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The weird part of this advice to me is all the "CS fundamentals" biz. It's admittedly been quite a while since I've felt the need to go out for "junior" roles,

by advael 4y ago

The weird part of this advice to me is all the "CS fundamentals" biz. It's admittedly been quite a while since I've felt the need to go out for "junior" roles, but I have a lot of close friends who are recent boot camp grads, and it seems to me that most success in an interview boils down to interpersonal skills and confidence in problem-solving. There's a significant backlash at least in the startup space to "whiteboard coding" and fiddly little problems as assessments, which I think is overall a good thing. My own experience has taught me that smart hiring managers are more interested in you getting along with the people you'll be working with, along with your willingness to try stuff you don't already know how to do, and talk about what you do to non-technical stakeholders, and from what I've heard from my more junior-in-the-industry friends, this seems to bear out across the board That said, none of them are targeting FAANG jobs and neither am I, so if you are, this may be wildly wrong

bitwize 4y ago
"Brush up on CS fundamentals" means "grind leetcode" which is already table stakes for getting a job, and about to become more important. In a recession, companies will crack down on candidates with interpersonal skills and confidence but no competence. Interpersonal skills and confidence are deciding factors after you've filtered out the candidates with low technical skill, as determined by leetcode, whiteboard, online coding exercises, etc. Once again, I've seen enough candidates talk the talk, and then get caught typing in answers verbatim from Google or SO, to know that eliminating coding exercises in the interview process is folly -- it's opening the door for bad hires who can't code and who waste everyone's time.
- cto_of_antifa 4y ago
- advael 4y ago
  Honestly to me the most important piece is the willingness and ability to try new things and work under certainty. I have seen first hand time and time again that it is easier for someone who is good at this to learn how to code when the rubber hits the road than it is for someone who knows how to code but isn't comfortable learning on the fly to learn a new python library fast enough to work with the team. On a super short timescale with no testing feedback loop, 99% of "algorithms" questions are "Have you encountered this thing before" shit tests in practice, rather than meaningful tests of problem-solving skills, and do not effectively test whether someone will be effective. This is to me a classic Goodhart's Law + policy problem: One can easily assess the answer to an algorithm problem, so it's popular as an assessment and becomes pervasive. Goodhart's Law predicts the next part
usrbinbash 4y ago
> There's a significant backlash at least in the startup space to "whiteboard coding" Good. Whiteboard coding is probably one of the least useful methods I have ever seen to evaluate candidates. It tells me nothing about the persons actual qualification and can be gamed.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  While I agree that it won't tell you if a candidate is good, it will often show very quickly that a candidate is absolutely terrible. My warm-up questions are usually something like "reverse a singly-linked-list" or "check if a string is a palindrome", and you would be surprised at how many people have just no clue on how to do it, even with a lot of help (and I work in a FAANG so we should be getting decent candidates).
  - usrbinbash 4y ago
    > it will often show very quickly that a candidate is absolutely terrible. It CAN show that. Problem is; even a terrible candidate can prepare, knowing the kinds of things that will likely be tested, by memorizing the solutions to these very specific problems.
  - newbye3 4y ago
    Don't hire me, this version cons a lot )): (defun palindrome(str) (string= str (coerce (reverse (coerce str 'list)) 'string))
    - iLoveOncall 4y ago
      I would ask you to implement reverse and coerce yourself.
  - bluefirebrand 4y ago
    I haven't worked with a linked list since first or second year university, more than 10 years ago, nor have I had much of a reason to do character by character string analysis. I could probably work these problems out, but I might not seem too confident about it.
noneeeed 4y ago
We are in the middle of interviewing for our first ever intake of graduates/juniors and this describes what we are looking for to a T. We are far more interested in problem solving, reasoning about systems and constraints, and an ability to work well with others, and most importantly a strong desire to learn new stuff. We will have a small code related test, but it's short and relatively simple but of but fixing/changing existing code.
windows2020 4y ago
> try stuff you don't already know how to do I've seen this used as justification for implementation of shiny third-party things that were both a fundamentally unfit solution and permitted those pushing it to avoid understanding the root cause of their current problems.
- hamandcheese 4y ago
  There’s a fine line, but I don’t think that is what GP is talking about. Chasing the new shiny unnecessarily vs learning a new tool when required/necessary. Plenty of people do the former, and plenty of people also resist the latter (vehemently so, in many cases).
- skrtskrt 4y ago
  I see this more of the quality where you can dive into something you don’t already know how to do with confidence that you can come out the other side. A lot of people are just really scared of what they don’t know, and don’t even give themselves a chance to self-teach or expand their skills
rad88 4y ago
That culture has definitely taken root in some ways, but I wouldn't count on it during a downturn. The idea is what will the hiring/candidate pools look like in a tech recession, so a premise is that many people who can presently get an engineering job then cannot. There are so many software programming jobs right now that the market created bootcamps to fill the demand, but it's not like mature engineers necessarily have fewer interpersonal skills, and suddenly there are many more of them all trying to get jobs.
cabraca 4y ago
You're not wrong. I mentor some juniors and the ability to talk to a specific target audience about a topic is the most important skill a dev can have. I can teach you the tech stack, but i cant teach you how to talk to the business people or the finance department. "I need budget to rewrite that app in rust" will get you a no from the finance guys most of the time. Tell them that it would reduce your current infrastructure cost by 10% (or whatever you want to achieve) and they might say yes.
- mandeepj 4y ago
  > I mentor some juniors and the ability to talk to a specific target audience about a topic is the most important skill a dev can have. Sure, it comes with experience and lessons learnt. But, I don't think a junior dev would straight talk to finance guys for money. They would have support from his own tribe in some form (PM/Manager/Director). Nonetheless, you are making a good point. In sprint demos, I make sure my team members do not bring up any tech jargon.
  - cabraca 4y ago
    finance was just a example. replace it with the stakeholder, the PM of another team or an external partner. > In sprint demos, I make sure my team members do not bring up any tech jargon thats exactly what i mean. the audience does not care about the tech, they care that their problems are solved and money is made.
    - willcipriano 4y ago
      I wonder if it works that way in other fields. Do the suits at Boeing get upset that the engineer they hired keeps talking about things like thrust, lift and control surfaces instead of what EBITDA will be this quarter? Actually maybe... That might be the reason airplanes are throwing themselves at the ground and why all your personal information is now public knowledge.
exdsq 4y ago
Some startups are still requiring weird whiteboard questions sadly. Interviewed for a role recently and was asked to navigate a maze of obstacles and teleports with possible infinite loops, saying the minimum number of steps to leave the maze if it’s possible. That was for a test engineering role so… WTF.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  They wanted to know if you can traverse a graph, which is something pretty simple. I don't see a need for outrage here.
  - exdsq 4y ago
    I'm sure it's simple if you know it! But having not taking an algorithm class before, and having completed three other Algorithm questions within the 90 min total allotted time, I crashed pretty hard. I solved it afterwards when I had time to really think, but didn't know it off the top of my head.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  I assume they wanted more than a DFS or BFS or similar with loop detection? The teleports sound like a fun twist, although I'm not sure they change that much since from a graph perspective presumably they're just another edge?
  - 414techie 4y ago
    Yeah, but does that kind of problem really exist on a regular basis for a test engineer on that team? I doubt it.
    - bigDinosaur 4y ago
      It's probably not that relevant to the job, but as far as weird questions go it's not too bad. It's presumably not leetcode hard, basically.

