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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”

#651

Post by gofreddygo »

_9omd wrote: post #640
gofreddygo wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent practical advice. That part of just following the solution for the first 50-100 problems is spot on. It resonates very well with my experience learning math by first following the "solved" examples, fully understanding them, then solving similar "simple" problems, repeating them till they fit into muscle memory and only then attempting the challenging ones. First challenge I faced with leetcode is they do n…

I completely agree about leetcode lacking a technique map/graph/tree. This would be immensely useful. In my studies I found that I naturally gravitated to classes of problems I was already good at, because that way I could avoid the mental pain of learning new techniques. I really needed a roadmap that lead me to what I actually needed to study, and that showed me where I was strong and weak. But as you said, they ne…

Well thanks for your comments. Feels assuring knowing I'm not alone (although clearly in the minority) waving my hands at how crude and ineffective the common advice to "do leetcode" really is. That training site idea sounds exciting, much better than what exists today.

The key perspective shift from me was from - "I need to solve 200 leetcode problems before I can approach interviews with confidence" to - "Here are 50 techniques. Most solutions use a combination of these"

I started my journey splitting things into buckets (Arrays, Strings, Binary tree, BST, Stacks, Linked List, Matrix, Graphs, DP). I went through EPI and Leetcode populating those buckets. I started solving the easies for a month. Built a repo of questions and links so huge, it would take me years (really, years) to get through it sequentially. That was depressing and with no sense of immediate reward, gave up.

A few weeks later, I decided to reduce scope and focus only on Arrays, Strings, BST and Graphs. Turns out that isn't a great approach either as there are a lot of overlaps between Array and String problems and by the time I got to the string problem that used a technique similar to what I had used in a problem in Arrays, i'd forgotten most of it anyway. Repeated this a few time and it gave me the impression that I couldn't remember shit, I wasn't cut out for this and gave up, again.

My latest attempt is to focus on data structures (properties, strengths and tradeoffs) and techniques. This has been liberating so far but is a lot of work which drove me to look for resources adopting such a perspective and I found none. I believe its probably a lot of work (like you mention) but I wouldn't know unless I get through more problems. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#652

Post by user5994461 »

landtuna wrote: post #145
solipsism wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some other problem. None of us can say what it is unless you share your resume, what companies you've applied to, etc. But if you get "no hits" with 20 years of experience in Python and C++, the problem is 100% not "missing machine learning and cloud experience".

Is that an offer? :) https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimhunziker/ One hit was for making machine guns target humans better. (I rejected the in-person interview.) Another dropped me because they wanted cloud experience. A YC company changed the job from remote to SF only before we talked.

How big is Bernardsville, New Jersey? Is it New York basically or is it elsewhere, countryside?

One really bad thing about the industry that's rarely talked about is how the jobs are concentrated in a few cities worldwide. If you're in SV/NYC you're fine but if you're in a small city there might hardly be any opportunity.

I would had some numbers in the resume. When you say large amount of data for example, how many sensors? how many GB per day?

You're saying you're a consultant? I think it could turn off some companies who are looking for a permanent employee. Also, it's really uncommon for a consultant to work at the same company for 6 years.

If you've worked mainly for two clients, you could describe that as two separate jobs. That would add way more content and show more experience. The resume is quite empty right now for 20+ years.

P.S. Can see all the experience going back to 1999. There's no problem of linkedin hiding anything for me.

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

#653

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

koonsolo wrote: post #275
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way you size up anyone else's aptitude, really: by making them feel comfortable, speaking with them honestly, trying to quickly figure out what excites them and asking lots of follow-up questions. When someone is eager and bright, and they've been made to feel relaxed, it's usually obvious. Conducting a great interview is hard. It requires some mentorship and a ton of practice. Not everyone's cut out for it.…

Again an answer with a lot of fluff but no real content. So what do you ask then? How do you assess the skills of the candidate?

"Can you tell me about a hard problem you've solved?" is usually enough to kick off a good dialogue. It gives you a little peek into their approach to solving problems, but also tells you what they think is hard. If you ask good follow up questions, you'll very quickly have a solid understanding of their current experience levels and a rough gauge of their aptitude. A lot of it comes from intuition and experience interviewing and hiring.

