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The author has been working as a developer for 15 years, and claims very strong technical skills. Why are they learning/re-learning Python, C++, SQL, C#, colleg

The author has been working as a developer for 15 years, and claims very strong technical skills. Why are they learning/re-learning Python, C++, SQL, C#, college math? Nobody will be fooled by that; at 15 YoE they will be evaluated on what they have done over a career, not over the last month. > it's all about how much time you can spend on Leetcode. The author is playing a game built for new grads. Here's a secret, speaking as an (ex) Facebook interviewer: Facebook's hiring pipeline is optimized for new grads, but its hiring needs are senior engineers. They know this, but you can't build a high-volume interview pipeline for senior engineers: there's not enough of them, their skill set is too varied. So Facebook is kind of at a loss, but in general if you have 15 YoE and can show you're good, they want to hire you. In particular they'll try to find deep domain experts ("pirates", their term) to evaluate you. So be prepared to demonstrate basic competence in coding, and also some deep expertise. T-shaped engineers, as they say.

dilyevsky 6y ago
Haven’t worked at fb but same experience at other big co. Also I question authors experience interviewing people - I’ve done literally hundreds coding sessions and there’re surprisingly large number of folks who claim 5-10 years of experience and several companies under their belt but aren’t able to code a simple for-loop in their language of choice
- tomcat27 6y ago
  A simple for-loop? that's ridiculous. If that's really the case I wonder the screening abilities of recruiters more than candidates.
  - dilyevsky 6y ago
    Literally a scan of string with some basic logic and three cases inside. People would take 30 mins+ and create a giant mess. This was easily 50%+ cases during phone screen and resumes all looked good so not recruiters fault (most of the time).
    - tomcat27 6y ago
      Hard to believe. Actually I am surprised companies even asks such a simple question anymore. When was that? I have done several LC easy and mediums, have done internships and published papers and didn't even make it to phone screen at every FAANG or other companies whose names carry some weight in future interview opportunities.
      - dilyevsky 6y ago
        5-10 years ago. If you ask questions not from LC you have to make them easy or no one would make progress. My goal was to have at least something coded up so that candidate wouldn’t feel like they totally bombed, then I would calibrate my score based on quality of solution - basically secondary traits. Not everyone used this strategy =) > have done internships and published papers and didn't even make it to phone screen at every FAANG I recommend finding someone who works there through your network, conferences or open source projects and asking for a referral.
      - abiogenesis 6y ago
        You'd be surprised. That's basically why FizzBuzz test [1] usually works. [1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
      - koonsolo 6y ago
        That is exactly my experience too as someone who does a lot of interviews. Basically our job is to weed out the candidates that haven't made it to "newbie programmer" yet, and probably never will.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - SamuelAdams 6y ago
      So basically a FizzBuzz, Jeff Attwood discusses it here. This article was really eye-opening to me. Problem: Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print "Fizz" instead of the number and for the multiples of five print "Buzz". For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print "FizzBuzz". https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
  - bsder 6y ago
    > A simple for-loop? that's ridiculous. It's not. People STILL fail FizzBuzz. Every day.
- jariel 6y ago
