16 ms·

the thing that gets frustrating as i age are interviews and code challenges. i'd really prefer a certification that proves i can do xyz which i take once (per y

the thing that gets frustrating as i age are interviews and code challenges. i'd really prefer a certification that proves i can do xyz which i take once (per year? in my life?). then just decide if you like me based on personality and communication. i have over 200 repositories etc. its redundant, and random code challenges that differ from employer to employer prove next to nothing. 20 years ago it was the norm for interviewers to ask brain teasers / riddles in interviews ffs. edit: perhaps this is my own personal struggle as I did not attend University.

derangedHorse 4y ago
No the general sentiment is that the interview process for software engineers suck but almost no one wants to take a chance trying to develop a new way to interview. It’s somewhat understandable though since devising a new process can’t be to people focused less you inherit too much bias from the interviewer, nor can they be boiled down to a objective metric or else people may fall into inflexible dogmatic practices that use metrics that don’t directly or accurately measure a candidates ability to perform the job applied for
- w4ffl35 4y ago
  i think it should be like this: can code / do whatever is being hired for + understads what we're building? hire. doesn't do a good job? fire. its actually based on personality + a convoluted code challenge that has no bearing on the actual job.
- Arubis 4y ago
  That’s truer and truer the more generalized the position/hiring pool. “Developer at GiantCo” will end up doing leetcode interviews by default. Cofounding as a technical founder will be pretty much all about personal fit. Between these two extremes is a wide continuum (smaller companies, tech positions at non-tech firms, freelancing, consulting…) that’ll have different processes for finding a fit between someone with a problem and someone proposing a solution. If you truly hate the way interview processes have run for you, it’s worth considering if you feel strongly enough about it to seek a different fit in the market. You might not, and that’s fine! But alternatives do exist.
- PheonixPharts 4y ago
  > almost no one wants to take a chance trying to develop a new way to interview. I'm guessing your in the under 40 camp, but interviews did used to be better. In the early days of the startup explosion interviews where much better. The biggest signal at the time was having an active github profile or otherwise existing portfolio of code. The strongest signal back then was serious contribution to any open source projects (strangely today that almost seems to count against you). It also wasn't required that you had these, but they were a very strong signal. Interviews were largely technical conversations, to see if you understood the concepts, and even more importantly, it was okay if you didn't know. I remember being asked a question about TCP vs UDP. I didn't know much networking at the time, and explained what I knew about TCP but admitted my understanding of UDP was basically non-existent (admitting ignorance used to be a huge plus back then). The interviewers then explained how it worked and asked if I could explain when and why this would make for a better solution than TCP. I answered about the obvious application to media streaming and passed. Interviewers didn't care that you knew everything, they wanted to see how you think. Even the original predecessor to our current leetcode nightmare, fizzbuzz, was never supposed to hard it was meant as a basic sanity check. There were some devs who had just followed the flow at some big bank and literally couldn't code on their own. Fizzbuzz was just to make sure that given a blank page you could implement basic code. Of course as tech started to boom, so did the bootcamp/interview industry. People were trained to do fizzbuzz, instructed how to create a github repo filled with meaningless, half started project (or forks of other projects), and people where told how to flood OSS projects with minor pull requests so they could claim to be contributors. Then companies wanted to be like Google and have hard white board challenges. Then you had a generation of engineers that never knew any different and largely had forgotten (or never known) how to assess technical competency anyway than through a series of hazing rituals.
  - yu3zhou4 4y ago
    > The strongest signal back then was serious contribution to any open source projects (strangely today that almost seems to count against you) Would you mind sharing why contribution to open source might have a negative impact for an interview?
    - 4y ago
dominotw 4y ago
