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I think that, as you get older (or maybe further into your career? More tenured? I don't know that it's inherent with age as much as experience), you become les

I think that, as you get older (or maybe further into your career? More tenured? I don't know that it's inherent with age as much as experience), you become less interested in doing ridiculous things just to prove that you can. That's not to say that other people shouldn't, just that, the value-add seems less and less worth it as time goes on. It is possible (and in fact common) to lead a full and successful career as a dev, where A.) you don't ever work for FAANG or SV, and B.) You make plenty of money, have plenty of freedom, build high profile, successful technology, have plenty of career mobility. So, if you believe those things, "Learn these things that you learned in college and then never really touched again directly" seems like an absolute waste of time. You've seen them, and you've seen that while you were _actually building things_, they didn't really come up, or at least directly. And when the value add is "Work for big fancy company for a couple % more money per year", it doesn't really seem like that much of a value add.

nkingsy 6y ago
I had the “misfortune” of getting fired for going to bat for a junior co-worker who was being taken advantage of by the company. If I hadn’t taken 2 months to do nothing but grind on leetcode problems, there’s no way I was ever going to do it in my precious free time (2 kids, lots of hobbies). I’d never make a bet like that on myself by choice, but in hindsight it would have been an excellent investment years ago. My quality of life is immensely better working for a big tech co than it was at any startup.
- bird_monster 6y ago
  I suppose I'm pointing out the nuance between "Big Tech Co", "Startup" and FAANG. There are plenty of big tech companies that pay well, offer a lot of freedom, interesting tech, but are also not FAANG companies with silly interviewing practices.
  - nkingsy 6y ago
    I think I’ve done maybe 30 interviews? Only three of them were the full blown whiteboard for 5 hours process. The first two I failed at the beginning of my career and in hindsight I was properly rejected. The most recent one just made me feel like I’d earned it. The leetcode grinding helped, but my years of experience helped more. IMO if a company messes around with soft skills, take homes, techno chit chat, long lunches, brutal arcane automated domain knowledge screenings, shibboleths, “day in the life”, present your solution to the group, heuristics, or some other creative way to justify their own biases, I can be fairly confident that I’ll have at least a few co-workers that really just can’t code very well. I have not met an engineer at my current company who didn’t impress me when I dig into their code a little. There are low performers, but even they produce excellent code when they feel like it. Nothing is more frustrating than taking a day to interview and getting maybe 30 minutes of watery technical challenge.
    - bird_monster 6y ago
      I guess the splitting point is thinking that whiteboard interviews select candidates that are good coders - a point I have an entire career of anecdotes to disagree with. YMMV, as with everything. edit Also, to be clear, you seem very proud of your interview, your company and coworkers, and I do not mean to discredit your pride or success. I am simply pointing out that your experiences are not universal experiences and might be due to lots of other factors, totally unrelated to interview methodology (healthy attrition rates, supportive teams, constructive code review, etc).
      - nkingsy 6y ago
        To the edit: more like I was deeply unsatisfied with each and every non-whiteboard interview process. This is regardless of outcome, including many offers and years of working at companies with broken interview processes. I don’t think whiteboarding is a great methodology, but the other methodologies are worse. As an interviewer, I find it stressful to give whiteboard problems and my data point usually feels fairly noisy. At startups I preferred giving a tiny take home and working with the candidate on extending it in an open ended way. As a candidate, I refuse to do take homes (known too many take homes)
  - bradlys 6y ago
    > There are plenty of big tech companies that pay well, offer a lot of freedom, interesting tech, but are also not FAANG companies with silly interviewing practices. Names? I’m genuinely interested in places paying near 400k/yr but without stringent whiteboard exercises. Haven’t seen them tho...
    - bird_monster 6y ago
      > 400k/yr Are you currently making 400k a year?
      - bradlys 6y ago
        They pay that much. https://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/ I'm only going to be joining FAANG or similar if they pay that much as I have no incentive to otherwise. My personal situation doesn't seem relevant to the question. Depending on how you look at it - I am. It's just that over half of it isn't liquid right now - but will likely be next year or the year after.
        bird_monster 6y ago
        > They pay that much. https://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/ Very much aware what they pay. > I'm only going to be joining FAANG or similar if they pay that much as I have no incentive to otherwise If this is your perspective, best of luck to you, I hope it works out. You've ignored most of what I was trying to say, which is fine. I hope you find the success you're looking for.
        bradlys 6y ago
        The alternative is work on blah-blah-blah but make literally half as much. For people who live in very expensive regions - FAANG and the similar are the only options to a semi-regular middle-class lifestyle. When non-updated 1930's homes that are 1000sqft on 4000sqft lots are regularly going for over $1.7mil - you can't really afford a typical middle class lifestyle on $180k/yr income.

