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Honestly, the thing that's burns me out about this industry is none of these points. It's interviews. Specifically, algorithm interviews. The higher the level I
by kodah 5y ago
Honestly, the thing that's burns me out about this industry is none of these points. It's interviews. Specifically, algorithm interviews. The higher the level I've had, the more abstract of problem people think they're entitled to throw at me. I've played connect-4, I've had to write out binary search, I've had to pop from and push to stacks until my eyes turned blue all because... This somehow exemplifies a bar?
To be clear, I work on SDKs, CLIs, and mostly server infrastructure components (daemons, schedulers, etc). I know problems within my domain well, and as a result I can model for them well. Take me out of that, and I have exponential diminishing returns. On top of that, I'm not a college grad. I'm self taught. I didn't see these problems near as much as college grads do, so solving them in 30 minutes or an hour is like filing my teeth down without a numbing agent.
Anyway, I am getting out of this industry and taking the money I've made to go into EE. Maybe these notes will help make someone make their interviewing or promotion process better though.
- unobatbayar 5y agoI agree, but there are only so many algorithms; You should keep practicing and it'll definitely change your perspective!
- chakkepolja 5y agoMany of the Leetcode stuff is tribal knowledge by now. You know them by practice not general expertise in DS/A. On other side, many college grads practice a lot for this specific type of problems, even if they don't understand fundamentals.
- pedrosorio 5y ago> taking the money I've made to go into EE Electrical engineering? Getting a degree?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kodah 5y agoYes, I've made and saved enough money to go to college so that's what I'm going to do. I'm sufficiently burned on the toxic aspects of this industry not to do CS or CE, but I'd like to be able to use what I learned in terms of software and systems (specifically Linux and networking) to still be of some marginal use.
- cageface 5y agoI've interviewed with a bunch of companies recently and only one of them through anything like a leetcode problem at me. The rest were practical exercises building stuff with the tools they company was actually using in production. I've avoided applying at FAANG companies due to previous bad experiences like the ones you describe.
- wiseowise 5y agoThere are plenty of companies with low hiring bar.
- kodah 5y agoDS/A don't actually translate to a real-world bar. It's more parallel to "have you been to and passed college?" which is probably not what you want. Then there are the companies that say they don't give an algorithm test, but actually do. They just sufficiently abstract the real question behind something that is semi-related to what they do, while ignoring that the way they solve it will never be congruent to my answer because their question is sufficiently scoped to be used with DS/A.
- wiseowise 5y ago> DS/A don't actually translate to a real-world bar. It's more parallel to "have you been to and passed college?" which is probably not what you want. Any study that can confirm that?
- the_only_law 5y agoThough just keep in mind, a few other aspects of the job will be low in that case.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- the_only_law 5y ago> Anyway, I am getting out of this industry and taking the money I've made to go into EE. I’ll be doing the same, except not EE and for different reasons. I really don’t want anything to do with this industry as it doesn’t even faintly resemble the reasons I started hacking around with stuff. The sooner I’m out the better, it’s clear I don’t belong.