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If you can't code under pressure, you aren't a very competent programmer. Real world projects come with high pressure scenarios for software engineers. Code mon

If you can't code under pressure, you aren't a very competent programmer. Real world projects come with high pressure scenarios for software engineers. Code monkeys may be able to get away with low pressure, minimally impactful projects.

67726e 10y ago
I can't code with people staring at me, talking to me, asking me questions. If you can more power to you, but if that reflects the nature of the job then they can take that one and shove it. It simply doesn't reflect reality.
- totalZero 10y ago
  How about when you're alone, it's 3am, you haven't slept much in the past three days, and you have a 10am deadline to meet?
  - wasted_intel 10y ago
    Your job sounds terrible.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - kasey_junk 10y ago
    You almost certainly tell the project manager that they have dramatically failed at their job. You go to bed and come back when you aren't going to make stupid errors.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    That is a thing that happens, yes. If that happens consistently for months at a time, then as said the PM is severely fucking up. And if that wasn't communicated as an expectation before compensation was negotiated, then the company is probably fucking up. As the quip goes "If a race doesn't have an end, then it's a death march."
  - 67726e 10y ago
    A) Been there, done that, told my boss to fuck off. I've been on week long coding binges where I maybe got a cumulative 10 hours of sleep. This is a fundamentally different kind of pressure on yourself than having someone watching over your should or giving you a stare down on Skype while badgering you the whole time. B) If you're working a job like this you're working a shitty job and ought to quit. Unless you're maybe hacking the Gibson to stop some oil tankers from going belly up there is hardly a reason in our industry for this kind of shit.
TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
It's not like software development is the same as being a fighter pilot. Code now or die isn't usually something most people face in their day job.
- Apocryphon 10y ago
  The Swordfish art of tech interviewing
- DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
  According to Vim aficionados, the experiences are similar.
GrinningFool 10y ago
Upvoting you to help prevent your comment from reaching oblivion - I don't agree with you, but I think what you said is a common belief. The thing is, it's a vastly different kind of pressure. When I am coding as part of a job - by myself or with others - there is no inner monologue in the corner of my brain doing something like this: "Could do that or... no damn, that's O(n^2), damn I'm taking too long that one looks bored, if I instead put those keys in a hash... no, I'm sure there's a better way, running out of time though, is he looking at his phone now? Okay, what was the profile of merge sort again? ... oh, shit! She felt like she had to offer me a guiding hint, I'm doing it wrong!" And it never stops going. It picks apart every choice I make, and by five minutes into the interview I come across as a sub-articulate mess. In no other high-pressure situation does this happen to me. Hell, this past summer I actually spoke at a conference and I didn't have the kind of trouble I do in an interview. Whiteboarding, paired coding, participating in architecture design - these things come easily. In the context of an interview, though, it goes out the window.
- snoman 10y ago
  Have you done pair programming before? Especially as you become more senior, the pressure to not look like an idiot in front of junior devs adds up fast. You have to learn, quickly, how to get over that kind of inner monologue, and just get to work. That kind of scenario happens to me daily.
  - nsxwolf 10y ago
    I've never felt that pressure. Keep an air of confidence. Let them assume you know way more than they do about almost anything else. They'll feel like they're really shining in this moment, and impressing you, and growing in their role. Win win.
    - akamaozu 10y ago
      I don't understand the desire to make it seem like you know everything. If you learn something from someone, is it that much trouble to give them credit for expanding your horizon? If this mindset is recursive down your organization's hierarchy, doesn't it create a scenario where a legitimate critique never gets heard because people don't question the decision of a higher ranked employee because there is the impression that they know more than you? Seems like you and your employer are worse off, but your ego remains intact.
taneq 10y ago
You're getting hammered for this, but for some jobs you're absolutely right. If you can't handle being put on the spot for a simple interview question, how are you going to go when a production line is down and it's costing your client $100k/hr, and the foreman's standing looking over your shoulder wanting to know when it'll be working? Not all jobs give you all the time in the world on a test server without interruptions.
- closeparen 10y ago
  In my experience, high-pressure "fix it now" scenarios are about leaning on what you know about the system, interpreting metrics and log messages, understanding how it's going wrong, and deploying a (usually very simple) fix. Sometimes just blindly hitting the "rollback" button as a first step fixes it, too. Performing well in this kind of scenario is much less about algorithms and data structures, and much more about systems thinking and the level of your understanding of your system.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    Both of you have points, but I absolutely agree with this. Outside of "Healthcare.gov goes live tomorrow and turns out it's completely broken" scenarios I've never seen something that would require a ground-up design and build of a system under emergency production time constraints. System knowledge and knowing which one bolt to replace or turn is almost always more effective. PS: Not to mention, if we're getting into algorithmic complexity levels of engineering on a monkey patch to a production system, then so many alarm bells are already ringing.
- Noseshine 10y ago
  See my longer comment above. Last paragraph: An interview situation is much more adversarial: They are looking out for reasons not to hire you, you are competing with others for the job and only one can get it! No such consideration on the job, unless the work environment is completely and ridiculously broken. When are you ever in a work situation where several people work on competing solutions and everybody else but the person who made the winning one is fired? At work you are working together, and to solve a problem, not to week you out of the pool.
vehementi 10y ago
How do these opinions even survive? Yikes
Shorel 10y ago
I can code under pressure. But I will not work in a company where that's the norm. I value my health more than the potential money from that stressful job.