I think Leetcoding is a worthy investment for career. Why not . I understand that it feels like its waste of time with no practical use but the upsides are that they make job hopping trival because you know what to expect and feel confident. I think its a tiny investment for big returns. unparalleled to any other activity you could invest your time in.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Even though I had other means to get into BigTech and still stay hands on technical, if I didn’t, I definitely would have spent 3 months “grinding leetCode” to get a six figure increase. I’m lying, I would have hated working for any large tech company as a software developer after spending decades at small companies.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  > unparalleled to any other activity you could invest your time in. Huh. Never heard that before. I invest my time in writing "shippable" code. Even my "farting around" projects are done in a manner as if they were to be released by a Fortune 50 company. That means that Every. Single. Line. Of. Code. that I write is "ship" code. There are a number of projects that I've stopped working on (I archive them, but leave them out there), and a few that were never really meant to be sent out to fend for themselves, but I still make the effort to write tests and documentation for them. I'm so used to delivering software, that I've almost forgotten what it was like to play around; which is actually a bit of a shame. It could easily be said that I "take things too seriously." I can tell you that my employers liked it, though. My GH Activity Graph is solid green, and I wouldn't dream of "gaming" it. I don't especially care whether or not anyone thinks I'm "l33t." I'm an old fart that has no intention of working for anyone, ever again. I write code for myself, and that I want to see. Most of the folks that I care what they think of me, have no understanding of my tech work, and that's fine. It makes me feel good to make good, well-tested, well-documented, well-architected code that solves problems. I guess you could call me a "completionist." I like to finish stuff.
  - shakezula 4y ago
scarface74 4y ago
As someone who is very “certified” when it comes to cloud, I can tell you that certifications mean absolutely nothing and can easily be gamed. I went through the certifications route only as a guided learning path so I would know what I didn’t know. Anyone can pass a multiple choice certification. I got my first AWS certification without ever logging in to AWS. But it was never to get a job or a promotion. I was already the Dev lead at the company working on an on prem system and they wanted to “move to the cloud”. I just wanted to get an overview of the landscape. As far back as 2000, “brain dumps” of MS certifications were a thing.
- moondev 4y ago
  You can't game the cncf k8s certs. It's also an interesting indicator to see what date it was awarded. As in yesterday or 3 years ago.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    So I’ve heard. If someone passed the K8s cert, you expect them to be somewhat competent. If someone honestly studied for AWS certifications without experience, you expect them to be conversant. I have nine of them now (out of 10). But just so I can be conversant. It’s definitely not prove competence in areas where I don’t have real world experience.
iepathos 4y ago
I've interviewed people with computer science phd's from schools with good reputations that couldn't program worth a damn when it came to some simple algorithm and practical coding questions in person so, I don't have a lot of faith in certs/degrees for this.
- mike_ivanov 4y ago
  These types can't usually think clearly under pressure. Besides, answering coding questions is very, very different from inventing those algorithms. It's a completely different way of thinking. That's why.
  - sureglymop 4y ago
    But does that mean they're bad programmers? I don't think so at all. As a young person, we grew up with the internet so we're conditioned to just know the "pointer" to the information and then have to google/search for it. Now I've learned all the algorithms and data structures at uni too and passed the exams but what remains are the names of them and roughly when they are needed. It may be unfortunate but that's what it is like to study nowadays. It's all about cramming everything into your head and passing. Distractions absolutely everywhere and anxiety that we won't live up to and have the lives our parents had. Now i for one dislike leet code and coding challenge interviews. I think it's silly, plain and simple. What i would look for instead if i was an employer would be curiosity. Nothing is more important than insatiable curiosity. A curious employee will learn everything about your whole stack in the first week... just out of curiosity. And if they do hit a leet code like problem during day to day work you best believe their curiosity won't let them rest until they've solved it, be if with prior knowledge and experience or without.
    - LtWorf 4y ago
      Once at an hackaton a computer science phd student ended up in my team. He was unable to execute a .py file.
      - 4y ago
kbcool 4y ago
I'm an older engineer too and I am very aware of how frustrating this can be for techs of all ages so I made our screening test less fizzbuzz, do my work for me and gotcha questions and more real world, challenging, engaging and most of all interesting. Examples include: How would you solve this at a high level, here's some code we know is broken, how would you both fix and improve it etc. After all, both parties are being screened. The other upside is that we also get to gauge communication and analytical skills not just production line coding. Even after doing this, over the years I have seen a good 30% refuse to do it or just ghost at this point for whatever reason. Afterall, I've done it myself a number of times.
- w4ffl35 4y ago
