4 ms·

For me it’s the insane hazing ritual of the tech interview process that makes me want to leave the industry. I’m going through it again now, and honestly am pr

by nvarsj 4y ago

For me it’s the insane hazing ritual of the tech interview process that makes me want to leave the industry. I’m going through it again now, and honestly am pretty miserable. It has a large negative impact on the rest of my life and my mental health. When I was younger it was manageable, but the fact you have to do this even mid or late career every few years is insane to me. Wish I had gone into literally any other career now, despite it being my passion early on in life.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
> the insane hazing ritual of the tech interview process That's it, exactly. I was a hiring manager for 25 years, and never gave a single coding test, during that time. I never made any technical errors. The only bad hires were folks that couldn't adapt to the work environment. Some of them were quite technically proficient. Some of my most gratifying hires, were ones that came in, with little tech proficiency or experience. I kept people for a long time, and helped them to develop their careers. It was not always a a bad thing, when they left. If my company wasn't willing to do what it took, to keep them, then I sincerely wished them luck. In my rather truncated modern interview cycle (I gave up, after a few months), I came to understand that the interview process is, quite literally, a hazing ritual. Companies don't want "outside the box" thinking. They want people that won't rock the boat, and will do as they are told. I also personally believe that leetcode tests are "young pass filters." Us "olds" are quite unpopular, and it has nothing at all to do with how much we cost. In my entire career, I never made as much as many kids get, at their first job (yet, I still have more to show for it, than many). When I would ask interviewers why they refused to look at my portfolio, and, instead relied exclusively on leetcode tests, they would hem and haw, but eventually, it would boil down to "Well, I got hazed, so you are, too." After running into this a few times, I realized the fox ain't worth the chase.
- stutsmansoft 4y ago
  I couldn't agree more. I recently discontinued the process with a company over the leetcode garbage. Those things test one thing: how many of those puzzles have you memorized the solution to. I'm also an "old" and suspect you're right about the young-pass-filter.
- nvarsj 4y ago
  I did nope out of this process last time I was looking, when I moved out of the US and my kids were young - because I just didn't have the time for it. I took a huge pay cut, but I accepted family > career. Since then I managed to almost triple my income through accomplishments and networking, but I still make less than a FAANG senior engineer. Then I had a close friend, who I encouraged to get into software, land an L5 role at a FAANG with barely 1 year of actual engineering experience. The guy is a complete slacker, and never accomplished much at all until I actively pushed him to try rebooting his career. He's smart though, and single with no family, so he just grinded leetcode and system design and now he makes 350k/year. Anyways, that spurred me back into the meat grinder, so here I am. Multiple, large accomplishments under my belt, significant engineering experience. But none of it matters. Not that I expect anyone to have sympathy for me - it's just the way our industry is.
  - Sheeny96 4y ago
    Anecdotally, you have far more experience than me therefore probably already know this, but the skills you're describing sound suited to a digital transformation (buzzword in many old hat businesses transitioning to being 'tech companies')/technical management role as opposed to an out and out engineer at this point. Depends what you want as your day to day.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    I have sympathy (for what that's worth). I wish you well. I am very grateful to have had the means to "nope out." I used to say "My dream is to, one day, work for free." I'm living the dream ... :/
popcorncowboy 4y ago
