So you poor devs... you have to be strong now, hr has a new tool to torture you: Skype has a new coding interview function.
What do you think about that? Good or even more abuse?

College placements, one of the leading tech companies comes to hire people on day 1, I miss the first round coz I overslept, woke up and realized the test started an hour ago, finally went in after the test was done. They still let me take the coding test but with reduced time, and kept talking to themselves that if this guy gets through, I'm fucking done with placements. Managed to do well in the test and then proceeded to the interviews, aced the interviews and was offered a job. People at work still call me "that guy who turned up late and still got the job"

Me talking to a recruiter (even though I am not looking for a job)

Me: If I walk into an interview, and they ask me to reverse a binary tree for a frontend Reac or Vue position or something along those lines, I will end the call and/or walk away from it.

Him: I get similar feelings from other programmers, I don't quite understand why the notion is as common

Me: Because it is fucking useless, it servers no purpose to a dev to know about that when building frontends with react, I link my github profile, for which they can find advanced backend-frontend related projects, compiler and interpreter projects, plus the title I currently have at my workplace and a bunch of other shit, I am not interviewing for a teaching position at an institute, but an actual place of work, for which if they want to know about DS and A they can review my profile which has a repo of DS and A in about 5 different languages including plain C++. I do not need to be offended by such notions since they server no purpose on the frontend, and neither do other devs. If anything it should be a casual conversation during the interview, not a basis for employment.

Recruiter: .........thank you for explaining this to me, I am sure I can bring it up to the agencies doing the reviews and interviews. Are you still interested?

Me: Are they going to give me a coding assignment for a project or a bs question like what I mentioned?

Him: I don't know

Me: then I am not interested

Fucking HR interviews. Fucking "tell me about yourself" and pretending to seem interested in what i have to say while you think about how you did it with a guy behind the dumpster.
For fucks sake, i am a developer, i have spent more time with coding language than human language. I speak more to a rubber duck than to my friends. That's what you want to know about me?
I am here to fix your fucking site that uses flash plugin in 2017 and you want me to tell good things about your company?
Do you want me to tell you the details about your site that i got from whois and that your subscribed domain registration will end in September this year?
You don't know what responsive design is and you dare interview me?
Thanks for wasting my time and telling me shit about your company and how you have offices in germany and china. Well guess what? I dont care. I am busy thinking about some girl... Actually i am thinking about my side project. I dont know why i pretend to be cool?

These fuckface wantrapeneurs, posting jobs (paying to do so) and then offering bullshit like:
- We have no funding, so you'll work for free for some time.
- Paying in fucking crypto.
- Wanting a full stack rainbow puking and shitting unicorn for peanuts
- Fucking scammers, posing as legit companies and asking you to install Anydesk.
- Asking absurd interview tasks and times (a couple of days worth of work for a task).
- Whiteboard and live coding interviews with bullshit questions thinking they're Google, while having 20 devs.
- Negotiating salaries and when presented with contract get the salary reduced by double the amount.
- Having idiotic shit on their company websites like a fucking dog as a team member associated as happiness asshole. (One idiot even had a labrador during the video interview while cuddling him)
- Companies asking you to install tracking software with cam recording to keep you in check. (Yeah, you can go fuck yourselves)
- Having absurd compensation schemes, like pay calculation based on the "impact" your work has

Either I'm unlucky or job hunting has become something else since I last started searching.

"We reviewed your resume and we're impressed! We now want you to complete this 6 hour coding challenge before giving you an interview."

As a full-stack dev who has been looking for a full-time role for over half a year now... How the fuck can it be so difficult to land a job as a dev? I'm a passionate, capable, and proven dev; it shouldn't be this hard.

And why the hell are coding/whiteboard interviews the de-facto standard for deciding if somebody is worthy of a role? Whiteboard interviews are as inadequate and unencompassing a means of determining the quality of a candidate as asking a dentist how well they know the organ structure of the human body.

I've applied to an endless number of positions, so far-reaching and desperate as to even apply to international positions and designer roles instead of developer roles (I've been a graphic designer for over 13+ years). Even with this, most don't get back to you, and the few who do most often just notify you of your rejection. On the rare occasion I land an interview, my chances get fucked up by the absurd questions they ask, as if the things they are asking about are at all an appropriate, all-encompassing measure of what I know.

Aren't employers aware that competent devs are able to learn new things and technical nuances nearly instantaneously given documentation or an internet connection? Obviously, I keep learning and getting better after every interview, though it barely helps, when each interviewer asks an entirely new, arbitrary set of questions or problems....

Honestly, fuck the current state of the system for coding job interviews. I'm just about ready to give up. Why the hell did I put myself through 5 years of NYU for a Computer Engineering degree and nearly $100K in student loan debt, if it doesn't help me land a job?

Got the best compliment on an interview :3

Submitted a coding take home assignment. Was told by the tech lead that the code looked like they wrote it themselves! There was nothing they would change in terms of style or approach :3

!(short rant) && (long story)

So these last 2 months of my life have been quite topsy turvy. Everything was pretty much unexpected and now I am on my way to Banglore, which is referred to as the Silicon Valley of India.

All this started in mid Feb when one day my ceo dropped a mail to all of us saying he wants to covey something important. A little background story about my company before I go on. We were a bunch of 6-7 tech guys working on a location based analytics product and had a decent client base. I had joined them in November 2017 and I was very hopeful that I would get to learn a lot owing to the good seniors from reputed universities and their experience. Coming back to the day, the ceo called us and dropped a bomb on us that the funding is depleted and we only have enough money to pay you salaries for this month. "We didn't anticipate that this day will come but currently we are in talks with some companies that are looking to acquire us. I am very much hopeful that we will figure something out by the end of this month(Feb). Until then, I can't stop you from applying to other companies but don't reveal that we are in this situation." So, keeping my fingers crossed I was waiting for the acquisition and wasn't looking for any other opportunities.

The company work was under hold and during this time one of my friends approached me with his idea. Since I had nothing else to do, I agreed to work with him. I was living in Mumbai, the city with one of the highest living standards in India, and I was paying exorbitant rent without any income. There was no news until mid March when the ceo called and dropped bomb#2 that an Indonesian company is looking to acquire us and he had scheduled an interview for the entire team. This isn't what I had signed up for. Indonesia wasn't a country I had even considered, let alone leave the country. Still I appeared for the interview and it went very well.

No news from the company or the ceo after that. One of my friends advised me to start applying to other companies and not rely on this acquisition. Now the problem was I couldn't reveal about the acquisition in my interview, so I used to give some bullshit about me not liking the work here. The company didn't buy it because how can someone judge a company in just 4 months. So obviously I didn't clear the interviews, also partially because I didn't meet their technical requirements.