Building out a great team is more art than science, and you won't ever hone that craft by throwing coding challenges at your applicants - you just end up with a group of people who are a bit more likely to be very good at jumping through arbitrary hoops.

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

#654

Post by mosdave »

kingnothing wrote: post #620
pdovy wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google, at least, does the same style of interview for Senior and Staff positions as they do for entry level. It's just that the expectations are obviously different.

This is dumbfounding. Kinda tells you what kind of shit-eating devs they're looking for. What staff-level engineer possessing even a modicum of self respect would willingly subject themselves to this?

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

#655

Post by user5994461 »

dcl wrote: post #41
nulptr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

were you applying for a data scientist or software engineer position?

Senior Data Scientist. I've got a feeling that these large corporations have started to realise that the 'data scientists' (commerce and engineering grads that know some python) they are hiring are all pretty useless because they don't have the engineering skills to actually get anything done. A lot of the job advertisments for 'data scientists' I see these days focus WAY more on things like 'AWS, Spark, building pip…

Data Science and Machine Learning are buzzwords with little jobs behind them.

There's work to do around data (databases, logs, analytics, marketing, business intelligence, etc...) but none of it has to do with stats/maths. The realization is quite hurtful for those who wished to pursue data science.

The only field that recruits maths folks is finance, specifically quants, who are doing financial analysis all day. It's only a few roles in a few places and highly selective.

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

#656

Post by WOTERMEON »

runawaybottle wrote: post #250
jwmoz wrote: post #236

You don't have to do it. Depends on how desperate you are for it. I've had a successful 10+ year career in web dev in the UK. I've always avoided places that had a technical interview, it's a phobia of mine. I've landed multiple contracts without any technical interview, a couple of them from just an informal chat. I once kept rejecting an interview for a company that specified a tech test, then 6 months after they f…

The situation in America is that no name startups are doing the same type of interviews.

It's the same in UK Went over interview process this year. A complete joke with no name startups asking the most absurd things for middle level positions

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

#657

Post by WOTERMEON »

prh8 wrote: post #84
xiphias2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many Petabytes of data are you working with? Maybe your company is too small for data structures and cutting every 0.1ms latency count. As an example at Google I needed director level exception to introduce 0.1ms latency to the ads server (which wasn't needed at the end, but the monetary damage for timeouts is real). Understanding basic data structures and how the computer works is important in these cases, even…

The rarity of this scenario is not remotely close to once every 3 years, and not everyone is interviewing to work on something so obscenely performance dependent. Probably >99% of developers will never encounter something like this in their career.

That's why >99% doesn't work@ fang

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

#658

Post by mattst88 »

goldenManatee wrote: post #571
shaftway wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the interviewer pool at Google. Other FAANGs might be different. I've had candidates ask me why we do this, and my answer is that once you're in the company, transferring to another job on the same ladder is fairly trivial and requires no technical re-interviews. I go on to describe how I've been around for 10 years and am on my 5th team. None of those transfers required any sort of technical re-check. Teams t…

I’m not sure how unique that is, though. Most companies once you’re in doing technical, your peers will trust you to switch teams or broaden out a little. Re-testing a coworker would come off anywhere between amusing and insulting.

We would always interview internal candidates for technical abilities at Intel.

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

#659

Post by eeZah7Ux »

okareaman wrote: post #590
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Cherry-picking C++ as an example?

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

#660

Post by user5994461 »

prh8 wrote: post #84
xiphias2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many Petabytes of data are you working with? Maybe your company is too small for data structures and cutting every 0.1ms latency count. As an example at Google I needed director level exception to introduce 0.1ms latency to the ads server (which wasn't needed at the end, but the monetary damage for timeouts is real). Understanding basic data structures and how the computer works is important in these cases, even…

The rarity of this scenario is not remotely close to once every 3 years, and not everyone is interviewing to work on something so obscenely performance dependent. Probably >99% of developers will never encounter something like this in their career.

It's an improbable scenario for most developers in the world but it's normal day to day work for quite a few developers working at large companies.

There's no surprise that people are screening for the roles they are trying to fill.

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