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I think tons of experienced people that love programming moved on because of the "Google Interview". You got all this experience and love making stuff for user

by jarsin 8y ago

I think tons of experienced people that love programming moved on because of the "Google Interview". You got all this experience and love making stuff for users, but you don't know the "insert trick of the week" to solve the latest "elite" programming question. Bye Bye. No more jobs for you.

getaclue 8y ago
Interesting view point. Haven't thought about it like this before. Anecdotally, I am finding more of these people in indie development. Making their own thing or working with like minded people. I used to look to Google/Facebook for experts and people to follow. Now, I look elsewhere.
- sidpuri 8y ago
  I think some of the fellows at Google are still some of the best people to look up to but not new grad CS majors they know as much as you do about engineering
- jarsin 8y ago
  Yes that is my experience as well. Indie = recently unemployed, experienced dev making dream project.
hirundo 8y ago
Turns out that Google isn't the only outfit hiring coders. I could never have passed their interview but I've had a long career making a good living working for companies that never asked me to write a self-balancing binary search tree off the cuff.
- jarsin 8y ago
  I run into the "Google Interview" almost everywhere now days.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    Indeed, every two-bit operation is using coder-pad these days, even a certain unamed greeting card company running on google app engine.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    I can speak about my last 5 jobs over 10 years. Before that, I stayed at one company way too long. Job 1 - I had already been working at one company way too long. But I wasn’t asked any tough technical questions. I explained both my professional experience, and that I got my start as a hobbyist in 86 in 6th grade. To be honest, with my programming experience I was overqualified for the job, but I wanted to get into .Net and away from C so I took a high level entry job as a .Net developer and it was basically a vertical salary move (wage compression is real). 2. I remember having a real simple written test that made sure I could write FizzBuzz, knew the basics of .Net and knew how to design and use databases. After that, I sat down and did pair programming with an IDE where I had to make failing unit tests pass. Again I was still punching below my weight class, but I was more concerned with learning than maximizing salary. It was a 10K bump and with a well known at the time Fortune 10 company. 3. Basic technical interview making sure I knew .Net, JavaScript and relational database theory. They asked a lot of questions about architecture and my “whiteboard interview” was drawing out a relatively complex, scalable system. 4. Slightly technical but the main question I remember is “tell me what steps are you going to take to create this software development department we need”. I was interviewing for a Dev lead position without knowing it. 5. “Here are some real world issues we are having with our architecture. We are on AWS. How are you going to solve them?” Yes I’m still supposedly a hands on developer.
    - kamaal 8y ago
      Companies that consider themselves special generally "Google Interviews". That include bulk of the FAANG class companies, or any body who pays in the same ball park. There are also a huge alumni of the FAANG club, who have a vested interested in doing "Google Interviews". Basically these people have spent so much time(thousands of hours) that the only way they can justify it is by making that interview process that way. Anybody who hasn't spent that kind of effort is obviously beneath their station. But I hope you see where this is going. >>Here are some real world issues we are having with our architecture. We are on AWS. How are you going to solve them The "Google Interview" club likely won't ask you these questions. Their job isn't to build software. It is to get good at interviews, if you are good at interviews, interviewing is your day job, as practicing questions brings you a raise/promotion/title-change every year. Why waste time building software?
- stcredzero 8y ago