March end, I moved to my hometown in Gujarat because obviously I had started to get broke in this expensive-ass city. The friend with whom I was working with also didn't have any issue since it was just tech and coding and I could do it remotely. Comes mid-April when the ceo called and said the acquisition is done and gave me some details about it. For confidentiality sake I can't reveal the details but I figured enough red flags for me to go with it.

*Eye of the tiger playing in the background*
Now started my quest of finding a decent job. The edge I had now was that I could reveal about the acquisition to the other company. I started applying left right and center to any company I could find. Amazon, saavn and some good-ass Indian companies. The thing that now came in my way was my experience. I am 23 year old(soon to be 24) with around 20 months of experience. Everyone wanted a 3-5 year experience guy/girl. Soon, my entire optimism was draining and I even considered going back to my first company.

During this time, I got a call from this company in Banglore who were looking for a candidate which best suited my profile. I went all guns blazing and appeared for the interview. I had 6 rounds of technical interview plus 1 logical reasoning. And since I was giving the interview remotely, I had one round on each alternate working day. Everyday was a challenge and I spent the nights in anxiousness and anticipation. Meanwhile I was appearing for other interviews too, since I wasn't too hopeful about my chances in this one.

Cut to April 27, I got an offer from this company and without negotiating they offered me the package I was hoping for.

After this entire ordeal, I realised one thing. Whatever happens, happens for good. Looking forward to this new city, new company, new people and new environment.

That's how my preparation started.

Coding Interviews SUCK

- Get invited to apply to job
- Technical interview, guy shows up late starts small talk wasting time and gives me the exercise
- Start implementing the first algorithm, finish it passing min test cases then realize there's a solution that would make both algorithms a breeze
- I pitch my solution realizing there's no much time left, cuz we lost almost 20 min of my test hour talking about BS plus the almost 10 min he arrived late, and reassure the interviewer it can be developed faster
- Interviewer says it doesn't matter, we should finish edge cases
- Kay no problem, finish the first algorithm successfully and explain pitfalls on the second part with the current implementation
- I tell him there's a better solution but he doesn't seem to care, he says time's up

Now here's the funny part.

I get called by the recruiter today (2 weeks later) and she says "They are happy with your soft skills but feel there are some gaps with your coding, they would like to repeat the technical interview because they didn't feel there was much time to assess the 'gaps' ".
Interviewers, either I'm competent enough to work for you or not, your tests must be designed to assess that, if you see you can't fit the problem you want in the time you have left change the problem, reschedule or here's an idea...LEAVE THE BS CHITCHAT TILL THE END AND START THE INTERVIEW ON TIME. When I do interviews I always try to have one complete free hour and a one algorithm exercise because I expect the candidate to solve it, analyze it and offer alternatives or explain it, I've never had someone finishing more than 2 an hour.

You can keep your job I'll keep my time. I'll write a similar problem on the comments to pass on the knowledge for people who enjoy solving these kinds of problems, can't give you the exact same thing, also tip guys don't do NDA's for interviewing it makes no fucking sense trust me no one cares about your fizz buzz intellectual property.

So I've been applying to jobs. I, purposely, have been putting down that I am female (since they all harp on diversity, I'd like to see if they even bother reaching out to me. Also anything to get my resume past the bots).

Spoiler alert - getting similar ratios to male counterparts, 100+ applications sent, maybe 4 phone interviews. No offers yet. Still made to do code challenges.

Well, I just found out where all that diversity hiring went to. Buddy of mine who works at a mid tier company said that they have a special program that onboards women into tech.

Specifically, women who have literally zero background in computers.

Teachers, social workers, etc. They get a week or so of some coding bootcamp and then get full time positions over more skilled applicants.

This infuriates me. I literally would be in a better situation to be hired had I not have had any technical background, taken this particular bootcamp and finally net the elusive entry level position I need.

And guess what? That move has antagonized the existing male employees who see that they have zero interest and zero competency instead of having an integrated workplace.

10/10 for incredible bullshit.

**noob alert**
Hi all, I'm new to this community. I found it out couple of days back while downloading some apps on play store. And I don't know how much time have I spent here since then... Damm, I've an interview after 2 days.

My query is, I am stuck/confused. I have so many ToDos. ToDos to learn new things, from UI to other langs to machine learning to database to etc etc. And I keep on postponing it because I can't decide which way to go first. There is so much fuzz about BigData/AI which sounds cool. Sometimes I want to build UI for my imaginary idea, then somebody says a man must learn linux and DB. Top of that I'm preparing for interviews, so I think I should get a job first and then start learning. But when I get a job, I get *busy* with job. It feels like Captain America, all he does is official work. I sometimes feel like trying open source coding, but quit the idea because I get scared or overwhelmed by imagining the big community behind it and I won't be able to make a difference or I might get bashed by others as I get bashed in StackOverFlow :-(
I'm unable to get help from friends/family/colleagues, not because they are bad. It's just they don't get it. People think just because you have a job which pays the bills and save money, everything is fine because there are lots of people who dream to get a job, so be thankful for what you have. I'm thankful... But it's not helping. I really want to do things more than what my job asks me to. The kid inside me is awake since I became adult.

Have you been in this condition or is it just me? Or is it too confusing? Could you please help me out. Thanks a lot. Sorry for serious post. I'm a java programmer by the way.

HR: you didn’t write in your job experience that you know kubernetes and we need people who know it.

Me: I wrote k8s

HR: What’s that ?

…
Do you know docker ?
Do you know what docker is ?
Do you use cloud ?
Can you read and write ?
Are you able to open the door with your left hand ?
What if we cut your hands and tell you to open the doors, how would you do that ?
What are your salary expectations?
Do you have questions, I can’t answer but I can forward them. Ask question, ask question, questions are important.
What is minimal wage you will agree to work ?
You wrote you worked with xy, are you comfortable with yx ?
We have fast hiring process consisting of 10 interviews, 5 coding assessments, 3 talks and finally you will meet the team and they will decide if you fit.
Why do you want to work … here ?
Why you want to work ?
How dare you want to work ?
Just find work, we’re happy you’re looking for it.
What databases you know ?
Do you know nosql databases ?
We need someone that knows a,b,c,d….x,y,z cause we use 1,2,3 … 9,10.
We need someone more senior in this technology cause we have more junior people.
Are you comfortable with big data?
We need someone who spoke on conference cause that’s how we validate that people can speak.
I see you haven’t used xy for a while ( have 5 years experience with xy ) we need someone who is more expert in xy.
How many years of experience you have in yz ??? (you need to guess how many we want cause we look for a fortune teller )

Not much changed in job hunting, taking my time to prepare to leetcode questions about graphs to get a job in which they will tell me to move button 1px to the left.

