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Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

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Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#61

Post by pmiller2 »

zubairq wrote: post #45
dilaver wrote: post #3

" When I go into ‘interviewing mode’ I stop working on side projects, I stop visiting bs sites like reddit, news sites, and even HN. If it isn’t going to help you get that job just cut it from your life. Focus intensely on learning and writing job applications until you get there. This process isn’t fun, why drag it out any longer than you need to. "

actually this is the right advice. To find a job IS a full time job. No one wants to hear it but after running NemCV and getting data on around 15,000 job hunters, I saw that the people who treat looking for a job AS A JOB get a job over 10x faster than those who don't... Here is a link to the meetup we have run for 5 years too: http://www.meetup.com/get-your-dream-job/

It's too bad I'm thousands of miles away from you. I would go to that meetup. :)

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#62

Post by mysterypie »

exBarrelSpoiler wrote: post #43

It's quite fitting that the dating scene in S.F. is often similar to tech interviewing. Play the number games, don't get attached, and move on. Nothing personal, it's just metrics. Is this what cutthroat economic competition does to people?

The dating scene is messed up for men in the Bay Area because eligible men vastly outnumber eligible women. It's as simple as that. All the unnatural relationship dynamics flows from this fact. More men study computer science, math, physics, and engineering than women do. Silicon Valley is a magnet for people in those fields. Silicon Valley ends up with way more single men in the 20-40 age bracket than single women.

If you a straight single male, you have an important decision. If you value the immense professional opportunies of the Bay Area more than finding a partner, then do move there. If you think that finding a partner is also very important, then consider finding your job someplace with better ratios. If the Bay Area 20-40 dating pool is something like 3 male to 1 female, that means 2/3 of single men will be without partners.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#63

Post by citeguised »

"Things like knowing the box model, closures, map/filter/reduce, object vs array, prototypes, bind/call/apply, event delegation. These made up almost ever single first phone screen interview I’ve ever had."

Seems pretty hefty for a junior-frontend-position.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#64

Post by lrem »

pmorici wrote: post #11

This has got to be one of the most honest descriptions of how job hunting actually works ever written and posted on HN. It's a sharp contrast to a lot of the stuff that is posted here that depicts job hunting like some kind of spiritual search for your life's passion.

Really depends on your circumstances. I've been doing part-time gigs since I turned 18 and recently finished my PhD. When I searched for my first full-time job I interviewed with a bunch of companies in different industries in different countries. I got an offer from every one of them and it really turned into a search of where I think I would be the happiest.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#65

Post by pmiller2 »

mysterypie wrote: post #62
exBarrelSpoiler wrote: post #43

It's quite fitting that the dating scene in S.F. is often similar to tech interviewing. Play the number games, don't get attached, and move on. Nothing personal, it's just metrics. Is this what cutthroat economic competition does to people?

The dating scene is messed up for men in the Bay Area because eligible men vastly outnumber eligible women. It's as simple as that. All the unnatural relationship dynamics flows from this fact. More men study computer science, math, physics, and engineering than women do. Silicon Valley is a magnet for people in those fields. Silicon Valley ends up with way more single men in the 20-40 age bracket than single women.…

It's actually not quite that bad, but there are some areas where men outnumber women by over 40% [0]. The ratio is a little better in Silicon Valley, at about 1.14:1 [1]. The SF/Oakland/Hayward metro area fares a little better at 0.93:1 overall [2], but that doesn't take into account how difficult is is to access SF from the East Bay and vice versa. It doesn't take much of a skew to really mess up the ratios.

[0]: http://visualizing.nyc/bay-area-zip-codes-singles-map/

[1]: http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2014/10/02/study-says-silicon-va...

[2]: Ibid.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#66

Post by oblio »

pmiller2 wrote: post #59
sschueller wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there no trial period in the US? Every person we hire here (Switzerland) gets interviewed but because it is almost impossible to know if someone is going to work out there is a trial period of three months by law. Usually with a termination time of one week. After the trial you will usually need to give at least three month notice. You can get the most brilliant Coder but if he/she doesn't work with your existing…

Unless there's an employment contract or collective bargaining agreement stating otherwise, people can be fired in the US at any time for almost any reason. That "almost" hides a little nuance, such as the reason can't be related to race, gender, or certain other "protected" reasons, but, "any reason" is a pretty good approximation. No notice period is required. If you're lucky, you get to walk out by yourself carryi…

That's horrible. And I'm from Romania, which is a second world country, basically.