67726e 10y ago

I can't code with people staring at me, talking to me, asking me questions. If you can more power to you, but if that reflects the nature of the job then they can take that one and shove it. It simply doesn't reflect reality.

totalZero 10y ago
How about when you're alone, it's 3am, you haven't slept much in the past three days, and you have a 10am deadline to meet?
- wasted_intel 10y ago
  Your job sounds terrible.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- kasey_junk 10y ago
  You almost certainly tell the project manager that they have dramatically failed at their job. You go to bed and come back when you aren't going to make stupid errors.
- ethbro 10y ago
  That is a thing that happens, yes. If that happens consistently for months at a time, then as said the PM is severely fucking up. And if that wasn't communicated as an expectation before compensation was negotiated, then the company is probably fucking up. As the quip goes "If a race doesn't have an end, then it's a death march."
- 67726e 10y ago
  A) Been there, done that, told my boss to fuck off. I've been on week long coding binges where I maybe got a cumulative 10 hours of sleep. This is a fundamentally different kind of pressure on yourself than having someone watching over your should or giving you a stare down on Skype while badgering you the whole time. B) If you're working a job like this you're working a shitty job and ought to quit. Unless you're maybe hacking the Gibson to stop some oil tankers from going belly up there is hardly a reason in our industry for this kind of shit.

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago

It's not like software development is the same as being a fighter pilot. Code now or die isn't usually something most people face in their day job.

Apocryphon 10y ago
The Swordfish art of tech interviewing
DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
According to Vim aficionados, the experiences are similar.

GrinningFool 10y ago

Upvoting you to help prevent your comment from reaching oblivion - I don't agree with you, but I think what you said is a common belief. The thing is, it's a vastly different kind of pressure. When I am coding as part of a job - by myself or with others - there is no inner monologue in the corner of my brain doing something like this: "Could do that or... no damn, that's O(n^2), damn I'm taking too long that one looks bored, if I instead put those keys in a hash... no, I'm sure there's a better way, running out of time though, is he looking at his phone now? Okay, what was the profile of merge sort again? ... oh, shit! She felt like she had to offer me a guiding hint, I'm doing it wrong!" And it never stops going. It picks apart every choice I make, and by five minutes into the interview I come across as a sub-articulate mess. In no other high-pressure situation does this happen to me. Hell, this past summer I actually spoke at a conference and I didn't have the kind of trouble I do in an interview. Whiteboarding, paired coding, participating in architecture design - these things come easily. In the context of an interview, though, it goes out the window.

snoman 10y ago
Have you done pair programming before? Especially as you become more senior, the pressure to not look like an idiot in front of junior devs adds up fast. You have to learn, quickly, how to get over that kind of inner monologue, and just get to work. That kind of scenario happens to me daily.
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  I've never felt that pressure. Keep an air of confidence. Let them assume you know way more than they do about almost anything else. They'll feel like they're really shining in this moment, and impressing you, and growing in their role. Win win.
  - akamaozu 10y ago
    I don't understand the desire to make it seem like you know everything. If you learn something from someone, is it that much trouble to give them credit for expanding your horizon? If this mindset is recursive down your organization's hierarchy, doesn't it create a scenario where a legitimate critique never gets heard because people don't question the decision of a higher ranked employee because there is the impression that they know more than you? Seems like you and your employer are worse off, but your ego remains intact.

taneq 10y ago

You're getting hammered for this, but for some jobs you're absolutely right. If you can't handle being put on the spot for a simple interview question, how are you going to go when a production line is down and it's costing your client $100k/hr, and the foreman's standing looking over your shoulder wanting to know when it'll be working? Not all jobs give you all the time in the world on a test server without interruptions.

closeparen 10y ago
In my experience, high-pressure "fix it now" scenarios are about leaning on what you know about the system, interpreting metrics and log messages, understanding how it's going wrong, and deploying a (usually very simple) fix. Sometimes just blindly hitting the "rollback" button as a first step fixes it, too. Performing well in this kind of scenario is much less about algorithms and data structures, and much more about systems thinking and the level of your understanding of your system.
- ethbro 10y ago
  Both of you have points, but I absolutely agree with this. Outside of "Healthcare.gov goes live tomorrow and turns out it's completely broken" scenarios I've never seen something that would require a ground-up design and build of a system under emergency production time constraints. System knowledge and knowing which one bolt to replace or turn is almost always more effective. PS: Not to mention, if we're getting into algorithmic complexity levels of engineering on a monkey patch to a production system, then so many alarm bells are already ringing.
Noseshine 10y ago
See my longer comment above. Last paragraph: An interview situation is much more adversarial: They are looking out for reasons not to hire you, you are competing with others for the job and only one can get it! No such consideration on the job, unless the work environment is completely and ridiculously broken. When are you ever in a work situation where several people work on competing solutions and everybody else but the person who made the winning one is fired? At work you are working together, and to solve a problem, not to week you out of the pool.

vehementi 10y ago

How do these opinions even survive? Yikes

Shorel 10y ago

I can code under pressure. But I will not work in a company where that's the norm. I value my health more than the potential money from that stressful job.