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> I no longer believe this. You should try interviewing "software engineers" that claim to have 10 years of experience architecting and coding in various langu

> I no longer believe this. You should try interviewing "software engineers" that claim to have 10 years of experience architecting and coding in various languages and cannot write a function that doubles the value of each number in an array.

ticmasta 8y ago
Well, it's pretty common to have 10 x 1 year of experience. Lots of jobs require the repetition of a relatively shallow set of skills. When I started my current job I remember the announcement said something like 15 years experience and I thought "I've been doing lots of things for a long time, but I don't feel like I have 15 years experience in any of them" at least no the same way someone in a more stable domain might...
geebee 8y ago
You should try interviewing as a software engineer with 10 years experience. They never ask you to double the value of each integer in an array. They ask you to find all matching subtrees in a binary tree, or to find all sub-matrices in an NxM matrix with a positive determinant in a matrix of arbitrary size, or find all words in a dictionary that can be constructed by concatenating other words in the dictionary. The easiest questions I've been asked are unimaginative but straightforward things (build a binary tree, print inorder, find all permutations of a string, code a hash map). There's also a particularly pernicious trend toward asking for on-line assessments or homework assignments, things that save the hiring company time but put an even greater time burden on the applicant. I'd say "cracking the coding interview" is a good reflection of the kinds of questions you need to be prepared to answer in an interview, and they are miles away from doubling the value of each integer in an array. I think this is why there's such a disconnect between us. You do see self-described software engineers with 10 years of experience who can't do fizzbuzz, I really do believe you. But we (the applicants) never see this, instead we see a vastly higher standard applied. Which would be fine if the companies acknowledged that they are having trouble hiring because they're extremely picky. But instead, we hear people claiming that there's a "shortage" and that they can't hire because all these supposedly senior people can't code fizz buzz.
- apazzolini 8y ago
  I don't doubt that you've had poor interviewing experiences with companies that ask you to do things that are not representative of the job you're interviewing for. This is a well-known problem in our field, and as a fellow engineer with 10 years of experience, I've also encountered it. It's also not my point at all. The comment I was responding to was advocating that there is a myth surrounding the flood of people who don't know how to code. This is not a myth. Doubling an array of integers is one of the easiest questions I can possibly think of, and use it to build interviewee confidence as a warm-up before diving into pragmatic questions related to the job. Unfortunately, there is a not insignificant number of candidates who claim experience and yet are unable to write `.map(x => x * 2)` or use a for loop.
  - geebee 8y ago
    I'll agree, you were making a more narrow point that there are in fact a lot of candidates who can't do extremely simple coding exercises (I agree about that as well) This assertion is often mis-used (a slight of hand to resolve the question of why companies reject so many candidates yet claim that anyone competent will find "100 companies that will hire you today".) However, you were not making that second assertion, you were insisting that something that is real is not a myth, fair enough.
- penguat 8y ago
  we ask almost everyone the same thing, which can be resolved to one of the unimaginative but straightforward things above, but is not necessarily obvious at first glance. We fail the people who evidently can't code, not the people who fail to resolve it to the magic answer.
- tracker1 8y ago
  I've seen both sides a number of times. Even when interviewing specifically those coming out of code-camp style organizations, there's probably 2/3 that never did anything in terms of discovery beyond what they were assigned. I'm not saying that anyone has to spend all their free time coding, but a bit of passion when starting out is the single best indicator of how a junior level developer will perform. This other is title inflation where someone at junior-mid level has a senior title after 2-3 years of experience. It's all over the map. For every good developer, I've seen 2-3 bad developers. For every 10 good developers, you might get 1 great developer. For every 2 great developers, 1 has a personality that doesn't work well with others. It's a challenge to build a team where you need to balance ability, room for growth with need. I also agree that the hiring practices outlined in "cracking the coding interview" are excessive for most environments. Most line of business applications will use tooling that abstracts some of the more difficult challenges. Cloud environments offer services that take care of many of the rest. In reality, there's more need for someone to have an understanding of when you might use a given SQL variant, Mongo or Cassandra (or any number of others), vs even thinking of creating your own systems. In general, for "senior" javascript developers, I ask a single question. Something that's in every JS book from beginning to advanced that I've ever seen. And less than one in 10 give a complete answer, and less than half get it half right.
tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
I've been interviewing several engineers over the last year, for the first time ever. It's _amazing_ how right you are. I would look at a resume and think "wow this person is gonna be amazing". And then I would ask them very very basic questions, and they would get them wrong. I still don't know what to make of it, because it doesn't make any sense to me.

