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Interviewer: Welcome, Mr X. Thanks for dropping by. We like to keep our interviews informal. And even though I have all the power here, and you are nothing but a cretin, let’s pretend we are going to have fun here.
Mr X: Sure, man, whatever.
I: Let’s start with the technical stuff, shall we? Do you know what a linked list is?
X: (Tells what it is).
I: Great. Can you tell me where linked lists are used?
X:: Sure. In interview questions.
I: What?
X: The only time linked lists come up is in interview questions.
I:: That’s not true. They have lots of real world applications. Like, like…. (fumbles)
X:: Like to implement memory allocation in operating systems. But you don’t sell operating systems, do you?
I:: Well… moving on. Do you know what the Big O notation is?
X: Sure. It’s another thing used only in interviews.
I: What?! Not true at all. What if you want to sort a billion records a minute, like Google has to?
X: But you are not Google, are you? You are hiring me to work with 5 year old PHP code, and most of the tasks will be hacking HTML/CSS. Why don’t you ask me something I will actually be doing?
I: (Getting a bit frustrated) Fine. How would you do FooBar in version X of PHP?
X: I would, er, Google that.
I: And how do you call library ABC in PHP?
X: Google?
I: (shocked) OMG. You mean you don’t remember all the 97 million PHP functions, and have to actually Google stuff? What if the Internet goes down?
X: Does it? We’re in the 1st world, aren’t we?
I: Tut, tut. Kids these days. Anyway,looking at your resume, we need at least 7 years of ReactJS. You don’t have that.
X: That’s great, because React came out last year.
I: Excuses, excuses. Let’s ask some lateral thinking questions. How would you go about finding how many piano tuners there are in San Francisco?
X: 37.
I: What?!
X: 37. I googled before coming here. Also Googled other puzzle questions. You can fit 7,895,345 balls in a Boeing 747. Manholes covers are round because that is the shape that won’t fall in. You ask the guard what the other guard would say. You then take the fox across the bridge first, and eat the chicken. As for how to move Mount Fuji, you tell it a sad story.
I: Ooooooooookkkkkaaaayyyyyyy. Right, tell me a bit about yourself.
X: Everything is there in the resume.
I: I mean other than that. What sort of a person are you? What are your hobbies?
X: Japanese culture.
I: Interesting. What specifically?
X: Hentai.
I: What’s hentai?
X: It’s an televised art form.
I: Ok. Now, can you give me an example of a time when you were really challenged?
X: Well, just the other day, a few pennies from my pocket fell behind the sofa. Took me an hour to take them out. Boy was it challenging.
I: I meant technical challenge.
X: I once spent 10 hours installing Windows 10 on a Mac.
I: Why did you do that?
X: I had nothing better to do.
I: Why did you decide to apply to us?
X: The voices in my head told me.
I: What?
X: You advertised a job, so I applied.
I: And why do you want to change your job?
X: Money, baby!
I: (shocked)
X: I mean, I am looking for more lateral changes in a fast moving cloud connected social media agile web 2.0 company.
I: Great. That’s the answer we were looking for. What do you feel about constant overtime?
X: I don’t know. What do you feel about overtime pay?
I: What is your biggest weakness?
X: Kryptonite. Also, ice cream.
I: What are your salary expectations?
X: A million dollars a year, three months paid vacation on the beach, stock options, the lot. Failing that, whatever you have.
I: Great. Any questions for me?
X: No.
I: No? You are supposed to ask me a question, to impress me with your knowledge. I’ll ask you one. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
X: Doing your job, minus the stupid questions.
I: Get out. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
All Credit to:
http://pythonforengineers.com/the-p...89 -
This is more just a note for younger and less experienced devs out there...
I've been doing this for around 25 years professionally, and about 15 years more generally beyond that. I've seen a lot and done a lot, many things most developers never will: built my own OS (nothing especially amazing, but still), created my own language and compiler for it, created multiple web frameworks and UI toolkits from scratch before those things were common like they are today. I've had eleven technical books published, along with some articles. I've done interviews and speaking engagements at various user groups, meetups and conferences. I've taught classes on programming. On the job, I'm the guy that others often come to when they have a difficult problem they are having trouble solving because I seem to them to usually have the answer, or at least a gut feel that gets them on the right track. To be blunt, I've probably forgotten more about CS than a lot of devs will ever know and it's all just a natural consequence of doing this for so long.
I don't say any of this to try and impress anyone, I really don't... I say it only so that there's some weight behind what I say next:
Almost every day I feel like I'm not good enough. Sometimes, I face a challenge that feels like it might be the one that finally breaks me. I often feel like I don't have a clue what to do next. My head bangs against the wall as much as anyone and I do my fair share of yelling and screaming out of frustration. I beat myself up for every little mistake, and I make plenty.
