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I don't mean to sound rude, but I feel like your response seriously lacks empathy. I am a father to a 2 year old, I have a mortgage and an existing full time j

I don't mean to sound rude, but I feel like your response seriously lacks empathy. I am a father to a 2 year old, I have a mortgage and an existing full time job. The time investment required to go through a bunch of algorithms that are almost exclusively used in passing coding interviews does not offer the same ROI as, for example, streamlining a process that you are currently facing on a day to day basis. On top of that, something that I've learned recently about myself is that I have a tremendous fear of failing coding interviews. You see there is an emotional component to the effort you put in to doing one of those things. You go through the work to get accepted into the interview process then you find yourself face to face with "one shot" to impress. Maybe they've even flown you out to their location so you can go through this whole experience on site. At that point the optimistic among us might start thinking about things like what our lives would look like if we worked at "technological mecca" doing really cool shit for silicon valley dollars. So you start allowing yourself to think about watching the ocean on a sunny day eating avacado toast while you watch your now bleach blonde son playing in the surf. Your wife is happy too. You have this beautiful life that you're providing for those that you love. (in your fantasies you don't worry about the cascadia fault-line, the dystopian nature of US healthcare, or the fact that california seems to catch fire for a month every year nowadays) ANYWAYS, you go in, you give it your all. Maybe you think you nailed it, or maybe you can clearly come up with 20 better solutions in the 20 seconds after you leave. Maybe you studied 50 concepts intensely, but missed the one they picked to ask you about. You didn't get the questions in advance or anything. It doesn't matter though, you missed a semicolon on the whiteboard and your code doesn't compile when they type it in. You get a terse reply from your original recruiter "not a good fit at this time" ... there's no insight into what you did wrong or where you could get better. That opens the company up to legal liability. Anything more than "thanks" risks exposure. So you're left with days and weeks of effort for nothing. On top of that you have a real long flight home where you get to grieve the loss of that beautiful life you imagined. Do you work in a place where you can tell your colleagues at work that you were interviewing? If not, you can't even talk to the people in your life who are most likely to understand the pain you're going through. So you get to suffer alone. So. What does it say about someone? Absolutely nothing.

sanderjd 5y ago
For me the ROI was about 40 hours of studying for (estimating) about a million dollars delta over my next best job offer over the first five years. That week I spent studying is the most return I've ever achieved per hour. I don't love it and I deeply hated it at the time and still feel dirty to think about it, but from a financial ROI perspective it is unassailable. Honestly I think the opposite of your family-man argument is the case: I couldn't afford to allow my pride to keep me from doing that, for the sake of my family's finances. When I was young and unattached I could (and did) afford to be more idealistic about not doing that kind of gross thing, just for the financial reward.
- travisporter 5y ago
  I think you should acknowledge that some people fail despite studying about 40 hours, and failing an interview takes a significant emotional toll that needs to be dealt with.
  - sanderjd 5y ago
    Good point, it is definitely not risk-free ROI at all, and the emotional toll can have outsized impacts. But I still think people with the skill set to succeed at other companies can learn enough in a relatively small period of time (I said 100 hours in a different comment to make the numbers round, maybe even double that is worthwhile) for it to be a worthwhile risk. I mean, the exact calculation depends on a bunch of details, like what the best alternative is in comparison. But I think for lots of people, it is worth the risk. One thing I'd say is that essentially none of the people I know in other fields have a similar opportunity for a relatively small amount of dedicated study to pay off so well.
    - alexc05 5y ago
      You're just so right! I'm expecting to take on a roughly 14 week study course to fit the work required into the time I have after I've put my son to bed and around my day job. Oh yeah ... and that podcast I started about professional development in software engineering. (...and, and, and...) But you're SO right. I expect that publicly committing to internet-strangers that I'm working on the course, producing materials for them &, having a scheduled weekly discussion around the topics will help with both learning the content AND keeping us all motivated. Your initial comment was one of the things that helped me come to those conclusions, so genuinely thank you, kind internet stranger for sharing your wisdom.

sanderjd 5y ago

For me the ROI was about 40 hours of studying for (estimating) about a million dollars delta over my next best job offer over the first five years. That week I spent studying is the most return I've ever achieved per hour. I don't love it and I deeply hated it at the time and still feel dirty to think about it, but from a financial ROI perspective it is unassailable. Honestly I think the opposite of your family-man argument is the case: I couldn't afford to allow my pride to keep me from doing that, for the sake of my family's finances. When I was young and unattached I could (and did) afford to be more idealistic about not doing that kind of gross thing, just for the financial reward.

travisporter 5y ago
I think you should acknowledge that some people fail despite studying about 40 hours, and failing an interview takes a significant emotional toll that needs to be dealt with.
- sanderjd 5y ago
  Good point, it is definitely not risk-free ROI at all, and the emotional toll can have outsized impacts. But I still think people with the skill set to succeed at other companies can learn enough in a relatively small period of time (I said 100 hours in a different comment to make the numbers round, maybe even double that is worthwhile) for it to be a worthwhile risk. I mean, the exact calculation depends on a bunch of details, like what the best alternative is in comparison. But I think for lots of people, it is worth the risk. One thing I'd say is that essentially none of the people I know in other fields have a similar opportunity for a relatively small amount of dedicated study to pay off so well.
  - alexc05 5y ago
    You're just so right! I'm expecting to take on a roughly 14 week study course to fit the work required into the time I have after I've put my son to bed and around my day job. Oh yeah ... and that podcast I started about professional development in software engineering. (...and, and, and...) But you're SO right. I expect that publicly committing to internet-strangers that I'm working on the course, producing materials for them &, having a scheduled weekly discussion around the topics will help with both learning the content AND keeping us all motivated. Your initial comment was one of the things that helped me come to those conclusions, so genuinely thank you, kind internet stranger for sharing your wisdom.