by advael 4y ago

bitwize 4y ago

"Brush up on CS fundamentals" means "grind leetcode" which is already table stakes for getting a job, and about to become more important. In a recession, companies will crack down on candidates with interpersonal skills and confidence but no competence. Interpersonal skills and confidence are deciding factors after you've filtered out the candidates with low technical skill, as determined by leetcode, whiteboard, online coding exercises, etc. Once again, I've seen enough candidates talk the talk, and then get caught typing in answers verbatim from Google or SO, to know that eliminating coding exercises in the interview process is folly -- it's opening the door for bad hires who can't code and who waste everyone's time.

cto_of_antifa 4y ago
advael 4y ago
Honestly to me the most important piece is the willingness and ability to try new things and work under certainty. I have seen first hand time and time again that it is easier for someone who is good at this to learn how to code when the rubber hits the road than it is for someone who knows how to code but isn't comfortable learning on the fly to learn a new python library fast enough to work with the team. On a super short timescale with no testing feedback loop, 99% of "algorithms" questions are "Have you encountered this thing before" shit tests in practice, rather than meaningful tests of problem-solving skills, and do not effectively test whether someone will be effective. This is to me a classic Goodhart's Law + policy problem: One can easily assess the answer to an algorithm problem, so it's popular as an assessment and becomes pervasive. Goodhart's Law predicts the next part

usrbinbash 4y ago

> There's a significant backlash at least in the startup space to "whiteboard coding" Good. Whiteboard coding is probably one of the least useful methods I have ever seen to evaluate candidates. It tells me nothing about the persons actual qualification and can be gamed.