Need to make up some stories about how I was bad person at work and my boss was angry and told me to be better so I become better and we lived happy ever after. How I argued with coworkers but now I’m not arguing cause I can explain. How bad I was before and how good I am now. Cause you need to be a better person if you want to work in our happy creepy company.

Because you know… the tree of DOOM… The DOMs day.

Got an email in response to an internship application asking "if you can just complete a coding challenge within next 24 hours thanks". They also wanted to me to setup a phone interview today or tomorrow. As if they expected everyone to drop everything with no explanation.

Told them I'm busy but can get started on Sunday, and was told they have assessment centres next week so it can't wait. No real apology.

I didn't set the date for the assessment centre, this is your fuckup. You have to at least feign respect when you ask for a day of my time with less than a week's notice. Been through too many bad interviews to waste my time on a company that doesn't have its shit together and/or doesn't respect interns.

Idk, maybe I overreacted. Thoughts?

F*** companies that give you a coding project to work on and still haven't responded a month after submission. Tech interviews are so beyond f***ed.

Passionate programmer attends one of the toughest interviews ever and solves lot of algorithmic problems coding in different programming languages. Impresses the interview panel providing solutions with as much as efficiency as possible. Gets selected, completes induction and gets a nice Dev machine allocated.

Manager walks in and says we got to work with the production support team on fixing a UI bug.

The posts about love coding interviews and low paid freelancing work just reminds me how little anyone know about process of using code to solve real problems.

If someone wanted to give me a JavaScript test then I'd point them at Fivver where there are tonnes of JS devs available for minimum wage.

No one is paying me for my ability to write code. They are paying me to solves problems that businesses have that are likely to involve software.

I've had a couple of interviews that were bad because I fluffed them, but the worst was a 4 stage process I went through a while back.

Development hub for an international org, 1st stage was a phone call with high level questions. Stage 2 were online coding tests, which I passed. Third - another phone call. Finally, a visit to the office. I was informed that I was the only one to get this far after the other filtering. This is where it all went wrong.

I'd been led to believe this would be a reasonably informal chat (around an hour or so) to fill in some of the detail of what I'd already been given. It wasn't. It turned into 2+ hours of the most intense grilling I've ever had. Felt like I'd gone 12 rounds by the end. Another coding test in the middle of it. The interviewer seemed to be enjoying the opportunity to show that he knew much more than me and seemed to be trying to catch me out, rather than really discover what I knew.

By the end of it, I didn't want the job and I didn't want to report directly to someone who seemed to thrive on making life difficult to boost his own ego.

Most people I talk to in the industry hate the "puzzle-y" nature of interviews (e.g. coding on a whiteboard, now get it to run in linear time, oh wait there's a trick you don't know but could totally look up if given the chance) and acknowledge that it does a poor job determining the value of the prospective hire.

Why then is there no sign of this changing? I realize it's a hard problem to solve but in theory the entire company is at stake when it comes to hiring good/bad devs. You'd think somebody would have come up with a better way.

Working in a startup company acquired by some €^%€*^^ from singapore, second month no sallary(the first Local CEO) paid us.. now nothing...
I went to new interviews today.. HR and later 2 hours C# Coding test... definitely I was fucking good in the test, they called me hours later with positive feedback and new interview tomorrow , and they want me to team lead now 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 positive vibrations guys🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

Wanted to move to London out of curiosity/adventure. Started doing interviews online and all companies wanted a stage 2/3 in person but that would've been a pretty expensive flight just to go on a short interview, especially with my budget back then.

The guys at my current company were pretty cool and instead we did more video calls and coding tests, then they offered me the job without having to do the face to face.

Had a week to pack up and move here. Never had been in the UK before that. I arrived in the evening, slept at my temporary accommodation and went to work next morning. That's basically how I got here :)

Why is the interviewing process becoming worse over the years?

About 2 years ago I applied for a company and got into 2 interviews: one with the hr to see if I am bsing them and one with the tech people, to be sure I am not using buzzwords without context. Pretty straightforward, could be done in a single interview IMHO, but it's making me waste max 2 weeks.

Fast forward to one year ago: 1 interview with the hr, 1 interview with the tech people, 1 interview with CEO (why? Just.. why?)

Fast forward to today: 1 interview with hr, 1 interview with tech people, 1 interview with the CEO (again... why?), 1 coding assignment which "it's only going to take a couple of hours" and punctually has either poorly documented APIs to rely on or has trick questions/points. So "it takes a couple of hours", but if you want to pass it you need to spend a day on it... (and let's add that they may be using old docker versions so if it doesn't work cause they are using docker 1.0 and it fails too bad, you lost time for nothing, we are not trying to solve it, you just don't pass!).

Not kidding the last assignment I took and dropped required: external API, testing, don't use CSS libraries and make your own CSS, you must use TS and it was supposed to take "3 hours max".

My question is: why? Why is the interviewing process slowly becoming less of a: "I understand that your code may not be perfect for us but that you are a human being able to reason and adapt your code to our standards" and more of a: "You must do everything PERFECTLY and we don't give a sh*t about your time, start giving us your free time and then we see if we want you."

I just keep giving up after I analyze the assignments, cause a part of my brain thinks that if this is the way a professional relationship starts it's too easy to foresee weekend shifts and lots of overtime cause some manager thinks that "come on, it just takes a couple of hours!"

So technical interview today but woke up (6am) and started thinking about it and it led to this rant about algorithms. This is probably going into a Medium post if I ever get around to finishing it but sort of just wanted to share the rant that literally just went off in my mind.

*The problem with Algorithms Technical Interviews Is They don't test Real skills*

Real world problems are complex and often cross domain combining experience in multiple areas. Often the best way is not obvious unless you're a polymath and familiar with different areas, paradigms, designs. And intuitively can understand, reason, and combine them.

I don't think this is something a specific algorithm problem is designed to show. And the problem is the optimal solution to some of these and to algorithm design itself is that unless you train for it or are an algorithm designer (practice and experience), you can only brute force it in the amount of time given.

And quite frankly the algorithms I think we rely on daily weren't thought of in 30 minutes. The designers did this stuff for a living, thought about these problems for days and several iterations… at least. A lot were mathematicians. The matrix algorithm that had a Big O of 7N required a flash of insight that only someone constantly looking and thinking about the equations could see.

TBA
-system design
-clean readable coding practices
...

TLDR: I could probably go on and on about this stuff for hours jumping from item/example/area to the next and back again... But I don't think you can test these (~20) years of experience in a 1 hr technical interview focused on algorithms...

I can’t put into words how much I dislike coding in front of people in an interview

Well just blew up a coding interview.

Got an offer to be a Drupal dev and was expecting questions on Drupal API and module dev but got asked how to find the closest Enemy in an array and blah blah blah.

