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> having 13 years of practical experience means that I won't take a job for $60k Where are you based? If you're in the US and you have as much experience as yo

> having 13 years of practical experience means that I won't take a job for $60k Where are you based? If you're in the US and you have as much experience as you say you do, even if you're in places that aren't major tech hubs, you should be able to find remote work that pays more than $60k/year. > That will teach me to not memorize algorithms I haven't used since college. The debate about the merits of algorithm-driven interviews aside, the fact is that most companies still do this for their interviews. This is starting to change, but slowly. When I was last looking for a job, every company but one[0] asked questions about complexity classes at some point during the interview stage. Unlike the last time I was on the interview circuit, though, more than half had at least one question that was explicitly focused on something else - so it's changing, but still slowly. So, while it may be information you never access again while on the job, if it's the knowledge that will secure you that well-paying job in the first place, consider it a worthy ROI. [0] incidentally, the one I ended up working for

falcolas 11y ago
> should be able to find remote work that pays more than $60k/year. Key word being "should". The "companies willing to take risks" from the OP don't accept remote people most of the time, and those who do allow remote frequently don't believe that people outside of SV are worthy of the payscales you see in SV (even after adjusting for the cost of living). > asked questions about complexity classes at some point during the interview stage Yeah, and I am reasonably certain that I passed 3 of the 4 for that class of question, but I had forgotten the minutiae of Dijkstra pathfinding algorithm. As a result, my response for the 4th was O(n^3), but it should have been O(n^2). At least I won't forget that one again. It was pretty funny in one of the interviews, where we spent 50 minutes going over a logic puzzle (the kind where if you don't know the answer, it's unlikely you'll figure it out in an hour), they then went on to say how the job was about creating an interface between a DB and RabbitMQ, and creating a common application framework for the rest of the company. We ended up having a good (but short) conversation about how to do exactly that, and those 10 minutes seemed much more valuable than the time spent on a logic puzzle. I think that's the big thing: the existing employees who are drafted to do candidate interviews were themselves interviewed with this style, so it's how they go about it. They simply haven't stopped to think about what biases these interviews introduce, or think those biases are a good thing.

falcolas 11y ago

> should be able to find remote work that pays more than $60k/year. Key word being "should". The "companies willing to take risks" from the OP don't accept remote people most of the time, and those who do allow remote frequently don't believe that people outside of SV are worthy of the payscales you see in SV (even after adjusting for the cost of living). > asked questions about complexity classes at some point during the interview stage Yeah, and I am reasonably certain that I passed 3 of the 4 for that class of question, but I had forgotten the minutiae of Dijkstra pathfinding algorithm. As a result, my response for the 4th was O(n^3), but it should have been O(n^2). At least I won't forget that one again. It was pretty funny in one of the interviews, where we spent 50 minutes going over a logic puzzle (the kind where if you don't know the answer, it's unlikely you'll figure it out in an hour), they then went on to say how the job was about creating an interface between a DB and RabbitMQ, and creating a common application framework for the rest of the company. We ended up having a good (but short) conversation about how to do exactly that, and those 10 minutes seemed much more valuable than the time spent on a logic puzzle. I think that's the big thing: the existing employees who are drafted to do candidate interviews were themselves interviewed with this style, so it's how they go about it. They simply haven't stopped to think about what biases these interviews introduce, or think those biases are a good thing.