4 ms·

> VMWare has A LOT of fat to trim Oh, VMware is the 2nd shortest job in my career, primarily for that reason. I don't want to say much in a public forum, but

> VMWare has A LOT of fat to trim Oh, VMware is the 2nd shortest job in my career, primarily for that reason. I don't want to say much in a public forum, but my best lesson from working at VMware is how to sniff out an incompetent engineer early in a job interview: I just ask coding questions that a VMWare engineer would get wrong. For example: I have an engineer write some very basic manual SQL data mapping code. If the candidate really pushes back, or just can't figure it out, I move on. I ask a question where the engineer should use an enum instead of a string. If the engineer uses an enum, I move on.

alephnerd 3y ago
I used to do that as well when I was still a SWE and then a PM. VMWare has good talent (when I first became a PM a long time ago, I was mentored by a very smart VMWare PM alum), but it also has a lot of empire building (when I first became a SWE a large portion of my management was VMWare EM alumni who weren't that impressive). Also, a lot of their early management feel like one hit wonders in my experience working with them. It reminds me of how PANW was before Arora joined and cleaned house, and Symantec/CA before Broadcom cleaned house.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  > Also, a lot of their early management feel like one hit wonders in my experience working with them. And many of those one hits were ideas crafted and handed to them for implementation (still valuable and important), but left to distill ideas on their own? Not so much.
throwaway5959 3y ago
> I ask a question where the engineer should use an enum instead of a string. If the engineer uses an enum, I move on. I’m confused by this. You’re saying you move on if the engineer uses an enum as you would expect?
- gamblor956 3y ago
  You're not confused. As the OP indicated, he was once a VMWare engineer, so he gets his own questions wrong.
  - icelancer 3y ago
    Takes one to know one. Checkmate.
- gwbas1c 3y ago
  No I should have said string
- akira2501 3y ago
  Incompetent managers seem to love shorthand "competency" tests like this.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>I have an engineer write some very basic manual SQL data mapping code. Do people usually have the SQL language so well memorized that they can pull it out of their head on command? I swear to god I'm not the only engineer who regularly goes to the cheat sheet.
- rf15 3y ago
  I have to use SQL like 1-3 times a month and can confirm that the syntactic inconsistencies of the language make me go to the cheat sheet regularly.
  - nerpderp82 3y ago
    I am a SQL wizard and I have to lookup and experiment with the syntax every time I use it. Every engine handles it differently, which is a little maddening.
- JeremyNT 3y ago
  > Do people usually have the SQL language so well memorized that they can pull it out of their head on command? I swear to god I'm not the only engineer who regularly goes to the cheat sheet. I think the key insight for you here is that there are many jobs where the only technical skill used is SQL. You probably should know this stuff like the back of your hand for such roles. Old, slow moving, large companies have many people doing this sort of work. Contrast with a generic "developer" at some startup who uses SQL as only one part of much larger and more complex applications. As a "developer" you have to deal with so much obscure syntax in your life (actual programming languages, shells, dockerfiles, kubernetes yaml, helm, god knows how many 3rd party APIs, ci/cd definitions, other rando DSLs...) that you won't be able to keep everything in working memory.
  - ecshafer 3y ago
    Ironically working at a big old company I wrote almost no SQL, because the database was DB2, so we had dedicated Data developers to write stored procedures in COBOL / SQL. While at a small shop and a more modern tech company I wrote tons of SQL.
stillwithit 3y ago
As an EE, when someone explains they need SQL, all the other hallucinated semantic handlebars to compute, I move on. Abacus, slide rule, grid paper, mechanical pencil, or gtfo! IT is data librarian work. I compute with raw materials of reality, not 1970s semantic babble. Software as an industry has a lot of fat to cut. …The argument can work from various contexts. Not the flex you think it is.
- throwaway5959 3y ago
  You should really check out Agile if you want to understand why software is so messed up now. It’s been perverted to basically mean “rush out product features every two weeks that product managers think are interesting” in many places.
- adolph 3y ago
  If said candidate's whiteboard response doesn't use at least two main spurving bearings, culture fit comes into question.
broast 3y ago
Unfortunately it sounds like you're filtering on things that can be easily taught.
- esafak 3y ago
  I think the idea is that if they don't know something basic you can forget about the hard stuff.
- gwbas1c 3y ago
  That's kinda the point. The project I was on at VMware failed because the developers refused to learn how to use a database and just threw an ORM at it. So I would write on the whiteboard a skeleton method that had a SQL query, explain a simple data reader API, and have them fill it in. The good candidates got it fast, and then we'd discuss various error conditions and how to handle them. The bad candidates would get stuck, whine that I didn't allow an ORM, or hallucinate that they could answer with an ORM: IE, the question did it's job.
didibus 3y ago
Incompetent engineers and fat to trim I feel are seperate issues. Layoffs seem pretty bad at identifying the incompetent from the competent from my experience. It seems to cut on all front, you're not sure if you're left with the best or the worse ones, but you saved a lot of payroll cost either way. Or if you try to handicap teams by understaffing them, even competent engineers will need to reduce the quality of their output. This is when fat is trimmed in a bad way, where instead of getting rid of low ROI venture/projects/services/products and focus on the important, you just tighten the budgets accross the board for example.

