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I'm so tired of hearing programmers complain about how useless programming interviews are. I'm currently in the process of preparing for interviews. I'm almost
by docker_up 7y ago
I'm so tired of hearing programmers complain about how useless programming interviews are.
I'm currently in the process of preparing for interviews. I'm almost 50. I'm currently talking with FANG and other well-known Silicon Valley unicorn startups so I don't feel any ageism yet. I hate it, though. But it's the reality of the industry right now. I don't pretend I'm above it, so I will do whatever I need to get a new job.
Yes, I hate them with a passion. Today I had a phone screen with a company and I was so nervous, I think I'm suffering from PTSD from how completely random the question will be, and how random the evaluator's perception of me will be based on said question. But I accept it for what it is. I'm auditioning for a role as "senior programmer", just like an actor would. That's the reality, and if I'm going to get myself a job that pays ~$400,000/yr in total comp, I will jump through whatever hoops I need to.
The OP was saying he was doing one programming question per week. Really? I'm doing 5 per night, and even more on the weekends. As I get closer to onsites, I'm going to be studying 8 hrs a day on weekends and leaving my kids to my wife.
- Waterluvian 7y agoI appreciate your differing perspective. But just because you're willing to make those sacrifices doesn't mean it's right or that everyone should have to.
- dillonmckay 7y agoYou don’t have to, but you won’t get a job at FAANG.
- Waterluvian 7y agoYep that's probably true. But boy oh boy is FAANG overrated in my opinion. To be fair, some people might like the opportunity to double their salary by working twice as much. But I'm not convinced any of them are making the right choice of what to do with their time here.
- akhilcacharya 7y agoIt’s closer to double for about the same amount of work if my friends back home are any indication (and I work for the frugal FANG)
- Waterluvian 7y agoSo if you're talking 200-300k for 35 hours a week of fully remote low stress work then yeah, I'm all mixed up on this topic.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- akhilcacharya 7y agoWell not remote, but pay and hours very reasonable at G specifically. I do a little more for a bit less but I’m satisfied :)
- scarface74 7y agoI know that Amazon doesn’t require their AWS Solutions Architects to do leetCode. I doubt that Microsoft or Google do.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoMy first interview in my last amazon loop was a canonical popular leetcode question (Alien Dictionary). The rest weren’t, however. I surely got points off in my interview for pointing out how practiced Alien Dictionary was for anyone studying for an interview.
- throwaway55554 7y agoI hate that problem. I would have walked. I get ticked off every time I work some leetcode because that's what we're being reduced to and problems like Alien Dictionary are the ones that really set me off. It's just stupid. Insultingly so.
- dillonmckay 7y agoWhat are other popular canonical coding questions/puzzles?
- ed312 7y agoFrom my experience, "Solutions Architects" are closer to "Sales Engineering" vs pure software roles. YMMV.
- scarface74 7y agoExactly. Pre-sales, post sales, and proofs of concepts. Technical Account Managers seem to lean more on the software/proof of concepts side. Third party AWS partners can have consultants who are more software architects. But SAs are all over the map between pure sales => infrastructure (lift and shifters) => "cloud native" architects/developers.
- LandR 7y agoI'm ok with this.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- docker_up 7y agoMy point is that it's the reality. Change and adapt or die along with the COBOL programmers. I watched the COBOL programmers get laid off in droves after Y2K and the dotcom bust so it's a lesson I won't forget. Sure there are some COBOL programmers making mint as consultants but the total number were laid off with prejudice.
- Waterluvian 7y agoOkay I can appreciate that point. I guess why I disagree is that while I agree that you need to adapt to new technologies, you should never need to adapt to absurd hoop jumping in terms of working nights and weekends just to get hired. Ie. I do not accept the idea that, "well x hours of interviews and code trivia is normal so you need to just go do that." At that point I would rather die than adapt. I'll go do demolition with Peter Gibbons and see my kids evenings and weekends.
- docker_up 7y agoI wish I had other options, but the only thing I've ever done in my life is code. I can't even put together IKEA furniture very well, so I'm effectively useless everywhere else.
