5 ms·

> no one bothers to look at my portfolio [...] I usually send a couple of links [...] My portfolio leaves absolutely no question at all about what I can and can

by dahart 7y ago

> no one bothers to look at my portfolio [...] I usually send a couple of links [...] My portfolio leaves absolutely no question at all about what I can and can't do, technically. I hear this a lot from software engineers, but it might be worth thinking about the underlying expectation that anyone should spend time poking through repos on the internet, why they would, and how hard it might be to standardize a hiring process that compares you to other candidates. Contrast your own opinion of HackerRank with the hope that hiring managers, who perhaps often don’t have the time, interest, or even ability to read someone’s portfolio to determine the quality of the code. As someone who’s done a lot of hiring, I often glance at an online portfolio briefly, but I find it to be a low-quality signal for whether I will want to hire the person, and even for the technical ability. If I don’t know you, I can’t tell from your online portfolio whether you’re the sole author and/or how much you’ve contributed to a project. I can’t easily tell if you get a lot of your code from StackOverflow, or write it yourself. I can’t tell what motivates you, whether you love programming or you are hoping for a high salary. While high technical ability is a requirement for someone I hire, it’s not actually the primary requirement. What I need to know is how adaptable people are, how well they’ll work in a team, how quick they are on their feet, whether they’re friendly under pressure, a whole bunch of things that you can’t learn from a github account. Communication, attitude, curiosity, optimism, and cooperativeness are incredibly important traits, as is technical potential vs existing technical ability. I seek out ways to hire people who can (and want to) learn quickly, regardless of current skill level. Personally, I’m totally convinced by your comment that your technical ability is high, where you say it is. You would easily pass my entry filter and make it to an interview. But after that, I’d want to talk to you, not sit at my computer looking through your portfolio.