  This sounds like a well refined process. DM me ;)
- malthuswaswrong 4y ago
  over the years I have seen a good 30% refuse to do it I'll do reasonable take homes, but I'll often pass on interactive coding sessions. I don't like coding in a browser, and I use my dev tools as a major crutch. "Why did you store that value as a string instead of a long?" "Because it's a string from standard in and I have no idea what bullshit inputs there will be so I can check it before casting it." "But the user story said it will be a number." Well if I had more than 15 minutes maybe I would have been able to gain confidence in the input. Something like that comes from many years of experience getting burned yet it's considered a negative mark. Some of these places are actually selecting for recklessness.
  - sgerenser 4y ago
    A take home that can be done in an hour or two is fine in my book. It’s problematic when they assume way too much background on the part of the interviewer. I had a take home from a small local embedded devices company want me to write a 2D DCT algorithm from first principles in C (absolutely no use of external libraries or code copied or based on any existing code) and I noped out pretty quickly. Unless it’s something I’ve done before, doing it honestly without consulting any existing code would probably take me days.
cortesoft 4y ago
I have avoided this problem by not interviewing anymore. Every job I have had after my first one has been going to work with someone I worked with before, and they recruited me so I didn’t have to do any formal interview process. It has worked for me so far in my 15 year career.
- weatherlite 4y ago
  Dang those are amazing connections. Even with good connections I can only get my CV to the top of the pile and maybe some more leeway from the interviewers (which is a lot!), but never was I just skipped through the whole thing and gotten an offer. You have some good friends are they are high up the chain I guess.
  - cortesoft 4y ago
    Well, I have only had 3 jobs after the first one... I tend to stay at places for a while. My first company was shut down suddenly by the parent company, and I was recruited by a consultant we had worked with to join a startup he had joined. I then joined the next company when the people who started that company started a new one. When that startup failed, I was going to take a break and maybe start my own company, but a guy who had worked for me at the failed startup invited me over for margaritas and to check out his new company he had joined, and next thing I knew I had accepted a job offer. I have been at the last job for almost 10 years. I now have a ton of connections from people who I worked with and they then left the company. I am sure if I was interested in getting a new job, I could put some feelers out and have some offers right away. I have had people try to recruit me, but don't have much interest in leaving my current place. I don't think my experience is that unusual. It is so hard to find good talent, sourcing from people you have worked with before is extremely valuable.
- greyhair 4y ago
  I have had to interview for jobs, but the four jobs I have interviewed for since 2000 were all in response to requests to join companies, either from friends, or (once) from an internal HR employee (and to this day, I have never found out who gave him my name). So the interviews were more about finding out if I would fit within the team than hard technical interviews. People knew me, and knew what skills I brought to the table. Your network matters. And if you think it doesn't, stop, think again. Your network matters. One final note. I have interviewed people. Never oversell yourself on your resume. Don't put down that you are an 'expert' at this or an 'expert' at that, unless you really are. Because you just may end up being interviewed by someone that is. And nobody, absolutely nobody, is an expert at fifteen different unrelated things. Don't do that. I have been doing this for 38 years, and I am pretty good at about five things. And those five things that I am good at have changed on a regular basis since the day I started.
sgerenser 4y ago
In theory that’s what TripleByte was supposed to be, but it didn’t really work out in practice. At best being screened by them got you past an initial screener call but you still had to go through the full gauntlet of interviews at most companies. Then they realized they weren’t making money and started doing shady stuff with personal data: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837
closeparen 4y ago
I think interviews and code challenges have to be be decentralized and unscientific. Assessing likelihood of success in a software engineering role is genuinely difficult; any single well-known credentialing program is going to generate experiences of its graduates being incompetent in the wild. And then no one will trust it anymore. People's own interviewing styles aren't any more valid, of course, but they operate at small enough scale to escape the kind of scrutiny that a standardized test would attract. People also don't like to admit they're wrong, and might be applying a kind of halo effect to colleagues who have passed their personal interview questions. Whereas people love to dunk on prestige, and will eagerly seize on anything they can count against someone with a prestigious credential.