- Circuits 7y agoThat is incredibly sad to hear. I wouldn't hire you based on your inability to adapt and learn new things. You may get through the coding questions but with an attitude like that (without lying) you aren't going to get threw the interview. Not to say that you ACTUALLY wont... I really hope you do but just keep in mind they are looking for more than a robot.
- docker_up 7y agoI'm totally okay with you not wanting to hire me. Even at my age, I get about a 50% acceptance rate from my onsites. I would rather take a coding job that pays me well than start from the beginning in any other industry. If all it takes is a few months of studying, I'll take it.
- dillonmckay 7y agoHave you started remote coding interviews yet?
- docker_up 7y agoI've done phone screens with coderpad/hackerrank if that's what you're talking about. That's the industry norm for several years now.
- dillonmckay 7y agoKinda. How many phone-screens do you do before an onsite is scheduled?
- docker_up 7y agoJust one. I'm in SV and I can often get onsites skipped because I know someone and get a direct referral.
- dillonmckay 7y agoNice. I would really like to talk to you more about your experiences through this process.
- scarface74 7y agoCounterpoint. I’m 45. A hands on developer, an occasional team lead and have never had to do a leetCode style interview, never studied “Cracking the Code”. Most of the local startups are recruiting me to be the “adult supervision” and were asking me architectural questions.
- docker_up 7y agoMore power to you. I personally haven't not seen a leetcode-style interview in at least 15 years in Silicon Valley. There's also system design questions these days and I was told Google does "Computer Science Fundamentals" and Facebook does "Distributed Systems Design" specifically.
- dillonmckay 7y agoWhat metro area are you being recruited in?
- PorterDuff 7y agoWhile ageism is real, I like your spirit and somewhat agree. Probably the hardest part of looking for and getting a FTE gig is starting over clearing a space for yourself I think. It's tough to switch from being the local expert to just another FNG. Personally (like anyone cares, but this is the internet after all) I'd like to find a really interesting job and I don't give a rip about the money. I suppose there's always open source, but working for free violates all kinds of my internal makeup.
- docker_up 7y agoI've had over 10 jobs in my career so starting over, making new friends, learning new code bases from scratch etc is old hat to me. I wish interviews would test for that instead of leetcode.
- paxys 7y agoAgree with everything else, but what company (even in silicon valley) is paying $400k total comp in the first year to a senior engineer?
- docker_up 7y ago400k TC is about average (if not low) these days for staff-level positions in SV. Getting those jobs requires studying hard, though.
- paxys 7y agoMaybe after a few years with a lot of stock appreciation. I don't know of any company that will offer it straight-up. If you do, let me know and I'll consider switching right away.
- seattle_spring 7y agoFacebook, Google, Airbnb, Uber, Lyft. All of them easily offer 400k to L5s.
- docker_up 7y agoYes, 400k is easily attainable as an L5/E5 at FANG. That's 200k base salary, 30k annual bonus, and $175k yearly RSU vesting (or about 750k initial grant). Those are definitely possible. Staff-level (L6) is about $250-300k, $50k bonus and $300k yearly vest at FANG. Senior engineers at Netflix make $600k or more per year in base salary only. I'm not smart enough or ambitious enough anymore for staff but L5 is definitely doable.
- vonmoltke 7y agoIs Google really that much of a jump from L4 to L5? Their L4 packages are reportedly in the ±270k area (and my offer last year was well into the minus part of that range). Also, and possibly related if the point above is the case, I have read from various Googlers recently that getting hired from outside at L5+ is really hard.
- mnm1 7y agoMost senior level jobs don't even break 200k. Sure for a faang job it should be expected to play this game no matter how silly it is. But for 99% of positions out there it's absurd.
- Brian_K_White 7y agoThe reason to complain about a bad thing, is because in the entire history of the world, nothing ever got better because people accepted things as they were. You benefit right now, in countless ways, from past versions of those exact same people you are so tired of hearing. Awesome gratitude, and way to pay it forward.
- ctvo 7y agoAnd what's your suggestion to make it better? Giving us the definition of complaining... well thanks. There is a correlation between these horrendous interviews and quality of candidates otherwise, if they were full of false positives, we would stop doing them. The problem is they produce false negatives and how do we go about fixing that? Is it even that big of a problem? These are all debatable. We haven't hit the point where hiring is SO expensive that we can't handle false negatives, we may in the future, then we'd work much harder at addressing the current situation.