bambataa 7y ago
Because companies often ask for it! They ask for a link to your Github profile or portfolio, making people feel their GH needs to give the best version of them, and then completely disregard it. if you’re lucky it makes you pass some CV filter but you still need to jump through the rest of their hoops even though they have accepted the evidence that you can program.
ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
I've done a lot of hiring, too. I managed a team of C++ image processing engineers for 25 years. All my coding was on the side, as open-source. I did it to keep my dev chops up. That's a big reason I have such an extensive portfolio. I learn faster, and much, much more comprehensively, these days, than I ever did when I was younger (I suspect because of the vast context I got from experience). The main reason I'm doing my own thing, is because I love learning so much, and I see there's a whole world of stuff to learn. StackOverflow is a critical tool for me, but only a reckless madman would stock a majority of their code from there. I use it to solve occasional vexing problems, from time to time, and always modify the (usually tiny) snippets I may glean from it. All the rest is mine. I've been writing original code, often far ahead of its time, since the 1980s. I would have been happy to work for a fraction of the salary a lot of folks far less capable would have asked; simply because I love doing this, and the challenge of the job would have been the most important coefficient. But that's water under the bridge, these days. Once I accepted things the way they are, and just started doing what I wanted, on my own, I became much happier.
- dahart 7y ago
  You do sound like you're in a great spot, congrats! I've tried to do the same thing and haven't made it there yet. I did start my own company hoping it would turn into a lifetime of being able to always do exactly what I wanted, but it didn't end up working out that way. It was a ton of fun and a ton of work, and I had to sell it and take a job so I could feed my family. Would love to hear a little about how you're making ends meet and still doing what you want on your own. Are you selling software, doing contract work, making money some other way and doing software on the side...?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
    Not especially a great spot; an acceptable one. I have enough invested and working for me that I don't need to work again, but I won't be flying in my private jet anytime soon. I also have two corporations, one with restrictions, but decent assets, and one with few assets, but a lot of flexibility.
sixstringtheory 7y ago
> As someone who’s done a lot of hiring, I often glance at an online portfolio briefly, but I find it to be a low-quality signal for whether I will want to hire the person, and even for the technical ability. If I don’t know you, I can’t tell from your online portfolio whether you’re the sole author and/or how much you’ve contributed to a project. I can’t easily tell if you get a lot of your code from StackOverflow, or write it yourself. I can’t tell what motivates you, whether you love programming or you are hoping for a high salary. How are performance reviews done where you work? It strikes me that you have to do all the same things to see if the portfolio of work an employee has done _for your company_ is up to snuff. Because i’ve seen a few places that just offload this to some numeric ranking based on the subjective (nay, political) perceptions of one’s peers through a filter of imperfect, variable understanding of how the numbers should even work, and I hated that process just as much as I hate most interview processes. In a way performance reviews are like interviewing to keep your job or get a promotion, so I’d find your approach to hiring to be a warning about how the culture operates there. Everything about how a person works, in your subsequent paragraph, is true. But parent is talking about their currently existing body of work, vs every stupid take home challenge to do some menial transformation of a data structure wrapped in polished UI. Not as a stand in for their personality or culture fit.
- dahart 7y ago
  > I’d find your approach to hiring to be a warning about how the culture operates there. Hahaha, well I can't stop you from making bad assumptions. When I say I believe that online portfolios are a low quality signal, I am speaking from experience. I have seen first-hand people that look amazing on paper who were bad hires, and also people who didn't invest in their online presence but were rock stars. I'd encourage you to think a little harder about what you really want out of hiring and performance reviews, and whether online material is actually what you want to be measured by. Not only is online material a low-quality indicator of someone's work performance, it's also much easier to game, in ways that are both subtle and not subtle. If you prefer that someone reads your repo checkins over talking to you, you're letting other people figure out how to make themselves look better than you with less effort. I'm not even talking about unscrupulous behavior -- when the metrics are online material, you will be competing with others' online material. People who write better will tend to "perform" better, people who produce more code will tend to look better (even though LOC is a terrible metric), and people who borrow and build on others' code will tend to look better than people who write their own. Are you really certain these are the metrics by which you want to be judged in interviews and performance reviews? The job I have now, thankfully, has the lowest overhead performance reviews I've had at any other job, because my team believes that annual performance reviews are not a very good system at all. We practice continuous performance reviews by working with each other and giving feedback on a regular basis. You should never be surprised by a performance review, or have to wade through the last year's work to see how someone did. If you're doing that, something is already wrong, it