Interesting question but man. My mind got blank and got nervous. It's been a while since I've done a question like that and I've been coding for 10+ years.

I would've love to solve that in another language such as Python or C++ but got stuck on PHP because it was a Drupal position. But I only use PHP for Drupal modules and templates who are highly dependant on Drupal API. Or even WordPress plugins. But I try to avoid WordPress because is shit.

Guess the job market hasn't changed since I graduated back in 2014. So I feel a little bummed down. But I guess I'll just have to practice those type of problems as well. At least the problem solving method.

At least it will be an excuse to do those leetcode problems.

The other day I went back to my college representing the company that I work for interviews of Freshers. Since I was taking interviews of my immediate juniors, I knew that every candidate’s major is Computers Applications, and we had sent out a JD ‘specifically’ mentioning that we need Devs, so tech people only.
We interviewed 40 people for first round in total out of which 12 were shortlisted for second round (we made them write some code).
Out of 12, 8 straight up refused to write the code saying they weren’t interested in coding at all (even professionally). Made me boil up so much, someone else, much more deserving and willing could have been in their place and may even have the job. But us humans are always cunts.

I've been sort of lost after New Year's...

Last few years, my main goal was just to learn stuff to pass technical interviews. I also did a lot of personal dev in C#... and played with the js, python, and when a bit of c++.

But this year I kinda feel sorta of "ah screw it". Interviews never work out, haven't for years, what's the point in even trying... I get paid enough though the work is sort boring and team sort of feels like the Wild West, no rules, code reviews, processes...

But ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Feels like coding has lost its place at the top now. The future is all cloud, machine learning, big data/real time analytics but feels like these are out of reach for just 1 guy...

And well doesn't seem like anyone is going to give me a job because I'm not a good fit or have enough experience in these areas...

Sorta lost now but guess this is what a sudden thought leads to...

Oh and maybe just with tech in general. It feels this year I'm just not as interested as I was before... Spent a lot of time binge watching movies and stuff instead....

A long long time ago ( 2007 I think ) I worked for a company that made landing sites, so basically an email campaign would go out, users would be sent to a 1 page website with a form to capture their data, ready to be spammed even more. You know how it was back then.

So I worked with a guy who we had just hired, I didn't do the hiring but his CV checked out, so I gave him one of my tasks. Now most pages were made with js and html, with a PHP backend ( called with Ajax). Now this guy didn't know PHP so I was like all good, ASP works too at the end of the day we don't judge, we do like 2 or 3 of these a day and never look at them again. So he goes of and does is thing.

3 weeks later, the customer calls up to me they still haven't received their landing page. Ok so he probably forgot to email the customer np, I tell him to double check he has emailed the customer. Another week goes by end the customer calls back, same problem. At this point I'm getting worried, because we're days away from the deadline and it was originally my task.

So I go back to the guy and I tell him I want that landing page so I can send it myself, half thinking to myself that we had a freeloader, that guy that comes in to companies for 3 weeks, doesn't work, but still cashes his pay. But no, this was much worse.

So he tells me he has finished yet. I ask him why, what's the blocker ? You had 4 weeks to tell me you were blocked and couldn't progress. And his answer was simply, because I wasn't blocked I have been working on it this whole time. So I tell him to zip his project up and email it to me. We didn't do SVN or git back then, simply wasn't worth it. So he comes back to me and says the email server is telling him attachments can't be bigger then 50mb. At this point I'm thinking he didn't properly sized the art or something, so I give him a flash drive to put it on.

When I then open the flash drive, the archive is 300mb, thinking to myself, the images weren't even that big to begin with.
So I open it up, and I don't even find any images, just a single asp page. About 500mb. When I opened that up and it finally loaded, I saw the most horrendous things ever.

The first 500 lines was just initializing empty vars. Then there was some code that created an empty form with an onChange event that submits the form. After that.. it was just non stop nested if's. No loops, no while, for, foreach, NO elseif's, just nested if's, for every possible combination of the state the form could be in. Abou 5000 of them, in a single file. To make matters worse, all the form ( and page ) layout was hardcoded in the if's. Includes inline css, base64 encoded images, nothing but as dynamic, based on the length of the form he changes the layout, added more background etc. He cut the images up for every possible size of the page and included them in the code.

I showed it to my boss, he fired the guy on the spot. I redid the work from scratch, in under 4 hours. Send it to the client. they had no ammends to make, happy as Larry. Whish I kept the code somewhere.

Morale of the story, allways do a coding test on interviews, even if small things just to sanity check.

Whenever I do coding interviews.

*brain shut down

There's nothing wrong with asking algorithm and data structure questions in an interview if the employer calls for it.

If you're hiring a junior and/or you desperately need workers, then you can lower the bar, but if you want to be picky, then asking them leetcode-tier coding questions is fine.

THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH ASKING A SOFTWARE ENGINEER CANDIDATE DATA STRUCTURES AND ALGORITHM QUESTIONS

If they complain that asking ds&a questions is unfair for a position where all they're going to do is shit-tier frontend work, then blacklist them for 10 years.

If people argue that Doctors don't get asked chemistry and biology questions for interviews, tell them it's because medicine is much more regulated than software and that doctors are vetted technically even before they're allowed to go job hunting. Since software doesn't have the same regulations medicine does, employers have to do the technical vetting themselves.

If you think it's unfair to ask software engineering questions to a candidate applying for a software engineering job, then find a different career.

After a rough exit from one company, I was diverted into Ops just to continue to have food on the table and keeping the lights on. This, over time, unfortunately made me more or less unemployable as a dev again. Got stuck in that place 13 years doing almost no professional coding.

During the last 5 years I took courses, got side jobs writing articles and tutorials, went to interviews and generally worked hard to get the fuck out of ops and into development again.

After getting to choose between level 1 customer support and quitting in a re-org, I quit without having a new gig. I got a lucky break through someone I'd worked with earlier to start a junior position working on some legacy systems with legacy tech.

After all that work late nights churning away using up my passion for coding, I now can't make my self pick up even Advent of code or Hacktoberfest... My passion is dead... I hope I get it back, but for now I fill my spare time with my guitar...

i have been applying for jobs recently, and after getting some HR interviews that evolved to tech interviews, i just cancelled them all...

Every company seems to have hacker rank, and online coding sessions as tech interview stages which really stress me out. Its like everyone thinks they are google and its ok to make people go theough this pressure to join them.

I dont mind being given 10 days to implement a complex project, after which im either in or not. But 20 mins to solve something online while either the interviewer is watching me or the automated test is waiting to filter my application out... i get anxiety just thinking about that..

so im gonna stick with my current job for now, and focus on building my own business slowly on the side. I really felt anxious because of those tech interviews these past weeks and i feel so much better after cancelling all of them.

if a decent company comes along with the project approach, id love to apply, but otherwise ill just stick to where I am for now. dont know if im being immature or irresponsible career wise or if this decision will blow up in my face

stay tune to find out !

