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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”

#581

Post by opportune »

abj wrote: post #370

What if we form a group/site that refuses to do leetcode interviews? This seems like a classic coordination problem. If enough people refuse, companies will have their talent pool limited. We could use this group to help match companies and developers who don't want to leetcode. If it's true that leetcode filters out great developers, than companies who 'can't find talent' should be able to use our group to find some…

Leetcode also filters out bad developers. I’ve said this on HN many times before but I don’t actually want to work with people who can’t solve basic leetcode.

There are a lot of “experienced” engineers out there who don’t know how to tie their shoes once they’re out of their comfort zone. Try interviewing people, you’ll see.

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

#582

Post by Rebelgecko »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #364
Rebelgecko wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Culture fit" is one of those things that seems to be used as a proxy for traits that are illegal to take into consideration during the hiring process.

Also a proxy for not wanting to build a team where people don't like each other. Culture fit isn't a bad thing unless you take it too far.

It's OK to challenge people's beliefs. Make a misogynist work with women on their team. Don't enable those sorts of attitudes

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

#583

Post by QuesnayJr »

ldng wrote: post #430
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…

Well, now that you've started working. Have you actually applied any of it ? To make an analogy, I'm always perplexed at how you're asked to build an EPR on the spot and then all you do is general electricity mundane work. I've seen a lot of EPR builder beeing incapable of simple wiring ...

What's an EPR? I did a search, and none of the meanings I found seem to fit.

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

#584

Post by tomcat27 »

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

So true. It's not enough to write some approach that's better than brute force. We need to write the best possible method. And sometimes interviewers do not encourage methods that are not on their mind.

Just sucks!!

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

#585

Post by pb7 »

LolWolf wrote: post #579
pb7 wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where this misguided implication comes from that FAANG doesn't have a sane schedule or reasonable work expectations. The people that work a lot do so because they're some of the most passionate in the industry and enjoy working a lot as a result. On average, I would speculate FAANG is less stressful and more reasonable than other companies. The reason you may think that is not the case is that negative s…

I would describe FAANG (in my and many friends' experiences) as "adult daycare." Not in a bad way, mind you, but very much "get your homework done and go have your free time after." (This excludes higher management and architects, etc., of course. I mean this as a middle-of-the-road SWE on a decent team.) I'm not quite sure where the GP got stressful, but it is soul-sucking if you expect your work to be interesting,…

I fully agree. It is soul-sucking at times, but nowhere near as soul-sucking as the life I came from and I will never stop being grateful for that. If I want more excitement from working, I can always pick up the exact work of my personal interest on the side (but I don't, because there are so many other interesting things to do outside of software). I'd rather have great security and quality of life from the work that puts a roof over my head.

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

#586

Post by pdovy »

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…

Curious if any FAANG employees know if this kind of thing is still standard above a certain level, or does say "staff" level and above tend to be internal promotions only?

I guess the pay is phenomenal but I have a hard time imagining that this kind of algorithmic trivia approach makes any sense at all for hiring into senior roles. Especially if someone was trying to move laterally between FAANGs.

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

#587

Post by scott_meyer »

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 can't wait until I have enough money to be financially independent and never have to do this nonsense again.

There are a lot of people operating on that plan. Mostly it doesn't work out for them.

Play this forward ten years with a family to support and a mortgage which committed you to personal inflation and a track record of ...? You can absolutely fool people for a week or a year, but a decade of non-experience will stick out like a sore thumb. Experience compounds, and the one you describe is compounding down. Do this for ten years and you will be much less accomplished than you could be.

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

#588

Post by anon9001 »

rorykoehler wrote: post #377
anon9001 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This sums up perfectly why I’m pro universal basic income. How many people do this? Think of all the collective brain cycles wasted. We’re stealing from our future. You’re clearly smart and capable. Work you don’t find rewarding stole your motivation. If you could work on projects that reflect the world you want to live in you would create something much more valuable top society than whatever it is you’re half assin…

I don't know who's downvoting you, but this is also why I support UBI.

One of my biggest fears is that by the time I can stop working, I won't have any will left to pursue passionate endeavors that would benefit society.

Even if I just didn't need to worry about health insurance cost, that would be enough to shorten my financial independence timeline by years.

If I had sufficient UBI to cover basic expenses for the year, I would quit right now.

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

#589

Post by andybak »

We've been trying to hire a part-time contract dev recently and we hate the process so we've been a little half-assed about it.

As a result I think we've stumbled across a fairly effective approach.

We ask them to do a half day to day coding task based on a real requirement. We pay them for this as we have few enough applicants that we want to test that we can afford to.

We give them the requirement as if it came directly from the client. It's incomplete and there's a few assumptions they might make that would be incorrect.

It's fascinating to watch how people have approached this. We've only done two so far but the degree to which they ask the right questions vs leap in and try and code their way through it is revealing a lot.

Our initial setup instructions had a couple of errors in and this too has been really useful. Watching how they respond and how they resolve the problem.

It's remarkably close to real world tasks - poorly worded requirements, problems with documentation, missed assumptions that it feels like we're testing the things we really want to test.

The difficulty is that we can't come right out and tell them this is what we're doing and the artificial nature of the test might make them less likely to ask questions that they would ask in a live task. We've tried to drop hints to guide them into doing so however.

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

#590

Post by okareaman »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #561
okareaman wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you imagine how many times Google was burned by junior devs writing C++ no matter how smart they were? Memory bugs at Google scale must be expensive. They had to come up with Go.

How about hiring better engineers instead?

I know C++ and I know Rust is growing because of memory problems in C++ code. I would agree with this statement "It requires years of experience and great discipline to avoid errors in C++" from this article https://www.toptal.com/c-plus-plus/top-10-common-c-plus-plus...
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