Imposter syndrome is very real and it never truly goes away no matter what successes you've had and you have to fight the urge to feel shame when things aren't going well because you're not alone in those feelings and they can destroy even the best of us. I suppose the Torvald's and Carmack's of the world possibly don't experience it, but us mere mortals do and we probably always will - at least, I'm still waiting for it to go away!
Remember that what we do is intrinsically hard. What we do is something not everyone can do, contrary to all the "anyone can code" things people do. In some ways, it's unnatural even! Therefore, we shouldn't expect to not face tough days, and being human, the stress of those days gets to us all and causes us to doubt ourselves in a very insidious way.
But, it's okay. You're not alone. Hang in there and go easy on yourself! You'll only ever truly fail if you give up.32 -
Someones keyboard just stopped working in my job.
They called the helpdesk and i told them to unplug the keyboard from the back of the PC and try a different usb port before i send them down a new keyboard.
Their reply?
‘How am i meant to do that? I mean... *laughs* I didn’t go to college for this kind of stuff. I know you did but you need to explain it in English for me instead of using technical terms.’
....
So i had to describe what a USB looks like, and tell her how to follow the (only) skinny black cable she has on her desk, down the back of the desk and into the PC. She got overwhelmed by this cable being the same colour as the thicker VGA cable, so ended up unplugging everything!
Its fine though, as when she plugged them all back in, everything was back working.
She finished the call by saying:
“Like, i know how to use a computer but I just don’t understand all this technical mumbo jumbo, like USB’s and stuff? How should i know about that?”
...
I sincerely think interviews need to have just 5 minutes dedicated to the person showing that they know what a bloody USB is!!, can turn on/off a PC, open outlook, and follow basic instructions.
Ugh I work with idiots 😢18 -
I'd like to extend my heartfelt fuck-you to the following persons:
- The recruiter who told me that at my age I wouldn't find a job anymore: FUCK YOU, I'll send you my 55 birthday's cake candles, you can put all of them in your ass, with light on.
- The Project Manager that after 5 rounds of interviews and technical tests told me I didn't have enough experience for his project: be fucked in an Agile way by all member of your team, standing up, every morning for 15 minutes, and every 2 weeks by all stakeholders.
- The unemployment officer who advised me to take low level jobs, cut my expenses and salary expectations: you can cut your cock and suck it, so you'll stop telling bullshit to people
- The moron that gave me a monster technical assignment on Big Data, which I delivered, and didn't gave me any feedback: shove all your BIG DATA in your ass and open it to external integrations
- the architect who told me I should open my horizons, because I didn't like React: put a reactive mix in your ass and close it, so your shit will explode in your mouth
- the countless recruiter who used my cv to increase their db, offering fake jobs: print all your db on paper and stuff your ass with that, you'll see how big you will be
To all of them, really really fuck you.12 -
I recently joined the dark side - an agile consulting company (why and how is a long story). The first client I was assigned to was an international bank. The client wanted a web portal, that was at its core, just a massive web form for their users to perform data entry.
My company pitched and won the project even though they didn't have a single developer on their bench. The entire project team (including myself) was fast tracked through interviews and hired very rapidly so that they could staff the project (a fact I found out months later).
Although I had ~8 years of systems programming experience, my entire web development experience amounted to 12 weeks (a part time web dev course) just before I got hired.
I introduce to you, my team ...
Scrum Master. 12 years experience on paper.
Rote memorised the agile manifesto and scrum textbooks. He constantly went “We should do X instead of (practical thing) Y, because X is the agile way.” Easily pressured by the client to include ridiculous (real time chat in a form filling webpage), and sometimes near impossible features (undo at the keystroke level). He would just nag at the devs until someone mumbled ‘yes' just so that he would stfu and go away.
UX Designer. 3 years experience on paper ... as business analyst.
Zero professional experience in UX. Can’t use design tools like AI / photoshop. All he has is 10 weeks of UX bootcamp and a massive chip on his shoulder. The client wanted a web form, he designed a monstrosity that included several custom components that just HAD to be put in, because UX. When we asked for clarification the reply was a usually condescending “you guys don’t understand UX, just do <insert unhandled edge case>, this is intended."
Developer - PHD in his first job.
Invents programming puzzles to solve where there are none. The user story asked for a upload file button. He implemented a queue system that made use of custom metadata to detect file extensions, file size, and other attributes, so that he could determine which file to synchronously upload first.
Developer - Bootlicker. 5 years experience on paper.
He tried to ingratiate himself with the management from day 1. He also writes code I would fire interns and fail students for. His very first PR corrupted the database. The most recent one didn’t even compile.
Developer - Millennial fratboy with a business degree. 8 years experience on paper.