We usually have a two week notice (it depends on the company and the position) and I've never seen someone escorted out. There's often a short inventory of company assets you used, and that's it.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#67

Post by evgen »

oblio wrote: post #66
pmiller2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless there's an employment contract or collective bargaining agreement stating otherwise, people can be fired in the US at any time for almost any reason. That "almost" hides a little nuance, such as the reason can't be related to race, gender, or certain other "protected" reasons, but, "any reason" is a pretty good approximation. No notice period is required. If you're lucky, you get to walk out by yourself carryi…

That's horrible. And I'm from Romania, which is a second world country, basically. We usually have a two week notice (it depends on the company and the position) and I've never seen someone escorted out. There's often a short inventory of company assets you used, and that's it.

It has its downsides, but the benefit of such a system is that it is easier to hire someone as well. It lowers the risk of hiring if you know that you can terminate employment just as easily, so the jobs market ends up being a bit more robust at the cost of a bit more volatility.

It should also be noted that for the sort of jobs we are talking about here there is a difference between being terminated 'for cause' (e.g. incompetence, theft from your employer, etc) and termination due to downsizing and the job itself being eliminated. In the latter case you will often get a package of benefits and the termination process is somewhat similar to the one you are familiar with.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#68

Post by kybernetikos »

swang wrote: post #54
kybernetikos wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about the take homes. But this may primarily be because I've been hiring with a heavily weighted take-home for the last six months. Here's my reasoning: 1. I don't want to work for a company that uses CVs as a major part of its job screen, since they are nearly useless from an informational point of view. Steps that improve the quality of candidates also improve the expected quality of your future colleagu…

i don't think pure cvs are the answer. i don't think a take-home is either. especially since a lot of companies expect you to put a lot of sweat into these take-homes. if your take-home is a "half-day" which means... 12 hours? half a work-day? what? that does not sound appealing to me. unless you are actually building something unique, offering more stock, or more money, or a better work environment i am not sure how…

half-day means four hours. I'm being generous there, because a skilled developer can create a good solution in 2 hours, but many find they want to put around 4 hours in.

In terms of what you have to do for the take home to be a success, we explain that fairly clearly these days. I'm now on the 6th version of it because I ask for feedback from the people who do it and try to improve the wording and make it more clear over time. I also provide contact details for people with questions.

It's also a fact though that simply achieving the task is not enough if the code you used to do it is sufficiently poorly factored or overcomplicated to a ridiculous extent. We don't mark people down based on superficial coding style. Fails get marked by more than one person, the marking team is small and regularly talks about the individual tests they are marking, but there'll definitely be situations where working code gets marked as fail.

The person marking the take home does so before they get access to the CV. They do usually know the name, we'd need a more complicated process to redact names from submissions, but it might be worth doing.

I am sure there are ways we can improve our process, and I am aware that there will be lots of companies out there with a process even worse than ours, but I wanted to talk about it, partly as a way of getting feedback with the aim of improving it more, and partly because I hope that others can learn from what we've done.

I have been pretty happy about the team we've built with this process compared to teams that I've been involved with building in the past, so there are definitely good parts to it. The two big concerns I have with it are 1. are we being equitable with peoples time and 2. can we reduce the number of skilled candidates who refuse to do it on principle.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#69

Post by user5994461 »

lrem wrote: post #64
pmorici wrote: post #11

This has got to be one of the most honest descriptions of how job hunting actually works ever written and posted on HN. It's a sharp contrast to a lot of the stuff that is posted here that depicts job hunting like some kind of spiritual search for your life's passion.

Really depends on your circumstances. I've been doing part-time gigs since I turned 18 and recently finished my PhD. When I searched for my first full-time job I interviewed with a bunch of companies in different industries in different countries. I got an offer from every one of them and it really turned into a search of where I think I would be the happiest.

Sorry to say it but if everyone says yes without further thinking, it means that they know they're screwing you ^^

Lowball salary? No benefit? Bad company desperate to hire? There can be many explanations.

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