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I am one of those senior engineers who regularly code and dare I say produce optimal solutions quickly. I still fail at coding interviews, and I attribute it t

I am one of those senior engineers who regularly code and dare I say produce optimal solutions quickly. I still fail at coding interviews, and I attribute it to the gamification fatigue and age. Please understand me. I have a leetcode account but I can not force myself into solving puzzles in my free time after solving them all day long at work. And puzzles at work are more interesting, because they are real people's problems. I avoid board games for similar reasons. Whenever I sit in and play, I enjoy being in the flow, the conversation, and the intellectual challenge. But dragging me in is damn hard. On the other side, I am much more into sports nowadays: running, swimming, skiing and hiking, as if I was making up for my younger years spent in front of a screen. I feel like I have to carefully choose where to apply my intelligence because I am not as resourceful as I was. But I am wiser. Would you hire me? No. Would I be a net positive for you business even if I cost double your younger self? Probably yes.

thelastknowngod 3y ago
> I have a leetcode account but I can not force myself to solve puzzles in my free time after solving them all day long at work. And dare I say puzzles at work are more interesting, because they solve real people's problems. The problems at work are also real, actual problems. I have trouble with the coding section of the interviews but I do know how to write code. If the coding section of the interview was like "build me a ci pipeline for this app" or "find all the workloads in this cluster which need X attribute" or "design a terraform module to do Y" then I would pass with flying colors. In the average SRE role, it has been my experience that there are very few situations where I would need to build out a perfect O(1) algorithm. Nothing I write is going to be so heavily used that this level of performance is something to be concerned with. These are the only code problems I really see when interviewing though.
- sshine 3y ago
  > build out a perfect O(1) algorithm In my experience, the algorithm-heavy interviews happen at large companies that use it as an extended IQ test to filter out people who don't perform well on mathy problems, psychologically or problem-solving wise. The argument is that with their influx of applicants, they can afford false negatives (a good programmer failing an algorithm quiz) more than false positives (a bad programmer passing a personality test). I've had live-coding interviews where I consistently felt so dumb with flashbacks to my worst oral exams at uni. And I've had live-coding interviews where I aced it so much it felt like improvising teaching material.
  - taylodl 3y ago
    > The argument is that with their influx of applicants, they can afford false negatives (a good programmer failing an algorithm quiz) more than false positives (a bad programmer passing a personality test). I don't understand this line of thinking, especially at the Big Tech companies. You're hired on a probationary basis, usually six months. If the candidate seems reasonable then hire them. It's sink or swim time.
    - marssaxman 3y ago
      > You're hired on a probationary basis, usually six months. Where is that the case? I have never heard of such a practice, and I don't remember that being routinely done at either Microsoft or Google.
      - sshine 3y ago
        This is always the case in Denmark.
        marssaxman 3y ago
        Well, that's certainly different from what I am used to! I suppose people in Denmark must not relocate for work very often? Hard to imagine uprooting one's household on a six-month gamble.
sshine 3y ago
> I still fail at coding interviews, and I attribute it to the gamification fatigue and age. This statement should be clarified: You probably don't fail all coding interviews. The closer your test is to realistic work (without realistic time use), the better you'll perform. When interviewing for a senior position, what should matter is all of those secondary abilities. Your ability to code should be a formality at this point; I think the touchy subject is that some engineers are primarily senior by age, and some by work-year inflation, and so are expected to be better in all possible ways than anyone with fewer years on their back. I interviewed for a position this year where they requested I solve problems for a full workday. I don't mind spending a couple of hours solving a programming problem (and risk failing), but I'm too old to spend an entire day working for free to get a chance at advancing to the next interview level with 3-5 other candidates. I could be making money, seeing friends, learning things, building things. Looking at Glassdoor for that position, I saw someone say they spent 25 hours and 4 interviews to finally end up declining the offer because the company was being sketchy with the terms. I have friends who love puzzles. I just always ask: Will my effort compound? If not, it's a tough sell. My time is precious.

thelastknowngod 3y ago

> I have a leetcode account but I can not force myself to solve puzzles in my free time after solving them all day long at work. And dare I say puzzles at work are more interesting, because they solve real people's problems. The problems at work are also real, actual problems. I have trouble with the coding section of the interviews but I do know how to write code. If the coding section of the interview was like "build me a ci pipeline for this app" or "find all the workloads in this cluster which need X attribute" or "design a terraform module to do Y" then I would pass with flying colors. In the average SRE role, it has been my experience that there are very few situations where I would need to build out a perfect O(1) algorithm. Nothing I write is going to be so heavily used that this level of performance is something to be concerned with. These are the only code problems I really see when interviewing though.

sshine 3y ago
> build out a perfect O(1) algorithm In my experience, the algorithm-heavy interviews happen at large companies that use it as an extended IQ test to filter out people who don't perform well on mathy problems, psychologically or problem-solving wise. The argument is that with their influx of applicants, they can afford false negatives (a good programmer failing an algorithm quiz) more than false positives (a bad programmer passing a personality test). I've had live-coding interviews where I consistently felt so dumb with flashbacks to my worst oral exams at uni. And I've had live-coding interviews where I aced it so much it felt like improvising teaching material.
- taylodl 3y ago
  > The argument is that with their influx of applicants, they can afford false negatives (a good programmer failing an algorithm quiz) more than false positives (a bad programmer passing a personality test). I don't understand this line of thinking, especially at the Big Tech companies. You're hired on a probationary basis, usually six months. If the candidate seems reasonable then hire them. It's sink or swim time.
  - marssaxman 3y ago
    > You're hired on a probationary basis, usually six months. Where is that the case? I have never heard of such a practice, and I don't remember that being routinely done at either Microsoft or Google.
    - sshine 3y ago
      This is always the case in Denmark.
      - marssaxman 3y ago
        Well, that's certainly different from what I am used to! I suppose people in Denmark must not relocate for work very often? Hard to imagine uprooting one's household on a six-month gamble.

sshine 3y ago

> I still fail at coding interviews, and I attribute it to the gamification fatigue and age. This statement should be clarified: You probably don't fail all coding interviews. The closer your test is to realistic work (without realistic time use), the better you'll perform. When interviewing for a senior position, what should matter is all of those secondary abilities. Your ability to code should be a formality at this point; I think the touchy subject is that some engineers are primarily senior by age, and some by work-year inflation, and so are expected to be better in all possible ways than anyone with fewer years on their back. I interviewed for a position this year where they requested I solve problems for a full workday. I don't mind spending a couple of hours solving a programming problem (and risk failing), but I'm too old to spend an entire day working for free to get a chance at advancing to the next interview level with 3-5 other candidates. I could be making money, seeing friends, learning things, building things. Looking at Glassdoor for that position, I saw someone say they spent 25 hours and 4 interviews to finally end up declining the offer because the company was being sketchy with the terms. I have friends who love puzzles. I just always ask: Will my effort compound? If not, it's a tough sell. My time is precious.