His entire knowledge of programming amounted to a single data structures class he took on Coursera. Claims that’s all he needs. His PRs was a single 4000+ line files, of which 3500+ failed the linter, had numerous bugs / console warnings / compile warnings, and implemented 60% of functionality requested in the user story. Also forget about getting his attention whenever one of the pretty secretaries walked by. He would leap out of his seat and waltz off to flirt.
Developer - Brooding loner. 6 years experience on paper.
His code works. It runs, in exponential time. Simply ignores you when you attempt to ask.
Developer - Agile fullstack developer extraordinaire. 8 years experience on paper.
Insists on doing the absolute minimum required in the user story, because more would be a waste. Does not believe in thinking ahead for edge conditions because it isn’t in the story. Every single PR is a hack around existing code. Sometimes he hacks a hack that was initially hacked by him. No one understands the components he maintains.
Developer - Team lead. 10 years of programming experience on paper.
Writes spaghetti code with if/else blocks nested 6 levels deep. When asked "how does this work ?”, the answer “I don’t know the details, but hey it works!”. Assigned as the team lead as he had the most experience on paper. Tries organise technical discussions during which he speaks absolute gibberish that either make no sense, or are complete misunderstandings of how our system actually works.
The last 2 guys are actually highly regarded by my company and are several pay grades above me. The rest were hired because my company was desperate to staff the project.
There are a 3 more guys I didn’t mention. The 4 of us literally carried the project. The codebase is ugly as hell because the others merge in each others crap. We have no unit tests, and It’s near impossible to start because of the quality of the code. But this junk works, and was deployed to production. Today is it actually hailed as a success story.
All these 3 guys have quit. 2 of them quit without a job. 1 found a new and better gig.
I’m still here because I need the money. There’s a tsunami of trash code waiting to fail in production, and I’m the only one left holding the fort.
Why am I surrounded by morons?
Why are these retards paid more than me?
Why are they so proud when all they produce is trash?
How on earth are they still hired?
And yeah, FML.8 -
The following meeting occurred at a client between a recently added client PM and our team, we'll call her Shrilldesi, previously from one of the main consulting vendors.
*Meeting begins after 15 minutes of bullshitting, waiting for people to file in*
Shrilldesi: "Ok everyone, let's get started
TeamMember: "We're still waiting for Z and W, not sure why they're late."
SD: "We can start there. It was decided had to lay off Z and W, because we didn't have enough work."
Moi: "Wait, what. Who made that decision? Why weren't we consulted on this? We have another project starting next week that they were needed for. They just delivered the entire public facing rewrite, why would we let them go?!"
SD: "It was decided by myself, pajeet, and venkata looking at the backlog. Not enough work, week gap."
Moi: "This is going to hurt our ability to deliver the next phase. When are we going to start interviewing new people, the project begins next week?"
SD: "We will interview new resources as needed."
Moi: "Who is we? And 'as needed' is yesterday, or realistically several weeks ago as the. project. starts. next. week. Also, we're obligated by federal law to bring back anyone we lay off before we hire anyone else for the same position."
SD: "Interviews will be done by myself, Mohd, and Pajeet."
Moi: "...can I point out that there's only one modestly technical person in that group, they're an admin, and none of them are from this team? How do you conduct an engineering interview without any engineers?"
SD: "That does not matter, I have watched enough to be able to ask your questions."
Moi: *anger intensifies* "I have to respectfully disagree. I don't feel it's appropriate to cut us out of the process of interviewing our own team members."
SD: "It is decided, we will take care of it, let us move on. Next, we need to find work for the Manasa, she doesn't have anything to do."
Moi: *sharpens baseball bat* "...shouldn't we just fire her then?"
SD: "Oh that is so mean, why would we fire her? We were thinking she might be able to do some of my project management work."
Moi: *sharpening intensifies* "You do realize it's a violation of H1-B statutes for someone to be employed in work other than what is stated on their contract, and Project Managers are specifically listed as not specialized skillsets per federal law."
SD: *ignores question* "We also need to find work for the offshore team, they don't have enough to do. Please find them work for the next period."
Moi: *checks how long the wait period is for ar-15s*
SD: "We also have a new person rolling onto our team, he comes from the xyz team, Dikshit *gestures to person we all figured was lost*. He will be handling our front end development."
Moi: *seething hatred* "WE JUST LET TWO EXCELLENT FRONT END DEVELOPERS GO. WE DO NOT NEED DIKSHIT."
SD: "Please calm down. We will be replacing the other two shortly, there is no problem."
Moi: "Have you heard nothing I've said? Did you even run this by legal and HR? Why did we let them go in the first place? Why do we even need Dikshit?!"
SD: "I said it before, please listen. There is not enough work for them. Dikshit will do front end. What is unclear?"
