6 ms·

I am happy for people who has energy, free time, and will to prove their abilities. I don't have the will, or energy for that. I have been working in the area

I am happy for people who has energy, free time, and will to prove their abilities. I don't have the will, or energy for that. I have been working in the area like for the approx. last 2 decades. If anyone wants to validate if I can really code, can put 1 hour of their time and go over my github/gitlab profiles instead of asking 1 hour of my free time to redo what I was doing professionally. This will be counted against their paid time, but not mine. This is asking some sacrifice on my part for a process everyone knows is highly subjective, and not really doing the expected. And more to that, while working I solve real problems of the business. I do work with colleagues. I do use as much time as needed to do research. I don't get on a dumb IDE which is not integrated to my workflow, or tooling and do puzzles with illogical limits.

ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
I have over 100,000 LoC in the public domain, in over 30 repos (the ones I'm highlighting). I have architected, deployed and shepherded large-scale hybrid systems that are currently in use daily by thousands of people around the world. I have a decade of checkins and mineable Git data. I have solved every single problem that I've ever encountered; whether technical or human (I was a manager for a long time). I have convinced skeptical, conservative, empirical Japanese managers to fund and support development strategies, based mostly on their confidence in me, and my Integrity. I have hundreds of pages of articles I've written in Medium and my own (multiple) sites. I have multiple sites that I have designed, and hundreds of pages of instruction, along with entire courses and presentations. I can trot out a long line of personal and professional references that include CEOs, VPs, lawyers, doctors, consultants, politicians and other engineers, all of whom will sing my praises to the stars -on the record. A big reason for that, is the reason I'm not extremely well-known (outside of a certain narrow demographic). I have done most of my engineering over the last decade in Service and open-source projects that aren't about making money; but helping others. However, when I say this, the answer I get is "IF what you say is true..." Why the hell would anyone make a claim like that without backup? That's crazy. OF COURSE I can back it up. My SO Story is a mile long, with links to everything. Damn straight, there's folks better than me at pretty much any branch of what I do, but I know few that can offer the depth of knowledge across the spectrum, like I can. AND I CAN PROVE IT. But you'll make your decision based on a half-hour, fifty-line binary tree test that a college student would ace better than me. I want to see lawyers do legal briefs as part of their interview. I want to see doctors do "trial surgeries." I want to see HR managers do "how would you handle this?" tests as the ONLY variable in their hiring process, while having their portfolios ignored. After a few months of this crap, I just gave up, and started my own gig. It's working well, but slowly. I would have been fine, taking a low salary, if the work interested me. My retirement's set. I have a couple of companies that I can use to keep my toys going. But good luck with the "Draw Spunky" matchbook tests. I'm sure that you'll get top-shelf talent, that way.
- baron_harkonnen 7y ago
  While I completely agree (and sympathize) with this frustration, there are two things I want to point out. 1. If you can do all these things, then it really won't take that long to freshen up your your white board skills so that you can solve a variety of algorithmic problems easily in code on a whiteboard. If you really want to work for at a FAANG-style place, then just divert your energy for a bit into practicing white boarding. I agree it's stupid and it's probably not worth your time... which leads me to point two. 2. Given your experience and interests, it sounds like working as a cog in a mega-corp is probably not the right career path for you. You're going to do much better in a place where your role is a much bigger part of the company, and your individual skills will have a much bigger impact. And as far as the "other professions don't have to do this" line. I worked for a while in a career that was not software engineers and to be honest, I wish there was basic, practical proficiency tests as part of interviews in more fields. The number of professionals in my last field of work that could not do the basic requirements of the field correctly was horrifying.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
    1) Why would I bother spending time "freshening up" on HackerRank? I don't do DSA, so things like binary trees are a waste of time for me; but they are a favorite of schools. Every second I'm doing that is a second that I'm not devoting to the driver work I'm doing (ONVIF stuff). I have a VERY full dance card. Writing generic driver code for a sloppy spec like ONVIF is...challenging. I was interviewed a while back for a marquée corporation. Great outfit. Would definitely be a place that I'd like to work. I'd even have moved for it, and would have been happy to put aside my ONVIF work to work with them. They had an HR "triage" person reach out to me to make sure that I was good for the next stage. I sent them a link to my SO Story, along with links to specific repos that addressed the needs of the position (I have repos for multiple shipping apps on the App Store, and source for LOTS of stuff that is currently in use as industrial-strength infrastructure). The triage guy didn't bother forwarding it, and the secondary interview was...you guessed it...a fifty-line binary tree test. To add insult to injury, it was given in Swift, when the position was for ObjC, and the tester dinged me for not writing inscrutable, obfuscated garbage code using the nil-coalescing operator (think ternary, but worse). I deliberately try to avoid using it in a "chained" fashion, as it leaves unreadable code. Basically, I was rejected for an ObjC job, because I didn't write ugly Swift. All my work in open source has taught me to write extremely readable, well-documented code that can be taken over by folks; often with fewer chops than mine. I know that the outfit I was applying for takes that stuff seriously. They are a model that I like to follow. 2) You're right. I have figured out that "used to be a manager" is poison. I've had a number of times where I've made it to the techs I'd work with, and the process has stopped there. I assume that they are afraid I'd be hard to work with. You don't last long at a Japanese company unless you are REAL GOOD at being a cog. I was excellent at it. I lasted for a long time. I was actually looking at startups. I'd be almost ideal for a startup. I was willing to work cheap, and take risks, as my retirement was set, and I live extremely humbly. I have a huge array of skills and experience. I have management experience. I clean up real good and can get Japanese managers to commit (they make American VCs look like Santa Claus). Ah...well...water under the bridge. More will be revealed...
zerr 7y ago
Err.. but then how we can select fresh grads and early 20s against old dudes legally?...
- ausjke 7y ago
  good point!
- IloveHN84 7y ago
  Test their ability by assigning them some paid task for a week and look for results: if they return good results, hire them. If not, dump them, but it's a win-win for fresh grads and for companies.

ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago

I have over 100,000 LoC in the public domain, in over 30 repos (the ones I'm highlighting). I have architected, deployed and shepherded large-scale hybrid systems that are currently in use daily by thousands of people around the world. I have a decade of checkins and mineable Git data. I have solved every single problem that I've ever encountered; whether technical or human (I was a manager for a long time). I have convinced skeptical, conservative, empirical Japanese managers to fund and support development strategies, based mostly on their confidence in me, and my Integrity. I have hundreds of pages of articles I've written in Medium and my own (multiple) sites. I have multiple sites that I have designed, and hundreds of pages of instruction, along with entire courses and presentations. I can trot out a long line of personal and professional references that include CEOs, VPs, lawyers, doctors, consultants, politicians and other engineers, all of whom will sing my praises to the stars -on the record. A big reason for that, is the reason I'm not extremely well-known (outside of a certain narrow demographic). I have done most of my engineering over the last decade in Service and open-source projects that aren't about making money; but helping others. However, when I say this, the answer I get is "IF what you say is true..." Why the hell would anyone make a claim like that without backup? That's crazy. OF COURSE I can back it up. My SO Story is a mile long, with links to everything. Damn straight, there's folks better than me at pretty much any branch of what I do, but I know few that can offer the depth of knowledge across the spectrum, like I can. AND I CAN PROVE IT. But you'll make your decision based on a half-hour, fifty-line binary tree test that a college student would ace better than me. I want to see lawyers do legal briefs as part of their interview. I want to see doctors do "trial surgeries." I want to see HR managers do "how would you handle this?" tests as the ONLY variable in their hiring process, while having their portfolios ignored. After a few months of this crap, I just gave up, and started my own gig. It's working well, but slowly. I would have been fine, taking a low salary, if the work interested me. My retirement's set. I have a couple of companies that I can use to keep my toys going. But good luck with the "Draw Spunky" matchbook tests. I'm sure that you'll get top-shelf talent, that way.

baron_harkonnen 7y ago
While I completely agree (and sympathize) with this frustration, there are two things I want to point out. 1. If you can do all these things, then it really won't take that long to freshen up your your white board skills so that you can solve a variety of algorithmic problems easily in code on a whiteboard. If you really want to work for at a FAANG-style place, then just divert your energy for a bit into practicing white boarding. I agree it's stupid and it's probably not worth your time... which leads me to point two. 2. Given your experience and interests, it sounds like working as a cog in a mega-corp is probably not the right career path for you. You're going to do much better in a place where your role is a much bigger part of the company, and your individual skills will have a much bigger impact. And as far as the "other professions don't have to do this" line. I worked for a while in a career that was not software engineers and to be honest, I wish there was basic, practical proficiency tests as part of interviews in more fields. The number of professionals in my last field of work that could not do the basic requirements of the field correctly was horrifying.
- ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
  1) Why would I bother spending time "freshening up" on HackerRank? I don't do DSA, so things like binary trees are a waste of time for me; but they are a favorite of schools. Every second I'm doing that is a second that I'm not devoting to the driver work I'm doing (ONVIF stuff). I have a VERY full dance card. Writing generic driver code for a sloppy spec like ONVIF is...challenging. I was interviewed a while back for a marquée corporation. Great outfit. Would definitely be a place that I'd like to work. I'd even have moved for it, and would have been happy to put aside my ONVIF work to work with them. They had an HR "triage" person reach out to me to make sure that I was good for the next stage. I sent them a link to my SO Story, along with links to specific repos that addressed the needs of the position (I have repos for multiple shipping apps on the App Store, and source for LOTS of stuff that is currently in use as industrial-strength infrastructure). The triage guy didn't bother forwarding it, and the secondary interview was...you guessed it...a fifty-line binary tree test. To add insult to injury, it was given in Swift, when the position was for ObjC, and the tester dinged me for not writing inscrutable, obfuscated garbage code using the nil-coalescing operator (think ternary, but worse). I deliberately try to avoid using it in a "chained" fashion, as it leaves unreadable code. Basically, I was rejected for an ObjC job, because I didn't write ugly Swift. All my work in open source has taught me to write extremely readable, well-documented code that can be taken over by folks; often with fewer chops than mine. I know that the outfit I was applying for takes that stuff seriously. They are a model that I like to follow. 2) You're right. I have figured out that "used to be a manager" is poison. I've had a number of times where I've made it to the techs I'd work with, and the process has stopped there. I assume that they are afraid I'd be hard to work with. You don't last long at a Japanese company unless you are REAL GOOD at being a cog. I was excellent at it. I lasted for a long time. I was actually looking at startups. I'd be almost ideal for a startup. I was willing to work cheap, and take risks, as my retirement was set, and I live extremely humbly. I have a huge array of skills and experience. I have management experience. I clean up real good and can get Japanese managers to commit (they make American VCs look like Santa Claus). Ah...well...water under the bridge. More will be revealed...

zerr 7y ago

Err.. but then how we can select fresh grads and early 20s against old dudes legally?...

ausjke 7y ago
good point!
IloveHN84 7y ago
Test their ability by assigning them some paid task for a week and look for results: if they return good results, hire them. If not, dump them, but it's a win-win for fresh grads and for companies.