nkingsy 6y ago

I had the “misfortune” of getting fired for going to bat for a junior co-worker who was being taken advantage of by the company. If I hadn’t taken 2 months to do nothing but grind on leetcode problems, there’s no way I was ever going to do it in my precious free time (2 kids, lots of hobbies). I’d never make a bet like that on myself by choice, but in hindsight it would have been an excellent investment years ago. My quality of life is immensely better working for a big tech co than it was at any startup.

bird_monster 6y ago
I suppose I'm pointing out the nuance between "Big Tech Co", "Startup" and FAANG. There are plenty of big tech companies that pay well, offer a lot of freedom, interesting tech, but are also not FAANG companies with silly interviewing practices.
- nkingsy 6y ago
  I think I’ve done maybe 30 interviews? Only three of them were the full blown whiteboard for 5 hours process. The first two I failed at the beginning of my career and in hindsight I was properly rejected. The most recent one just made me feel like I’d earned it. The leetcode grinding helped, but my years of experience helped more. IMO if a company messes around with soft skills, take homes, techno chit chat, long lunches, brutal arcane automated domain knowledge screenings, shibboleths, “day in the life”, present your solution to the group, heuristics, or some other creative way to justify their own biases, I can be fairly confident that I’ll have at least a few co-workers that really just can’t code very well. I have not met an engineer at my current company who didn’t impress me when I dig into their code a little. There are low performers, but even they produce excellent code when they feel like it. Nothing is more frustrating than taking a day to interview and getting maybe 30 minutes of watery technical challenge.
  - bird_monster 6y ago
    I guess the splitting point is thinking that whiteboard interviews select candidates that are good coders - a point I have an entire career of anecdotes to disagree with. YMMV, as with everything. edit Also, to be clear, you seem very proud of your interview, your company and coworkers, and I do not mean to discredit your pride or success. I am simply pointing out that your experiences are not universal experiences and might be due to lots of other factors, totally unrelated to interview methodology (healthy attrition rates, supportive teams, constructive code review, etc).
    - nkingsy 6y ago
      To the edit: more like I was deeply unsatisfied with each and every non-whiteboard interview process. This is regardless of outcome, including many offers and years of working at companies with broken interview processes. I don’t think whiteboarding is a great methodology, but the other methodologies are worse. As an interviewer, I find it stressful to give whiteboard problems and my data point usually feels fairly noisy. At startups I preferred giving a tiny take home and working with the candidate on extending it in an open ended way. As a candidate, I refuse to do take homes (known too many take homes)
- bradlys 6y ago
  > There are plenty of big tech companies that pay well, offer a lot of freedom, interesting tech, but are also not FAANG companies with silly interviewing practices. Names? I’m genuinely interested in places paying near 400k/yr but without stringent whiteboard exercises. Haven’t seen them tho...
  - bird_monster 6y ago
    > 400k/yr Are you currently making 400k a year?
    - bradlys 6y ago
      They pay that much. https://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/ I'm only going to be joining FAANG or similar if they pay that much as I have no incentive to otherwise. My personal situation doesn't seem relevant to the question. Depending on how you look at it - I am. It's just that over half of it isn't liquid right now - but will likely be next year or the year after.
      - bird_monster 6y ago
        > They pay that much. https://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/ Very much aware what they pay. > I'm only going to be joining FAANG or similar if they pay that much as I have no incentive to otherwise If this is your perspective, best of luck to you, I hope it works out. You've ignored most of what I was trying to say, which is fine. I hope you find the success you're looking for.
        bradlys 6y ago
        The alternative is work on blah-blah-blah but make literally half as much. For people who live in very expensive regions - FAANG and the similar are the only options to a semi-regular middle-class lifestyle. When non-updated 1930's homes that are 1000sqft on 4000sqft lots are regularly going for over $1.7mil - you can't really afford a typical middle class lifestyle on $180k/yr income.