  This is fair comment - there are definitely experienced devs who really are not up to scratch. But - there are tons who are great devs, unwilling to 'play the leetcode game'. So both those things can be true at the same time.
- jjav 6y ago
  > there’re surprisingly large number of folks who claim 5-10 years of experience and several companies under their belt but aren’t able to code a simple for-loop in their language of choice No. This indicates a failure in the interview technique.
  - username90 6y ago
    Many software jobs barely involve programming. Just look around in this thread, you will find people who argue that the job barely requires writing any code at all and mostly involves talking to customers or managers. That kind of experience doesn't make you a better coder, it makes you a better product manager, so technical interviews filtering them out is intended.
  - dilyevsky 6y ago
    Not really - these companies try to cast a very wide net deliberately so it’s natural there will be large number of rejections. Smaller companies do a lot more prescreening so it’s less common there
tomcat27 6y ago
what's the ratio of software engineers to senior software engineers at Facebook? Gestimate.
- millstone 6y ago
  Maybe 15 to 1.
landtuna 6y ago
That's nonsense. I've got 20 YoE, an elite college degree, tons of experience in Python and C++, have single-handedly put together mission critical software systems, and I can't get my foot in the door outside my small area of expertise. The teams I've worked on are tiny, so I have no career network to draw from. I'm missing machine learning and cloud experience, and my resume gets no hits because of it. Age 44, and I'm starting to think I've been aged out. As far as I can tell, no one is interested in experience that consists of project successes. It's just years of buzzwords and coding challenges. (So I just signed up for Hackerrank. Maybe someone will notice me there.)
- tomcat27 6y ago
  Perhaps a bad suggestion. competitive programming can be really fun, addictive and great learning experience, and incredibly frustrating and takes lot of time (> 3 hours/day for 1 year to do it the right way). If you want to learn algorithms for the sake of learning, perhaps specialize in some weird algo sub-topics, places like TopCoder, SPOJ, CodeForces that train for ACM ICPC might be a great place to start. These are different from LeetCode.
- solipsism 6y ago
  There's some other problem. None of us can say what it is unless you share your resume, what companies you've applied to, etc. But if you get "no hits" with 20 years of experience in Python and C++, the problem is 100% not "missing machine learning and cloud experience".
  - landtuna 6y ago
    Is that an offer? :) https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimhunziker/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimhunziker/ One hit was for making machine guns target humans better. (I rejected the in-person interview.) Another dropped me because they wanted cloud experience. A YC company changed the job from remote to SF only before we talked.
    - solipsism 6y ago
welearnednothng 6y ago
Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Over 20 years of really solid experience here doing some awesome stuff for recognizable employers. I’ve had the exact experiences as the author. One recent interview run by ex-FUAANG folks started with a non-trivial take home that represented their actual business. I come in, am told it’s one of the best they’ve seen. Which was great, because I was genuinely proud of it. Now let’s find all of the combinations on a boggle board. Which wasn’t even the worst of it. So far, that’s been pretty par for the course for me. It’s been discouraging.
sanGupta2 6y ago
Exactly.
driverdan 6y ago
> Facebook's hiring pipeline is optimized for new grads, but its hiring needs are senior engineers. The hiring process should be based on the position and candidate. If you're applying the same process you use for new grads to someone with 15 years experience you're doing it wrong. FB should be capable of doing this correctly.