alephnerd 3y ago

I used to do that as well when I was still a SWE and then a PM. VMWare has good talent (when I first became a PM a long time ago, I was mentored by a very smart VMWare PM alum), but it also has a lot of empire building (when I first became a SWE a large portion of my management was VMWare EM alumni who weren't that impressive). Also, a lot of their early management feel like one hit wonders in my experience working with them. It reminds me of how PANW was before Arora joined and cleaned house, and Symantec/CA before Broadcom cleaned house.

FireBeyond 3y ago
> Also, a lot of their early management feel like one hit wonders in my experience working with them. And many of those one hits were ideas crafted and handed to them for implementation (still valuable and important), but left to distill ideas on their own? Not so much.

throwaway5959 3y ago

> I ask a question where the engineer should use an enum instead of a string. If the engineer uses an enum, I move on. I’m confused by this. You’re saying you move on if the engineer uses an enum as you would expect?

gamblor956 3y ago
You're not confused. As the OP indicated, he was once a VMWare engineer, so he gets his own questions wrong.
- icelancer 3y ago
  Takes one to know one. Checkmate.
gwbas1c 3y ago
No I should have said string
akira2501 3y ago
Incompetent managers seem to love shorthand "competency" tests like this.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

>I have an engineer write some very basic manual SQL data mapping code. Do people usually have the SQL language so well memorized that they can pull it out of their head on command? I swear to god I'm not the only engineer who regularly goes to the cheat sheet.

rf15 3y ago
I have to use SQL like 1-3 times a month and can confirm that the syntactic inconsistencies of the language make me go to the cheat sheet regularly.
- nerpderp82 3y ago
  I am a SQL wizard and I have to lookup and experiment with the syntax every time I use it. Every engine handles it differently, which is a little maddening.
JeremyNT 3y ago
> Do people usually have the SQL language so well memorized that they can pull it out of their head on command? I swear to god I'm not the only engineer who regularly goes to the cheat sheet. I think the key insight for you here is that there are many jobs where the only technical skill used is SQL. You probably should know this stuff like the back of your hand for such roles. Old, slow moving, large companies have many people doing this sort of work. Contrast with a generic "developer" at some startup who uses SQL as only one part of much larger and more complex applications. As a "developer" you have to deal with so much obscure syntax in your life (actual programming languages, shells, dockerfiles, kubernetes yaml, helm, god knows how many 3rd party APIs, ci/cd definitions, other rando DSLs...) that you won't be able to keep everything in working memory.
- ecshafer 3y ago
  Ironically working at a big old company I wrote almost no SQL, because the database was DB2, so we had dedicated Data developers to write stored procedures in COBOL / SQL. While at a small shop and a more modern tech company I wrote tons of SQL.

stillwithit 3y ago

As an EE, when someone explains they need SQL, all the other hallucinated semantic handlebars to compute, I move on. Abacus, slide rule, grid paper, mechanical pencil, or gtfo! IT is data librarian work. I compute with raw materials of reality, not 1970s semantic babble. Software as an industry has a lot of fat to cut. …The argument can work from various contexts. Not the flex you think it is.

throwaway5959 3y ago
You should really check out Agile if you want to understand why software is so messed up now. It’s been perverted to basically mean “rush out product features every two weeks that product managers think are interesting” in many places.
adolph 3y ago
If said candidate's whiteboard response doesn't use at least two main spurving bearings, culture fit comes into question.

broast 3y ago

Unfortunately it sounds like you're filtering on things that can be easily taught.

esafak 3y ago
I think the idea is that if they don't know something basic you can forget about the hard stuff.
gwbas1c 3y ago
That's kinda the point. The project I was on at VMware failed because the developers refused to learn how to use a database and just threw an ORM at it. So I would write on the whiteboard a skeleton method that had a SQL query, explain a simple data reader API, and have them fill it in. The good candidates got it fast, and then we'd discuss various error conditions and how to handle them. The bad candidates would get stuck, whine that I didn't allow an ORM, or hallucinate that they could answer with an ORM: IE, the question did it's job.

didibus 3y ago

Incompetent engineers and fat to trim I feel are seperate issues. Layoffs seem pretty bad at identifying the incompetent from the competent from my experience. It seems to cut on all front, you're not sure if you're left with the best or the worse ones, but you saved a lot of payroll cost either way. Or if you try to handicap teams by understaffing them, even competent engineers will need to reduce the quality of their output. This is when fat is trimmed in a bad way, where instead of getting rid of low ROI venture/projects/services/products and focus on the important, you just tighten the budgets accross the board for example.