Recently came across an example where someone entirely different person went for the interview answered, cleared but the another person reported for the job.
I must say I am extremely disappointed at bay area job scene.
For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
71–80 of 306 posts
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#72Some really great advice within that forms a foundation for the narrative. I can really appreciate the diligence and apparent 'no hard feelings' kind of pragmatism. I especially liked the closing part: > If you fail 10 interviews in a row, go for the 11th interview. But take a look at all the variables, and see if there’s anything you can do differently to improve. Take the pressure off, and work through problems rou…
Yeah. When I was job hunting ~3 years ago I knew I was going to have to do a lot of whiteboarding problems. I only had two 2 years of coding experience, and for the last six months I had been freelancing, which doesn't often encourage algorithms. I was working through "Cracking the Coding interview" and "programming interview exposed" but I was worried. So I sent an email to everyone in my coworking space that I'd pu…
That's a damn good idea. I completely agree, a job interview is something that you need to practice to be good at. Just doing code exercises isn't enough. Having someone do a real interview is the best way.
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Getting 38 job interviews is very much a sign of the times. I've noticed that many employers have copied google and have stated to interview with as many people as possible. Lots of them take pride in their acceptance ratio, some even advertising that on their careers page. Def a sign of times but might not in a way that you are suggesting. Getting an interview is not all that hard these days, you can get an intervi…
> Getting an interview is not all that hard these days, you can get an interview with google/facebook ect pretty easily. Maybe... I got contacted by 2 google recruiters in 2 separate instances. I replied to them, but I never heard back. I would've probably failed at the whiteboard, but I never even got a chance to attempt the interview.
Yeah, that just happened to me this week. I'm sitting here wondering what I said wrong in my reply email.
Was I not enthusiastic enough? What was it?
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#74So, how did you get to where you are today? I’ve always been passionate about coding, starting from my early days at Olympiad teams in high school and ACM teams in college. Anyone who's made it onto an Olympiad team[1] of any significant geographical scale, in any category, shouldn't have to deal with this whiteboard nonsense. Maybe a few lightweight-to-medium rounds to verify that they are what they say they are. Bu…
I see the whiteboard coding test as an attitude-test. If you have too much attitude to sit down and write some code for an hour, then you aren't someone I want in my company. It shouldn't be hard if you're skilled. Sorry to be that way, but that's the way I (and we) see it.
you've just failed my attitude test because you started talking about attitude :) The reason for that is that chalking something up to attitude as a first or major explanation usually is just mental cheating on your part - in the particular case of whiteboarding issues there may be a lot of reasons for different people other than attitude, i'd venture to guess that attitude is never a reason (until of course it is a director/VP candidate and one of my friends suggests the candidate to write a sort, any sort ... even here i think the first was [lack of] such ability and the attitude was only masking it :)
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only that were true. I'm a U.S. national event champion in Div. C Science Olympiad (Road Scholar), and I not only have to deal with whiteboard nonsense all the time, but also, the spouse never really believes that I know how to get anywhere from anywhere else. (Sure, argue with Siri/Google, rather than allowing that I might possibly know which direction north is.) Credentials are only as good as the trust other pe…
They're not looking for good people, they're looking for cheap people. 1 good person will cost as much or more than 5 bad ones and somehow it got into managements head that 5 'B' (or even 'C') players is better than one 'A' player for the same money. Which of course isn't true but good luck convincing people otherwise. (Source: regular clean up jobs after all the money has been spent and the company is on the skids a…
I think you got your second sentence a little twisted around. I've never seen an "A" player command a 5x multiple on a median or "B" player.
I think "A" players are the best bargain in the software world...
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#76So, how did you get to where you are today? I’ve always been passionate about coding, starting from my early days at Olympiad teams in high school and ACM teams in college. Anyone who's made it onto an Olympiad team[1] of any significant geographical scale, in any category, shouldn't have to deal with this whiteboard nonsense. Maybe a few lightweight-to-medium rounds to verify that they are what they say they are. Bu…
I see the whiteboard coding test as an attitude-test. If you have too much attitude to sit down and write some code for an hour, then you aren't someone I want in my company. It shouldn't be hard if you're skilled. Sorry to be that way, but that's the way I (and we) see it.
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Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#77Any time a company asks me to do a HackerRank test, I immediately reject them. It's just not possible to have a quality engineering team and to also believe the results of HackerRank tests correspond to on-the-job success. HackerRank is an attempt to commoditize software labor (literally reducing evaluation of your labor fitness to standardized examples). It communicates immediately that creativity is valued less tha…
Full-stack developers should be generalist in nature to make sure the issues that cross domains (front/backend, etc) are taken care of. Also, they can plug any gaps in the development that crop up from time to time (eg: someone on vacation, or next feature needs more back-end people). The downside is that they will not be spectacular or as quick at any one domain.
Basically, a full-stack developers specialization is to be flexible and have knowledge and experience in working the entire application stack. Another way of thinking about it is that they are like a general practitioner doctor/dentist, while they generally don't do surgery, they can refer you to the correct specialists who can and take care of any minor/common ailments. This is also why you don't want an entire team of them is that they don't go into depth in any domain.
I don't doubt that the current full-stack education path does a poor job of education on issues that specifically cross domains or when a task is better suited to a specialist.
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#78So, how did you get to where you are today? I’ve always been passionate about coding, starting from my early days at Olympiad teams in high school and ACM teams in college. Anyone who's made it onto an Olympiad team[1] of any significant geographical scale, in any category, shouldn't have to deal with this whiteboard nonsense. Maybe a few lightweight-to-medium rounds to verify that they are what they say they are. Bu…
I see the whiteboard coding test as an attitude-test. If you have too much attitude to sit down and write some code for an hour, then you aren't someone I want in my company. It shouldn't be hard if you're skilled. Sorry to be that way, but that's the way I (and we) see it.
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Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have done this and have done interviews I did most of the questioning as the interviewee. In my experience, this approach turns off a lot of people.
The point is: If the candidate asks a relevant question that the interviewer cannot solve in time, the company failed at its own game because the candidate proved that he/she is better qualified than the company's representative, given the rules of the game. What excuse does the company have for not hiring the candidate now?
What if the interviewer refuses to do it. You walk away? And remember, you're the one looking for a job and applied there (unless you're jeff dean, of course :)
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 'excuse' that there are better or equally qualified candidates out there. Many companies hire to fill in expertise, so the person who you are interviewed by may be less experienced than you in a particular technology.
> The 'excuse' that there are better or equally qualified candidates out there. In that case, these companies should be ok with registering their names in an online registry saying they rejected a candidate for someone who is better qualified. For the following 6 months, they cannot complain that that cannot find qualified candidates. > Many companies hire to fill in expertise, so the person who you are interviewed b…
This of course assumes the candidate knows the answer to the question they asked, which is something the interviewer can't verify because they also don't know.