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I've been doing this for a LOOONG time. Early on, the core skill for a programmer was intensive in-depth knowledge of the language being used. We all talked a

I've been doing this for a LOOONG time. Early on, the core skill for a programmer was intensive in-depth knowledge of the language being used. We all talked a good game about what we called "reusable software," but yeah. Talk. Now things are TOTALLY different. Doing a good job requires extensive, encyclopedic, knowledge of what's out there, how well it works, and how to integrate it. npm, nuget, maven, anaconda, we all know the drill. In a day's work it's much less necessary to implement an algorithm from memory. What should programmers know from memory? Simple stuff like fizzbuzz. The difference between TCP and UDP. What DNS is for. If SQL data's involved the difference between JOIN and LEFT JOIN. And, if they're experienced, they must be able to describe intelligently how their own stuff fit into the bigger system they worked on. Because there's always a bigger system. If they're being hired to be a tech rep to an *sshole customer, possibly their performance under pressure matters a lot. Otherwise, not. This business of high stakes quiz questions serves just one purpose: feeding the ego of the interviewer. "We have high standards!" Yeah, so high that we wouldn't hire Jesus of Nazareth to be a storyteller.

kamaal 6y ago
>>This business of high stakes quiz questions serves just one purpose: feeding the ego of the interviewer. "We have high standards!" It's scary how true this is. I know one manager who routinely rejects perfectly good candidates for making negligible mistakes in the interview. All on the grounds of "We have high standards!"
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  It sounds like the process works! … at preserving the candidate from your organization. :)
- castratikron 6y ago
  Haha. I worked at a place that did not start out as a software company but now had a software team (they built industrial machinery). The director of the electrical and software department was completely clueless of course. He insisted that since we are an engineering company, an engineering degree was required to work here. And that meant any candidate for a software engineering position was automatically rejected if they only had a computer science degree since it didn't have the word "engineering" in the title.
stonecharioteer 6y ago
Lol @ wouldn't hire Jesus of Nazerath to be a story teller. I'm going to use this phrase. Also, I love it when people say Jesus of Nazerath. Such a melody to that.
ornornor 6y ago
That is exactly my current employer. Our main office is in a small town, so there aren’t that many candidates to begin with (a job stays open for 6–9 months and we get maybe 15 applicants during that time) Our software is utter trash because the business is very clannish, fragmented, and the people in charge either never ever wrote code or did it 15 years ago. And yet we fail 95% of the technical candidates we interview because they don’t meet our “high” standards. We won’t even consider hiring remotely (but within the country because we’re making government software) even though an overwhelming majority of the company and tech team has been working from home 80–100% since March... No, we’re insisting on rejecting the handful of candidates that apply in our small town. Insane.
perl4ever 6y ago
>Doing a good job requires extensive, encyclopedic, knowledge of what's out there I wouldn't say that. What I feel like I've accumulated in knowledge over time is I can look at a new problem and without having the solution/encyclopedic knowledge, I can know in my gut that (a) there is a solution, and (b) the solution I'm looking at is not the solution. Merely being able to look up things on the internet without these two things means you will either give up too early or settle on the wrong solution. This is the most succinct way I can describe what I think >a decade of experience is worth compared to being fresh out of college.
- theshrike79 6y ago
  I describe this as known-unknown vs unknown-unknown (credit to Donald Rumsfeld) Unknown unknowns: The things that you don't know are possible and thus don't even know how to start solving. You will accidentally reinvent the wheel, most likely very badly. Or give up right away. Known unknowns: An experienced developer most likely unconsciously knows (has read on HN/Reddit/Book/Blog some time in the last 20 years) that a thing they encounter has been solved already, at least partially. This allows them to start searching for the answer with a few key words, because they know it's possible but don't know how it can be done. Same comes with having a network of people who know different things, I know the bare minimum about professional pentesting, but I know a few people who I are absolute pros in the field.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    > Known unknowns: An experienced developer most likely unconsciously knows (has read on HN/Reddit/Book/Blog some time in the last 20 years) that a thing they encounter has been solved already, at least partially. I feel like my brain is full of "I read a headline about this once" tidbits, in part because of HN. It's like I don't know the answer, but I know the question has been solved before so I know there is an answer.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Yup, a lot of developers grow into generalists that know a lot of things about a wide range of subjects; they suck in a technical / algorithm interview, but they can solve most problems. They may not know all of NPM's options (for example), but they know how to quickly find an answer if they are confronted with a problem.
bananaface 6y ago
I honestly don't agree with this. The worst programs are written by people who know how to plug a million and one things together, but can't drill down and analyse the algorithmic implications of what they're doing. Electron runs like shit and inhales RAM is because it was programmed by people who don't have solid understanding of fundamentals. They understand a huge number of horizontal abstractions but they have no concept of how it looks vertically. Knowing how to maximally exploit a CPU is way more important than knowing eight different Javascript frameworks if good software is your objective. And frankly, learning Node is way easier than figuring out how to structure basic, bare-bones Javascript so that it leverages your L1 cache. And therein lies the problem. How many interviewers dock marks for iterating over columns, instead of rows? Because that matters, a huge amount. How many interviewers would give credit for "how can you speed this up?" if the interviewee said, "write it in C, and simplify the datastructures you want me to use so we maximise sequential lookups over basic arrays, to maximise cache usage." They'll look at you like you have three heads. "Don't you know Big N complexity is the only thing that really matters if you're looking for speed?" - then you get Electron.
- tikwidd 6y ago
  Performance matters when it matters. Part of the job is knowing when it matters and adjusting the approach accordingly.
  - bananaface 6y ago
    Efficiency automatically matters for something like Electron because if it's not well-engineered, it will produce monstrosities like Slack. If Slack was written in Qt with the same budget it would just be fast. Even with effort we don't have Qt apps that behave like Slack.
    - aprdm 6y ago
      If slack were built in Qt it wouldn’t ever have hit the market or adapt to changes. It would be an order of magnitude more expensive too. Do you feel that you somehow know something that nobody else knows ? It’s all about trade offs . Being able to move quicker seems more important to businesses than writing more performant software .