iLoveOncall 4y ago
While I agree that it won't tell you if a candidate is good, it will often show very quickly that a candidate is absolutely terrible. My warm-up questions are usually something like "reverse a singly-linked-list" or "check if a string is a palindrome", and you would be surprised at how many people have just no clue on how to do it, even with a lot of help (and I work in a FAANG so we should be getting decent candidates).
- usrbinbash 4y ago
  > it will often show very quickly that a candidate is absolutely terrible. It CAN show that. Problem is; even a terrible candidate can prepare, knowing the kinds of things that will likely be tested, by memorizing the solutions to these very specific problems.
- newbye3 4y ago
  Don't hire me, this version cons a lot )): (defun palindrome(str) (string= str (coerce (reverse (coerce str 'list)) 'string))
  - iLoveOncall 4y ago
    I would ask you to implement reverse and coerce yourself.
- bluefirebrand 4y ago
  I haven't worked with a linked list since first or second year university, more than 10 years ago, nor have I had much of a reason to do character by character string analysis. I could probably work these problems out, but I might not seem too confident about it.

noneeeed 4y ago

We are in the middle of interviewing for our first ever intake of graduates/juniors and this describes what we are looking for to a T. We are far more interested in problem solving, reasoning about systems and constraints, and an ability to work well with others, and most importantly a strong desire to learn new stuff. We will have a small code related test, but it's short and relatively simple but of but fixing/changing existing code.

windows2020 4y ago

> try stuff you don't already know how to do I've seen this used as justification for implementation of shiny third-party things that were both a fundamentally unfit solution and permitted those pushing it to avoid understanding the root cause of their current problems.

hamandcheese 4y ago
There’s a fine line, but I don’t think that is what GP is talking about. Chasing the new shiny unnecessarily vs learning a new tool when required/necessary. Plenty of people do the former, and plenty of people also resist the latter (vehemently so, in many cases).
skrtskrt 4y ago
I see this more of the quality where you can dive into something you don’t already know how to do with confidence that you can come out the other side. A lot of people are just really scared of what they don’t know, and don’t even give themselves a chance to self-teach or expand their skills

rad88 4y ago

That culture has definitely taken root in some ways, but I wouldn't count on it during a downturn. The idea is what will the hiring/candidate pools look like in a tech recession, so a premise is that many people who can presently get an engineering job then cannot. There are so many software programming jobs right now that the market created bootcamps to fill the demand, but it's not like mature engineers necessarily have fewer interpersonal skills, and suddenly there are many more of them all trying to get jobs.

cabraca 4y ago

You're not wrong. I mentor some juniors and the ability to talk to a specific target audience about a topic is the most important skill a dev can have. I can teach you the tech stack, but i cant teach you how to talk to the business people or the finance department. "I need budget to rewrite that app in rust" will get you a no from the finance guys most of the time. Tell them that it would reduce your current infrastructure cost by 10% (or whatever you want to achieve) and they might say yes.

mandeepj 4y ago
> I mentor some juniors and the ability to talk to a specific target audience about a topic is the most important skill a dev can have. Sure, it comes with experience and lessons learnt. But, I don't think a junior dev would straight talk to finance guys for money. They would have support from his own tribe in some form (PM/Manager/Director). Nonetheless, you are making a good point. In sprint demos, I make sure my team members do not bring up any tech jargon.
- cabraca 4y ago
  finance was just a example. replace it with the stakeholder, the PM of another team or an external partner. > In sprint demos, I make sure my team members do not bring up any tech jargon thats exactly what i mean. the audience does not care about the tech, they care that their problems are solved and money is made.
  - willcipriano 4y ago
    I wonder if it works that way in other fields. Do the suits at Boeing get upset that the engineer they hired keeps talking about things like thrust, lift and control surfaces instead of what EBITDA will be this quarter? Actually maybe... That might be the reason airplanes are throwing themselves at the ground and why all your personal information is now public knowledge.

exdsq 4y ago

Some startups are still requiring weird whiteboard questions sadly. Interviewed for a role recently and was asked to navigate a maze of obstacles and teleports with possible infinite loops, saying the minimum number of steps to leave the maze if it’s possible. That was for a test engineering role so… WTF.

DeathArrow 4y ago
They wanted to know if you can traverse a graph, which is something pretty simple. I don't see a need for outrage here.
- exdsq 4y ago
  I'm sure it's simple if you know it! But having not taking an algorithm class before, and having completed three other Algorithm questions within the 90 min total allotted time, I crashed pretty hard. I solved it afterwards when I had time to really think, but didn't know it off the top of my head.
bigDinosaur 4y ago
I assume they wanted more than a DFS or BFS or similar with loop detection? The teleports sound like a fun twist, although I'm not sure they change that much since from a graph perspective presumably they're just another edge?
- 414techie 4y ago
  Yeah, but does that kind of problem really exist on a regular basis for a test engineer on that team? I doubt it.
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    It's probably not that relevant to the job, but as far as weird questions go it's not too bad. It's presumably not leetcode hard, basically.