5 ms·

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 wo

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...
- ecf 7y ago
  Look I'm not trying to be rude, an attitude like yours doesn't really fit into a startup. They aren't looking for an absolute rockstar who believes their experience puts them in a level above all other engineers, or someone who believes they are too good to go through the process everyone else went through. They want someone who won't spread toxicity through the small team, and your numerous accolades does nothing to convey that. However, the way you've conducted yourself so far speaks volumes.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
    Could ask said references what I'm like (See "Won't last long in a Japanese corporation if not a good team player"). I don't do self-promotion well. I just state the facts. Apparently, that's enough to "have an attitude." I spent most of my career at a marquée corporation; surrounded by the finest engineers and scientists in the world, where I was NOWHERE NEAR the top of the heap, and never pretended to be so. The simple fact that stating that I have a PROVABLE PORTFOLIO means that I "have an attitude" is a sign of how sick the industry is. BTW: That portfolio is full of errors and mistakes I've made, as well as successes. I'd never dream of getting any work by deception. I want folks to know what they are getting; warts and all. I know damn well that I'm not a "rockstar." I was a hiring manager for years. This is not a Dunning-Kruger binge. I'm quite aware of where I fit in the food chain. And I guess that it's obvious. I'm done looking. I wouldn't post stuff like this if I were. Sooner or later, I'll probably be looking to hire other folks. I'm a really, really good manager. You should see some of the testimonials on my LI profile. One of my "golden rules," has always been to treat others as I would want to be treated; regardless of how I am actually treated. Being a working engineer during my entire management career helped me to have a lot of empathy (and hard to BS). I was also privileged to manage a really high-functioning team of top-shelf developers. They knew more than me; and that was great. If things don't work out...well, I can wash dishes as well as the next guy. I don't really have as much ego tied up in this stuff as it seems. I just love tech.
  - kentrado 7y ago
    But you are being rude assuming he is toxic without knowing anything about him.
inimino 7y ago
The takeaway here isn't for people looking for these jobs (yes you can bite the bullet and conform to any stupid process) but rather for hiring managers that if you actually want what you say you want (diversity, hiring for ability to do the work, etc) then you should not be hiring in this stupid broken way that we all know doesn't work and doesn't give you those things.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > for hiring managers that if you actually want what you say you want They don't; what they say they want is pure PR aimed at creating an image of both fit to the perceived culture of the developer community and compliance with the law. > then you should not be hiring in this stupid broken way that we all know doesn't work and doesn't give you those things Of course. The fact that they continue to do despite the fact that it is well-known not to produce what their PR says they want is pretty compelling evidence that their PR is nothing more than that. But as long as enough people are willing to both play the game and believe the PR, there's no incentive to change.
sandino 7y ago
It really won't take that long to freshen up your your white board skills so that [pass that next round of whiteboard hazing] Actually it does (and that's part of the whole point of the massive burnout crisis caused by these tests). By and large -- they've become so distorted (either by intentionally asking candidates to solve ridiculously hard problems; or by having these goals set, or simply having the tasks so carelessly so as to achieve the same effect) that they've basically lost any grounding in reality. The only way to soften the blow (that is, to significantly reduce the chance of immediate rejection) is to cram -- that is, to in effect make it your part-time job (for a little while) specifically "practicing for" (that is, memorizing the expected outcomes of) these tests. Which of course defeats the entire purpose of the "test". As one would think these companies would be smart enough to know. Yes I know many people are ready to say, "But when Iinterview I just do this simple FizzBuzz-oid thing I came up with that anyone who claims to have a CS degree should be ale to solve." What I mean is -- the last time I had to go through this ritual -- about 50 percent of the time these tests (or simply the environment in which they were conducted) were seriously off-base in one form or another. And in more than a few cases I wish I could forget, ridiculously so.

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...

ecf 7y ago
Look I'm not trying to be rude, an attitude like yours doesn't really fit into a startup. They aren't looking for an absolute rockstar who believes their experience puts them in a level above all other engineers, or someone who believes they are too good to go through the process everyone else went through. They want someone who won't spread toxicity through the small team, and your numerous accolades does nothing to convey that. However, the way you've conducted yourself so far speaks volumes.
- ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
  Could ask said references what I'm like (See "Won't last long in a Japanese corporation if not a good team player"). I don't do self-promotion well. I just state the facts. Apparently, that's enough to "have an attitude." I spent most of my career at a marquée corporation; surrounded by the finest engineers and scientists in the world, where I was NOWHERE NEAR the top of the heap, and never pretended to be so. The simple fact that stating that I have a PROVABLE PORTFOLIO means that I "have an attitude" is a sign of how sick the industry is. BTW: That portfolio is full of errors and mistakes I've made, as well as successes. I'd never dream of getting any work by deception. I want folks to know what they are getting; warts and all. I know damn well that I'm not a "rockstar." I was a hiring manager for years. This is not a Dunning-Kruger binge. I'm quite aware of where I fit in the food chain. And I guess that it's obvious. I'm done looking. I wouldn't post stuff like this if I were. Sooner or later, I'll probably be looking to hire other folks. I'm a really, really good manager. You should see some of the testimonials on my LI profile. One of my "golden rules," has always been to treat others as I would want to be treated; regardless of how I am actually treated. Being a working engineer during my entire management career helped me to have a lot of empathy (and hard to BS). I was also privileged to manage a really high-functioning team of top-shelf developers. They knew more than me; and that was great. If things don't work out...well, I can wash dishes as well as the next guy. I don't really have as much ego tied up in this stuff as it seems. I just love tech.
- kentrado 7y ago
  But you are being rude assuming he is toxic without knowing anything about him.

inimino 7y ago

The takeaway here isn't for people looking for these jobs (yes you can bite the bullet and conform to any stupid process) but rather for hiring managers that if you actually want what you say you want (diversity, hiring for ability to do the work, etc) then you should not be hiring in this stupid broken way that we all know doesn't work and doesn't give you those things.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> for hiring managers that if you actually want what you say you want They don't; what they say they want is pure PR aimed at creating an image of both fit to the perceived culture of the developer community and compliance with the law. > then you should not be hiring in this stupid broken way that we all know doesn't work and doesn't give you those things Of course. The fact that they continue to do despite the fact that it is well-known not to produce what their PR says they want is pretty compelling evidence that their PR is nothing more than that. But as long as enough people are willing to both play the game and believe the PR, there's no incentive to change.

sandino 7y ago

It really won't take that long to freshen up your your white board skills so that [pass that next round of whiteboard hazing] Actually it does (and that's part of the whole point of the massive burnout crisis caused by these tests). By and large -- they've become so distorted (either by intentionally asking candidates to solve ridiculously hard problems; or by having these goals set, or simply having the tasks so carelessly so as to achieve the same effect) that they've basically lost any grounding in reality. The only way to soften the blow (that is, to significantly reduce the chance of immediate rejection) is to cram -- that is, to in effect make it your part-time job (for a little while) specifically "practicing for" (that is, memorizing the expected outcomes of) these tests. Which of course defeats the entire purpose of the "test". As one would think these companies would be smart enough to know. Yes I know many people are ready to say, "But when Iinterview I just do this simple FizzBuzz-oid thing I came up with that anyone who claims to have a CS degree should be ale to solve." What I mean is -- the last time I had to go through this ritual -- about 50 percent of the time these tests (or simply the environment in which they were conducted) were seriously off-base in one form or another. And in more than a few cases I wish I could forget, ridiculously so.