4 ms·

If your application process starts with a human being—even better a technical human being—reaching out to me, followed by 2-3 interviews, followed by an offer,

If your application process starts with a human being—even better a technical human being—reaching out to me, followed by 2-3 interviews, followed by an offer, I am already on your side. If your application process starts with a HackerRank, followed by 2 phone interviews followed by on-site, followed by team matching, I will not be on your side. Oh and if there's random month long gaps in between stages, I will especially be uninterested. I've noticed though that as I've gotten more specialized to compilers and programming languages, my application experience has improved significantly. It's not a large sample size but the last few processes I've gone through have been fewer interviews that usually involve going over a project of mine or doing a problem that's related to compilers. It's really refreshing to have an interview where I actually learn something about my field of interest during it. I know that doesn't scale because we shouldn't expect compilers knowledge for junior compilers jobs but it's a very nice change of pace for me.

purplecats 5y ago
the quality of your experience will depend on the desperation of the candidate employer. more competition = worse time for you
Dig1t 5y ago
I agree actually, I've had a similar experience except in the mobile engineering space. Currently I'm going through the interview process with a ton of companies (because my company is really dumb and is forcing everyone to move back to a certain bay area city post-covid), and I have been happily surprised to find that most of my interviews are very practical, project based, ones instead of straight whiteboarding leetcode problems. I've received several take-home projects that are followed up with a simple add-on interview to sit down and explain the choices made during the take-home. They have all been specifically focused on domain knowledge to the mobile platform that I'm interviewing for. Its really nice! I hope this trend continues. That said, I am still reviewing leetcode problems for the stupid faang interviews I have coming up as well.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Where do you find take home project interviews?
  - kxrm 5y ago
    I just went through this with a company. They sent me a generic packet with 3 projects to choose from. With a simple Google search I was able to find all of the answers to all 3 sample projects implemented in different languages. This was after a 10 minute conversation with the company's recruiter. To top it off, nothing in the job listing said anything about software. Just Cloud and Devops management role. I am absolutely ok with take home or some presentation of my skills. However, I expect to know that I am being taken seriously as a candidate by that point. I don't want to waste my time on something with no investment from the company. As you can guess, I bowed out of the running explaining that I didn't think it was appropriate for me to give them so much of my time with no commitment from their end. I also told them I could tell their take home project took them less than 5 minutes to generate for me as it was everywhere on the internet. How can I trust a process where the answers to the interview are everywhere? How can they really know my skills as a candidate if I can just steal the answers off of GitHub? Worse, how can I know how I will stack up to someone who might be less scrupulous than I and steal those answers when I tried in earnest and actually burned an afternoon trying to solve their test?
andrew_ 5y ago
Agree totally. I recently accepted a position where an officer reached out to me, followed by a really great discussion with them. A call with two engineers and a team call later, I was offered, and we were all confident it was a great fit. The interested was consistently maintained on all sides evenly and communication was fluid. Great experience.
Aeolun 5y ago
I don’t think there is such a thing as a junior compiler job?
- hardwaregeek 5y ago
  Considering I've worked on a compiler as an intern and know plenty of people who have done the same, I politely disagree :D
- trhway 5y ago
  compilers are 101 of CS with coding a major part of compiler being just a course project. Honestly, one of the most straightforward and simple things in the industry. At one of my previous jobs several senior undergrads (beside fresh grads which were frequently hired) were hired full-time to work on a major compiler suite. A nearby company doing a lesser known kind of bit more narrow specialized compiler suite were hiring even more of senior undergrads and fresh grads.
virgilp 5y ago
Is HackerRank so bad? If one does "whiteboard problems", HackerRank says, "boo, whiteboard interviews, just let me code and be able to search on Google, whiteboard is unrealistic!". Now if the company starts with a HackerRank test, that's also bad? I don't get it. Look, a lot of people have good-looking CVs and can't code shit. I don't know about you but my experience was that one really can't hire based on CV alone. Also, I've seen "architects" that are smart and fairly knowledgeable people that failed to code very very basic stuff (as in, merge 2 sorted arrays).... I get it that at some companies you are expected to draw diagrams in Confluence as a main job, and might no longer have actual coding skills; but we want even the most senior people to actually code, and that doesn't seem unreasonable to me. So just because you're a very-senior FAANG employee doesn't automatically mean you'd be a good fit. I'm not saying they're bad employees, but maybe they just wouldn't be a good fit and wouldn't enjoy the job if they expect to just design stuff instead of actually implementing, too.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  A lot of the issue with HackerRank is just how early it is in the process. I don't object to it. But there companies out there that just have every applicant do it indiscriminately.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  HackerRank isn't inherently bad. It's actually pretty good. It's that receiving a 1-2 hour automated algo contest to every job application is bad. If I applied to 10 companies, and every single one of them asked me to come onsite for whiteboarding as the first step, that would also suck tremendously, but at least it would be limited in scope by the employer's time as well. As it stands, arbitrary companies can expect a large time investment without any of their staff ever having to speak to anyone. I'll take a calculated stab at Amazon's once every 6 months I guess, because if I pass (which I haven't) I can potentially earn a hell of a lot more than any other place. I get it, whatever. If every company is doing it (they are)? I might just leave the industry if I can't find a way to be specifically good at remembering the implementation details of every data structure and algorithm. Sucks to be someone with pointless skills I guess.
- itronitron 5y ago
onion2k 5y ago
I applied to a company recently whose first interview was a tech test. I turned them down before I even spoke to a human. I don't want to work for any company that puts so little value on people.
- that_guy_iain 5y ago
  Honestly, I understand the whole send the tech test first. Having wasted time on talking to people who clearly weren't able to do the job I would rather waste their time than mines. For me, it's when I talk to their developers and it's clear they know I know what I'm talking about and they then try to tech test me. At that point, no. I just impressed the hell out of some of the people you consider to be your best and you think I can't code? Nah. The tech test seems often like it's cargo cult. It's on Joel's list so everyone thinks it is a must do. Instead of realising that the entire point of the tech test was to make sure people could actually code. With some of the original tech tests being do FizzBuzz or do something really simple in a short amount of time. Not, build me a production ready toy project using techincal DDD aspects.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    Having wasted time on talking to people who clearly weren't able to do the job I would rather waste their time than mines. Of course. But consider how that attitude looks from the perspective of a candidate - you'd rather waste my time that yours is a really good reason for me to drop out of the interview process. This is essentially what's wrong with hiring right now. Companies don't want to have anyone "waste their time", so they have many levels of filtering to reject candidates as early as possible while doing as little work as possible to make hiring good for candidates. In other words, companies have largely forgotten that candidates are people, and wasting anyone's time is a pretty bad idea.
    - that_guy_iain 5y ago
      Well, being the candidate I would rather they did a tech test first than talk to me and then do a tech test. Actually, if someone technical has spoken to me and then they ask me to do a tech test. I'm very likely to say no because they've already got a feel for my abilities and that is the point of a tech test. I think sometimes people forget people working at these companies are people too and noone wants to have their time wasted. This isn't companies deciding these things. It's people. It's the person on the otherside that doesn't want their time wasted.