  I've had a long career making a good living working for companies that never asked me to write a self-balancing binary search tree off the cuff. No one should be asking you to write a self balancing binary search tree off the cuff. One of the simplest would be a Splay tree, and even that's way too much. More relevant would be to ask for 3 or so things each of which are 1/10th the complexity, but then see if you can specify how to integrate those things together into a system in a way that shows you have experience with the pitfalls of actual coding and debugging.
lfowles 8y ago
Pretty much! After repeatedly failing interviews for the past year, I've lost hope of having a "normal" dev job again. Studying for interviews took too much time away from things I'd rather be focusing on if I wasn't going to be employed. I'm now trying to get a business off the ground in a field I've dabbled in for years (game dev), but there's no expectation it'll get me past minimum wage :/
- jarsin 8y ago
  Right. More and more experienced people are moving into indie / contracting on the side because you simply won't pass these interviews unless you spend ton's of time learning all the tricks.
  - badpun 8y ago
    Depends on the company I guess. Less known companies may either not use algorithmic puzzles at all, or have a lower bar (either the puzzles are easier or you don't need to ace them), just because they don't get to be as selective as Google. I once aced the puzzle coding interview in a well known late stage startup without doing much preparation (I was 10 years out of CS school at that time, so none of the algo stuff was too fresh in my head). The problems just were not that hard - you could simply figure them out with common sense and some basic algorithmic techniques.
hinkley 8y ago
Asking people questions that only come up in college and not in the field is ageism plain and simple. They’re selecting for recent graduates. Could be lots of reasons for that. They’re hungry, they don’t know what’s impossible (occasionally an asset, often a source of aggravation), or that they don’t know when to say no.
- hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
  Google loved asking questions relating to the square-cube law. Like "you're shrunken down to the size of a dime and placed in a blender that's going to start in thirty seconds, what do you do?" From what I gather, this is covered in required curriculum in schools like Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, etc. I've never heard of it in my life, and I was one of the top two in my CS graduating class. IMO, this boils down to cultural bias, plain and simple. "We hire people just like us."
  - kamaal 8y ago
    Those questions are no longer asked. Most questions these days come from sites like leetcode, hackerrank and other online judge sites. These companies now specialize in creating online tests. Where in you will have to enter a working program, which takes input through stdin, and has to print output to stdout. There are typically a huge range of tests your program has to pass. Several of those tests are to check if your program completes in time. And yeah, you write the program in a stipulated period of time. Most questions go along the lines of dynamic programming. Mostly because for other questions, there is often a solution you can come up with. But for DP ones there is often a 'unique trick' involved with nested loops. And other ones are often bit manipulation types, where you get strange and interesting results by doing some tricks. So you have to learn all possible algorithms. Which means you have to spend hours everyday learning every new problem/solution posted on those forums. Apart from this you also need to good C++ skills. I often see solution submitters in Java and Python laugh in the comments, commenting how their solution is just a Java equivalent of the C++ code, but just won't complete in time for a test case to pass. That also means learning a lot of C++ important to go through these tests. These days getting good at interviews is a full time job. I often have this thought. If you are really good at interviews you should waste no time in a company, building stuff and writing software. Your whole life must be dedicated to finding the next best paying job. After all that's what you trained for.

