TLDR why do I need to be like a competitive coder just to get a good job?

Why does being very good at technical interview questions beat having a portfolio of actual apps built using technology, tools, and skills that are much more relevant to the needs of doing the actual jobs?

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Because technical interview questions are easy to evaluate and allow employers to be lazy. That's the way to go since there is an abundance of devs so that nobody complains about dev shortage. Oh wait.

And now I've lost the sudden motivation I had to start a new project... Hm... O well...

@irene That's where FizzBuzz came from. I couldn't write any sorting algo more complex than bubble sort on a whiteboard, but I know when to use which one.

Although I had actually an interview-like real problem last week. Given lists L1 and L2, find all items from L2 that are NOT in L1. The obvious solution would scale horribly of course.

You don't, any company doing that and rejecting you for it is a dodged bullet.

If the interview is stupid, the job will be worse.

@irene 90% of interviewed interviewees or 90% of interviewed interviewees for a position that reuqieres the interviewed interviewees to code?

Coz first scenario makes sense, the second doesn't.

Who built those apps? Your friend? Coworker? Do you really know how to build stuff or did you just rip someone's portfolio and presented as yours?

If you built them, how long ago was that? How long did it take you to do? Are you a slow or a quick thinker? Do you still have it?

Are these the only apps you can work with? Do you have any other qltys useful for the project? Are you more like a leader or more like someone who's to be lead? Or a rebelion? Do your qltys, mindset and intentions meet the company's qltys, mindset and intentions?

I could keep going

@Fast-Nop what would be a better solution then?
(I'm assuming the 'obvious' one is checking each element of L2 against each element of L1 in a loop, thus doing size(L1)*size(L2) checks).

Maybe going through a copy of the lists, and removing elements from L1 when you find a match, so there are less elements to check for later iterations?
Maybe some sorting algo on top of that to avoid checking all elements against eachother?

@netikras they can fckin check my linkedin, GitHub, web page... Which are all on my resume.

And yes maybe a slow thinker which is why I say these interviews are geared for competitive coders... And by slow I need a day, maybe need to sleep on it after trying a few approaches to get the eureka... But not like a week just to understand the problem.

In the long run, I'm pretty sure I get more shit done just because I don't need to spend time fixing any bugs I released to prod.

@netikras also then why are portfolio ok/required for other professions like writing and art?

And well if they actually asked about the projects or even mention them.... Which they never do... It would be very apparent I wrote them just based on the details and enthusiasm when talking about them

@billgates let me rephrase with exaggeration...

Who stops me from putting https://github.com/microsoft [and similar linkedin pages, where profile pic looks smth like me or hard to recognise at all] in my resume?

Who stops me from filling my lIn page with "master of js, asm, cpp, c, java, cobol, linux, unix, windows, mac, perl, python, swift and everything else" right after graduation?

If you are the one who's hiring, are you willing to trust what all these online records say w/o any checking/proof? You are investing thousands in that person.

@billgates also, the skills you have as a learner are way less hardcore than those of someone actually working in the industry. Companies, especially large ones, expect that you learn on the job, so they prefer people with the most "raw" skill, so to speak. Many companies also train you in the stack they use so it's not really relevant if you know a particular stack, you're expected to be flexible enough to handle any stack.

Given the right environment, a person with good competitive coding and problem solving skills will usually gain the required knowledge in software stacks and architecture quite easily, it just takes time.

Also many companies use competitive coding as a baseline to weed out people who don't have basic problemsolving skills, the actual interview and stuff is very legit.

@netikras but I mean at the interview, not the online screening if there is one.

Online ones they give you like 1-2 hours. OK. Interviews though would be a good time to just ask. My

Not sure about profile pics on resume. But mine have links to GitHub and well if the recruiter is that stupid to get "phished" then there's something went with him... Maybe he should be technically interviewed...

@billgates portfolios are the only way to show your competence in art. Also artists prepare portfolios very carefully to show fundamental skills, the intent is still competitive: many portfolio pieces are crafted to show strength in specific areas instead of just being good art, so this makes it similar to competitive coding since the final intent of a portfolio is to both be suitable for the job and outdo the competition (I need to have better control over perspective and lighting to get the job over some other guy).

Also practically there are fewer people for art jobs so companies can spend more time judging each one.

@RememberMe but what does being good at algo show?

Quite frankly just today we had a prod issue. The root root root cause I suspect it's because other people decided to use our DB as a cache. And in general, don't seem to know when to split off, build something new. So end up with monoliths and using a hammer for everything.

Pretty sure having a portfolio that does competency in several languages and that you can solve real problems... Should mean something more than it does now... But it never does...

It seems I'm much more versatile and probably efficient at problem solving then most people around me just because I so much more experience using different tools and open to picking up new ones when something new comes up.