means you haven't been paying attention. When you have a system that reviews people annually, even if people are keeping records, it still tends to result in people changing their behavior for 1 month out of the year right before performance reviews. Doing amazing work for 10 months and then getting put on a crappy task can undo your whole year. There is no online substitute for talking to people; it's much, much higher bandwidth than trying to read code checkins. Once someone has demonstrated they can code, I don't need to check for that again. What I need to know is why someone made the choices they did, what their philosophy about coding is, how they handle themselves during code reviews, how they work with others. I need to know what people are feeling, how they see themselves fitting in, and what their dreams and aspirations are. You can't get any of this from online portfolios, not when hiring, and not when reviewing employees.
swat535 7y ago
> hiring managers, who perhaps often don’t have the time, interest, or even ability to read someone’s portfolio to determine the quality of the code. Then perhaps this person should not be interviewing in the first place? Why should an unqualified hiring manager somehow asses the candidates technical abilities ? This seems really bizarre to me. Imagine putting someone who is clueless about the medical field in charge of hiring surgeons based on some test score they took online, whilst completely ignoring their years of experience. > I can’t tell from your online portfolio whether you’re the sole author and/or how much you’ve contributed to a project. I can’t easily tell if you get a lot of your code from StackOverflow, or write it yourself. The OP has hundreds of citations in his portfolio. It's interesting that leetcode which can be gamed by a grad has more weight than multiple, well established projects. If you place this much trust in applicants, you will most likely be micromanaging them as well. This isn't the way to attract top talent. > I can’t tell what motivates you, whether you love programming or you are hoping for a high salary. This is what the in person interview is for. > While high technical ability is a requirement for someone I hire, it’s not actually the primary requirement. What I need to know is how adaptable people are, how well they’ll work in a team, how quick they are on their feet All these are valid points, but the discussion here is regarding whiteboard algorithms vs actual experience. I honestly think it boils down to a few things: - Companies are willing to waste the candidates time. - Copying FAANG style interviews serves as a marketing tactic for startups (we have the same hiring standards as Google) And finally an unpopular opinion: - Asking Algorithm questions makes the interviewer feel smart, Especially if they are interviewing someone which is more experienced.
- dahart 7y ago
  I think you misunderstood my comment about whether a hiring manager has the ability to judge online code, I wasn't suggesting they're incompetent, I'm trying to point out that you can't expect even an amazing programmer with decades of experience to understand what the hell you were trying to do with your code -- in a reasonable amount of time. Styles and goals can be as different as night and day. I believe I'm a very good programmer, but I can't tell from github whether you are. I have to talk to you to figure that out. Look, this is the same as taking tests in school. Tests suck, but there's a reason we have to take tests and not just only turn in homework. The reason is that you need to demonstrate that you can do it on your own in a time-bound environment. Github doesn't demonstrate that even when you're amazing. Talking to someone who can ask questions about your abilities, and demonstrating your abilities on the spot is the way to do that, just like taking a test. I'm sorry it's less comfortable than posting online, but it's reality. Leetcode doesn't have more weight than projects in my book, and I didn't mention it, neither did the top comment, so I'm not clear why you're saying that. Are you referring to the article? > the discussion here is regarding whiteboard algorithms vs actual experience The discussion in this sub-thread was about interviews & online portfolios. I wasn't talking about whiteboarding. > Companies are willing to waste the candidates time [...] asking algorithm questions makes the interviewer feel smart. I can't speak to all companies, you are probably right about many of them. However, young grads today seem to feel entitled to easy interviews and job offers from all of them. What I hear in your post is some angst and frustration. I can understand that. I think it's a buyer's market. Getting a good job means figuring out how to stand out from the rest of the crowd, and it's really, really hard to do that with code alone. It's true that companies are optimizing for their own needs, just as you are optimizing for your own needs. You can choose to see that negatively, as them wasting your time, or you can take more control of your interviews, and work to protect your own time. The deal on offer is, if you pass the interviews, then you get paid well to code. Or, you can go start your own company and make your own money. If you paid attention in school and understand algorithms, them you should think of algorithm questions as the easy part of the interview, something you can pass without problems. The questions are there to see if you care about algorithms and understand the basics. Don't take them personally, and understand that the questions are for all candidates, and they need to filter people out who don't know algorithms. So stop complaining about the easy questions, and start spending your time figuring out what the hard questions are and how to ace them. (Also, just FYI people who complain about certain kinds of interview questions is a small red flag in my book. If you love programming, algos might not be the exact thing you want to do, but it's part of the job pre-requisites and basic knowledge, so enjoy them instead of fighting them.)