by jarsin 8y ago

getaclue 8y ago

Interesting view point. Haven't thought about it like this before. Anecdotally, I am finding more of these people in indie development. Making their own thing or working with like minded people. I used to look to Google/Facebook for experts and people to follow. Now, I look elsewhere.

sidpuri 8y ago
I think some of the fellows at Google are still some of the best people to look up to but not new grad CS majors they know as much as you do about engineering
jarsin 8y ago
Yes that is my experience as well. Indie = recently unemployed, experienced dev making dream project.

hirundo 8y ago

Turns out that Google isn't the only outfit hiring coders. I could never have passed their interview but I've had a long career making a good living working for companies that never asked me to write a self-balancing binary search tree off the cuff.

jarsin 8y ago
I run into the "Google Interview" almost everywhere now days.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Indeed, every two-bit operation is using coder-pad these days, even a certain unamed greeting card company running on google app engine.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I can speak about my last 5 jobs over 10 years. Before that, I stayed at one company way too long. Job 1 - I had already been working at one company way too long. But I wasn’t asked any tough technical questions. I explained both my professional experience, and that I got my start as a hobbyist in 86 in 6th grade. To be honest, with my programming experience I was overqualified for the job, but I wanted to get into .Net and away from C so I took a high level entry job as a .Net developer and it was basically a vertical salary move (wage compression is real). 2. I remember having a real simple written test that made sure I could write FizzBuzz, knew the basics of .Net and knew how to design and use databases. After that, I sat down and did pair programming with an IDE where I had to make failing unit tests pass. Again I was still punching below my weight class, but I was more concerned with learning than maximizing salary. It was a 10K bump and with a well known at the time Fortune 10 company. 3. Basic technical interview making sure I knew .Net, JavaScript and relational database theory. They asked a lot of questions about architecture and my “whiteboard interview” was drawing out a relatively complex, scalable system. 4. Slightly technical but the main question I remember is “tell me what steps are you going to take to create this software development department we need”. I was interviewing for a Dev lead position without knowing it. 5. “Here are some real world issues we are having with our architecture. We are on AWS. How are you going to solve them?” Yes I’m still supposedly a hands on developer.
  - kamaal 8y ago
    Companies that consider themselves special generally "Google Interviews". That include bulk of the FAANG class companies, or any body who pays in the same ball park. There are also a huge alumni of the FAANG club, who have a vested interested in doing "Google Interviews". Basically these people have spent so much time(thousands of hours) that the only way they can justify it is by making that interview process that way. Anybody who hasn't spent that kind of effort is obviously beneath their station. But I hope you see where this is going. >>Here are some real world issues we are having with our architecture. We are on AWS. How are you going to solve them The "Google Interview" club likely won't ask you these questions. Their job isn't to build software. It is to get good at interviews, if you are good at interviews, interviewing is your day job, as practicing questions brings you a raise/promotion/title-change every year. Why waste time building software?
stcredzero 8y ago
I've had a long career making a good living working for companies that never asked me to write a self-balancing binary search tree off the cuff. No one should be asking you to write a self balancing binary search tree off the cuff. One of the simplest would be a Splay tree, and even that's way too much. More relevant would be to ask for 3 or so things each of which are 1/10th the complexity, but then see if you can specify how to integrate those things together into a system in a way that shows you have experience with the pitfalls of actual coding and debugging.

lfowles 8y ago

Pretty much! After repeatedly failing interviews for the past year, I've lost hope of having a "normal" dev job again. Studying for interviews took too much time away from things I'd rather be focusing on if I wasn't going to be employed. I'm now trying to get a business off the ground in a field I've dabbled in for years (game dev), but there's no expectation it'll get me past minimum wage :/

jarsin 8y ago
Right. More and more experienced people are moving into indie / contracting on the side because you simply won't pass these interviews unless you spend ton's of time learning all the tricks.
- badpun 8y ago
  Depends on the company I guess. Less known companies may either not use algorithmic puzzles at all, or have a lower bar (either the puzzles are easier or you don't need to ace them), just because they don't get to be as selective as Google. I once aced the puzzle coding interview in a well known late stage startup without doing much preparation (I was 10 years out of CS school at that time, so none of the algo stuff was too fresh in my head). The problems just were not that hard - you could simply figure them out with common sense and some basic algorithmic techniques.

hinkley 8y ago

Asking people questions that only come up in college and not in the field is ageism plain and simple. They’re selecting for recent graduates. Could be lots of reasons for that. They’re hungry, they don’t know what’s impossible (occasionally an asset, often a source of aggravation), or that they don’t know when to say no.

hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
Google loved asking questions relating to the square-cube law. Like "you're shrunken down to the size of a dime and placed in a blender that's going to start in thirty seconds, what do you do?" From what I gather, this is covered in required curriculum in schools like Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, etc. I've never heard of it in my life, and I was one of the top two in my CS graduating class. IMO, this boils down to cultural bias, plain and simple. "We hire people just like us."
- kamaal 8y ago
  Those questions are no longer asked. Most questions these days come from sites like leetcode, hackerrank and other online judge sites. These companies now specialize in creating online tests. Where in you will have to enter a working program, which takes input through stdin, and has to print output to stdout. There are typically a huge range of tests your program has to pass. Several of those tests are to check if your program completes in time. And yeah, you write the program in a stipulated period of time. Most questions go along the lines of dynamic programming. Mostly because for other questions, there is often a solution you can come up with. But for DP ones there is often a 'unique trick' involved with nested loops. And other ones are often bit manipulation types, where you get strange and interesting results by doing some tricks. So you have to learn all possible algorithms. Which means you have to spend hours everyday learning every new problem/solution posted on those forums. Apart from this you also need to good C++ skills. I often see solution submitters in Java and Python laugh in the comments, commenting how their solution is just a Java equivalent of the C++ code, but just won't complete in time for a test case to pass. That also means learning a lot of C++ important to go through these tests. These days getting good at interviews is a full time job. I often have this thought. If you are really good at interviews you should waste no time in a company, building stuff and writing software. Your whole life must be dedicated to finding the next best paying job. After all that's what you trained for.