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The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

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Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#691

Post by northern-lights »

heartbeats wrote: post #650
arp242 wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the kind of big companies that repeatedly break the law, engage in unethical behaviour, and put growth above all else? Yeah. Only the US has those. Congratulations. Plenty of tech companies in Europe either way; you just don't know about them. Do you think Europe is some poor underdeveloped continent with uneducated people who can only "write spreadsheets?" What a patronizing comment.

You have to break eggs to make omelettes. The US is the only country in the world (perhaps excepting China) with any tech industry of value, just as it is the only country with any finance industry of value. Europe has some companies with IT departments, some American companies with European offices, and some no-name consultancies (which are often US-owned). The indigenous European tech industry is a complete joke, s…

Just so you know, salaries in Bangalore are comparable to that of SF if adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity. If you don't believe me, feel free to look up levels.fyi for both and match the conversions through: http://salaryconverter.nigelb.me/

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#692

Post by heartbeats »

northern-lights wrote: post #691
heartbeats wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to break eggs to make omelettes. The US is the only country in the world (perhaps excepting China) with any tech industry of value, just as it is the only country with any finance industry of value. Europe has some companies with IT departments, some American companies with European offices, and some no-name consultancies (which are often US-owned). The indigenous European tech industry is a complete joke, s…

Just so you know, salaries in Bangalore are comparable to that of SF if adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity. If you don't believe me, feel free to look up levels.fyi for both and match the conversions through: http://salaryconverter.nigelb.me/

That's because SV outsources their development work there, artificially inflating prices. In reality, India has a 'tech industry' in the same sense that Africa has an 'AI industry' - there is industry and it is vaguely related to AI, but tagging images does not an 'AI industry' make.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#693

Post by taeric »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #683
taeric wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, then what are they succeeding at? If engineering hasn't helped them not kill most of their products, what is it helping do? And again, it is more than just social. ChomeOS? Even still a thing? How is android wear doing nowadays? Again, I'm not claiming they are bad at engineering. I honestly don't feel qualified to judge. But I don't know that they are qualified to judge success of new hire, either. Their main s…

> " If engineering hasn't helped them not kill most of their products, what is it helping do? " Engineering does not set direction, they just build what they're told to. There are entire product management, market research, and similar teams that help senior management decide what to build. This is the case at most large software companies.

This is orthogonal to my question.

Yes, direction can be set independent of engineering. But a string of failures, at best, shows a string of misused engineering resources. Which just leads back to my challenge of why do they think they know what a successfull candidate is?

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#694

Post by runawaybottle »

octoboto wrote: post #263
Benjammer wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, the people who pass the grueling gauntlet will still be dumped on a fringe feature team with a first- or second-time engineering manager within 2 years of your age, and a PM that's fresh out of college (or worse, just finished MBA) who is spending 100% of their time learning how to use Jira instead of how to build product.

This new trend of hiring PMs straight out of college seems like insanity to me

Oh this trend. I sit next to a recruiter at a large company that literally vets college grads all day for PM and scrum master positions. Like people with zero experience dealing with deadlines, requirements, resource management, time management, release cycle experience.

Oh, and I’ll just leave off ‘software development’ experience from that list too, since they also all come from non coding backgrounds.

What’s the rationale behind this one, anyone got anything? I’m stumped.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#695

Post by chillacy »

taeric wrote: post #248
chillacy wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think those products failed due to poor engineering, google just hasn’t been great at social (if you don’t count YouTube). Other companies which use the same interview techniques are winning in those exact product spaces.

But, then what are they succeeding at? If engineering hasn't helped them not kill most of their products, what is it helping do? And again, it is more than just social. ChomeOS? Even still a thing? How is android wear doing nowadays? Again, I'm not claiming they are bad at engineering. I honestly don't feel qualified to judge. But I don't know that they are qualified to judge success of new hire, either. Their main s…

> I'm not claiming they are bad at engineering

Nope, you're actually claiming that they're bad at product. Maybe you can question their product management or marketing hires?

Their most successful product is still search, followed by android and youtube. Their stock is up 300% in the past 5 years.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#696

Post by chillacy »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #442
chillacy wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think those products failed due to poor engineering, google just hasn’t been great at social (if you don’t count YouTube). Other companies which use the same interview techniques are winning in those exact product spaces.

Google has been pretty good at social. With the community around gReader. Which they killed to make space forfor Google+. How did it fare, already?

Was it poor engineering which killed gReader or a strategy decision to go for G+ back when social was a big buzzword?

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#697

Post by RobRivera »

blaufast wrote: post #594
EpicEng wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I don't have as prolific a tale as that, but I'm in the looking stage right now and the idea of cramming for a test I haven't taken in 12 years annoys the hell out of me. I've done some pretty interesting things in biotech in my career, things that required learning about motion control, digital imaging, signal processing, and biology... but if I want a job as a web dev I apparently need to memorize how to imple…

Having worked at cutting edge biotech,startups and FAANG I wholeheartedly defend the interview process, and believe you would too if you ever switched over for a while

I think there's a certain breed of people who will pony up the time and resources to levelup for the interview, and the compliment. Ignoring the privilege of resource availability, i think its totally doable and worthwhile. I come from a blue collar family and I think my old man would love to hear I can pull off miraculous study habits for a month to take home the kind of paychecks offered for hitting a keyboard.

Granted, if the money were not there, I would not find it worthwhile. I would probably just focus on founding my own company.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#698

Post by runawaybottle »

courtf wrote: post #141
proximitysauce wrote: post #3

In addition to all of the very dystopian examples given in this post, there are other non-technical, super-dystopian things that have been popping up as "trends" in the tech industry. Ever heard of top-grading? It's the most oppressive interview technique of all time. A series of grueling multi-person interviews. A retrospective of all work experiences since high school . You also have to get multiple prior employers…

Not sure if they were using this exact method, but I did interview at a place that had a long, grueling process (series of interviews, coding challenge, etc). They also asked for every employer back to high school, as well as contact info for supervisor for all of those jobs, which of course was ridiculous. I did enjoy seeing them taken aback when I provided that information and, despite being in my early 30s, having…

Lol, the Kubernetes part.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#699

Post by blub »

busterarm wrote: post #597
pansa2 wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I work on the Advertising part of Giant Search and Advertising [...] on interesting problems Genuine question - what do you consider to be interesting problems in advertising?

Having worked on the spend side of things and at high stakes (9 figure budgets), targeting and how to improve it is extremely intellectually stimulating. More than anything else I've done in my career, even. This is especially true when you have constraints, like being in a regulated industry such as legal marketing. The only problem is that it's hard to command a salary commensurate with how good you are at it unles…

"targeting and how to improve it is extremely intellectually stimulating"

I thought the answer to that was a rather bland "by gobbling up even more information about everyone"?

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#700

Post by runawaybottle »

bobbytran wrote: post #280
samkater wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also other trends that, thankfully in my experience, have not yet made their way to tech. I suspect it is only a matter of time, though... A lot of non-technical positions I have seen and heard about (including non entry-level positions) require a video of the candidate to describe themselves and why they would be a good fit for the position. That just sounds awful to me.

One company said I had to make a video of myself..and then the final interview would be singing a song of my choice in front of the entire company through video conferencing. This was for a software engineer position. I didn't even bother going on the interview. I feel like the purpose was to see what they could get you to do.

Wait, so, you did’t find them having you sing a song to be a light hearted suggestion that would warm you to their apparently super fun culture?
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