Note: There's not really any dramatization here. It's almost verbatim what happened. Eventually, the next project was cancelled, they incrementally rolled the rest of the local team off. They then had the cojones to express aghast anger when I notified them I would not be renewing my contract, and open hatred when I explained to them I was not a slave, and I refused to be a bag holder for the inevitable failure of a project without any chance of success. I don't really care what happened after that, they can all burn in their own little nepotistic shitshow of perpetual failure.4 -
The most disappointing (not so sure about upsetting) rejection was from none other than Google.
I was ecstatic when Google respond to my application by inviting me to an interview. If I recall rightly I had two pre-interview screenings, two technical interviews, and about four interviews with people. The people were great and the HR person I was dealing with was open that the feedback was all good.
And then the rejection came! I called the HR guy and asked what happened. He said there’s a central group somewhere who approve all hiring and they decided I hadn’t worked for a “big enough” company in the past.
Yet - my potential colleagues and manager thought I could do the job, I passed the Google-scale technical tests … and then some faceless person somewhere says “meh” and that’s that.
It’s not like they didn’t have my resume that whole time, or the opportunity to ask any questions they wanted !
So that sucked.10 -
You can believe or not but it’s just one of those stories. It’s long and crazy and it probably happened.
A few years ago I was interviewed by this big insurance company. They asked me on linkedin and were interested. They didn’t specify who they were so I didn’t specify who I am either.
After they revealed who they are I was just curious how they fuck they want to spend those billions of dollars they claimed in their press notes about this fucking digital transformation everyone is talking about. The numbers were big.
I got into 3 or 4 phone/skype interviews without technical questions and I was invited to see them by person.
I know that it would be funny because they didn’t asked me for CV so they didn’t know anything about me and I was just more curious how far I can get without revealing myself.
They canceled interview at midnight and I was in the middle of Louis de Funès comedies marathon so I didn’t sleep whole night. I assumed they would just reschedule but then they phoned me at 8 am if I can come because they made mistake.
So at first talk I was just interviewed by some manager I knowed after 5 minutes he would be shitty as fuck and demand stupid things in no time because he is not technical. He was trying to explain me that they got so great people and they do everything so fast.
From my experience speed and programming are not the things that match. ( for reference of my thought see three virtues of a GREAT programmer )
So I just pissed them off by asking what they would do with me when I finish this transformation thingy next year. ( Probably get rid off and fire at some point were my thoughts )
Then I got this technical interview on newest gold color MacBook pro - pair programming ( they were showing off how much money they have all the time ).
The person asked me to transform json and get some data in javascript .
Really that was the thing and I was so bored and tired that I just asked in what ES standard I can code.
The problem was despite he told me I can do anything and they are using newest standards ( yeah right ) the “for of” loop didn’t worked and he even didn’t know that syntax existed. So I explained him it’s the newest syntax pointing mozilla page and that he need to adjust his configuration. Because we didn’t have time for that I just did it using var an function by writing bunch of code.
When he was asking me if I want to write some tests probably because my code looked ugly as fuck ( I didn’t sleep for more then 24 hours at that point and wanted to live the building as fast as I can) I told I finished and there is no time for tests because it’s so simple and dumb task. The code worked.
After showing me how awesome their office is ( yeah please I work from home so I don’t care ) I got into the talk with VP of engineering and he was the only person who asked me where is my CV because he didn’t know what to talk about. I just laughed at him and told him that I got here just by talking how awesome I am so we can talk about whatever he wants.
After quick talk about 4 different problems where I introduced 4 different languages and bunch of libraries just because I can and I worked with those he was mine.
He told me about this awesome stack they’re building with kubernetes and micro services and the shitty future where they want to put IOT into peoples ass to sell them insurance and suddenly I got awake and started to want that job but behind that all awesomeness there was just .NET bridge with stack of mainframes running COBOL that they want to get rid off and move company to the cloud.
They needed mostly people who would dump code to different technology stack and get rid of old stack ( and probably those old people ) and I was bored again because I work more in r&d field where you sometimes need to think about something that don’t exist and be creative.
I asked him why it would take so much time so he explained me how they would do the transformation by consolidating bunch of companies and how much money they would make by probably firing people that don’t know about it to this day.
I didn’t met any person working permanently there but only consultants from corporations and people hired in some 3rd party company created by this mother company.
They didn’t responded with any decision after me wasting so much time and they asked me for interview for another position year after.
I just explained HR person how they treat people and I don’t want to work there for any money.
If You reached this point it is the end and if it was entertaining thank YOU I did my best.
Have a nice day.5 -
We've been trying to hire a greenhorn, fresh-faced intern from India for like a month now.
Plenty of applicants, most with very nice curriculums, a few even can think on their feet while grilled by my questions.
