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I feel 100% the opposite of you and agree with the young people. But I'm youngish as well. It's so stupid to spend months preparing for interviews just to lear

I feel 100% the opposite of you and agree with the young people. But I'm youngish as well. It's so stupid to spend months preparing for interviews just to learn something that you will never, ever use. There are libraries for a reason. What you think is good and commendable to me views as a horrible practice in our industry.

makerofthings 2y ago
If a job interview requires this and you choose not to apply then that is entirely your choice. I think the problem highlighted in the comment above is that some people do actually want that job, but don't do the required work because they don't agree with that type of interview, then get surprised when they don't get the job. There's no point turning up to a chess tournament and trying to play poker because you're morally opposed to chess.
- Sprotch 2y ago
  I wish I had read your comment when I was 15! Spot on!
- LeifCarrotson 2y ago
  The problem is that people are turning up to a chess tournament and are being forced to play poker to get in the door. That clearly says to potential players that the organization doesn't care about chess, and won't have the best chess players in the tournament. Instead, the only people playing are those willing to jump through hoops on command.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I think some of those assumptions are questionable and that thought process suffers from black and white thinking. I dont want to torture the analogy any more, so I will just be candid. First, I agree bad interviews are bad. That said, bad or un-necessarily difficult hiring processes dont automatically mean there is a better company out there. IF there is, it isn't a given that the better company will hire you. Similarly, it is not even a given the employees jump through hoops and get in are inferior to those that do. This is a numbers game, and can go many different ways. On one hand, I appreciate the uncompromising nature of refusing to play the game, but on the other, I dont think that everyone is doing it with open eyes to the costs they are paying. I have seen a few people progress from: 1) being uncompromising to 2) worse outcomes than if they compromised, to 3) bitterness and anger. Back to the analogy: If your life dream is to play chess but you refuse to play poker to get in the door, you may end up bitter and playing with mud in the street.
williamdclt 2y ago
I’m yet to learn something that I never ever use. If not directly, it fleshes out my mental model of the software engineering field which is incredibly valuable (but usually, everything I learnt has been pretty directly useful at some point) As a rule of thumb (not quite _always_ true), if you couldn’t implement the lib yourself you will be showing some skills gap in some way or other
- _zoltan_ 2y ago
  besides during uni (CS) don't remember when I needed the last time to implement a red-black tree from scratch.
abofh 2y ago
In truth, it's really hard to judge if someone is a self-starter, creative or able to follow basic directions just based on a resume. Giving them a basic coding take-home (and I mean basic, 30-60 minutes should be more than enough) is a good way to see if: they just grabbed stackoverflow answers, chatgpt solutions, actually wrote any documentation or tests. I agree as a candidate it can be demoralizing, but thats the exchange usually - prove you can do the job (or something close to it) and you get hired for it. It's just that your job isn't street sweeping or generalized labor -- and it's helpful to know if you're going to be the type who: Couldn't write leftpad without a library, would depend on leftpad as a library, or would understand the implications of using a library like leftpad and rely solely on trusted functions like isEven instead. Yes, you're a programmer, you will get libraries in your day job - but as your hiring manager, I don't have the time to tell you you won't have access to most of the ones you're familiar with because we're doing real-time or large-scale compute or javascript widgets on embedded devices - I just wanna see you do as asked. If you decline - I've seen what I needed.
- _zoltan_ 2y ago
  I'm not sure you'd be able to distinguish ChatGPT's output once somebody who actually knows how to properly do software engineering and how to structure a codebase and write code would go through it. ChatGPT is a really good junior programmer who can write basic functions per best practices, and when it makes a mistake or does something weird, a senior SWE will spot it, and can fix it with much less mental effort than writing the function.
  - abofh 2y ago
    Yeah for that you're better off using one of the live-coding platforms rather than take home, but my point stands -- mostly this is just the trash-can test. "What would you do if I asked you to get me that trash can?" - if your response is to go off on job roles and responsibilities, call janitorial whatever, those are fine responses -- but the winner? They just go get you a trash can. Job's are not a popularity contest - it's about if you'll do what's asked of you, or if you'll spend more time arguing about the right way to code something rather than solving the business need -- and for my purposes, I need the business problems solved, not someone who gets self-righteous when asked to show an example of them working when applying for, ya know, work.
resonious 2y ago
I think it's a tad naive to assume that you'll never ever use data structures and algorithms when programming. If you don't like them, that's a fine reason to not practice them, but let's not pretend they're useless (even to web devs).
- _zoltan_ 2y ago
  I'd much hire somebody who understands things at a high level and then able to dig in deeper _if needed_, than someone who knows _some_ things really, really at depth but has no idea about other things.

makerofthings 2y ago

If a job interview requires this and you choose not to apply then that is entirely your choice. I think the problem highlighted in the comment above is that some people do actually want that job, but don't do the required work because they don't agree with that type of interview, then get surprised when they don't get the job. There's no point turning up to a chess tournament and trying to play poker because you're morally opposed to chess.

