“I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews” • Hacker News Board

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

#671

Post by gknoy » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:32 AM UTC

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #598

gknoy wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At scale, it might be hard to do that, however this doesn't address the key problem. One of the hallmarks of good engineering is to add technical safeguards, rather than relying solely on Smart People. It would be comical to hear, "Hire better pilots" as an alternative to building parachutes, or fly-by-wire systems. Every one makes mistakes. This is why we have tests, linting, code review. Our choice of tools that we…

> This is why we have tests, linting, code review. None of which is related to using a dumbed-down language. > At Google's scale, I can completely understand why they might feel that developing a new tool was the best way to prevent a core set of problems. There's plenty of research around software reliability and on the sources of bugs across different languages. Research shows that verbose languages e.g. Java don't…

Tests, linting, and code review are all tools that we use to find mistakes before they get into production code.

A "dumbed-down" language is a tool that prevents one from being able to write certain classes of errors (e.g. some of the footguns from C).

Changing the language doesn't mean you make less mistakes, but it means that you make different kind of mistakes. I'm rather unlikely to make an error related to memory allocation in Python or Java, for example.

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

#672

Post by Thorrez » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:32 AM UTC

abiogenesis wrote: post #238

Thorrez wrote: post #202

I agree with a lot of this, but not this part: > Young people aren't benefiting from these tests either. To succeed in the testing process, you need to code defensively against edge-case problems. I think coding defensively against edge cases is good. It helps prevent security problems. I am a bit of a perfectionist so I know I lean this way more than others, but it just seems like a good idea to me, especially any c…

Author's point is it's neither an indicator for senior developers (too much CS stuff) nor for new graduates (finding edge cases requires real world experience).

In my time in college there was a lot of edge case stuff. There were autograders that would test tons and tons of edge cases, so a large percent of my project time was analyzing my code trying to find which edge case I missed that was taking a point off my score. I also participated in CTFs which are all about finding security vulnerabilities (edge cases). If the senior developer is going to be expected to write a lot of code, then I would expect the senior developer to be adept at finding edge cases. If the senior developer isn't going to be writing much code, then yes, a coding interview is maybe not so useful, and a more architecture-focused interview might be better.

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

#673

Post by hated » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:17 AM UTC

throwaway201103 wrote: post #277

ornornor wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re designed to trick you into acting against your best interests. To push you to spend money you don’t have on shit you don’t need to impress people you don’t like, to quote a witty whoever wrote this.

I'd say that sounds like George Carlin but just a guess.

Which part?

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

#674

Post by pbourke » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:24 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #538

pbourke wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for replying. This is a great approach and seems really well suited for the target audience.

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

#675

Post by mooreds » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:29 AM UTC

meekrohprocess wrote: post #276

andrew_ wrote: post #88

Tech hiring is severely broken. 22 years in and it's only gotten worse. We still tolerate PhD Comp Sci algorithm questions for frontend developer gigs, endless series of array shuffling and sorting, canned problems intended to "measure your problem solving ability," ridiculous hypotheticals (e.g. whiteboard how you would build Slack), and a litany of other tactics that recruiters or old school management thinks are r…

Yeah, it does seem like the best jobs are the ones that you don't have to jump through arbitrary hoops for. Ideally, your employer or client will respect you as a human being who has something valuable to bring to the table. When I find "good jobs", they almost always crop up from serendipity in areas that I am genuinely interested in at the time. Looking back it feels like dumb luck, but the sort of dumb luck that i…

> Yeah, it does seem like the best jobs are the ones that you don't have to jump through arbitrary hoops for. Ideally, your employer or client will respect you as a human being who has something valuable to bring to the table.

Even better if they actually know you!

> If you ever have a chance to talk candidly with an executive or entrepreneur about a subject that you are passionate about...well, at least take the meeting. Those sorts of discussions aren't interviews per se, but sometimes your vision will click with someone else's, and that's where the magic happens.

This is great advice. Talking to business folks when you aren't working for them is a great way to practice this skill and you never know what you might end up running into. Another good thing to do is to try to connect two people who might benefit from the connection (discussing a technology, an opportunity, etc). Sometimes something will happen, sometimes not, but the goodwill will be remembered.