I've sent to talk to HR three almost college-graduating candidates, who convinced me they know the subject of data engineering enough to be working with me and that they are actually gonna do the tasks assigned.
The fucking tweep at HR, an old fart who I had to convince that HVAC maintenance is not the job of the IT department nor the data team, calls my approved candidates "too junior".
WTF, I ask. - "Not professional enough", says the human toad.
Yes, they are to be interns! - "But they do not show professionalism", answered the hag.
Yes they do! They were very professional on the interviews! - "That is for me to say!" barked the reptile.
A week pass by while I try to find more just as good candidates who are also "more professional" when the hag has the audacity to say "here, I found someone. He knows everything about computer things and is very professional".
I took like 20 seconds to find out that the kid she'd given my number to, and was now messaging me IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING NIGHT, was her niece's fiancee and wasn't even in uni! He was just a high school graduate!
Seriously, nepotism kids, delete your Instagrams, tiktoks and every single piece of social media.
I scaled the issue to my VP, who contacted the HR VP for India, who gave the worst possible excuse for her behaviour: "She knows nothing about computer things!" for what my own boss said "so why was she assigned to oversee the data team's new hires?!". The HR slug mumbled something and then doubled down with "well, the kids you sent her were all girls! she had never hired a girl to a technical position, she wouldn't know what to look for in an interview!"
What. The. Fuck.
My boss, my VP of a very strategic technical area, happens to be a woman who lives in a place where women's rights are for real. I had *never* heard she swear on a non-football-related context. She did. Loudly. On camera. As if the HR boss was a referee who just disallowed a goal for her team due to an very ambiguous forward pass.
Shit is still flowing, but it seems that the hiring process of the entire company is being restructured because of that.
I guess I've just sped up this process in about one hundred years?9 -
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?13 -
!(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.11 -
About 18 months ago my non-technical Manager of Applications Development asked me to do the technical interviews for a .NET web developer position that needed to be filled. Because I don't believe in white board interviewing (that's another rant), but I do need to see if the prospective dev can actually code, for the initial interview I prepare a couple of coding problems on paper and ask that they solve them using any language or pseudo code they want. I tell them that after they're done we'll discuss their thought process. While they work the other interviewing dev and I silently do our own stuff.
About half way through the first round of technical interviews the aforementioned manager insisted we interview a dev from his previous company. This guy was top notch. Excellent. Will fit right in.
The manager's applicant comes in to interview and after some initial questions about his resume and experience I give him the first programming problem: a straightforward fizzbuzz (http://wiki.c2.com/?FizzBuzzTest). He looked as if the gamesters of Triskelion had dropped him into the arena. He demurs. Comments on the unexpectedness of the request. Explains that he has a little book he usually refers to to help him with such problems (can't make this stuff up). I again offer that he could use any language or pseudo code. We just want to see how he thinks. He decides he will do the fizzbuzz problem in SQL. My co-interviewer and I are surprised at this choice, but recover quickly and tell him to go ahead. Twenty minutes later he hands me a blank piece of paper. Of the 18 or so candidates we interview, he is the only one who cannot write a single line of code or pseudo code.
I receive an email from this applicant a couple of weeks after his interview. He has given the fizzbuzz problem some more thought. He writes that it occurs to him that the code could be placed into a function. That is the culmination of his cogitation over two weeks. We shake our heads and shortly thereafter attend the scheduled meeting to discuss the applicants.
At the meeting the manager asks about his former co-worker. I inartfully, though accurately, tell him that his candidate does not know how to code. He calls me irrational. After the requisite shocked silence of five people not knowing how to respond to this outburst we all sing Kumbaya and elect to hire someone else.
Interviews are fraught for both sides of the table. I use Fizzbuzz because if the applicant knows how to code it's an early win in the process and we all need that. And if the applicant can't solve it, cut bait and go home.
Fizzbuzz. Best. Interview. Question. Ever.6 -
!(!rant)
So I wanted a raise and the only way was becoming a software lead.
With that title you get more money but also more responsibility, so you have the last word in technical decisions, you review architecture, do tech interviews, guide the less experienced, etc. I can handle that, even as introverted as I am.
What nobody told me was that I was going to spend my whole time on fucking meetings, one after another, I have not touched my IDE in days, I hate this shit already.
Careful what you wish for they say, so true, I'm stuck here and I hate my job now, probably going to quit as soon as I recover my life, if ever.4 -
!rant
Interviewed a guy for a senior technical job. I worked hard on making my own questions that hopefully make the interviewee think instead of useless gotchas.
He told me at the end that they were fun questions and this interview was loads better than the rest who just ask questions off of Google.