All my coding interviews where embarrassing moments..

Coding on table interviews be like uhhhhh whys intellisense not working

5 years of leetcode with no progress. I'm giving up.

First some background, I have an undergraduate degree in computer science and one and a half years of professional coding experience which ended when I got fired for performance issues. I have worked diligently at Leetcode for those 5 years (exceptions occurred when I got ill). I have been personally coached by a google software engineer for months. I have done and given 100s of mock interviews and paid for some to be done by professionals. I have spent 100s if not thousands of hours on Leetcoding and algorithms trying to improve in any way I can imagine. I'm still not good enough.
This all came to a head yesterday when someone on Leetcode made a post about being able to solve every single Leetcode problem in a year within a year while managing a post doc degree and having almost no programming background (link at bottom of post). It made it clear that Leetcode is a game of talent not hard work. The difference between someone like her and someone like me must be noted by the programming community. The majority of people would not ever be able to accomplish that. I dedicated myself for 5 years to Leetcoding almost exclusively and still am no where near what that person has accomplished. I have put in much more work than that person and have gotten much less from it.

I believe the programming community can learn from this contrast. The culture of always trying harder and thinking success stories apply to everyone that is pervasive in programming circles is toxic. The is reality not everyone is lucky enough to be intellectually gifted to succeed and not all hard work pays off. I am proof of that and this is the type of story that needs to be shared and heard too.

I am quitting programming out of humility and recognition of my limitations. It’s ok to give up and wise to do so when you aren't good enough for something.

I just don't get it.

Been looking for a new job for 2+ years and have failed at every opportunity. Numerous white board interviews, code challenges, hours upon hours wasted. Just can't seem to make the next move. I believe I have my soft skills down because I am able talk and do meetups just fine but either I'm too junior or something else is going on.

What started all of this was my latest rejection that I thought I had in the bag. Sailed through all their questions, did a live code thing, all of that being for 3+ hours. As it's called a final interview with them. Not to mention they're a startup, figured their standards might even be a bit lower than normal since they're needing people. Yet, still got rejected.

This sort of stuff, I'm seriously considering just leaving tech in general and probably just go do a outside job. With supposedly everything going for me like working in a hot job market, in a growing tech town, experience, and doing extra coding on my own time to beef up my portfolio. Doesn't matter. Still continious rejection. Lol in fact how I even got my current job was through completely unconventional means and based on that, I think it's done me more harm than good, which is why I'm trying to leave my current job and go into a place where I can be a better developer.

As of now, back to the grind of trying to find something.

Shady business practices. You see a lot of stories of people getting fucked over on here. Companies giving applicants a "coding test" to get work done for free, or guys promising to pay when the work is done(and then bailing), deserve to be thrown screaming from helicopters.

Some quick advice for people starting out:

1. If it's important, get it in writing. Promises are worth precisely dick, unless it's legally binding.

2. Exercise caution in interviews. The shadier companies know a lot of applicants are desperate, and they take advantage of that fact if they're allowed to.

Not sure if I'm rambling at this point, but fuck it. 🤣

I hate interviews. I am not too keen on giving them and not too great at taking them, though I typically do well.

We are smart people, there has to be a better way than coding things on the fly...

I'm still looking for a job after more than two months. Never thought I'd say this but after all these interviews I'm starting to prefer live coding tests over take home assignments. You spend a few hours preparing by reading interview guides (the interviewers usually get their questions from these same guides) and then you either do well or fuck up but it's all over in a few hours and you move on with your life.

I want to rant about tech YouTubers. As one myself, I feel like I do an even exchange with my viewers.

I want your attention, I don't feel like I deserve it, so I teach you something coding related. You get something of value, I get your attention.

But that's not the case with most in this space. Idiots feel like they can spout whatever bullshit they think about.

They're all stupid with their stupid fucking titles and ideas. Let's review some.

Video Title: How much Javascript you should know to get in tech??
Anyone with > 2 braincells: WTF !!!!!

Video Title: How would I start over to learn coding if I could?
My Reaction: Nope, I wouldn't. The things that I did and didn't is exactly what my journey is and I would do it all over again.

And I get the intent, you're trying to put a roadmap for beginners but they're not going to follow exactly how you lay it out. And why are you trying to establish that there is a correct way of learning coding? Everyone learns at different paces at different times. It's a journey not a race.

Video Title: A day in the life of {COMPANY} engineer.
My Reaction: What do you want to show everyone? Your fancy office? Your perks? The job perks which 99% of other devs won't have?

Video Title: How to crack FAANG interviews.
My Reaction: Well, only the top 1% is going to get an interview anyway. You're not acknowledging the fact that the acceptance rate is < 1% in these companies. Creating a video like this creates false expectations in beginner's heads. And they only see these companies as their only shots of making careers. They dont consider startups or starting their own companies.

Video Title: Top 4 dying programming languages.
My Reaction: WTF !!! COBOL was invented in 1959 and there still is demand for it. And my blood started boiling when Tiff in Tech said PHP is a dying language. Like seriously????

Video Title: Top paying programming languages in 2023.
My Reaction: Please, come on. We know it's Java. And 99% of the viewers ain't getting that job. You're just wasting time listing out languages. By the time someone starts from scratch and gets to a position of getting a job, something else will be the new fad.

Video Title: What advice would I give myself when I was starting?
My Reaction: Really? You couldn't think about saying what advice you'd give to your viewers? Are you really that full of narcissism?

There are good techies though, it's just that I get angrier and angrier the more YouTube recommends me these stupid videos. Ah, my chest feels lighter now.

**random rant**

So next week I have a technical interview with TripleByte and I'm supposed to spent the next 2 days sorta preparing. Just woke up and had this thought tho:

What's the point? Yes I think I could try to get a better job but been trying for years (banking tech area) but now it feels like I'm at a "local optimum" sort of a sweet spot. Team/company could be smarter/more efficient but...

I've got my own place in a city that's also near NYC. It takes me 20 minutes to get to my current office, fairly flexible with the 9-5 work day, I can work remotely. I get enough money.

And then finding a new job === technical interviews about stuff you will rarely use and usually with no feedback like a pass-fail test where they only tell you if you pass or fail (and for me it always feels skewed towards fail the moment i walk since I'm deaf).

But at this point, I feel more like "you need to convince me to work for you". In my head, the plan is mostly to just have a nice chat and wing the technical questions just to see how good i am without any prep (i.e. poring thru Cracking the Coding Interview or Big O concepts, sorting...).

My do-over would be going to a different coding bootcamp. I wonder if I could be making more money if I went to a better school.

