my limit…

Of course you want the best you can get. I’m arguing 10x is constantly influx for any number of reasons. So it’s unlikely you’ll get one. If you have a process for making engineers into the best then you don’t need to look for the unlikely 10x because you can make them into the 10x high performers you need.

Ive seen companies literally turn good engineers into underperforming engineers...stifling them with process, tech debt, politics, etc... Then they get angry some people can perform and others can’t under the circumstances and conditions the management created.

I’ve watched perfectly good engineers get fired or forced out for not being miracle workers only for people to later realize there was nothing wrong with the engineer in the first place.

You don’t know who is going to be the best until you work with them. I would advise people to pick people they will like even under the worst of conditions and train them to the way you want them to be.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#532

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 10:15 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #386

bulatb wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Story time! I've failed a FizzBuzz. While failing interviews is basically my superpower, I think my git repositories, college graders, previous and subsequent employers, coworkers and clients might be somewhat shocked to learn that all that code was written by a guy who "couldn't code" at all. (The autograders and CI accepting all that non-code must have been exceptionally buggy.) But still, I failed the test. I told…

Putting yourself in the shoes of the company interviewing you: If you collapsed into a puddle of goo under pressure, to the point where you were incapable of performing a task "you could do in your sleep," why are you still a good choice to hire?

Optimally a company does not place their developers in stressful situations 100% of the time.

I mean, some do, and those are indeed better passing the GP. But most don't.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#533

Post by modbait » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 10:16 PM UTC

ropeadopepope wrote: post #486

modbait wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been my experience as well. In addition, people are generally pretty honest about where they're at, skill-wise. That said, I have seen several people who were open about lacking the basic requirements for a position get hired anyway. So, I wouldn't assume that seeing someone incompetent in a position means they lied to get there.

What field do you work in?

General Linux programming, in a variety of fields.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#534

Post by cableshaft » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 10:16 PM UTC

boyter wrote: post #462

rojobuffalo wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't like take-home assignments. It's a one-sided time investment. If I'm asked to do one I say that I'm only prepared to put in 45 minutes on it. Now that I've done this a few times and subsequently been rejected after submitting, I'm leaning towards rejecting assignments altogether. It doesn't really serve me well in job searching but I feel strongly about it. It's a bad investment on my time and the assi…

Same. Now that I am on the other side I send out a short piece of code and ask the person to point out all the errors in it. There are about 20. It takes about 5-10 minutes of the candidates time and I have had a lot of success with it.

Really wish more interviews were like this. My favorite onsite interview was when the interviewer printed out a class from the actual system I'd be working on (as I verified for myself later), asked me to figure out what it did, any errors I found, and a few ideas to improve or refactor it. Then he took my code sample and asked me to describe what it did as well.

After that he said "Okay, I know you know enough to handle the job, now I'm curious how much you really know. " (This is key, I feel. He specified I wasn't going to get dinged for not knowing the answers, so I didn't feel the pressure in the questions he asked afterwards, when I usually feel intense pressure, as I know I've been passed over for getting a single question wrong in multiple interviews in the past.) He then asked me some pretty deep questions about low level memory and other things, and if I said I didn't know he turned into teacher mode and taught me the concept.

I actually walked out of that interview having learned something new and useful. I then got to chat with the President very casually, and I received a job offer a few days later.

The interviewer new his stuff, too. He'd been programming arcade games in assembly for decades. His games have sold millions of dollars, and two of the series still get made today.

Ever since, I figured if a freaking legend could be satisfied after reviewing some code and a code sample, the crap I've had to endure everywhere else is completely and totally unnecessary, and it's just frustrated me to no end.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#535

Post by ljw1001 » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 10:19 PM UTC

phaedrus wrote: post #109

lostcolony wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. I've sat on the hiring side. I've seen impressive resumes. I've had reasonable discussions with people. And then I give them a very, very trivial coding exercise (a take home, they're free to Google, do it on their own computer, in their own IDE, in their professed preferred language), in a time frame that while constrained is still plenty...and the result is -terrible-. I can try and come up with reasons…

I once got knocked out of the running by a whiteboard-coding interview question that went something like "How would you find all triples from a list of a million integers, where the first two numbers add up to the third?" I said, "Hmmm that sounds like an O(N^3) problem." Interviewer: "Can you think of any way to do it in smaller big-O?" Me: "Not off the top of my head, no." For some reason that company insisted on o…

>For some reason that company insisted on only doing interviews at 7:00 AM, and my brain doesn't come fully online until after 9:00 anyway.