by dahart 7y ago

bambataa 7y ago

Because companies often ask for it! They ask for a link to your Github profile or portfolio, making people feel their GH needs to give the best version of them, and then completely disregard it. if you’re lucky it makes you pass some CV filter but you still need to jump through the rest of their hoops even though they have accepted the evidence that you can program.

ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago

I've done a lot of hiring, too. I managed a team of C++ image processing engineers for 25 years. All my coding was on the side, as open-source. I did it to keep my dev chops up. That's a big reason I have such an extensive portfolio. I learn faster, and much, much more comprehensively, these days, than I ever did when I was younger (I suspect because of the vast context I got from experience). The main reason I'm doing my own thing, is because I love learning so much, and I see there's a whole world of stuff to learn. StackOverflow is a critical tool for me, but only a reckless madman would stock a majority of their code from there. I use it to solve occasional vexing problems, from time to time, and always modify the (usually tiny) snippets I may glean from it. All the rest is mine. I've been writing original code, often far ahead of its time, since the 1980s. I would have been happy to work for a fraction of the salary a lot of folks far less capable would have asked; simply because I love doing this, and the challenge of the job would have been the most important coefficient. But that's water under the bridge, these days. Once I accepted things the way they are, and just started doing what I wanted, on my own, I became much happier.

dahart 7y ago
You do sound like you're in a great spot, congrats! I've tried to do the same thing and haven't made it there yet. I did start my own company hoping it would turn into a lifetime of being able to always do exactly what I wanted, but it didn't end up working out that way. It was a ton of fun and a ton of work, and I had to sell it and take a job so I could feed my family. Would love to hear a little about how you're making ends meet and still doing what you want on your own. Are you selling software, doing contract work, making money some other way and doing software on the side...?
- ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
  Not especially a great spot; an acceptable one. I have enough invested and working for me that I don't need to work again, but I won't be flying in my private jet anytime soon. I also have two corporations, one with restrictions, but decent assets, and one with few assets, but a lot of flexibility.

sixstringtheory 7y ago

> As someone who’s done a lot of hiring, I often glance at an online portfolio briefly, but I find it to be a low-quality signal for whether I will want to hire the person, and even for the technical ability. If I don’t know you, I can’t tell from your online portfolio whether you’re the sole author and/or how much you’ve contributed to a project. I can’t easily tell if you get a lot of your code from StackOverflow, or write it yourself. I can’t tell what motivates you, whether you love programming or you are hoping for a high salary. How are performance reviews done where you work? It strikes me that you have to do all the same things to see if the portfolio of work an employee has done _for your company_ is up to snuff. Because i’ve seen a few places that just offload this to some numeric ranking based on the subjective (nay, political) perceptions of one’s peers through a filter of imperfect, variable understanding of how the numbers should even work, and I hated that process just as much as I hate most interview processes. In a way performance reviews are like interviewing to keep your job or get a promotion, so I’d find your approach to hiring to be a warning about how the culture operates there. Everything about how a person works, in your subsequent paragraph, is true. But parent is talking about their currently existing body of work, vs every stupid take home challenge to do some menial transformation of a data structure wrapped in polished UI. Not as a stand in for their personality or culture fit.

dahart 7y ago
> I’d find your approach to hiring to be a warning about how the culture operates there. Hahaha, well I can't stop you from making bad assumptions. When I say I believe that online portfolios are a low quality signal, I am speaking from experience. I have seen first-hand people that look amazing on paper who were bad hires, and also people who didn't invest in their online presence but were rock stars. I'd encourage you to think a little harder about what you really want out of hiring and performance reviews, and whether online material is actually what you want to be measured by. Not only is online material a low-quality indicator of someone's work performance, it's also much easier to game, in ways that are both subtle and not subtle. If you prefer that someone reads your repo checkins over talking to you, you're letting other people figure out how to make themselves look better than you with less effort. I'm not even talking about unscrupulous behavior -- when the metrics are online material, you will be competing with others' online material. People who write better will tend to "perform" better, people who produce more code will tend to look better (even though LOC is a terrible metric), and people who borrow and build on others' code will tend to look better than people who write their own. Are you really certain these are the metrics by which you want to be judged in interviews and performance reviews? The job I have now, thankfully, has the lowest overhead performance reviews I've had at any other job, because my team believes that annual performance reviews are not a very good system at all. We practice continuous performance reviews by working with each other and giving feedback on a regular basis. You should never be surprised by a performance review, or have to wade through the last year's work to see how someone did. If you're doing that, something is already wrong, it means you haven't been paying attention. When you have a system that reviews people annually, even if people are keeping records, it still tends to result in people changing their behavior for 1 month out of the year right before performance reviews. Doing amazing work for 10 months and then getting put on a crappy task can undo your whole year. There is no online substitute for talking to people; it's much, much higher bandwidth than trying to read code checkins. Once someone has demonstrated they can code, I don't need to check for that again. What I need to know is why someone made the choices they did, what their philosophy about coding is, how they handle themselves during code reviews, how they work with others. I need to know what people are feeling, how they see themselves fitting in, and what their dreams and aspirations are. You can't get any of this from online portfolios, not when hiring, and not when reviewing employees.