The one I did go to was a big scam. They were more obsessed with teaching you to pretend rather than teaching how to code. They pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes—the students, the volunteers, the donors, the community. They were very cult-like with mantras like “trust the process.”

I spent 9 months there, but I felt I was a year behind. I am not misspeaking. I would have to relearn basic concepts the right way because they taught them half assed or not at all. I didn’t realize I was behind until I went to interviews and bombed. Seriously, I learned more in a 40 hour free library coding class than I learned in 9 months at the school. Most of the interviews I was getting were for unpaid internships. The school was telling me to go for mid level roles.

I found out recently that they’re breaking the law by operating without a license. In my state code schools do need a license. There are screenshots going around of a letter from the education department. They’re defense is “they’re not a school.” They’re still open. I think ppl should be warned away, but there’s only so much I can do. And I know ppl will give this place the benefit of the doubt before taking any student accusations seriously.

The biggest red flag is they want students to pay up to 70k and bind them to payments for 8 years. I say it’s a red flag because this place is operating as a nonprofit. Shouldn’t a nonprofit not be charging 3-4x more than competitors? They’re definitely not going to give you 70k worth of services.

They really just exploit the poor and POC by signing them up for debt and knowing those ppl would not be able to pay even with a 100k job. They have a very poor understanding about how poverty works.

It had MLM/pyramid scheme vibes when they started making recruiting students a game. They give out tickets to their annual fundraiser or promote you on social media if you refer the most students to them.

I’m one of the lucky ones who was studying coding before I started at the school. Also, job searching is mostly luck, so I was lucky at that too. But I still had to take a job that paid below market. I still wonder what would happen if I went someplace else.

I don’t even put this place on my resume or LinkedIn. Even without these problems, it’s not like anyone would have heard of the place anyway.

No this place isn’t Lambda or Holberton school.

Stopped studying DSA and for coding interviews, they legit rejected me even tho I did all questions right. Wtf is wrong with hiring.

I remember this another bastard asked me only DSA for a frontend job. :) he didn't ask me to give an intro even a straightaway question.

Have you ever seen a tree data structure implementation in any code base?
I wonder why recruiters are so desperately asking how to invert binary trees in my coding interviews🥴

I've been doing interview prep for almost two months now (off and on). Doing this course online to better understand algorithms and doing Leetcode problems here and there. Definitely not putting in 6 or even 8 hours a day into studying since I'm working, but fuck I feel so discouraged when I'm not even able to get an "easy" problem.

I really want to get better, and I know it takes a lot of patient and practice when it comes to problems. I try my best to tell myself "you haven't learned this yet" or "you'll get it soon", but in the end I just feel so discouraged that I want to quit practicing for interviews.

I hate that this profession requires people to spend X months or even years studying for an interview. That the 3-5 years of relative and good work experience means nothing more than passing a resume screening to get to a coding interview where they ask you a problem you'll never face in your career at X company.

Do I hate the process because I'm just bad at algorithms I don't use often? Or would I feel like it's just and fair if I understood things easier and were able to land jobs easily because I get all the algorithms?

I just want to be better.

Dah. Boss says we have to set a take home coding task for the dev interviews we're doing. I'd prefer just having a chat and forming an opinion.

I mean, you're the boss, but I still reckon that'll only cause the good candidates to sod off...

I can understand why in technical interviews they use those algorithmic questions. It's an incredibly short period of time to assess someone's coding capabilities. BUT can't we find a better way to do it? I mean, I've never implemented dijkstra in a work environment, and I had never heard of someone that faces those kind of problems in a normal day of work.

I may be judging by my limited information, but wouldn't be more useful to actually ask to solve a more plausible problem?

For example, create a microservice that implements this API, send us the GitHub link and the API url.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Job hunting is hard!

I have over 10 years experience in software engineering. I do mostly full stack, so I can say I'm a jack of all trades and a language agnostic. I'd say I'm a good software engineer and will be able to tackle any task I've been assigned to. Having said that, my confidence in finding a new role is at an all time low.

I've been job hunting for 3-4 months now and so far I've only had 1 interview and it was unsuccessful. Now have been invited to a first round interview for another company (first of many rounds). It's going to involve many technical challenges like coding, algorithms and data structure and system designs.

In general I've had hardly any interviews (about 6-7 in total in my whole career). Due to my lack of interview experience, I've been getting anxiety especially now that the job market is tougher than it has ever been.

Firstly, how do you guys prepare, if at all? I feel like many of these interviews require you to be good at interviews, almost like an exam. If these questions were presented to me when I first came out of college, I would've had a better chance.

Secondly, how do you take rejections? I didn't know how painful it was to get rejected, regardless of how much I wanted the role.

I've been fortunate enough to still have my current job, but because of that I don't really have much time, nor the mental energy to study for interviews.

Apologies I'm advanced for poor grammar, I'm writing this on the train.

Anyone working at CloudKitchens a.k.a company bought by Travis Kalanick after being kicked out of Uber?

Got several interviews next week. Recruiter that I was working with really overhyped everything. From tech to culture.

They want me to do 4 technical interviews (live coding, DSA, home assignment, and something more). Not sure if its worthwhile.

Alright... so now my week of vacation and advanced but fun coding is over... tmr I will be returning to the grind...

Time to go back to ranting and thinking about how to get a better job... and preparing for those pesky technical interviews...

!rant

I’ve 2 great job opportunities and would like to get some opinions from you guys..

The first position is in my home country, I’ve passed the first interviews and (highly advanced) coding test.
I’d have the possibility to contribute to something big that really matters nowadays.
I would learn about lots of stuff that really interests me (security, embedded systems...)

The second position is in another country, I’ve passed the first interview and just received the coding test.
There I could work on a cool project and I’d definitely learn a lot there, too. But more important is that I love the county, there I really feel like “home”, I love the people and culture.

In case both of them want me, it would be really Hard to make my decision..

What would you do in my situation?
- dream job in a country I don’t necessarily like, neither dislike
- cool job in a country I totally wanna settle down sooner or later (but currently wouldn’t have problems getting the permissions and stuff..)?

Thanks in advance:)

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a “Data Structures and Algorithms” certification that provided validation of your skills and was industry-wide accepted so that you don’t need to go through the same leetcode coding interviews at every new job

It’s rare to see a profession where experience means so little during the hiring process

Question: How would you reimagine the dev interview process, trying to make it efficient to find ingenious freshers?

I'm gonna be hiring full MERN stack dev freshers soon. I hate coding interviews, and I just want to test their ingenuity and problem solving, not if they can code a textbook algorithm.

Plan so far was to ask them questions like: "What happens when you like a link in the browser" to gauge how deep they could track a request and understand the internet infrastructure.