Reminds me of my final round at Amazon, which they always do in Seattle. I woke before 4 AM west coast time having flown out the night before from the East, and 12 hours later was still coding on a white board. After writing (to my surprise) a correct merge sort, they asked my to write a program to do basic math with, IIRC, binary numbers. I was like, um. I'm out.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#536

Post by komali2 » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 10:23 PM UTC

Barjak wrote: post #425

komali2 wrote: post #216

>Total Jobs Applied For: 82 >Total Jobs Where You Got an HR Interview 25 >Total Jobs Where You Got a Technical Interview: 15 >Total Jobs Where You Got an Onsite Interview: 2 >Total Job Offers: 1 From a recruitment standpoint, this guy's "sales funnel" is remarkably efficient. I'm more used to seeing a ration of 100 applications > 10-15 phone calls > 5 onsites/technicals > 1 offer. Needless to say he blew the initial…

What percentage of the 100 applications include a personalized cover letter these days? >It's a number's game. You must send a fuckload of resumes ... So you recommend not bothering with personalized cover letters? At this point I'm really starting to see the sense in this.

I can put together a customized, good looking and genuine cover letter within 5 minutes + another 5 minutes of research that was already happening to determine if I wanted to apply.

You should always send a cover letter because it can't hurt, can only help, and therefore game theory or some shit.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#537

Post by ljw1001 » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 10:24 PM UTC

s2g wrote: post #92

octorian wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...who nodded gravely as the CEO talked about the desperate shortage of software developers. This comment is exactly why reading about "interview gymnastics" like this really pisses me off. Its also why I wonder how many big tech companies are somehow able to hire so many people... With processes like these, you'd think that they either have a "secret backdoor" or never managed to actually hire more than a dozen or…

Volume. Huge volume. Google has a completely broken interview process, to the point where they pretty much brag about how ridiculous their false negative rate is, but they make up for it on volume. When people will throw themselves at you two or three times in hope of getting that lucky set of algorithm wankery questions that they can answer, then you will keep interviewing like that.

Actually, I suspect Google makes up for it on acquisitions. When I was there that's how most people got into the company.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#538

Post by CM30 » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 10:27 PM UTC

hitekker wrote: post #173

One thing I’d add: don’t ever check the box that says "Yes, I'm disabled" when applying to a company. Ever. Unlike declaring race or veteran status, admitting past or present disability can only hurt your chances at getting an offer. Some employers may appreciate the honesty, most of them will automatically and quietly hold it against you at every step of the hiring process. And they'll get away with it. Easily. The…

I'm not sure I'd agree with that. Found I had better results when interviewing when I mention being on the autistic spectrum beforehand. Possibly because otherwise the chances that I'd struggle in the interview were extremely high.

Then again, maybe it's different in the UK here compared to the US as well.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#539

Post by jonathankoren » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 10:29 PM UTC

twic wrote: post #508

Balgair wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, maybe we should 'equalize' the playing field then: Give everyone something from left field that pretty much all people bomb, that'll see how quick they learn. Exp: You must code in an unfamiliar language (Fortran 1988, for example) and do something simple in it. At least then you'll know that people are all starting from scratch. Time it, make sure it doesn't last more than 2 hours, see how laughably slow we all…

> You must code in an unfamiliar language (Fortran 1988, for example) Oh wow, that would definitely get me sweating. All the FORTRAN i learned was 77!

The joke is, that there is no FORTRAN 88, unless you count some prerelease version of FORTRAN 90. ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#540

Post by cableshaft » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 10:31 PM UTC

tkxxx7 wrote: post #395

cortesoft wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is only 'rational and efficient' if you are being obtuse... they aren't asking you to code a CSV parser because they actually need a CSV parser, they are asking because they want to see you code. The 'rational' thing to do is satisfy THAT requirement, which is the real one, not try to bypass the purpose by insisting on using a CSV library. The ability to understand the underlying need behind a request is impor…

> The ability to understand the underlying need behind a request is important to being a good employee. If a candidate fails completely to understand the purpose of a question during an interview, and in fact continues to argue against you as you explain it, they aren't a good candidate at all. I agree with everything you've said, but that still makes it a bad and equally obtuse question. If they don't actually need…

I recently couldn't use a built-in CSV parser and had to roll my own because one of our clients couldn't be arsed to send us consistently formatted CSV files so we had to include a bunch of edge cases in there to still correctly format the damn things. (sometimes pipe-delimited, other times comma delimited, sometimes fields surrounded by quotes, other times no quotes except one column (that has a LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME" in it), yet still other times has quotes in the data itself, fields usually have no commas, but sometimes this one field will have it in the middle of it, typos in header names, not including the end of file checksum that others include, etc). The built-in CSV reader you had to specify if the fields had surrounding quotes or not for the entire document, it didn't detect it on its own, for example.

And that was when I found out parsing something that should be as stupid simple as CSV file can actually be pretty complicated.