- learc83 7y ago>if they were full of false positives, we would stop doing them. Or the alternate explanation. Hiring is incredibly difficult, everyone is bad at it, and the best solution people can come up with is to cargo cult Google's hiring process. From experience I know there are many companies that have absolutely no evidence to support their hiring process, they just do it because it's the current fad. And I assure you whiteboard interviews are full of plenty of false positives. Particularly now that people are spending so much time prepping for the interviews. You know the saying about metrics ceasing to he useful
- Frost1x 7y agoIt will be a big problem if your false negatives become your competitors.
- pellucidar 7y agoBut hiring IS crazy expensive because of the hours of effort spent by existing employees on the hiring side of the process, and the difficulty of finding "good" candidates who are willing to spend those hours plus even more of their own on the being hired side. In other industries people just don't talk about spending 6-8 hours a week every week interviewing applicants--not even in high-turnover industries. That's an incredible cost, but it's not counted as a line item, just yet another annoyance of the annoying hiring process.
- throwaway55554 7y agoA while ago I was contacted by a FAANG recruiter and so I said, sure, I'll interview with you. Then I started looking at all the material they send to prepare you. And I started looking at all the sites dedicated to passing the interviews. I started working the leetcode problems, but the more I did the more pissed off I got that this is what it comes down to. > I'm doing 5 per night, and even more on the weekends. As I get closer to onsites, I'm going to be studying 8 hrs a day on weekends and leaving my kids to my wife. I'm not going to do this. No job is worth that much stress to me. The kids can have these jobs. There are plenty of other interesting development jobs. They pay well, just not FAANG well.
- acheron 7y ago> But it's the reality of the industry right now. It really, really isn't. Thanks for the reminder of why I would never live/work in SV. I have never encountered anything like this in many years of working and taking new jobs. Mostly they look at my resume, we talk about stuff I've done, there's maybe a couple simple technical questions specifically related to things I've done and things that the position will involve, and that's about it.
- Frost1x 7y agoIt is in the DC area.
- 75dvtwin 7y ago> I'm auditioning for a role as "senior programmer", just like an actor would. That's the reality, and if I'm going to get myself a job that pays ~$400,000/yr in total comp, I will jump through whatever hoops I need to. Your will power, mental flexibility and cognitive endurance -- should deserve nothing but praises. I am going to add an additional assumption here, is that throughout your work, you were able to impress people you worked for and with, in the same way. So you have built a network of 'admirers' so to speak, of your skills. With that, you should, evaluate if these types of capabilities deserve more, than what you will be getting. When you sign up to work for a company that does not particularly value your experience, your network -- but instead demands up-to-date / or needle-in-haystack interview skills -- you are trading reduced risk (of a salaried employee for a large corp), in exchange for reduced financial reward. Other venues your own startups, your own contracts, may be joining ad-hoc contracting gigs.
- jstewartmobile 7y ago$400,000/yr in SV is peasant wage. One slip on the career ladder, and you'll be shooting up smack in a tent city like everyone else over there. In a country where most people live like kings, why is everyone so determined to become a peasant?
- b3b0p 7y agoI don't know how you can get anything out of or the time to work through 5 problems per day, have a day job, and a life (going to the gym, family, friends, eating, taking care of my life). I guess it's possible, but sounds almost like you might be setting yourself up for total burnout. I've tried that and after a week or 2 of that I'm extremely tired and have difficult time doing much when it comes to coding and problem solving or even work. I have a couple onsite at FAANG coming up in the next few weeks and I decided to buy a year of InterviewCake to work through the problems. I'm trying to do at least 1 per day or so and more on weekends. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the course and will go through again when I'm done and supplement with Cracking the Coding Interview, High Scalability blog, and probably some LeetCode problems. Otherwise, I have a job right now I'm very happy with and comfortable. I can always try again if I want to give it a shot.
- abledon 7y agoLol, your user name 'docker_up' reminds me of a hard-ass man espousing the masculinity trope of 'manning up' or 'MAN UP!' to some sniveling coworkers in an alternate business domain, but basically having your same attitude.