And make them audit gpt generated react code, and optimize it.

What're your thoughts, folks?

What does everyone think about whiteboard interviews?

Fellow ranters,

I have been devoting few hours to the book called cracking the coding interview.

It's a fun book. Questions are nice.

But does it help even a tiny bit in interviews?

Getting absolutely destroyed on my first coding interviews

I’ve been looking for a job recently since I am a student and starting my career.

I have a bunch of experience and I like to think I have pretty broad knowledge of programming concepts (web dev, ML, AI, software development).

I see these job postings for jobs that I know I am qualified for.

- I got my research published (which is related to the jobs I’ve been applying for)
- I have great grades
- I have a clear track record of doing well in teams (life long athlete)
- I am a complete geek for new tech and libraries so I always learn them super fast
- I have side projects that aren’t just shit I’ve done in school
- my past jobs show that I am an efficient worker who has real experience

However, I always fucking fail the coding challenges.

I’m never asked questions like “how to reverse a linked list”, just obscure questions that I don’t know how to study for.

What the fuck am I supposed to do? It’s not even like I get close to the answers. I usually get a couple test cases and then fail the rest of them, or I can’t figure out a solution to solve them.

This is all really disheartening and I fucking hate it I absolutely fucking hate it and when I am trying to hire people in the future, I’m never going to make them do coding challenges bc they’re fucking stupid

C++ or Python for coding interviews?

I used to do a lot of developments in Python and JS/TS. But now I have been doing a lot of back-end stuff in Golang at work (1+ year) and C++ for some of my side projects. So when I started grinding leetcode, I used C++ all the way.

Today this question struck me and I keep thinking if I should continue with C++ or use Python, which will help me focus more on the question than the language.

Another rejection....😞

Hey developers, am I allowed to make use of the pass-by-reference feature of C/C++ during a coding interview( given I am using C/C++ as my main language )?

I basically used python in my interviews, but this time I decided to go with C/C++.

now,
for those who gonna say "WRONG CATEGORY": most of you check rant rather than questions.

for those who gonna say "BUT YOUR NAME SUGGEST THAT YOU HATE C": bloody educate yourself.

I have struggled with leet code two years ago when I started university and was learning programming.
Now I am finally set to have a leet code interview at a large company, followed by a take home problem and a system design problem.

I started looking into leet code again today and I feel like I could had done so much more back then if I just had some help.

Back then I made the mistake of doing leet code problems in Java since that's all I knew and it used to make many simple problems last for hours.

I want to try it out using Python this time around since I don't have to focus on every little detail when I solve the problem. The company focuses on Python, Go and JS but I don't know Go and JS well enough.

What do you think? Is it a good idea or not? Should I just try JavaScript?

Also do you have any advice for this kinds of interviews?
i think the leet code one will be the toughest.
Some suggest I should read Cracking the coding interview, but I don't see the point of doing that
Good thing is all interviews are through Zoom since it's coronavirus season.

Carpel Tunnel has actually made me a far better programmer.

While I've had to cut down on how much I program, I have instead started writing the first draft of any program on the whiteboard and manually debugging it.

Also got my dream internship because it made me far better at coding interviews!

Craziest prep for interview :

Step 1 : Given sufficient time for the scheduled interview by any company, start by searching "How to prepare for Google interviews". Awe at the information before you and get all pumped up to jump in.

Step 2 : Starting with Algorithms, study each one and try not to mix any of them in confusion. In case you are stuck in whiteboard coding, close your eyes, take deep breath and visualize Don Kunth. If that doesn't help, well you are ruined anyway.

Step 3: Practice coding without internet connection, till you are able to write code while you talk about how the weather is really great today. Libraries and methods should flow like poetry. SO is sin.

Step 4: The X programming language which you added to your resume because you can write Hello World, head over to Wikipedia and read more about it just in case.

Step 5: Read some xkcd comics so you can impress the interviewer with some humor. You can try Dilbert too.

Coding has pretty much been the center of my life?

Although I was persuaded to take a dumb expensive, useless detour into Finance... and probably cost me a nice job at a big tech company... at least until maybe I get around to really really trying really hard to possibly get an interview after reading through a few Algo books and prepping for technical interviews and doing foobar enough to request being recruited...

Anyway I still like coding for my own use a lot (check my github.io page), getting paid for it is more of a ++ though I would prefer to be solving more interesting and useful problems at work....

Oh yes and it makes me an Android/tech power user, always thinking about how to use tech to solve my problems, get what I want...

and now if you'd please, dfox when can I have my unicorn? 😀

I really need some advice.

So the company I have been at the last year and a half wants to give me my first compensation evaluation at my two year mark. It makes me feel underappreciated and just unhappy, so I'm starting to look elsewhere.

How should I prepare for interviews? Cracking the Coding Interview, then Leetcode (free), then Leetcode paid (Pro), then ??? I am frontend so I don't deal with BSTs and such ever.

Any advice would be appreciated on how to proceed with my career.

Worked as android dev for 2.5 year and then worked as java gameserver dev for 2 years.

Now I wanna go back to android dev so I spent the last month grinding kotlin/android basics and already have 2 interviews lined up this week. Applying for junior dev role because of my gap and because my confidence in my android ability currently is really low. Having ADD doesnt help because I suck in memorizing implementations, syntax and I suck at live coding under pressure.

Fuck it I will set their expectations low, will get lower salary and hopefully will impress the hell out of them during first few months. Wel see what happens...

Any tips/advices?

Been going on some interviews recently and realized I'm not the best at interview style coding challenges. I was wondering if there's a good app/website with coding challenges to solve, or even a game? Preferably using JavaScript or Python.

We have a notorious question in one of our coding interviews, designed to weed out people who've slapped 'Postgres' on their CV (because that's what we're looking for) when what they really mean is "I've used MySQL a lot, and it's basically the same, right?". People get choked on that about 70% of the time.

If you put something technical on your CV, be prepared to be tested on it in a coding interview!

Recruiter contacted me for interview. I asked them what is the procedure of interviews and how many are there gonna be.

Recruiter listed 5 fucking interviews.

1. HR interview: 30-45 min
2. Technical 1: 60 min general coding live session
3. Technical 2: 60 min backend coding live session
4. Technical 3: 60 min system design coding live session
5. Hiring manager interview: 30 min

All that for $20.3125/hour, with possibility of being more or even less depending on how well i do on these 5 interviews

wk192: None. I was never asked to do a single coding challenge in any job interview. I had three successes and a bunch more interviews without programming anything in the interview or having ever shown any previous programming projects. I really wonder what criteria are important to companies hiring software developers if not how well they are at developing software.