kamaal 6y ago

>>This business of high stakes quiz questions serves just one purpose: feeding the ego of the interviewer. "We have high standards!" It's scary how true this is. I know one manager who routinely rejects perfectly good candidates for making negligible mistakes in the interview. All on the grounds of "We have high standards!"

fennecfoxen 6y ago
It sounds like the process works! … at preserving the candidate from your organization. :)
castratikron 6y ago
Haha. I worked at a place that did not start out as a software company but now had a software team (they built industrial machinery). The director of the electrical and software department was completely clueless of course. He insisted that since we are an engineering company, an engineering degree was required to work here. And that meant any candidate for a software engineering position was automatically rejected if they only had a computer science degree since it didn't have the word "engineering" in the title.

stonecharioteer 6y ago

Lol @ wouldn't hire Jesus of Nazerath to be a story teller. I'm going to use this phrase. Also, I love it when people say Jesus of Nazerath. Such a melody to that.

ornornor 6y ago

That is exactly my current employer. Our main office is in a small town, so there aren’t that many candidates to begin with (a job stays open for 6–9 months and we get maybe 15 applicants during that time) Our software is utter trash because the business is very clannish, fragmented, and the people in charge either never ever wrote code or did it 15 years ago. And yet we fail 95% of the technical candidates we interview because they don’t meet our “high” standards. We won’t even consider hiring remotely (but within the country because we’re making government software) even though an overwhelming majority of the company and tech team has been working from home 80–100% since March... No, we’re insisting on rejecting the handful of candidates that apply in our small town. Insane.

perl4ever 6y ago

>Doing a good job requires extensive, encyclopedic, knowledge of what's out there I wouldn't say that. What I feel like I've accumulated in knowledge over time is I can look at a new problem and without having the solution/encyclopedic knowledge, I can know in my gut that (a) there is a solution, and (b) the solution I'm looking at is not the solution. Merely being able to look up things on the internet without these two things means you will either give up too early or settle on the wrong solution. This is the most succinct way I can describe what I think >a decade of experience is worth compared to being fresh out of college.

theshrike79 6y ago
I describe this as known-unknown vs unknown-unknown (credit to Donald Rumsfeld) Unknown unknowns: The things that you don't know are possible and thus don't even know how to start solving. You will accidentally reinvent the wheel, most likely very badly. Or give up right away. Known unknowns: An experienced developer most likely unconsciously knows (has read on HN/Reddit/Book/Blog some time in the last 20 years) that a thing they encounter has been solved already, at least partially. This allows them to start searching for the answer with a few key words, because they know it's possible but don't know how it can be done. Same comes with having a network of people who know different things, I know the bare minimum about professional pentesting, but I know a few people who I are absolute pros in the field.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  > Known unknowns: An experienced developer most likely unconsciously knows (has read on HN/Reddit/Book/Blog some time in the last 20 years) that a thing they encounter has been solved already, at least partially. I feel like my brain is full of "I read a headline about this once" tidbits, in part because of HN. It's like I don't know the answer, but I know the question has been solved before so I know there is an answer.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

Yup, a lot of developers grow into generalists that know a lot of things about a wide range of subjects; they suck in a technical / algorithm interview, but they can solve most problems. They may not know all of NPM's options (for example), but they know how to quickly find an answer if they are confronted with a problem.

bananaface 6y ago

I honestly don't agree with this. The worst programs are written by people who know how to plug a million and one things together, but can't drill down and analyse the algorithmic implications of what they're doing. Electron runs like shit and inhales RAM is because it was programmed by people who don't have solid understanding of fundamentals. They understand a huge number of horizontal abstractions but they have no concept of how it looks vertically. Knowing how to maximally exploit a CPU is way more important than knowing eight different Javascript frameworks if good software is your objective. And frankly, learning Node is way easier than figuring out how to structure basic, bare-bones Javascript so that it leverages your L1 cache. And therein lies the problem. How many interviewers dock marks for iterating over columns, instead of rows? Because that matters, a huge amount. How many interviewers would give credit for "how can you speed this up?" if the interviewee said, "write it in C, and simplify the datastructures you want me to use so we maximise sequential lookups over basic arrays, to maximise cache usage." They'll look at you like you have three heads. "Don't you know Big N complexity is the only thing that really matters if you're looking for speed?" - then you get Electron.

tikwidd 6y ago
Performance matters when it matters. Part of the job is knowing when it matters and adjusting the approach accordingly.
- bananaface 6y ago
  Efficiency automatically matters for something like Electron because if it's not well-engineered, it will produce monstrosities like Slack. If Slack was written in Qt with the same budget it would just be fast. Even with effort we don't have Qt apps that behave like Slack.
  - aprdm 6y ago
    If slack were built in Qt it wouldn’t ever have hit the market or adapt to changes. It would be an order of magnitude more expensive too. Do you feel that you somehow know something that nobody else knows ? It’s all about trade offs . Being able to move quicker seems more important to businesses than writing more performant software .