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

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

#531

Post by itronitron »

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…

I left two years ago and have been largely pursuing my own extended interests. One result is that 90% of the HN postings seem to be absolute wastes of time (to me at least.)

Stay curious.

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

#532

Post by monksy »

echelon wrote: post #55
decafninja wrote: post #12

Unless you've made it to your "endgame" company that you're happy to stay at for a while, I feel investing anything more than the bare minimum to get your assigned work done is worth less than just grinding leetcode and otherwise studying for interviews. Doing an actual good job, above and beyond, is not going to be worth much when you're looking for your next job. Thus we're now seeing the rise of Professional Inter…

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…

We have people who claim to be engineers but start thorwing a fit when they're required to do unit testing. (Aka the anti-vaxxers of software engineering)

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

#533

Post by decafninja »

dnautics wrote: post #516
decafninja wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an extremely, extremely, extremely, unlikely edge case though. You're more likely to get simultaneous offers from all the letters in FAANG while also simultaneously becoming a 1MM+ subscriber Youtube star than you are of repeating Brian's story (or even a fraction of it).

well there is the story of when Google acquired youtube at the all-hands meeting the CTO addressed the engineering department and asked them how many of them had been rejected by google, and half of the people there shot their hands up. Probably they had a better windfall, and "Google could have saved more than a few billion"

On a similar vein, I recall a story that said most Googlers thought they probably wouldn't pass the technical interview if they had to go through it again. Does match with what my friends who made it into FAANG say as well - none of them are confident they'd be able to do it again with any certainty.

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

#534

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #347
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our industry feels like it's in the decline of the Roman Empire right now. .... And here I am, writing a desktop native app that targets a small niche of users, with no marketing, no advertising, and we've had our strongest year yet, and overall usage just grows slowly year over year. Maybe it's how you think things ought to be that is misaligned with reality, rather than "the decline of the Roman Empire".

Just because one household in the empire is having a good year doesn't mean the empire isn't on the verge of collapse.

The thing is, it's not one household. Every other company I'm in touch with in the audio software world (quite a few) had a banner year. Yes, the pandemic helped us by forcing lots of people to be stuck at home and turning to that song they'd always meant to record/write. But it was the icing on the cake for a market that generally continues to improve, despite stupid levels of competition.

Now of course, if by "household" you meant "the entire niche of audio software", then sure. Or maybe even more broadly, "the entire niche of creative software", then even more sure.

But these are not tiny niches, even if they are small.

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

#535

Post by cbozeman »

MattGaiser wrote: post #95
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…

> The Internet now treats everyone using it like we're all brainless idiots to be injected with dopamine. Like we're not smart enough to choose how to consume it. Have we generally proven otherwise?

The problem is that most people are. Look at the statistical breakdown of intelligence. Half of the world is 100 IQ and below. Half. Hell, 16% of all people are 85 IQ and below. That's over a billion people worldwide.

Any technology that you want to see enormous widespread adoption of, has to be usable by some of those people.

And believe me, no business-minded person wants to throw a billion potential customers to the wayside. They want to simplify the technology to capture those dollars.

Sorry if this offends sensibilities of anyone, but I guarantee you if you could get inside the heads of a lot of these billionaires and multi-millionaires, you'd hear the same shit I'm telling you right here. The reason I know this is because my Uncle is one of those people. Smart. Ruthless. And has absolutely no qualms about exploiting people of lower intelligence.

Don't think for a minute that the SV crowd is any different.

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

#536

Post by vsareto »

data_spy wrote: post #523
SQueeeeeL wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the ex-Googler's I've met have always been average; but I guess if no one will say the emperor has no clothes it doesn't matter

It used to mean something more than it does now. I noticed ex-Googlers were well above average in 2012, now they can be below avg. I have a colleague of mine at my current job that makes a point of being an ex-Googler but they only worked there for 6 months, so it is kind of meaningless.

Global average or people-who-work-at-FAANG average?

The frame of reference here is important, otherwise average is pretty meaningless since we have no objective list of what an average developer consists of.

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

#537

Post by yodsanklai »

neilv wrote: post #500
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…

Thanks, I tried to give an objective assessment but I'm certainly a bit biased because it eventually worked out well for me (luck being a factor).

But I understand that people who invested a lot of time (and sometimes money) on their preparation feel extremely bitter if it didn't pay out in the end. It's also unfair that some candidates (especially some who have a family or not much time off) simply may not have the time for this.

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

#538

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

pbourke wrote: post #335
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our industry feels like it's in the decline of the Roman Empire right now. .... And here I am, writing a desktop native app that targets a small niche of users, with no marketing, no advertising, and we've had our strongest year yet, and overall usage just grows slowly year over year. Maybe it's how you think things ought to be that is misaligned with reality, rather than "the decline of the Roman Empire".

Looks like Ardour is open source. How do you make money?

Source is always available without cost. Pre-built binaries are available via a pay-what-you-want pay tunnel. Subscriptions are encouraged to allow us to continue developing the software. We made on the order of US$200k this year.

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

#539

Post by [deleted] »

cableshaft wrote: post #472
vmception wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key for US compliance is to build a form of consumptive utility before the sale and never talk to your actual or potential buyers about the things they want to talk about (future prices, exchange listings). Look at IMVU’s no action letter for the kind of guidance US lawyers have been giving but nobody has been able to talk about. The SEC publicly agreed and I can confirm it matches the guidance given to many proj…

Huh. Okay, I'll take your word on it, I haven't done the research. Is this still a project you're actively working on, or have you moved on to other things?

[deleted]

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

#540

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

dbspin wrote: post #389
jarl-ragnar wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like it’s Ardour DAW https://ardour.org/

Yikes, tried to use Ardour multiple times back in the day (I used to work as an independent radio producer and sound engineer). Classic open source desktop software in that it promised the world, but in practice was extremely difficult to even get to install, and reliant on external packages that were themselves glitchy and baroque (I believe Jack was the common issue in this case).

The prebuilt binaries of Ardour that we supply have no external dependencies except for libc, the native window system (X11, Cocoa/Quartz, etc), and libstc++. Since Ardour 5.0, JACK has been optional.

Every week, more or less, someone tells me that Ardour is a piece of shit, and someone else tells me it's the best DAW they've ever used. I gave up believing that any given DAW could ever make everyone happy about a decade ago.

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