derangedHorse 4y ago

No the general sentiment is that the interview process for software engineers suck but almost no one wants to take a chance trying to develop a new way to interview. It’s somewhat understandable though since devising a new process can’t be to people focused less you inherit too much bias from the interviewer, nor can they be boiled down to a objective metric or else people may fall into inflexible dogmatic practices that use metrics that don’t directly or accurately measure a candidates ability to perform the job applied for

w4ffl35 4y ago
i think it should be like this: can code / do whatever is being hired for + understads what we're building? hire. doesn't do a good job? fire. its actually based on personality + a convoluted code challenge that has no bearing on the actual job.
Arubis 4y ago
That’s truer and truer the more generalized the position/hiring pool. “Developer at GiantCo” will end up doing leetcode interviews by default. Cofounding as a technical founder will be pretty much all about personal fit. Between these two extremes is a wide continuum (smaller companies, tech positions at non-tech firms, freelancing, consulting…) that’ll have different processes for finding a fit between someone with a problem and someone proposing a solution. If you truly hate the way interview processes have run for you, it’s worth considering if you feel strongly enough about it to seek a different fit in the market. You might not, and that’s fine! But alternatives do exist.
PheonixPharts 4y ago
> almost no one wants to take a chance trying to develop a new way to interview. I'm guessing your in the under 40 camp, but interviews did used to be better. In the early days of the startup explosion interviews where much better. The biggest signal at the time was having an active github profile or otherwise existing portfolio of code. The strongest signal back then was serious contribution to any open source projects (strangely today that almost seems to count against you). It also wasn't required that you had these, but they were a very strong signal. Interviews were largely technical conversations, to see if you understood the concepts, and even more importantly, it was okay if you didn't know. I remember being asked a question about TCP vs UDP. I didn't know much networking at the time, and explained what I knew about TCP but admitted my understanding of UDP was basically non-existent (admitting ignorance used to be a huge plus back then). The interviewers then explained how it worked and asked if I could explain when and why this would make for a better solution than TCP. I answered about the obvious application to media streaming and passed. Interviewers didn't care that you knew everything, they wanted to see how you think. Even the original predecessor to our current leetcode nightmare, fizzbuzz, was never supposed to hard it was meant as a basic sanity check. There were some devs who had just followed the flow at some big bank and literally couldn't code on their own. Fizzbuzz was just to make sure that given a blank page you could implement basic code. Of course as tech started to boom, so did the bootcamp/interview industry. People were trained to do fizzbuzz, instructed how to create a github repo filled with meaningless, half started project (or forks of other projects), and people where told how to flood OSS projects with minor pull requests so they could claim to be contributors. Then companies wanted to be like Google and have hard white board challenges. Then you had a generation of engineers that never knew any different and largely had forgotten (or never known) how to assess technical competency anyway than through a series of hazing rituals.
- yu3zhou4 4y ago
  > The strongest signal back then was serious contribution to any open source projects (strangely today that almost seems to count against you) Would you mind sharing why contribution to open source might have a negative impact for an interview?
  - 4y ago

dominotw 4y ago

I think Leetcoding is a worthy investment for career. Why not . I understand that it feels like its waste of time with no practical use but the upsides are that they make job hopping trival because you know what to expect and feel confident. I think its a tiny investment for big returns. unparalleled to any other activity you could invest your time in.