Applied for 4 jobs. If successful in each interview a total of 16 interviews, 6 coding tests as two of the jobs have 2 coding tests. One of those coding tests was to build a frontend and backend from scratch fully united tested implementing part of the product they are building. When I am recruiting I find out everything I need to know in about 2 hours. Does this seem all a bit too much or is it just me ?

I've heard all kinds of arguments for about how whiteboard coding interviews should be obsolete, and that they usually doesn't reflect how good you are as a developer. But I've been polishing my skills with data structures and algorithms for a few weeks (learning this stuff for the second time since years ago in college) and I get this feeling that I'm becoming a much better programmer by practicing these things. And having access to all these things in the "working memory" of my brain has made me now think of solutions I couldn't before. But then - it may be that right now I'm working on embedded systems so this efficiency matters much more, earlier while doing full stack web development I didn't care about these much except while playing with strings maybe. So it might be dependent on your niche. What do you guys think?

Write a C# WPF app that does ...

Or any hands on actual coding instead the pure Algo BS u will never use on a job. And when is you use will probably be conceptual or oh... This problem is better solved using ... Because it's already ...

As for interviews I don't do go-to them any more... Guess I'm disillusioned... It maybe just lost hope a don't give a fck anymore. Job paid the bills and I'm like the most experienced so meh....

So I'm a 4th year computer science student, and my school has mandatory Co-Op requirements, of which I need to complete an internship for 3 semesters. I have already completed 2 semesters at a tech company, and have continued to work part time for them for the past year. Though, for my last co-op block I wanted to try to go for a bigger more well known company that would look good on my resume after graduation. For several reasons, I was looking for something in the Boston area and I came across two companies that seemed like great places to work at, so I began preparing.

For both companies, the process was very similar: I applied, got a phone interview, completed a coding assignment, made it to the final technical interview. For both technical interviews, I did some research and found the typical prompts that these companies ask.  I took a look at both of them and they both involved a relatively simple challenge that involved string manipulation in the language of your choice. Before both interviews I practiced these challenges to make sure I could do them, it was no problem, could do each of them my first try in about 15 minutes. However, when it came to sitting down with their engineers, it was totally different.

Even though I literally practiced the problem before hand, I for some reason kept blanking on things during both interviews. For some reason I was finding it extremely challenging to talk and code at the same time. The first company interview went very well except for the coding portion in which they gave me feedback saying "I didn't seem confident in my coding skills", which is why I didn't get that position. For the second interview I couldn't even finish the assignment in the full hour even though I practiced it beforehand and did it in 15 minutes on my own. It is very frustrating because I feel that out of all the aspects involved in an interview, coding is in reality my strongest, but it just seems completely different when I have to explain what I'm doing while I'm doing it.

Has anyone else experienced this sort of thing? If so, how did you get past it/prepare for it?

Interviewing is a skill. Technical interviewing is a skill related to but not totally based on coding knowledge. You need to flex this muscle.

Try mock coding interviews with friends. Set up interviews at places you don't necessarily want to work at. Take coding interviews even when you're not looking for a job.

Starting yesterday, I'm going to study a total of 400 hours over the next 3-4 months on coding, system design, and behavioral interviews. My goal is to 2x my current salary (currently make almost 6 figures) and get out of this shitty company. I want to make it big and say that my studying was all worth it.

Wish me luck peeps. I'll come back in dues time to let you know how it all went.

Fellow devRanter needs your referral for internship in United States.

I was not confident or ready when the big companies were hiring for an internship. 190+ Leetcode problems later, I am now confident that I can crack technical coding interviews but I think its too late now. None of the companies I've applied to has responded back to me. I am worried that I have to stay idle during the summer break. I have 3 years of prior work experience as a software development engineer with a decent GPA and a few side projects. Any help would be much appreciated. Please provide referrals if your company is hiring candidates for an internship position. Thanks.

I'll share link to my leetcode profile, my github repo and linkedin profile. Please dm me.

Hi So I need some solid advice from you all wonderful people.
I think i am now ready to look into job side of this world, but have lots of doubts , read my story.
I have been learning android for last 2 years. Most of the time i have been trying to understand how stuff works in android , but i have also gained a few other skills ( python programming, kotlin/flutter basics data analysis basics, testing, some graphic designing, aweful web dev ,etc). But i really want to work with Android. I don't have any specific Salary figure in mind, but i guess my knowledge is better or atleast par with most of the good android developers.

So i want to know how is this fresher/placement thingy work?
1.) GETTING KNOWN? : How can i make some good android based company aware that I am available for hiring? Should i start emailing every android related company that i know of? Should i start listing my profile on recruitment sites like linkedin or internshala? This year it is being said that companies will come for placements. From the status of my college, they are going to give me way to less $ , nd i know am not going to like any of them, but i guess i have to sit for them too.

2.INTERVIEW OR DIRECT PLACEMENTS? A little pre-context: i am currently starting my 4th year in clg. Afaik , 4th year isnt that strict and their can be leniency in terms of attendance. But my college is a place full of political cun*s in the name of directors and HODs and I don't know if they are again going to enforce the old 75% mandatory criteria. Plus if the company is from a different state/country , then my attendance would definitely not suffice.
So mainly i am unsure if somehow a company hires me, i would be able to start immediately. I heard that there are interviews for job recruitment after which the candidate is binded with an agreement to do some months training followed by permanent working after college completion.
This type of agreement is very much suitable for me, since from what my friend tells me, trainings can be lenient and understanding regarding exam preparations nd stuff.

So what do company usually chooses? Binding a fresher on immediate working basis or do they consider graduate completion?

Also, i suck at competitive coding. Do i need to polish myself on that or some company is willing to give me chance on the basis of my other skills 🙈(okay, no kidding , that's a serious question. I need to either work on getting better in competitive or build more apps based on that)

3.) ANDROID OR EVERYTHING? From what i have heard, working as a professional fresher is more like being an allrounder than being a domain specialist. But as i already stated, i really dig android and that's no small framework. I may di other stuff too, but won't interest me nd my output might be less efficient than expected.
So freshers can really be asked to do any stuff? Or can i still be in the area i like being into?

4.) COMPANY OR START-UP? Yeah, this is a general debate starter. Ignoring the business side of the conversation ( job safety vs more salary, experience, etc) the thing that's most important for me is the presence of a team. I want someone to assign me a task, whose vision i could follow, from whom i could learn, and some other people who are supportive and doing the same amount / similar work that am doing . This is so much import8 for me that i can easily ignore other factors for a better team. I once took a call from a startup ceo who hired me, a 2 month old android beginner at that time, as the "lead android developer"
But if am being on a team where i am supposed to do any random stuff that is assigned, then obviously this whole point of "visionary, helpful leader, guiding team, "etc goes moot

Has anyone tried remoterinterview.io js test, I have to give one this Saturday #nervous #interviews

Any tips??