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How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

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Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#91

Post by scryder »

cookiecaper wrote: post #77
pvinis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I think about that question, and in fact that's the question I have gotten many times, is "what's a technical problem that you solved and you are the most proud of?". In this question, 100% of developers have an answer. Everyone has done something that needed a bit of thinking or planning, and then they were proud of the execution. It can be the hello world in a new language or it could be building Facebook,…

I actually don't like this question. It's hard to decide. If it's something too simple, you're going to be looked down on. If it's a clever hack around someone's bug, it's hard to really be proud of something that shouldn't have had to exist in the first place. If I say something from a long time ago, I may not remember enough details to answer follow-up questions. If my job is boring (hence interviewing for a new on…

I think you may be overthinking how seriously your interlocuters take interpreting the behavioral questions.

The vast majority of CS interview questions are really just one or both of two categories:

1. Say something entertaining or that makes me like you.

2. Say something that proves you're competent so if I like you it's not a hard sell to hire you.

When you read this hard into a question that can in this framework be reworded "talk about stuff you programmed that you thought was mentally interesting when you made it", they truly only are thinking about your skills at the most basic surface level, they really just want to let you gush for a minute.

Even in the most embarrassing code you've written there are dumb bugs and little moments of triumph, and they're begging you to share some of the juicy details, of which I'm fairly sure every programmer has a few they can recall.

If you have no example of work you've done you can gush over, then yeah it's a problem, but to me this is a sign that the only truly wrong answer is NO answer or trying to fake a modicum of passion by gushing about something you actually don't care about, and THEN sounding wooden when doing so, because if you didn't come off as wooden, even this would be sufficient.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#92

Post by notamy »

lettersdigits wrote: post #22

> What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. Maybe I just almost never work on REAL hard things. So my question to you, HNers, is : What is the hardest technical problem YOU have run into? I am really interested to know what you would consider 'hardest'.. It's probably not going to be something like 'I changed the css property value from "display: block…

> What is the hardest technical problem YOU have run into?

Layer 8, ie. human beings. The software side of stuff, I can eventually solve by hammering at the keyboard until it works. But the people using it, and the ever-changing requirements they have - especially since this influences my software design - is definitely the hardest part.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#93

Post by BurningFrog »

pvinis wrote: post #53
lettersdigits wrote: post #22

> What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. Maybe I just almost never work on REAL hard things. So my question to you, HNers, is : What is the hardest technical problem YOU have run into? I am really interested to know what you would consider 'hardest'.. It's probably not going to be something like 'I changed the css property value from "display: block…

The way I think about that question, and in fact that's the question I have gotten many times, is "what's a technical problem that you solved and you are the most proud of?". In this question, 100% of developers have an answer. Everyone has done something that needed a bit of thinking or planning, and then they were proud of the execution. It can be the hello world in a new language or it could be building Facebook,…

> In this question, 100% of developers have an answer.

Sorry, I don't.

The story I would tell if asked this was solved by the guy I was pairing with. He knew about URL encoding images, which immediately solved something we could have worked for weeks on. I was very surprised and impressed. Of course, now that is part of my toolbox, and I wouldn't think much of solving something else this way.

Sometimes I solve problems easily that others find very hard. I'm glad I could help, but I don't go around feeling proud of how awesome I did that day. I just happened to know something others didn't yet.

This might sound like humblebragging, and perhaps it is. Just trying to explain why I have a hard time with this question.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#94

Post by cookiecaper »

wernercd wrote: post #35
lettersdigits wrote: post #22

> What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. Maybe I just almost never work on REAL hard things. So my question to you, HNers, is : What is the hardest technical problem YOU have run into? I am really interested to know what you would consider 'hardest'.. It's probably not going to be something like 'I changed the css property value from "display: block…

> > What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? >I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. Real easy: Overcoming technical debt/bad decisions of the previous group of programmers. At my current company/position, our group basically replaced an outside company - two programmers. You name something you should do and they did it: Code in the behind, logic in triggers, plain text passwords, direct d…

This is not impressive. This is normal. When they say "What's the hardest thing you've done?" I would hope that if you are going to run with this, you explain why conventional maintenance/upgrades were so extraordinarily difficult in this case.

Every developer dreams of going greenfield. Ultimately, that's because it's harder and much more tedious to read code than to write it. If you start from scratch, you understand the whole stack/platform, everything is customized to your liking, and so on. That's great for you, but the company is usually stuck spinning its wheels for months while you push this rewrite down their throats.

It's also very easy to underestimate the depth of domain knowledge and accounted-for corner cases encoded in an old codebase. It looks easy at first, but it usually ends up taking at least months to reach feature parity with the old software, which usually also means that people will use both systems simultaneously, requiring data synchronization, etc.

The whole thing becomes messy, and by the time you're done, the "new system" usually isn't really all that improved over the old system. Systems get convoluted in the process of development, business needs demand quick shoehorning of something instead of thorough refactoring, etc.

Once in a while, a full rewrite is indeed justified, but it's much rarer than most people think.