scarface74 4y ago
Even though I had other means to get into BigTech and still stay hands on technical, if I didn’t, I definitely would have spent 3 months “grinding leetCode” to get a six figure increase. I’m lying, I would have hated working for any large tech company as a software developer after spending decades at small companies.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
> unparalleled to any other activity you could invest your time in. Huh. Never heard that before. I invest my time in writing "shippable" code. Even my "farting around" projects are done in a manner as if they were to be released by a Fortune 50 company. That means that Every. Single. Line. Of. Code. that I write is "ship" code. There are a number of projects that I've stopped working on (I archive them, but leave them out there), and a few that were never really meant to be sent out to fend for themselves, but I still make the effort to write tests and documentation for them. I'm so used to delivering software, that I've almost forgotten what it was like to play around; which is actually a bit of a shame. It could easily be said that I "take things too seriously." I can tell you that my employers liked it, though. My GH Activity Graph is solid green, and I wouldn't dream of "gaming" it. I don't especially care whether or not anyone thinks I'm "l33t." I'm an old fart that has no intention of working for anyone, ever again. I write code for myself, and that I want to see. Most of the folks that I care what they think of me, have no understanding of my tech work, and that's fine. It makes me feel good to make good, well-tested, well-documented, well-architected code that solves problems. I guess you could call me a "completionist." I like to finish stuff.
- shakezula 4y ago

scarface74 4y ago

As someone who is very “certified” when it comes to cloud, I can tell you that certifications mean absolutely nothing and can easily be gamed. I went through the certifications route only as a guided learning path so I would know what I didn’t know. Anyone can pass a multiple choice certification. I got my first AWS certification without ever logging in to AWS. But it was never to get a job or a promotion. I was already the Dev lead at the company working on an on prem system and they wanted to “move to the cloud”. I just wanted to get an overview of the landscape. As far back as 2000, “brain dumps” of MS certifications were a thing.

moondev 4y ago
You can't game the cncf k8s certs. It's also an interesting indicator to see what date it was awarded. As in yesterday or 3 years ago.
- scarface74 4y ago
  So I’ve heard. If someone passed the K8s cert, you expect them to be somewhat competent. If someone honestly studied for AWS certifications without experience, you expect them to be conversant. I have nine of them now (out of 10). But just so I can be conversant. It’s definitely not prove competence in areas where I don’t have real world experience.

iepathos 4y ago

I've interviewed people with computer science phd's from schools with good reputations that couldn't program worth a damn when it came to some simple algorithm and practical coding questions in person so, I don't have a lot of faith in certs/degrees for this.

mike_ivanov 4y ago
These types can't usually think clearly under pressure. Besides, answering coding questions is very, very different from inventing those algorithms. It's a completely different way of thinking. That's why.
- sureglymop 4y ago
  But does that mean they're bad programmers? I don't think so at all. As a young person, we grew up with the internet so we're conditioned to just know the "pointer" to the information and then have to google/search for it. Now I've learned all the algorithms and data structures at uni too and passed the exams but what remains are the names of them and roughly when they are needed. It may be unfortunate but that's what it is like to study nowadays. It's all about cramming everything into your head and passing. Distractions absolutely everywhere and anxiety that we won't live up to and have the lives our parents had. Now i for one dislike leet code and coding challenge interviews. I think it's silly, plain and simple. What i would look for instead if i was an employer would be curiosity. Nothing is more important than insatiable curiosity. A curious employee will learn everything about your whole stack in the first week... just out of curiosity. And if they do hit a leet code like problem during day to day work you best believe their curiosity won't let them rest until they've solved it, be if with prior knowledge and experience or without.
  - LtWorf 4y ago
    Once at an hackaton a computer science phd student ended up in my team. He was unable to execute a .py file.
    - 4y ago

kbcool 4y ago

I'm an older engineer too and I am very aware of how frustrating this can be for techs of all ages so I made our screening test less fizzbuzz, do my work for me and gotcha questions and more real world, challenging, engaging and most of all interesting. Examples include: How would you solve this at a high level, here's some code we know is broken, how would you both fix and improve it etc. After all, both parties are being screened. The other upside is that we also get to gauge communication and analytical skills not just production line coding. Even after doing this, over the years I have seen a good 30% refuse to do it or just ghost at this point for whatever reason. Afterall, I've done it myself a number of times.