purplecats 5y ago

the quality of your experience will depend on the desperation of the candidate employer. more competition = worse time for you

Dig1t 5y ago

I agree actually, I've had a similar experience except in the mobile engineering space. Currently I'm going through the interview process with a ton of companies (because my company is really dumb and is forcing everyone to move back to a certain bay area city post-covid), and I have been happily surprised to find that most of my interviews are very practical, project based, ones instead of straight whiteboarding leetcode problems. I've received several take-home projects that are followed up with a simple add-on interview to sit down and explain the choices made during the take-home. They have all been specifically focused on domain knowledge to the mobile platform that I'm interviewing for. Its really nice! I hope this trend continues. That said, I am still reviewing leetcode problems for the stupid faang interviews I have coming up as well.

MattGaiser 5y ago
Where do you find take home project interviews?
- kxrm 5y ago
  I just went through this with a company. They sent me a generic packet with 3 projects to choose from. With a simple Google search I was able to find all of the answers to all 3 sample projects implemented in different languages. This was after a 10 minute conversation with the company's recruiter. To top it off, nothing in the job listing said anything about software. Just Cloud and Devops management role. I am absolutely ok with take home or some presentation of my skills. However, I expect to know that I am being taken seriously as a candidate by that point. I don't want to waste my time on something with no investment from the company. As you can guess, I bowed out of the running explaining that I didn't think it was appropriate for me to give them so much of my time with no commitment from their end. I also told them I could tell their take home project took them less than 5 minutes to generate for me as it was everywhere on the internet. How can I trust a process where the answers to the interview are everywhere? How can they really know my skills as a candidate if I can just steal the answers off of GitHub? Worse, how can I know how I will stack up to someone who might be less scrupulous than I and steal those answers when I tried in earnest and actually burned an afternoon trying to solve their test?

andrew_ 5y ago

Agree totally. I recently accepted a position where an officer reached out to me, followed by a really great discussion with them. A call with two engineers and a team call later, I was offered, and we were all confident it was a great fit. The interested was consistently maintained on all sides evenly and communication was fluid. Great experience.

