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The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

jarednelsen.dev

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Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#81

Post by mullingitover »

gonehome wrote: post #42
mullingitover wrote: post #32

I honestly don't know why anyone gives FAANG recruiters the time of day anymore. I have yet to meet anyone who feels good about the prospect of working for them, anyone who works there who's super proud of their mission, and the competitors who are looking to hire at that level of talent pay roughly similar wages from what I've seen. My advice for this poor kid is to look around at startups and do more networking. FA…

A couple of reasons: - Comp: Total comp for a new hire with 3+ yrs dev experience is probably 300k -> 400k at a FAANG on average (with possibility to be higher). If you want to live and raise a family in your own house in the bay area (2.5 Million for a reasonable house), this matters. - Access: Few places have the kind of scale and resources of these companies, that can make them fun places to work. You also get to…

> If you want to live and raise a family in your own house in the bay area (2.5 Million for a reasonable house), this matters.

I love the bay area, and I have terrible judgement, but even my terrible judgement and my love of the bay area combined aren't a bad enough combination to make me think it's a good place to raise a family.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#82

Post by LaPingvino »

I've designed an interview test before and I am ironically now doing a very similar interview test to what I designed for the company I used to work at. It worked extremely well for where I used it and I am absolutely thrilled to work on it now for this company. The key element here is indeed relevancy to the job you apply for and not looking for a perfect answer.

For anyone doing programming tests, I would like to give some advice, too, based on the tests I did and got through successfully:

- Always give it a try - Always explain what you do and what you are trying to do - Don't worry about sending in an incomplete test when you don't manage to do it - Be verbose about what you are trying to do to solve it - Don't be afraid to ask questions

My first great programming job was at a place where I got a hard mathematical problem to solve, and I didn't manage to solve it at the moment, so I asked if I could take it home. I didn't manage to solve it at home but sent in the broken code that I had either way.

I got the job.

Why? Because the broken code I sent in showed that I understood recursion (it was for a Common Lisp job, that code was in Clojure) and the other people, even if they did manage to solve it, used more common languages and iterative solutions. He wanted someone who got the spirit of what they were working with, so that got me in. I asked my boss later how to solve that question, and he didn't manage either.

When I did the interviewing myself, the situation was similar. One candidate sent in a huge resume that looked impressive, but didn't send in the test. Immediate fail. Two others had a hard time with the test, but they showed that they cared about making it work, and that was enough for us to accept them: the core thing we wanted to see was that they could learn and cared enough to learn about what they needed.

One of those became main programmer and leader of many others later on, and made the company hugely successful.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#84

Post by ticmasta »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #33

Comedian Daniel Tosh had a bit about people that claimed to be smart, it's just that they were just bad at taking tests. He said, "oh, so you struggle with the part where we find out what you actually know?" I hear a lot of complaints about the "typical" software engineering hiring process, and it usually comes from the people that don't do well within the current system. Could the process be improved? Almost certain…

Unless your job is coding novel algorithm implementations under strict deadlines without a computer, how does answering this question in a job interview prove or disprove your efficacy in the actual position? It only proves you're good at interviewing, which, if you think about it, is not a desirable skill in your new hire 6-12 months down the road.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#85

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

The evolution of the software engineering interview is a consequence of people gaming the metric. As the author points out, once the cat got out of the bag, the problems became increasingly challenging.

The real consequence is for wages. By making interviews a ceremonious practice where even engineers with years of experience need to spend a month Leetcoding, you severely restrict the talent pool. It discourages poaching. Engineers only care to subject themselves so many times, and since they already have a job, they're not too motivated to find another (compared to industry outsiders who aren't already earning software engineering-level salaries).

Fortunately, many places don't put you through the hazing that is the typical FANG interview. You can make 85-90% of a FANG salary, at a company that asks Leetcode easy's. That's what I've chose for myself. Not because I'm an incompetent engineer, but because mastering leetcode isn't a priority for me.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#87

Post by pinewurst »

trollied wrote: post #23

> "The horrifically dystopian world of software engineering interviews" If you actually read the linked article, there aren't really any interviews. The OP is just getting let down by recruiters.

I disagree - the recruiters are forced to be the messengers of dysfunction. I've seen some pretty reprehensible examples of this where I actually felt sorry for the recruiters.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#88

Post by dilyevsky »

codingslave wrote: post #55
parsimo2010 wrote: post #33

Comedian Daniel Tosh had a bit about people that claimed to be smart, it's just that they were just bad at taking tests. He said, "oh, so you struggle with the part where we find out what you actually know?" I hear a lot of complaints about the "typical" software engineering hiring process, and it usually comes from the people that don't do well within the current system. Could the process be improved? Almost certain…

People are completing 500+ problems on leetcode before heading into interviews at google. Don't believe me? Go read the teamblind forums. People might spend six months studying, after which they pass a bunch of interviews and get good comp. Getting just one offer from a FAANG company often doesnt pay well enough, you need multiple competing ones. If you think this has anything to do with incompetent people complainin…

When I studied for my google interview back in 2011 I learned tons of new things which I used professionally at google and beyond. But I’ll concede that it was before leetcode (although i did casually compete on topcoder just for fun) so I mainly read up on areas where I knew I had blind spots.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#89

Post by glofish »

throwlaplace wrote: post #58
glofish wrote: post #45

In my personal experience, having interviewed dozens of candidates (data science), I believe that asking "easy" and "simple" questions is the most effective way to probe the problem-solving skills of a candidate. Fun and interesting solutions to easy questions are hallmarks of great individuals. The question would go like this: Suppose I have a column-oriented file and I want to print out a column in a reverse-sorted…

lol but this is literally a leetcode style problem so what's your point? https://leetcode.com/problems/merge-k-sorted-lists/ https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/external-sorting/ and it's literally called "merge sorted files" (page 175 of elements of programming interviews).

the point is to see how people think,

it is not so simple to regurgitate pre-learned answers when you alter a problem one small attribute at a time, in each case a different answer becomes optimal, thus you can see if the person understand what needs to be done or not

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#90

Post by ideal0227 »

When my classmates were preparing interview coding questions, I was working on a mini TCP implementation and a toy kernel.

AWS rejected me since I failed to write prefect code to traverse a tree in level order. Google did not even give me an interview since I told the campus recruiter I have not prepared for the coding questions.

Then I ended up with an internship at CoreOS and created etcd. I am glad that they did not hire me back then.

Today, I am sure I still cannot pass the coding interview at "Giant Search and Advertising Company", but they run a lot of my code in production :P.

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