w4ffl35 4y ago
This sounds like a well refined process. DM me ;)
malthuswaswrong 4y ago
over the years I have seen a good 30% refuse to do it I'll do reasonable take homes, but I'll often pass on interactive coding sessions. I don't like coding in a browser, and I use my dev tools as a major crutch. "Why did you store that value as a string instead of a long?" "Because it's a string from standard in and I have no idea what bullshit inputs there will be so I can check it before casting it." "But the user story said it will be a number." Well if I had more than 15 minutes maybe I would have been able to gain confidence in the input. Something like that comes from many years of experience getting burned yet it's considered a negative mark. Some of these places are actually selecting for recklessness.
- sgerenser 4y ago
  A take home that can be done in an hour or two is fine in my book. It’s problematic when they assume way too much background on the part of the interviewer. I had a take home from a small local embedded devices company want me to write a 2D DCT algorithm from first principles in C (absolutely no use of external libraries or code copied or based on any existing code) and I noped out pretty quickly. Unless it’s something I’ve done before, doing it honestly without consulting any existing code would probably take me days.

cortesoft 4y ago

I have avoided this problem by not interviewing anymore. Every job I have had after my first one has been going to work with someone I worked with before, and they recruited me so I didn’t have to do any formal interview process. It has worked for me so far in my 15 year career.

weatherlite 4y ago
Dang those are amazing connections. Even with good connections I can only get my CV to the top of the pile and maybe some more leeway from the interviewers (which is a lot!), but never was I just skipped through the whole thing and gotten an offer. You have some good friends are they are high up the chain I guess.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  Well, I have only had 3 jobs after the first one... I tend to stay at places for a while. My first company was shut down suddenly by the parent company, and I was recruited by a consultant we had worked with to join a startup he had joined. I then joined the next company when the people who started that company started a new one. When that startup failed, I was going to take a break and maybe start my own company, but a guy who had worked for me at the failed startup invited me over for margaritas and to check out his new company he had joined, and next thing I knew I had accepted a job offer. I have been at the last job for almost 10 years. I now have a ton of connections from people who I worked with and they then left the company. I am sure if I was interested in getting a new job, I could put some feelers out and have some offers right away. I have had people try to recruit me, but don't have much interest in leaving my current place. I don't think my experience is that unusual. It is so hard to find good talent, sourcing from people you have worked with before is extremely valuable.
greyhair 4y ago
I have had to interview for jobs, but the four jobs I have interviewed for since 2000 were all in response to requests to join companies, either from friends, or (once) from an internal HR employee (and to this day, I have never found out who gave him my name). So the interviews were more about finding out if I would fit within the team than hard technical interviews. People knew me, and knew what skills I brought to the table. Your network matters. And if you think it doesn't, stop, think again. Your network matters. One final note. I have interviewed people. Never oversell yourself on your resume. Don't put down that you are an 'expert' at this or an 'expert' at that, unless you really are. Because you just may end up being interviewed by someone that is. And nobody, absolutely nobody, is an expert at fifteen different unrelated things. Don't do that. I have been doing this for 38 years, and I am pretty good at about five things. And those five things that I am good at have changed on a regular basis since the day I started.

sgerenser 4y ago

In theory that’s what TripleByte was supposed to be, but it didn’t really work out in practice. At best being screened by them got you past an initial screener call but you still had to go through the full gauntlet of interviews at most companies. Then they realized they weren’t making money and started doing shady stuff with personal data: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837

closeparen 4y ago

I think interviews and code challenges have to be be decentralized and unscientific. Assessing likelihood of success in a software engineering role is genuinely difficult; any single well-known credentialing program is going to generate experiences of its graduates being incompetent in the wild. And then no one will trust it anymore. People's own interviewing styles aren't any more valid, of course, but they operate at small enough scale to escape the kind of scrutiny that a standardized test would attract. People also don't like to admit they're wrong, and might be applying a kind of halo effect to colleagues who have passed their personal interview questions. Whereas people love to dunk on prestige, and will eagerly seize on anything they can count against someone with a prestigious credential.