ticmasta 8y ago

Well, it's pretty common to have 10 x 1 year of experience. Lots of jobs require the repetition of a relatively shallow set of skills. When I started my current job I remember the announcement said something like 15 years experience and I thought "I've been doing lots of things for a long time, but I don't feel like I have 15 years experience in any of them" at least no the same way someone in a more stable domain might...

geebee 8y ago

You should try interviewing as a software engineer with 10 years experience. They never ask you to double the value of each integer in an array. They ask you to find all matching subtrees in a binary tree, or to find all sub-matrices in an NxM matrix with a positive determinant in a matrix of arbitrary size, or find all words in a dictionary that can be constructed by concatenating other words in the dictionary. The easiest questions I've been asked are unimaginative but straightforward things (build a binary tree, print inorder, find all permutations of a string, code a hash map). There's also a particularly pernicious trend toward asking for on-line assessments or homework assignments, things that save the hiring company time but put an even greater time burden on the applicant. I'd say "cracking the coding interview" is a good reflection of the kinds of questions you need to be prepared to answer in an interview, and they are miles away from doubling the value of each integer in an array. I think this is why there's such a disconnect between us. You do see self-described software engineers with 10 years of experience who can't do fizzbuzz, I really do believe you. But we (the applicants) never see this, instead we see a vastly higher standard applied. Which would be fine if the companies acknowledged that they are having trouble hiring because they're extremely picky. But instead, we hear people claiming that there's a "shortage" and that they can't hire because all these supposedly senior people can't code fizz buzz.

apazzolini 8y ago
I don't doubt that you've had poor interviewing experiences with companies that ask you to do things that are not representative of the job you're interviewing for. This is a well-known problem in our field, and as a fellow engineer with 10 years of experience, I've also encountered it. It's also not my point at all. The comment I was responding to was advocating that there is a myth surrounding the flood of people who don't know how to code. This is not a myth. Doubling an array of integers is one of the easiest questions I can possibly think of, and use it to build interviewee confidence as a warm-up before diving into pragmatic questions related to the job. Unfortunately, there is a not insignificant number of candidates who claim experience and yet are unable to write `.map(x => x * 2)` or use a for loop.
- geebee 8y ago
  I'll agree, you were making a more narrow point that there are in fact a lot of candidates who can't do extremely simple coding exercises (I agree about that as well) This assertion is often mis-used (a slight of hand to resolve the question of why companies reject so many candidates yet claim that anyone competent will find "100 companies that will hire you today".) However, you were not making that second assertion, you were insisting that something that is real is not a myth, fair enough.
penguat 8y ago
we ask almost everyone the same thing, which can be resolved to one of the unimaginative but straightforward things above, but is not necessarily obvious at first glance. We fail the people who evidently can't code, not the people who fail to resolve it to the magic answer.
tracker1 8y ago
I've seen both sides a number of times. Even when interviewing specifically those coming out of code-camp style organizations, there's probably 2/3 that never did anything in terms of discovery beyond what they were assigned. I'm not saying that anyone has to spend all their free time coding, but a bit of passion when starting out is the single best indicator of how a junior level developer will perform. This other is title inflation where someone at junior-mid level has a senior title after 2-3 years of experience. It's all over the map. For every good developer, I've seen 2-3 bad developers. For every 10 good developers, you might get 1 great developer. For every 2 great developers, 1 has a personality that doesn't work well with others. It's a challenge to build a team where you need to balance ability, room for growth with need. I also agree that the hiring practices outlined in "cracking the coding interview" are excessive for most environments. Most line of business applications will use tooling that abstracts some of the more difficult challenges. Cloud environments offer services that take care of many of the rest. In reality, there's more need for someone to have an understanding of when you might use a given SQL variant, Mongo or Cassandra (or any number of others), vs even thinking of creating your own systems. In general, for "senior" javascript developers, I ask a single question. Something that's in every JS book from beginning to advanced that I've ever seen. And less than one in 10 give a complete answer, and less than half get it half right.

tenaciousDaniel 8y ago

I've been interviewing several engineers over the last year, for the first time ever. It's _amazing_ how right you are. I would look at a resume and think "wow this person is gonna be amazing". And then I would ask them very very basic questions, and they would get them wrong. I still don't know what to make of it, because it doesn't make any sense to me.