dilyevsky 6y ago

Haven’t worked at fb but same experience at other big co. Also I question authors experience interviewing people - I’ve done literally hundreds coding sessions and there’re surprisingly large number of folks who claim 5-10 years of experience and several companies under their belt but aren’t able to code a simple for-loop in their language of choice

tomcat27 6y ago
A simple for-loop? that's ridiculous. If that's really the case I wonder the screening abilities of recruiters more than candidates.
- dilyevsky 6y ago
  Literally a scan of string with some basic logic and three cases inside. People would take 30 mins+ and create a giant mess. This was easily 50%+ cases during phone screen and resumes all looked good so not recruiters fault (most of the time).
  - tomcat27 6y ago
    Hard to believe. Actually I am surprised companies even asks such a simple question anymore. When was that? I have done several LC easy and mediums, have done internships and published papers and didn't even make it to phone screen at every FAANG or other companies whose names carry some weight in future interview opportunities.
    - dilyevsky 6y ago
      5-10 years ago. If you ask questions not from LC you have to make them easy or no one would make progress. My goal was to have at least something coded up so that candidate wouldn’t feel like they totally bombed, then I would calibrate my score based on quality of solution - basically secondary traits. Not everyone used this strategy =) > have done internships and published papers and didn't even make it to phone screen at every FAANG I recommend finding someone who works there through your network, conferences or open source projects and asking for a referral.
    - abiogenesis 6y ago
      You'd be surprised. That's basically why FizzBuzz test [1] usually works. [1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
    - koonsolo 6y ago
      That is exactly my experience too as someone who does a lot of interviews. Basically our job is to weed out the candidates that haven't made it to "newbie programmer" yet, and probably never will.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - SamuelAdams 6y ago
    So basically a FizzBuzz, Jeff Attwood discusses it here. This article was really eye-opening to me. Problem: Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print "Fizz" instead of the number and for the multiples of five print "Buzz". For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print "FizzBuzz". https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
- bsder 6y ago
  > A simple for-loop? that's ridiculous. It's not. People STILL fail FizzBuzz. Every day.
jariel 6y ago
This is fair comment - there are definitely experienced devs who really are not up to scratch. But - there are tons who are great devs, unwilling to 'play the leetcode game'. So both those things can be true at the same time.
jjav 6y ago
> there’re surprisingly large number of folks who claim 5-10 years of experience and several companies under their belt but aren’t able to code a simple for-loop in their language of choice No. This indicates a failure in the interview technique.
- username90 6y ago
  Many software jobs barely involve programming. Just look around in this thread, you will find people who argue that the job barely requires writing any code at all and mostly involves talking to customers or managers. That kind of experience doesn't make you a better coder, it makes you a better product manager, so technical interviews filtering them out is intended.
- dilyevsky 6y ago
  Not really - these companies try to cast a very wide net deliberately so it’s natural there will be large number of rejections. Smaller companies do a lot more prescreening so it’s less common there

tomcat27 6y ago

what's the ratio of software engineers to senior software engineers at Facebook? Gestimate.

millstone 6y ago
Maybe 15 to 1.

landtuna 6y ago

That's nonsense. I've got 20 YoE, an elite college degree, tons of experience in Python and C++, have single-handedly put together mission critical software systems, and I can't get my foot in the door outside my small area of expertise. The teams I've worked on are tiny, so I have no career network to draw from. I'm missing machine learning and cloud experience, and my resume gets no hits because of it. Age 44, and I'm starting to think I've been aged out. As far as I can tell, no one is interested in experience that consists of project successes. It's just years of buzzwords and coding challenges. (So I just signed up for Hackerrank. Maybe someone will notice me there.)

tomcat27 6y ago
Perhaps a bad suggestion. competitive programming can be really fun, addictive and great learning experience, and incredibly frustrating and takes lot of time (> 3 hours/day for 1 year to do it the right way). If you want to learn algorithms for the sake of learning, perhaps specialize in some weird algo sub-topics, places like TopCoder, SPOJ, CodeForces that train for ACM ICPC might be a great place to start. These are different from LeetCode.
solipsism 6y ago
There's some other problem. None of us can say what it is unless you share your resume, what companies you've applied to, etc. But if you get "no hits" with 20 years of experience in Python and C++, the problem is 100% not "missing machine learning and cloud experience".
- landtuna 6y ago
  Is that an offer? :) https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimhunziker/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimhunziker/ One hit was for making machine guns target humans better. (I rejected the in-person interview.) Another dropped me because they wanted cloud experience. A YC company changed the job from remote to SF only before we talked.
  - solipsism 6y ago

welearnednothng 6y ago

Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Over 20 years of really solid experience here doing some awesome stuff for recognizable employers. I’ve had the exact experiences as the author. One recent interview run by ex-FUAANG folks started with a non-trivial take home that represented their actual business. I come in, am told it’s one of the best they’ve seen. Which was great, because I was genuinely proud of it. Now let’s find all of the combinations on a boggle board. Which wasn’t even the worst of it. So far, that’s been pretty par for the course for me. It’s been discouraging.

sanGupta2 6y ago

Exactly.

driverdan 6y ago

> Facebook's hiring pipeline is optimized for new grads, but its hiring needs are senior engineers. The hiring process should be based on the position and candidate. If you're applying the same process you use for new grads to someone with 15 years experience you're doing it wrong. FB should be capable of doing this correctly.