Having had my share of shitty interviews, this makes me feel so good 😊11 -
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.6 -
TLDR: There’s truth in the motto “fake it till you make it”
Once upon a time in January 2018 I began work as a part time sysadmin intern for a small financial firm in the rural US. This company is family owned, and the family doesn’t understand or invest in the technology their business is built on. I’m hired on because of my minor background in Cisco networking and Mac repair/administration.
I was the only staff member with vendor certifications and any background in networking / systems administration / computer hardware. There is an overtaxed web developer doing sysadmin/desktop support work and hating it.
I quickly take that part of his job and become the “if it has electricity it’s his job to fix it” guy. I troubleshoot Exchange server and Active Directory problems, configure cloudhosted web servers and DNS records, change lightbulbs and reboot printers in the office.
After realizing that I’m not an intern but actually just a cheap sysadmin I began looking for work that pays appropriately and is full time. I also change my email signature to say “Company Name: Network Administrator”
A few weeks later the “HR” department (we have 30 employees, it’s more like “The accountant who checks hiring paperwork”) sends out an email saying that certain ‘key’ departments have no coverage at inappropriate times. I don’t connect the dots.
Two days later I receive a testy email from one of the owners telling me that she is unhappy with my lack of time spent in the office. That as the Network Administrator I have responsibilities, and I need to be available for her and others 8-5 when problems need troubleshooting. Her son is my “boss” who is rarely in the office and has almost no technical acumen. He neglected to inform her that I’m a part time employee.
I arrange a meeting in which I propose that I be hired on full time as the Network Administrator to alleviate their problems. They agree but wildly underpay me. I continue searching for work but now my resume says Network Administrator.
Two weeks ago I accepted a job offer for double my current salary at a local software development firm as a junior automation engineer. They said they hired me on with so little experience specifically because of my networking background, which their ops dept is weak in. I highlighted my 6 months experience as Network Administrator during my interviews.
My take away: Perception matters more than reality. If you start acting like something, people will treat you like that.2 -
- 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.
13 -
I REALLY HATE TECHNICAL PHONE INTERVIEWS!!!
I was asked: "What are the differences between C++ and Java?"
I got a mind blank at that point... Good thing it didn't last long and I came back with a reply.
But seriously, if you can't speak English clearly, why? Why? WHY?!
(I lost a whole question because I couldn't understand the interviewer. ☹)
At least it went "well" and now I have to improve the "technical" document and do 2 tests by Monday!11 -
My interview,
Introduction round.
Basic information round.
General Aptitude test.
Technical round 1
Technical round 2
Telephonic round
Telephonic technical round
And now i asked them for the results of my interview.
They told me to arrange another FUCKING TECHNICAL ROUND.
WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON.
IT'S BEEN FUCKING 2 MONTHS SINCE I'M GIVING INTERVIEWS..
I'm literally exhausted. And it looks like they are completing their project for free.1 -
Ok folks so u complained and I listened. Today instead of prepping for technical interviews... And bc the weather is nice... I am doing Spring cleaning!
6 -
Ha ha ha ha. Fucking morons!
You brag about being a highly skilled company.
You tell me I don’t have enough experience despite three years of uninterrupted activity where I currently work
You’re willing to give me a chance (I just don’t know how to express my gratitude)
BUT among your super talented team members you can’t find anybody capable of conducting a technical interview?? And you’ve been looking for over a month for someone who could do it?
Thanks for wasting my time with three useless HR interviews you worthless DIPSHITS!2 -
Gonna go to uni in a few months. So I applied to 2 companies for a side job. (10hrs/week - some kind of scholarship)
First interview:
Of all the applicants I seemed to be the only one with enough technical knowledge to be considered. :)
They rejected me still, because I don't have enough time to have a proper onboarding process. They offered that I could start off in the holidays in the second year of uni.
Second Interview:
Had a test with logic and a little bit of maths. Nearly completed that and then had a technical talk with their team lead. He said that I sound like I know my stuff. They are gonna contact me next week...
I think I aced the interviews, and being complimented on my knowledge feels validating.
Let's see where this is going...4 -
After I spent 4 years in a startup company (it was literally just me and a guy who started it).
Being web dev in this company meant you did everything from A-Z. Mostly though it was shitty hacky "websites/webapps" on one of the 3 shitty CMSs.
At some point we had 2 other devs and 2 designers (thank god he hired some cause previously he tried designing them on his own and every site looked like a dead puppy soaked in ass juice).
My title changed from a peasant web dev to technical lead which meant shit. I was doing normal dev work + managing all projects. This basically meant that I had to show all junior devs (mostly interns) how to do their jobs. Client meetings, first point of contact for them, caring an "out of hours" support phone 24/7, new staff interviews, hiring, training and much more.
