Sometimes I feel really bummed out I am getting 1/2 (or less?) of Google compensation. But then I open my eyes - see the workers in my daughter's kindergarten slaving away taking care of 30 toddlers for less than half what I make, nurses and doctors working in conditions I wouldn't be able to tolerate for more than a few months without mentally collapsing, the people in the supermarkets, gas stations, police, fire departments, social workers, teachers etc etc.
Really I don't see what we have to complain about - whether its a 3 man startup with "low" compensation or anything else.
You're getting paid for solving code riddles the whole day. You're getting paid a lot. Quit comparing yourself to your friends that work in Google and try to learn how to cultivate a peaceful and happy mind.
Panic at the Job Market
701–710 of 1001 posts
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#702>According to all the interviews I’ve failed over the years (I don’t think I’ve ever passed an actual “coding interview” anywhere?), the entire goal of tech hiring is just finding people in the 100 to 115 midwit block then outright rejecting everybody else as too much of an unknown risk. As a (now) senior/staff-level engineer back out on the job market for the first time in a while, I'm begrudgingly coming to accept…
My perspective aligns with your newer opinion. I have never studied for an interview, and cannot clearly imagine what such a process would involve; neither have I ever taken a CS course. A coding interview therefore feels like an opportunity to demonstrate my approach to problem-solving using the skills I have acquired over the years, which feels like a reasonable thing to ask of a potential future coworker. My pet t…
For FAANG and FAANG cargo cultists, the goal absolutely is to provide a correct answer, and to do it while pretending you're reasoning it out from scratch rather than recognizing the pattern from the hundreds of leetcode practice questions you've drilled on.
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#703Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a literal graph theorist, I cannot tell you how frustrating it is that (a) nobody seems to understand my work except (b) interviewers use it as a shibboleth to exclude people from jobs that will never need high performance graph algorithms. That, I never get called for these interviews because I don't use react angles or something, but if they did, I'd crush the interview and fall asleep at my desk once they start…
It is fun if you ever find yourself in this situation because you can play the uno reverse card on the interviewer and ask to clarify with impenetrable jargon and look for rising panic (can I assume the graph contains a Hamiltonian circuit? etc, etc)
> can I assume the graph contains a Hamiltonian circuit?
Many interviewers will likely ask you: what is a Hamiltonian circuit and can you think of a solution that doesn’t contain a Hamiltonian circuit?
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#704How do you know you're not the midwit? To me it seems quite reasonable that author is the one over complicating everything, and in reality coding interviews are just not that bad. [edit: they're not that bad in the sense that hiring is a inherently lossy process of projecting something incredibly complicated, like skills, personality, motivation, and situation into a 45 minute interview where only 1 or 2 dimension ca…
The author to me is pointing out that coding interviews are random and arbitrary, specially when done by junior engineers or engineers trying to protect their jobs. I’ve seen too many times coding interview given to the junior most engineer on the panel, specially at FAANG adjacent companies since they don’t know how to calibrate coding interviews correctly.
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#705I will add my two cents for people who believe that this might be related only to the SWE and tangent industries: It's really not. I have many friends (in Europe) who are trying to get through to different jobs in unrelated industries ranging from finance to fashion, or just trying to get promoted vertically (or horizontally), failing rather miserably. Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideratio…
> Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideration your particular profile or the contributions you can make. This is really key. I have applied for jobs before, and then get questions like: "what's your experience with C++ or advanced graph algorithms?". Only that, none of that shows up in my profile or resume. But they act surprised and completely shrug off how a decade of software and other relev…
It is funny I tried to hire people, just pasted the minimum requirements and salary - and got no response.
The other day I had a tech interview and just by screen calling to update python version on OSX one of the commands was "reboot" and oh well.. the interview was over.
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#706Earlier quoted context omitted.
I stopped at (paraphrased): "I've never passed a coding interview. Coding interviews hire the wrong people!"
He's not wrong. 90% of coding interviews are completely unrelated to the job. Here are some experiments for you to try in your next one: - if it's a super difficult problem, remark how fascinating it is and ask the interviewer how often they're doing this stuff - if it's FizzBuzz or something else that is solved and has a known value, propose hardcoding the answer as a constant and printing it without doing any compu…
He's not wrong and it still marks why he probably comes across poorly and fails those interviews
People in hiring positions basically want productivity. That largely means they want people who will slot into whatever problem is at hand and tackle it effectively. The minute you approach the situation with "this is a stupid pointless problem you have asked me to solve" you failed the test. Even if it's only implicit and through subtle use of language, this will come across.
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#707In my area at least, hiring isn’t slowing so much, but the quality of the average candidate has cratered in the last 5-10 years. My opinion personally on this is that if you can’t find a job building software, you are suffering from some combination of these factors: * Titles be damned, you aren’t actually a very talented engineer. Maybe this isn’t the right job for you. * You’re coming off as a jerk. Ask your friend…
> * You’re coming off as a jerk.
This is a big one, although I would phrase is more generally -- you don't work well with other people.
I have run interviews at [FAANG] and this becomes apparent quickly even in very technical discussions. So you may have thought you solved the problem and I have unfairly failed you.
Sadly the way things work in our society nobody will tell you this on their own accord unless yes you ask close friends.
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#708Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideration your particular profile or the contributions you can make. This is really key. I have applied for jobs before, and then get questions like: "what's your experience with C++ or advanced graph algorithms?". Only that, none of that shows up in my profile or resume. But they act surprised and completely shrug off how a decade of software and other relev…
Conversely, my company, which interviewed me by having me write ‘for’ loops in all 12 or so languages listed on my CV during the technical interview, is a pretty decent place to work. I cannot tell you how bemused I was after leaving that interview. I’d done months of degrading stupid ‘tell us some trivia about JS’ interviews, and here was someone that (apparently) just wanted to judge whether the information on my C…
Oh man that would be a nightmare - I mean I probably could do it for most of the languages I have used but I would sweat during an interview. Worse would be "show how long a string is in all these languages". I always keep confusing that syntax when I initally switch between languages.
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#709The current state of the tech job market, as discussed here, highlights a significant opportunity for grassroots innovation. While we're focusing on the challenges, we might be overlooking the potential for creating new, more resilient models of work and business. Consider the rise of digital cooperatives or platform co-ops. These could provide an alternative to the traditional tech company structure, offering worker…
Yes! I was just thinking of this. My thinking started along the lines of tech workers getting together to apply for jobs, discussing who would be best for each role etc, so instead of each role getting 100 varying quality applications it gets just one reasonable application that the company can take or leave. Then I made a couple of obvious leaps and realised I was quickly converging on existing ideas like unions, an…
Guilds were anti-competitive and anti free market, in that they regulated the number of people who could enter a profession, and practice it in a particular town. As such, that's against the interest of employers and most people who want to enter the profession. I don't think guild members generally worked for employers, except for apprentices, who had to work for a guild member; they were business owners or self employed.
Arguably though, medicine and academia are guilds.
Early guilds probably used violence to restrict entry; later they needed the state to enforce guild restrictions, so when the state decided it didn't want to; that guild was over.
I suspect that cooperatives are a better model than guilds for the modern era.
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#710Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideration your particular profile or the contributions you can make. This is really key. I have applied for jobs before, and then get questions like: "what's your experience with C++ or advanced graph algorithms?". Only that, none of that shows up in my profile or resume. But they act surprised and completely shrug off how a decade of software and other relev…
>What it boils down to is that companies have zero idea how to hire. Yeah, certainly doesn't have anything to do with hordes of people with make-believe degrees in everything.
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