swat535 7y ago

> hiring managers, who perhaps often don’t have the time, interest, or even ability to read someone’s portfolio to determine the quality of the code. Then perhaps this person should not be interviewing in the first place? Why should an unqualified hiring manager somehow asses the candidates technical abilities ? This seems really bizarre to me. Imagine putting someone who is clueless about the medical field in charge of hiring surgeons based on some test score they took online, whilst completely ignoring their years of experience. > I can’t tell from your online portfolio whether you’re the sole author and/or how much you’ve contributed to a project. I can’t easily tell if you get a lot of your code from StackOverflow, or write it yourself. The OP has hundreds of citations in his portfolio. It's interesting that leetcode which can be gamed by a grad has more weight than multiple, well established projects. If you place this much trust in applicants, you will most likely be micromanaging them as well. This isn't the way to attract top talent. > I can’t tell what motivates you, whether you love programming or you are hoping for a high salary. This is what the in person interview is for. > While high technical ability is a requirement for someone I hire, it’s not actually the primary requirement. What I need to know is how adaptable people are, how well they’ll work in a team, how quick they are on their feet All these are valid points, but the discussion here is regarding whiteboard algorithms vs actual experience. I honestly think it boils down to a few things: - Companies are willing to waste the candidates time. - Copying FAANG style interviews serves as a marketing tactic for startups (we have the same hiring standards as Google) And finally an unpopular opinion: - Asking Algorithm questions makes the interviewer feel smart, Especially if they are interviewing someone which is more experienced.

dahart 7y ago
I think you misunderstood my comment about whether a hiring manager has the ability to judge online code, I wasn't suggesting they're incompetent, I'm trying to point out that you can't expect even an amazing programmer with decades of experience to understand what the hell you were trying to do with your code -- in a reasonable amount of time. Styles and goals can be as different as night and day. I believe I'm a very good programmer, but I can't tell from github whether you are. I have to talk to you to figure that out. Look, this is the same as taking tests in school. Tests suck, but there's a reason we have to take tests and not just only turn in homework. The reason is that you need to demonstrate that you can do it on your own in a time-bound environment. Github doesn't demonstrate that even when you're amazing. Talking to someone who can ask questions about your abilities, and demonstrating your abilities on the spot is the way to do that, just like taking a test. I'm sorry it's less comfortable than posting online, but it's reality. Leetcode doesn't have more weight than projects in my book, and I didn't mention it, neither did the top comment, so I'm not clear why you're saying that. Are you referring to the article? > the discussion here is regarding whiteboard algorithms vs actual experience The discussion in this sub-thread was about interviews & online portfolios. I wasn't talking about whiteboarding. > Companies are willing to waste the candidates time [...] asking algorithm questions makes the interviewer feel smart. I can't speak to all companies, you are probably right about many of them. However, young grads today seem to feel entitled to easy interviews and job offers from all of them. What I hear in your post is some angst and frustration. I can understand that. I think it's a buyer's market. Getting a good job means figuring out how to stand out from the rest of the crowd, and it's really, really hard to do that with code alone. It's true that companies are optimizing for their own needs, just as you are optimizing for your own needs. You can choose to see that negatively, as them wasting your time, or you can take more control of your interviews, and work to protect your own time. The deal on offer is, if you pass the interviews, then you get paid well to code. Or, you can go start your own company and make your own money. If you paid attention in school and understand algorithms, them you should think of algorithm questions as the easy part of the interview, something you can pass without problems. The questions are there to see if you care about algorithms and understand the basics. Don't take them personally, and understand that the questions are for all candidates, and they need to filter people out who don't know algorithms. So stop complaining about the easy questions, and start spending your time figuring out what the hard questions are and how to ace them. (Also, just FYI people who complain about certain kinds of interview questions is a small red flag in my book. If you love programming, algos might not be the exact thing you want to do, but it's part of the job pre-requisites and basic knowledge, so enjoy them instead of fighting them.)