4 ms·

Well as a senior/lead engineer, the nice thing is that the jobs I get these days, I try to work from the inside to make sure interviews aren't too ridiculous, a

by davedx 5y ago

Well as a senior/lead engineer, the nice thing is that the jobs I get these days, I try to work from the inside to make sure interviews aren't too ridiculous, and not be super-critical of people who don't ace the programming stuff. So that's kind of nice. That being sad, where I am (Netherlands), interviews haven't gotten noticeably harder. 20 years ago I had an interview where I was asked to implement polymorphism in C on a whiteboard. The other year I had an interview where I had to implement some kind of graph sorting system related to blockchains. I failed them both, and went on to find a load of other companies that were a bit less silly. My overall impression is that it's big tech companies in the US that have become obsessed with coding tests, hankerrank and leetcode and the like. I don't know why, when half of them are complaining about acute talent shortages... (Facebook?)

hiptobecubic 5y ago
The number of applicants is ENORMOUS but the number that are hirable engineers is not. I think the stupid trivia is just filtering by necessity. The take-home project followed by discussion is great, but can it scale up to Facebook and Google? Are you going to have engineers doing several of those per week? It's already difficult to come up with algorithm questions that are novel enough that candidates haven't already practiced the exact question, as found in some aggregation site. How do you avoid that with project work? I agree the system is terrible, but I see how we ended up here too.
- samstave 5y ago
  I work in a position where there is typically only one of me in a company/team.... As I have been applying a lot lately, I was told by several recruiters that they are getting ~250 applicants to each seat... and most times, thats the only seat in a company - and the applicants are coming from all over the place now that WFH / remote is so much less stigma'd...

by davedx 5y ago

hiptobecubic 5y ago

The number of applicants is ENORMOUS but the number that are hirable engineers is not. I think the stupid trivia is just filtering by necessity. The take-home project followed by discussion is great, but can it scale up to Facebook and Google? Are you going to have engineers doing several of those per week? It's already difficult to come up with algorithm questions that are novel enough that candidates haven't already practiced the exact question, as found in some aggregation site. How do you avoid that with project work? I agree the system is terrible, but I see how we ended up here too.

samstave 5y ago
I work in a position where there is typically only one of me in a company/team.... As I have been applying a lot lately, I was told by several recruiters that they are getting ~250 applicants to each seat... and most times, thats the only seat in a company - and the applicants are coming from all over the place now that WFH / remote is so much less stigma'd...