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Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

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Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#91

Post by maxehnert »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #34

The methodical approach is applaudable, and I'm really glad it works for people like the author. Maybe it is indeed the best strategy. But after a few rounds of doing this, it gets old. Not old as in, "I'd rather be watching westworld than drafting this cover letter". But old as in, "I'd rather be shoveling diarrhetic pig shit than doing this code exercise". I really love being a software engineer. The job applicatio…

I completely agree. It's incredibly frustrating to stop working on any side projects and stop learning any framework/library stuff to focus exclusively on algorithmic questions for weeks or months. That's why I tried to make it clear you have to just push through and give it everything you can so you can get back to doing fun stuff again. No one likes doing this but lowly developers that just need a job can't do much about it unfortunately.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#92

Post by lj3 »

mooreds wrote: post #35
pmorici wrote: post #11

This has got to be one of the most honest descriptions of how job hunting actually works ever written and posted on HN. It's a sharp contrast to a lot of the stuff that is posted here that depicts job hunting like some kind of spiritual search for your life's passion.

I think this is a great description of the job hunting process early in your career. Later in your career, if you have kept connections alive, the job hunt should look like this: "Hi , I'm looking for a position doing X at Y, and I noticed you know Sara at Y. Do you mind doing intros? I'd really appreciate it." ... intros/coffee with Sara. ... resume to the hiring manager, perhaps through some automated system, but w…

In my experience, your network will get you an interview, but after that it's the normal interview hazing as described in the article. Because there are so many random, subjective factors at play, it's impossible to tell if a network referral will result in a job. As such, it's a bad idea to rely on them as your sole means of finding work.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#93

Post by lj3 »

pmiller2 wrote: post #38
strictnein wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "i also agree these take homes are not 4 hour affairs. they give you no direction so you can't sacrifice ui/ux for functionality because you have no clue how they judge it." I had a take home for a UI position that I spent ~10-12 hours on. It was some pretty standard UI stuff and they had 5 points of functionality they wanted you to code. Make it responsive, have these sections in a different order on mobile, make…

Given their cluelessness, would you even want to work with them? I'm guessing you "failed" that interview, and it was probably a good thing, too.

I hear this a lot in these kinds of discussions. While I agree with you that these might not be the best people to work with, the equation looks very different after doing these kinds of interviews for 6 months and you really need a paycheck yesterday.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#94

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

>> When I go into ‘interviewing mode’ I stop working on side projects, I stop visiting bs sites like reddit, news sites, and even HN. If it isn’t going to help you get that job just cut it from your life.

While I agree that interviewing is a bit of a crap shoot, the above paragraph from the OP is actually a pretty good argument for not doing anything to prepare for it.

If going into interviewing mode means you stop working on your own stuff, or having free time, or generally doing stuff that a) you enjoy and b) make you better at your work (rather than interviews) then you're paying a cost alright, and it's at least comparable to the cost of take-home coding exercises.

If you're just applying anywhere you can it probably means you don't care where you go anyway. If you apply in sufficiently many places eventually you'll find the one place where they like you, you like them, you got what they want and they're willing to hire you.

In fact if you take the time you'd waste in getting good at interviewing and invest it in learning a new language, or framework, or following a MOOC etc, you'll probably end up with much better qualtiy work, because your actual work skills will get better. It might take a bit longer to get there but you'll (probably) stick around for longer and you'll get more out of it.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#95

Post by maxehnert »

cmancini wrote: post #22

Lots of great stuff here. It is a numbers game in many ways since I've been in interview processes where we turned down lots of people who go on to succeed in amazing ways at other companies. I would be wary about recommending most people write cover letter templates. I can tell a templated letter most of the time. I'd recommend just writing a few sentences from the heart. Why you're great for them. Copy+Paste doesn'…

Thanks for the kind words.

For cover letters, I think I'm using template more loosely and probably should have provided examples. The template part is for describing myself, however I still write out a paragraph or two specific to that company. I think I noted on researching the place before hand so you can include your favorite things about the place in the letter.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#96

Post by maxehnert »

citeguised wrote: post #63

"Things like knowing the box model, closures, map/filter/reduce, object vs array, prototypes, bind/call/apply, event delegation. These made up almost ever single first phone screen interview I’ve ever had." Seems pretty hefty for a junior-frontend-position.

You're right, I should have been more clear. I wasn't applying for junior positions anymore but most of the technique is what I did the last time I applied for jobs when I was looking for more junior positions.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#97

Post by dpark »

viraptor wrote: post #24
dpark wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you prioritized for people willing to sink many hours into your assignment. The need to sink many hours into a homework assignment is the criticism.

Phone interview - 1h during work hours. On-site interview - ~3h total, but probably a whole day off work. Test - ~1h at any time you choose. I'm not sure I follow your logic. They would spend just as many hours, at a more inconvenient time of day without the test. I did the task myself to a level I'd expect at the time to make sure it does not take "many hours". If that simple task would take people many hours, then…

As the other commenter pointed out, you don't control how many hours a candidate spends on the assignment. All you see is the end result, and the guy who spends 8 hours will generally end up with a more impressive result than the candidate who spends 1 hour, and this reflects time spent far more than candidate quality. If you give an "open ended" assignment, you are encouraging candidates to spend a ton of time and then lie and claim they spent very little time, because that looks impressive.

Do you really think "the 1 person who made a proper package, a short .rst install & use documentation, and included crazy unicode test cases" spent only an hour?

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#98

Post by leshow »

citeguised wrote: post #63

"Things like knowing the box model, closures, map/filter/reduce, object vs array, prototypes, bind/call/apply, event delegation. These made up almost ever single first phone screen interview I’ve ever had." Seems pretty hefty for a junior-frontend-position.

really? this to me just seems like knowing the language you're going to be working with every day. If you don't understand these concepts, how could you be an effective developer?

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#100

Post by jondubois »

neverminder wrote: post #40

I have noticed that too often the interviewers look for people like themselves, which I find really naive - chances of you finding your own copy are slim to none. A recent anecdote from my own experience. I've interviewed with this company. Everything seemed to go well, I had a talk with hiring manager, then with one of the guys from technical team where we discussed real world problems, etc. Everything goes well. As…

Yes, that could happen if the person interviewing you has really deep knowledge of a very narrow area and somehow they've grown to think that this niche embodies all of software engineering.

I find that older, more experienced engineers tend to know not to ask these kinds of deep domain-specific questions (unless the are directly relevant to the position being applied for).

The unfair part about this type of interview process is that the interviewer assumes that what the candidate knows is only a subset of what they know - But they completely ignore the knowledge that lies outside of the intersection (which could also be useful).

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