Sprotch 2y ago
I wish I had read your comment when I was 15! Spot on!
LeifCarrotson 2y ago
The problem is that people are turning up to a chess tournament and are being forced to play poker to get in the door. That clearly says to potential players that the organization doesn't care about chess, and won't have the best chess players in the tournament. Instead, the only people playing are those willing to jump through hoops on command.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  I think some of those assumptions are questionable and that thought process suffers from black and white thinking. I dont want to torture the analogy any more, so I will just be candid. First, I agree bad interviews are bad. That said, bad or un-necessarily difficult hiring processes dont automatically mean there is a better company out there. IF there is, it isn't a given that the better company will hire you. Similarly, it is not even a given the employees jump through hoops and get in are inferior to those that do. This is a numbers game, and can go many different ways. On one hand, I appreciate the uncompromising nature of refusing to play the game, but on the other, I dont think that everyone is doing it with open eyes to the costs they are paying. I have seen a few people progress from: 1) being uncompromising to 2) worse outcomes than if they compromised, to 3) bitterness and anger. Back to the analogy: If your life dream is to play chess but you refuse to play poker to get in the door, you may end up bitter and playing with mud in the street.

williamdclt 2y ago

I’m yet to learn something that I never ever use. If not directly, it fleshes out my mental model of the software engineering field which is incredibly valuable (but usually, everything I learnt has been pretty directly useful at some point) As a rule of thumb (not quite _always_ true), if you couldn’t implement the lib yourself you will be showing some skills gap in some way or other

_zoltan_ 2y ago
besides during uni (CS) don't remember when I needed the last time to implement a red-black tree from scratch.

abofh 2y ago

In truth, it's really hard to judge if someone is a self-starter, creative or able to follow basic directions just based on a resume. Giving them a basic coding take-home (and I mean basic, 30-60 minutes should be more than enough) is a good way to see if: they just grabbed stackoverflow answers, chatgpt solutions, actually wrote any documentation or tests. I agree as a candidate it can be demoralizing, but thats the exchange usually - prove you can do the job (or something close to it) and you get hired for it. It's just that your job isn't street sweeping or generalized labor -- and it's helpful to know if you're going to be the type who: Couldn't write leftpad without a library, would depend on leftpad as a library, or would understand the implications of using a library like leftpad and rely solely on trusted functions like isEven instead. Yes, you're a programmer, you will get libraries in your day job - but as your hiring manager, I don't have the time to tell you you won't have access to most of the ones you're familiar with because we're doing real-time or large-scale compute or javascript widgets on embedded devices - I just wanna see you do as asked. If you decline - I've seen what I needed.

_zoltan_ 2y ago
I'm not sure you'd be able to distinguish ChatGPT's output once somebody who actually knows how to properly do software engineering and how to structure a codebase and write code would go through it. ChatGPT is a really good junior programmer who can write basic functions per best practices, and when it makes a mistake or does something weird, a senior SWE will spot it, and can fix it with much less mental effort than writing the function.
- abofh 2y ago
  Yeah for that you're better off using one of the live-coding platforms rather than take home, but my point stands -- mostly this is just the trash-can test. "What would you do if I asked you to get me that trash can?" - if your response is to go off on job roles and responsibilities, call janitorial whatever, those are fine responses -- but the winner? They just go get you a trash can. Job's are not a popularity contest - it's about if you'll do what's asked of you, or if you'll spend more time arguing about the right way to code something rather than solving the business need -- and for my purposes, I need the business problems solved, not someone who gets self-righteous when asked to show an example of them working when applying for, ya know, work.

resonious 2y ago

I think it's a tad naive to assume that you'll never ever use data structures and algorithms when programming. If you don't like them, that's a fine reason to not practice them, but let's not pretend they're useless (even to web devs).

_zoltan_ 2y ago
I'd much hire somebody who understands things at a high level and then able to dig in deeper _if needed_, than someone who knows _some_ things really, really at depth but has no idea about other things.