Going in saying "Yes, my company needed a full rewrite" is an instant orange flag in my book, and thorough questioning would be needed to determine if this is an ongoing attitude problem where there's a reluctance/reticence to read other peoples' code. That portends laziness, a disrespect for colleagues, and a disrespect for the business's needs, which are rarely aligned with tying its developer labor up in a greenfield reimplementation.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#95

Post by BurningFrog »

TheCowboy wrote: post #26
existencebox wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having done many interviews, mentored interns and full employees, I'd argue storytelling is a _key aspect_ of performing our job in a larger team. Perhaps I'm being too liberal in my definitions, but I see substantial overlap between "talk about your last project" (and then digging into pitfalls, hacks, workarounds, conflicts; and mind you, I don't mean just PASSION projects, literally any work prior one can speak fl…

As I mentioned, this is playing into the fallacy that telling a story during the interview is equivalent to the communication skills required for performing the job. It confuses story-telling performance during an interview, and the stresses of a success/fail situation, with the type required to perform real work. Mistaking "overlap" for all-encompassing. Sure, there's overlap. There's overlap in being able to type u…

Being able to discuss design is an essential skill for programmers. This question gives you a chance to display that.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#96

Post by DonbunEf7 »

lettersdigits wrote: post #22

> What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. Maybe I just almost never work on REAL hard things. So my question to you, HNers, is : What is the hardest technical problem YOU have run into? I am really interested to know what you would consider 'hardest'.. It's probably not going to be something like 'I changed the css property value from "display: block…

In no particular order:

* GPU drivers are a buffet of terrible things. My best moment was either hand-compiling shaders to GPU-specific assembly in order to implement video playback filters, or deducing how the GPU vendor's drivers managed to fake a particular GL extension and implementing that same fake trick in the MesaGL version of the driver.

* Self-applicable partial evaluators are cool. I've tried several times to build one, and each time I fall short.

* I've hand-written parsers for big languages. I've also written parser generators. I'm not sure which is harder.

* Fighting with motherfucking BitBake. You have no fucking idea.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#97

Post by cookiecaper »

scryder wrote: post #91
cookiecaper wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually don't like this question. It's hard to decide. If it's something too simple, you're going to be looked down on. If it's a clever hack around someone's bug, it's hard to really be proud of something that shouldn't have had to exist in the first place. If I say something from a long time ago, I may not remember enough details to answer follow-up questions. If my job is boring (hence interviewing for a new on…

I think you may be overthinking how seriously your interlocuters take interpreting the behavioral questions. The vast majority of CS interview questions are really just one or both of two categories: 1. Say something entertaining or that makes me like you. 2. Say something that proves you're competent so if I like you it's not a hard sell to hire you. When you read this hard into a question that can in this framework…

Right, I actually agree. I said in another comment that these questions are lazy interviewing, because it's just the interviewer saying "Well? Amuse me."

But it's still difficult to say I'm "proud" of something that I don't really think warrants pride. Just have to steel up and go in there ready to talk about something dumb I guess.

The things I'm actually proud of are things that don't look impressive to the outside. To me, the gold standard contribution is surgical, precise, and simple. It may only be 20 lines of code but it operates within the framework of the existing stuff, doesn't break the tests, etc. That sounds like "routine work" to me.

These people want to hear about atom bombs because they leave a cool looking mushroom cloud, but the professional shouldn't have to go nuclear -- and they shouldn't be proud of it when they do.

I guess the core issue is that if someone is asking this question, it signals that we're not really on the same wavelength. At least, it seems to signal that, because I assume they're saying "OK, please wow me now." Good work is quiet and consistent, usually not astonishing.

If the candidate is the author of some bona fide, actually-used open-source software (not GitHub vanity projects), that could qualify as something that looks impressive and is also probably objectively worth being proud of, but few people would meet this description.

Of course, in reality, the signal is really "I have no idea how to interview someone, please make this easy for me." If you interpret it that way and ignore the actual question posed, I guess it becomes easy; just say something that sounds like a vague answer, and then speak for 2 minutes+ about why you're probably the best choice.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#98

Post by ensignavenger »

dahart wrote: post #88
ensignavenger wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand putting the headline first (Let me tell you about the time I re-wrote the widget code for Acme.), but I don't think I ever tell the story backwards... maybe I am just strange in that I appreciate a good (concise) story?

Not strange at all, there's a reason movies are they way they are. It depends on context, there are times to put the punchline first, there are times tell the story backward. For that matter, there are classic examples of movies that tell the story backward, or give away the ending first. There's some difference between headline first and punchline first, but either way the real point being made was turn it into a co…

That makes much more sense. I was thinking of 'telling the story backwards' being telling the same story, just giving the details in reverse of how they happened.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#99

Post by matthewowen »

BurningFrog wrote: post #93
pvinis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I think about that question, and in fact that's the question I have gotten many times, is "what's a technical problem that you solved and you are the most proud of?". In this question, 100% of developers have an answer. Everyone has done something that needed a bit of thinking or planning, and then they were proud of the execution. It can be the hello world in a new language or it could be building Facebook,…

> In this question, 100% of developers have an answer. Sorry, I don't. The story I would tell if asked this was solved by the guy I was pairing with. He knew about URL encoding images, which immediately solved something we could have worked for weeks on. I was very surprised and impressed. Of course, now that is part of my toolbox, and I wouldn't think much of solving something else this way. Sometimes I solve proble…

How long have you been working for?

It just sounds kinda sad to say that you've never been proud of work you've done. I think if I was never proud of the work I'd done I wouldn't still be doing this job: a feeling of reward is important!

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#100

Post by planteen »

DonbunEf7 wrote: post #96
lettersdigits wrote: post #22

> What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. Maybe I just almost never work on REAL hard things. So my question to you, HNers, is : What is the hardest technical problem YOU have run into? I am really interested to know what you would consider 'hardest'.. It's probably not going to be something like 'I changed the css property value from "display: block…

In no particular order: * GPU drivers are a buffet of terrible things. My best moment was either hand-compiling shaders to GPU-specific assembly in order to implement video playback filters, or deducing how the GPU vendor's drivers managed to fake a particular GL extension and implementing that same fake trick in the MesaGL version of the driver. * Self-applicable partial evaluators are cool. I've tried several times…

Sounds like you do some embedded graphics work.

On multiple occasions, I've kicked off BitBake to run overnight. I come in to find it failing from running out of disk space. And I'm usually perplexed - does this really need over 200 GB of space!?!

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