A few years ago I joked about never wanting to submit a resume again. If you spend time on your network (all the time, not just when you need a job) and do good work, hopefully you'll get to a point where you can contact people you know who are looking for help.

Sure you'll still need to "interview" but the stakes are lower: they know you and you know them.

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

#676

Post by mooreds » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:32 AM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #650

throwaway201103 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would any company want me to write an array sort instead of calling the .sort() method on the standard array class? Is that really the sort of thing they want their devs to code and debug and maintain by hand?

You should use sort() and ask whether it's okay to use the built-in? They will always say it's fine and move. It would be extremely uncommon in the current decade to come across an interviewer who minds using the standard library.

And if they do mind, well, one of two things:

* they are a pedantic, roll your own type of place that is full of custom frameworks and libraries that you're better off avoiding

* they are big enough or specialized enough that they really need that level of knowledge

I imagine the former is more common.

And if you are applying to the latter, you should know that from your research. You do research companies before you interview there, right?

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

#677

Post by SeriousM » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:37 AM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #466

vsareto wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NGL, I'd jump through hoops for 250k + other compensation Part of why this has stuck around for so long is that so many people are willing to do that because it's a life-altering amount of money

Plus the prestige of being able to walk into your next job and captain the ship. I've been at a few places that hired former Googlers, and they were all treated like gods.

This is such a glorified and Heroes statement which just tells that some faang guys has such a skewed view of the world because of faang.

All I see is that faang is a term for expert code monkey.

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

#678

Post by SeriousM » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:47 AM UTC

andrew_ wrote: post #88

Tech hiring is severely broken. 22 years in and it's only gotten worse. We still tolerate PhD Comp Sci algorithm questions for frontend developer gigs, endless series of array shuffling and sorting, canned problems intended to "measure your problem solving ability," ridiculous hypotheticals (e.g. whiteboard how you would build Slack), and a litany of other tactics that recruiters or old school management thinks are r…

That's exactly how I handle these interviews nowadays. Granted, it'd hard to know what's your price when you're young and you would take everything in the early years. But now I'm mid 30 and have seen and executed enough interviews to know that the rational thinking and kind human is so much more worth than a code monkey that is twice as fast. Why? It's the same reason why code should be readable - you have to live with it. And the only way to achieve this is by asking for the way of thinking, now what's the solution is.

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

#679

Post by unk1102 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 7:07 AM UTC

_9omd wrote: post #520

polishdude20 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you just start off doing leetcode questions online and learned from the solutions? I'd study leetcode stuff if I could even start getting interviews to show my skills :/

Yes, and I went against the standard advice to not look at the solution until you solve it yourself. I think for the first 50-100 problems it's best to not think too hard about it before looking at the solution, gaining a full understanding, and writing an implementation or three (building that muscle memory so to speak). At this point, you'll have many more tools in your kit (graph traversal, search, dynamic program…

Thanks solid advice I can related as I did follow the same after wasting lot of time on LC problems I cant solve. I have started getting good at LC. Since you landed job at FAANG, I would really appreciate if you can share tips on specific question says finding max path in a matrix it is graph problem but how can you master it so code flows in 30 minutes or less. Did you actually solve same problems multiple times?

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

#680

Post by Godel_unicode » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 7:15 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #638

mywittyname wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus the prestige of being able to walk into your next job and captain the ship. I've been at a few places that hired former Googlers, and they were all treated like gods.

Is that really true? I've interviewed ex-FAANG employees at some jobs and there was never any pressure to hire them, and I didn't feel like any one of them would be treated as a god if hired. They were pretty universally above average though. They were also not "walking in to captain" anything. They were applying for standard engineering jobs. Think of an average individual-contributor software engineer from, say, Fa…

The amount of osmosis learning of how things should be that comes from working somewhere that things were that way is hard to explain. The density of good ideas you get exposed to has a huge effect, even if you aren't in leadership. It also doesn't necessarily come across in interviews, it's reflexes you might not realize you have.

I was very skeptical about this, then I worked for one. Now I get it.