Yep it's bullshit. Just don't imagine that the grass is any greener elsewhere. Most professions suck. Work/life balance for doctors is something they read about, lawyers have the highest suicide rates in the country, accountants grind soul crushing busy work, bankers call uppers "tie straighteners" to get them through the day, civil/mechanical engineering chews up the "weak" and cripples the "strong". Academia is a cess pit. Trades get romanticised (as "honest work"), but is its own version of hell (hours, physical toll, social hierarchy, etc etc). A very few people get lucky and don't deal with this. But from what I've seen, the rule is that work is mostly hell, everywhere.
- avgDev 4y ago
  Good point. I'm sometimes upset that I have to dig through a legacy database to figure out how to make my new web app work with it. I sometimes have to commit programming crimes to work around a legacy stored procedures that the company is unwilling to touch at that point. However, my job is relatively relaxed. My boss doesn't require any core hours from me and I go to the office every few weeks to touch base and attend meetings. I then talk to friends who are doctors and pharmacists.....and I wouldn't be able to do their jobs. The pharmacist works 12 hours days. Mostly standing. She cannot leave for lunch. She rarely has a moment to text or do anything else at work. She under intense pressure to show up everyday. If she misses like 3 days due to any emergency she is going to get fired. All I can say fuck that. Software development has its demons but most devs can make six figures changing the color of a button or creating relatively simple CRUD apps once they understand modern frameworks and databases.
BlargMcLarg 4y ago
The fact the interview process is largely unsupported by any empirical evidence speaks volumes really, and this has been known since the 1970s or so. Instead of listening, hiring, HR, recruiters generally clamped down, and newcomers believe this is in fact the best solution because "rationally, it makes sense!". The few who come to their senses struggle to change the common narrative.
- maximus-decimus 4y ago
  The way I see it, it's just an IQ test in disguise, which do have empirical evidence they predict your future performance at intellectual work.
  - krageon 4y ago
    There is empirical evidence for that? Where? Where are the 170+ IQ employees churning out magnificent solution after magnificent solution, rather than being stuck in the same rut as everyone else?
    - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
      170+ IQs are extremely rare. That's 4.67 standard deviations above the mean. That should be about 0.0002% of people, or 14,000 people in the entire world, and that has to be shared with every other occupation that exists.
      - krageon 4y ago
        You focused entirely on an operational detail of my question and not at all on what I was actually asking: Why is it assumed higher IQ is connected to higher performance. The reason I am asking this is because it is not at all my experience - if anything, higher IQ correlates strongly with dysfunction.
  - cehrlich 4y ago
    It's not though, it's a test of how hard you've studied for algo problems. Relevant for some programming jobs, but not for most.
_hcuq 4y ago
Yes. I don’t even apply for jobs. Just freelance using personal contacts.
wnolens 4y ago
I'm there too, but trying to take a different mindset. For one, the requirements are utterly clear so you CAN systematically prepare and do well even if you lack the exact years of experience they're asking for. Two, the payoff is massive if you're in the US. I mean.. if you land at a FANGetc, you can literally put your feet up, buy a house anywhere, send all your kids to Harvard, and retire before your parents ever dreamed. Three, prepare slowly over time. I would do one or two leet code questions a month. Pickup a trick here and there. When I hating my job now, I do a few per week. Now I've accrued most of the knowledge about these questions and interviews are a lot easier
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by nvarsj 4y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