Unrealistic deadlines, stress and pulling hair were a norm as was taking the blame anytime something went wrong (which happened very often).
All of that would be fine with me if I was paid accordingly, treated with respect as a loyal part of the team but that of course wasn't the case.
But that wasn't the worst part about this job. The worst thing was the constant feeling that I'm falling behind, so far behind that I'll never be able to catch up. Being passionate about web development since I was a kid this was scaring the shit out of me. Said company of course didn't provide any training, time to learn or opportunities to progress.
After these 4 years I felt burnt out. Programming, once exciting became boring and stale. At this point I have started looking for a new job but looking at the requirements I was sure I ain't going anywhere. You see when I was busy hacking PHP CMSs, OOPHP became a thing and javascript exploded. In the little spare time I had I tried online courses but everyone knows it's not the same, doing a course and actually using certain technology in practice. Not going to mention that recruiters usually expect a number of years of experience using the technology/framework/language.
That was the moment I lost faith in my web dev future.
Happy to say though about a month later I did get a job in a great agency as a front end developer (it felt amazing to focus on one thing after all these years of "full-stack bullshit), got a decent salary (way more than I expected) and work with really amazing and creative people. I get almost too much time to learn new stuff and I got up to speed with the latest tech in a few weeks. I'm happy.
Advice? I don't really have any, but I guess never lose faith in yourself.3 -
Part 3: today has become a blog post.
WARNING: this is loooooooooooong
Background is my boss and I were talking about hiring the right people, also generalists vs specialists.
Essentially John and I are the specialists. When something goes wrong it ends up escalating to either him or me. But this is not sustainable as I can't handle the stress and most likely he eventually won't either.
And this goes back to general hiring standards.
All the good people leave and the remaining ones are stuck with all the problems and eventually for one reason or another they leave as well... or the code keeps getting worse... until someone decides to scrap everything and build a new one... But now the only people left to lead teams are monkeys.
Now current problem is the only person that can replace me is John and the only person that can replace John, at least in handling issues, is me...
It's a certain type of person, people that have a growth mindset and can pick things up.
Google and strong tech companies are full of these types of people where if needed there's always someone that can step in and help. They have the background and the ability to quickly learn. This also lets them innovate and identify and solve new problems.
I think that's what the technical interviews are for, to find these types of people.
And you really can't train this. I'm not sure how effective our "new" training program on high quality development is but I'm guessing it's not. Excellence has to be in the culture and it's not something that can be built overnight or by randomly hiring people.
So in a sense, tech companies aren't really paying well, they're paying cost to what their hires are really worth, after they've verified it, and enough to keep them from leaving.3 -
I work in a contract position and reviewed the code of a senior engineer recently. Regretfully I can't provide context to preserve anonymity.
He wrote awful JavaScript;
- handled a single DOM element with 2 different frontend libraries
- used the logical operator && to 'chain' two methods (it didn't work) instead of returning a boolean value,
- broke everything down into minute detail (a comment box had 7 components!),
- API calls were made for every component update instead of maintaining local component state where it made sense, which meant UI updates were slow,
- animated EVERYTHING, which made my Firefox on Xubuntu i7 64bit with 16GB RAM beg for mercy.
I had a rough couple of months with interviews, with 2nd stage technical interviewers throwing impossible tasks at me.
Example:
1. Create an online Python code editor with Javascript which can compile Python bytecode,
2. Use Mesos and Kafka to create real time architecture for Tensorflow with a Javascript frontend in 1 day. (I asked, and wasn't allowed to use Kubernetes or serverless architecture),
3. Hack a website from the browser's address bar using parameters ( what?!! ),
Obviously, the next time I meet a 'senior', I'm going to tell him talk is cheap;
'SHOW ME YOUR CODE.'3 -
So I am going to talk about interviews from a different perspective, the being on the question side of the technical interview.
We have had four interviews for a single Senior Dev position. I threw some very hard questions at the people and some very easy ones. The thing that amazed me was that people actually went for an interview when they where woefully under qualified.
The latest in this list was someone who didn't understand how inheritance works for object orientated programming, and when I asked him something very specific he needed to look at his notes...
The person that I felt did the best on the interview was the person that didn't have every answer but said clearly that he didn't know and talked about his ability and desire to learn. The people that failed the worst were the ones that were certain, arrogant, and wrong.
Technical interviews are fun 😏4 -
I am conducting technical interviews for about 10 years now.
I swear to god, the applicants keep getting dumber and dumber.
Getting more and more ashamed to talk about data structures, design patters or even the most basic algorithms, everyone with a graduation badge from udemy is now a software engineer. Fuck this shit.
17 -
Fml... you keep getting the weekly discussions right on point.
I started with the last guys right out of university... just out of Hospital.
