3 ms·

Currently a junior in a reasonably well-regarded (and difficult) CS program, this is 100% how I feel. As a result of my genuine interest in the material being t

by md2020 7y ago

Currently a junior in a reasonably well-regarded (and difficult) CS program, this is 100% how I feel. As a result of my genuine interest in the material being taught and desire to do well on course projects, I do not have the time or energy to be grinding Leetcode and HackerRank to the extent that I've read others do. Yet every company I apply to will not even speak to you unless you pass their brain-teaser-esque HackerRank problem, many of which are somewhat ambiguous and have typos in the problem statement. It's infuriating and seems like it only incentivizes the behavior you describe here.

songzme 7y ago
I'm sorry you feel this way. The best advice I can come up with is, either find a product space you care deeply about and see how far you can take it or swim with the wave and start preparing for coding interviews.
- md2020 7y ago
  Interestingly, the only places I've interviewed with that deviated from the typical SV coding challenge interview have been the national labs (JPL, LANL, Sandia, etc.). The questions they asked were much more focused on my interests as well as evaluating my general software engineering skills. I did an internship at one of them last year and it looks like I might be headed back there this summer too. Hoping I don't get locked into the national labs scene permanently.
hermitdev 7y ago
I was interviewing with a company a year ago that had their own private tests on something like hackerrank. My code met the stated requirements and all of the publicly posted test cases. But, I failed a private test for which they would give me none of 1)the input 2)the expected result and 3) outpput of the program. I would have loved to have debugged it and fixed it, but said fuck it. Ifbthis is how they are in a preinterview, not a place I want to work. So, I told them to get bent when they declined to bring me on site because I couldnt pass their test. Told the recruiter what happened, and he was like "that's fucked up". Coding challenges are one thing, but you better have precise specs and actually give the candidates enough info to work on a tractable solution.

by md2020 7y ago

songzme 7y ago

I'm sorry you feel this way. The best advice I can come up with is, either find a product space you care deeply about and see how far you can take it or swim with the wave and start preparing for coding interviews.

md2020 7y ago
Interestingly, the only places I've interviewed with that deviated from the typical SV coding challenge interview have been the national labs (JPL, LANL, Sandia, etc.). The questions they asked were much more focused on my interests as well as evaluating my general software engineering skills. I did an internship at one of them last year and it looks like I might be headed back there this summer too. Hoping I don't get locked into the national labs scene permanently.

hermitdev 7y ago

I was interviewing with a company a year ago that had their own private tests on something like hackerrank. My code met the stated requirements and all of the publicly posted test cases. But, I failed a private test for which they would give me none of 1)the input 2)the expected result and 3) outpput of the program. I would have loved to have debugged it and fixed it, but said fuck it. Ifbthis is how they are in a preinterview, not a place I want to work. So, I told them to get bent when they declined to bring me on site because I couldnt pass their test. Told the recruiter what happened, and he was like "that's fucked up". Coding challenges are one thing, but you better have precise specs and actually give the candidates enough info to work on a tractable solution.