Aeolun 5y ago

I don’t think there is such a thing as a junior compiler job?

hardwaregeek 5y ago
Considering I've worked on a compiler as an intern and know plenty of people who have done the same, I politely disagree :D
trhway 5y ago
compilers are 101 of CS with coding a major part of compiler being just a course project. Honestly, one of the most straightforward and simple things in the industry. At one of my previous jobs several senior undergrads (beside fresh grads which were frequently hired) were hired full-time to work on a major compiler suite. A nearby company doing a lesser known kind of bit more narrow specialized compiler suite were hiring even more of senior undergrads and fresh grads.

virgilp 5y ago

Is HackerRank so bad? If one does "whiteboard problems", HackerRank says, "boo, whiteboard interviews, just let me code and be able to search on Google, whiteboard is unrealistic!". Now if the company starts with a HackerRank test, that's also bad? I don't get it. Look, a lot of people have good-looking CVs and can't code shit. I don't know about you but my experience was that one really can't hire based on CV alone. Also, I've seen "architects" that are smart and fairly knowledgeable people that failed to code very very basic stuff (as in, merge 2 sorted arrays).... I get it that at some companies you are expected to draw diagrams in Confluence as a main job, and might no longer have actual coding skills; but we want even the most senior people to actually code, and that doesn't seem unreasonable to me. So just because you're a very-senior FAANG employee doesn't automatically mean you'd be a good fit. I'm not saying they're bad employees, but maybe they just wouldn't be a good fit and wouldn't enjoy the job if they expect to just design stuff instead of actually implementing, too.

MattGaiser 5y ago
A lot of the issue with HackerRank is just how early it is in the process. I don't object to it. But there companies out there that just have every applicant do it indiscriminately.
brailsafe 5y ago
HackerRank isn't inherently bad. It's actually pretty good. It's that receiving a 1-2 hour automated algo contest to every job application is bad. If I applied to 10 companies, and every single one of them asked me to come onsite for whiteboarding as the first step, that would also suck tremendously, but at least it would be limited in scope by the employer's time as well. As it stands, arbitrary companies can expect a large time investment without any of their staff ever having to speak to anyone. I'll take a calculated stab at Amazon's once every 6 months I guess, because if I pass (which I haven't) I can potentially earn a hell of a lot more than any other place. I get it, whatever. If every company is doing it (they are)? I might just leave the industry if I can't find a way to be specifically good at remembering the implementation details of every data structure and algorithm. Sucks to be someone with pointless skills I guess.
itronitron 5y ago

onion2k 5y ago

I applied to a company recently whose first interview was a tech test. I turned them down before I even spoke to a human. I don't want to work for any company that puts so little value on people.

that_guy_iain 5y ago
Honestly, I understand the whole send the tech test first. Having wasted time on talking to people who clearly weren't able to do the job I would rather waste their time than mines. For me, it's when I talk to their developers and it's clear they know I know what I'm talking about and they then try to tech test me. At that point, no. I just impressed the hell out of some of the people you consider to be your best and you think I can't code? Nah. The tech test seems often like it's cargo cult. It's on Joel's list so everyone thinks it is a must do. Instead of realising that the entire point of the tech test was to make sure people could actually code. With some of the original tech tests being do FizzBuzz or do something really simple in a short amount of time. Not, build me a production ready toy project using techincal DDD aspects.
- onion2k 5y ago
  Having wasted time on talking to people who clearly weren't able to do the job I would rather waste their time than mines. Of course. But consider how that attitude looks from the perspective of a candidate - you'd rather waste my time that yours is a really good reason for me to drop out of the interview process. This is essentially what's wrong with hiring right now. Companies don't want to have anyone "waste their time", so they have many levels of filtering to reject candidates as early as possible while doing as little work as possible to make hiring good for candidates. In other words, companies have largely forgotten that candidates are people, and wasting anyone's time is a pretty bad idea.
  - that_guy_iain 5y ago
    Well, being the candidate I would rather they did a tech test first than talk to me and then do a tech test. Actually, if someone technical has spoken to me and then they ask me to do a tech test. I'm very likely to say no because they've already got a feel for my abilities and that is the point of a tech test. I think sometimes people forget people working at these companies are people too and noone wants to have their time wasted. This isn't companies deciding these things. It's people. It's the person on the otherside that doesn't want their time wasted.