> the insane hazing ritual of the tech interview process That's it, exactly. I was a hiring manager for 25 years, and never gave a single coding test, during that time. I never made any technical errors. The only bad hires were folks that couldn't adapt to the work environment. Some of them were quite technically proficient. Some of my most gratifying hires, were ones that came in, with little tech proficiency or experience. I kept people for a long time, and helped them to develop their careers. It was not always a a bad thing, when they left. If my company wasn't willing to do what it took, to keep them, then I sincerely wished them luck. In my rather truncated modern interview cycle (I gave up, after a few months), I came to understand that the interview process is, quite literally, a hazing ritual. Companies don't want "outside the box" thinking. They want people that won't rock the boat, and will do as they are told. I also personally believe that leetcode tests are "young pass filters." Us "olds" are quite unpopular, and it has nothing at all to do with how much we cost. In my entire career, I never made as much as many kids get, at their first job (yet, I still have more to show for it, than many). When I would ask interviewers why they refused to look at my portfolio, and, instead relied exclusively on leetcode tests, they would hem and haw, but eventually, it would boil down to "Well, I got hazed, so you are, too." After running into this a few times, I realized the fox ain't worth the chase.

stutsmansoft 4y ago
I couldn't agree more. I recently discontinued the process with a company over the leetcode garbage. Those things test one thing: how many of those puzzles have you memorized the solution to. I'm also an "old" and suspect you're right about the young-pass-filter.
nvarsj 4y ago
I did nope out of this process last time I was looking, when I moved out of the US and my kids were young - because I just didn't have the time for it. I took a huge pay cut, but I accepted family > career. Since then I managed to almost triple my income through accomplishments and networking, but I still make less than a FAANG senior engineer. Then I had a close friend, who I encouraged to get into software, land an L5 role at a FAANG with barely 1 year of actual engineering experience. The guy is a complete slacker, and never accomplished much at all until I actively pushed him to try rebooting his career. He's smart though, and single with no family, so he just grinded leetcode and system design and now he makes 350k/year. Anyways, that spurred me back into the meat grinder, so here I am. Multiple, large accomplishments under my belt, significant engineering experience. But none of it matters. Not that I expect anyone to have sympathy for me - it's just the way our industry is.
- Sheeny96 4y ago
  Anecdotally, you have far more experience than me therefore probably already know this, but the skills you're describing sound suited to a digital transformation (buzzword in many old hat businesses transitioning to being 'tech companies')/technical management role as opposed to an out and out engineer at this point. Depends what you want as your day to day.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  I have sympathy (for what that's worth). I wish you well. I am very grateful to have had the means to "nope out." I used to say "My dream is to, one day, work for free." I'm living the dream ... :/

popcorncowboy 4y ago

Yep it's bullshit. Just don't imagine that the grass is any greener elsewhere. Most professions suck. Work/life balance for doctors is something they read about, lawyers have the highest suicide rates in the country, accountants grind soul crushing busy work, bankers call uppers "tie straighteners" to get them through the day, civil/mechanical engineering chews up the "weak" and cripples the "strong". Academia is a cess pit. Trades get romanticised (as "honest work"), but is its own version of hell (hours, physical toll, social hierarchy, etc etc). A very few people get lucky and don't deal with this. But from what I've seen, the rule is that work is mostly hell, everywhere.

avgDev 4y ago
Good point. I'm sometimes upset that I have to dig through a legacy database to figure out how to make my new web app work with it. I sometimes have to commit programming crimes to work around a legacy stored procedures that the company is unwilling to touch at that point. However, my job is relatively relaxed. My boss doesn't require any core hours from me and I go to the office every few weeks to touch base and attend meetings. I then talk to friends who are doctors and pharmacists.....and I wouldn't be able to do their jobs. The pharmacist works 12 hours days. Mostly standing. She cannot leave for lunch. She rarely has a moment to text or do anything else at work. She under intense pressure to show up everyday. If she misses like 3 days due to any emergency she is going to get fired. All I can say fuck that. Software development has its demons but most devs can make six figures changing the color of a button or creating relatively simple CRUD apps once they understand modern frameworks and databases.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago

The fact the interview process is largely unsupported by any empirical evidence speaks volumes really, and this has been known since the 1970s or so. Instead of listening, hiring, HR, recruiters generally clamped down, and newcomers believe this is in fact the best solution because "rationally, it makes sense!". The few who come to their senses struggle to change the common narrative.

maximus-decimus 4y ago
The way I see it, it's just an IQ test in disguise, which do have empirical evidence they predict your future performance at intellectual work.
- krageon 4y ago
  There is empirical evidence for that? Where? Where are the 170+ IQ employees churning out magnificent solution after magnificent solution, rather than being stuck in the same rut as everyone else?
  - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
    170+ IQs are extremely rare. That's 4.67 standard deviations above the mean. That should be about 0.0002% of people, or 14,000 people in the entire world, and that has to be shared with every other occupation that exists.
    - krageon 4y ago
      You focused entirely on an operational detail of my question and not at all on what I was actually asking: Why is it assumed higher IQ is connected to higher performance. The reason I am asking this is because it is not at all my experience - if anything, higher IQ correlates strongly with dysfunction.
- cehrlich 4y ago
  It's not though, it's a test of how hard you've studied for algo problems. Relevant for some programming jobs, but not for most.

_hcuq 4y ago

Yes. I don’t even apply for jobs. Just freelance using personal contacts.

wnolens 4y ago

I'm there too, but trying to take a different mindset. For one, the requirements are utterly clear so you CAN systematically prepare and do well even if you lack the exact years of experience they're asking for. Two, the payoff is massive if you're in the US. I mean.. if you land at a FANGetc, you can literally put your feet up, buy a house anywhere, send all your kids to Harvard, and retire before your parents ever dreamed. Three, prepare slowly over time. I would do one or two leet code questions a month. Pickup a trick here and there. When I hating my job now, I do a few per week. Now I've accrued most of the knowledge about these questions and interviews are a lot easier

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