With a brand new degree and a Crohn’s diagnosis I stepped into the first place I found hiring. They were good guys, after a junior dev... to get stuck in their muck.
I did! I nailed project after project, tricky development after tricky development. I spent 5 years with them and over those years things changed.
They had a mass cull... the original idea was to get rid of the useless middle managers, the ones managing other managers being managed by another manager for no real reason.... the ones that do fuck all with their day.
But the fucking idiots upstairs put the job of working out the cull in the shitty middle managers hands.
So, instead, they cut the titles senior, junior and everything in between. Everyone was just a thing, no senior things, no junior things. Just things.
Once they’d done that they said “we’ll we have this many things, they’re all the same, let’s get rid of the things with the highest pay checks because the other things can do it just as well for less money”...
And that’s how they cut 50% of their senior techs.
I was one of the ones left behind but the damage became obvious quick. The middle managers barked out orders at people who couldn’t complete them, and everything went to shit.
My team was rebranded twice in as many years... an obvious ploy for funding, but the cost of the team fluctuated like hell because contractors had to fill the senior positions at 3 times the cost.
Then the managers started barking out Self contradictory orders. Do this, but this way...
This would work, but not that way... try explaining that to a group of non-technical, useless as fuck middle managers. It took months, and shit flows downstream so we got the bulk of the hassle for it.
Then my boy Morpheus, got a warning... they threatened his contract for saying “this will work, but not that way”.
He kept the contract, and the manager giving him the warning said he didn’t think he should... but he, and all the middle fuckwits don’t have the balls to stand up against nonsense.
That was the breaking point for me, I handed in my notice and told them a month was what they could have.
I didn’t have a position or an idea of where to go, a few long-standing offers as back up in a pinch but not the perfect job.
On the Thursday I decided I was done, I let my manager know. Then I boshed the fuck out of my CV and updated my profiles.
My phone started ringing off the hook, a senior NG2/MEAN/Ionic dev on the market is like candy to recruiters. They’re lovely too.
I went to a few interviews that were okay but not great. Then a company got in touch... one that I immediately recognised as an IT book publisher. They said they were looking for NG/NG2 devs, senior. winner! Set up the interview.
So I’d spent the weekend with the missus, about an hour away from mine and 2 from the interview. I hadn’t planned on staying there but at 6ish she looked over at me and said “do you have to go” <- imagine that with puppy dog eyes from a gorgeous Slovenian lass.
I folded quicker than a shitty pancake toss.
We spent the night together but that meant I had to be up at 6, to go back to mine, iron my interview clothes and make it to the train to manage the interview. Fuck. I did it, but I was at the interview wired on caffeine and struggling to be awake and coherent. I still managed, that’s what I do, I make do and try to do well regardless of the situation.
That comes from being ill btw, when you’re dealt a shitty hand you learn to play it well.
They were good guys, the heads all knew what they were on about, not the middle management bs I was used to.
They demoed me live with an ng1 test, which was awesome as hell to play with.
We chatted, friendly and cool guys! I loved the place.
The end of the week they got me in for second round. Ng2 and competence test, again I went for it!
Positive feedback and a “we’ll get back to you ASAP, should be by Tuesday”...
Tuesday was the Tuesday before the Friday I was due to leave the old company... I was cutting it close.
On the Monday the offers started rolling in, a few C# ASP MVC positions, cool but I was holding out for the guys I’d interviewed with.
Then Tuesday comes around, I’m nervous as fuck but it’s okay because I knew regardless I can pay the rent in December with one of the offers.
Then said yes!
The thing that seemed most important in the process was my ability to talk to any fucker. If you’re coming up to interview, talk to everyone, the grocer, your barista, the binmen, anyone. Practice that skill above all others.
I start tomorrow morning! I can’t wait.
Final thought: middle managers are taints.7 -
The story of how I got my dream job.
I was working for a company with a job I got just after graduating university. It was ok, not very exciting tech but I learned a lot by just surrounding myself with professional code monkeys. I was there for about a year when my company bought parts of another company and there was talk about people getting fired. This made me worried since I was the last one to get hired, so I started looking around for other jobs. I received this e-mail from a company saying they were looking for interns, what a coincidence! I adjusted my CV and sent it in.
--A few weeks pass--
It's Friday and I'm at a dinner party, it's 10pm and someone is calling me. I pick up and it's a recruiter from this company. I get very nervous but the alcohol helps me keep my cool, I pass the initial idiot test and they invite me for an interview. Yay!
I go to work on Monday and in a 1-on-1 and I tell my boss about the upcoming interview, he gives me a high-five :)
The interview is approaching and I'm feeling that I'm about to get sick, I refuse to believe this so I start taking a lot of medicine (painkillers, cough medicine etc.). I feel a bit better and thank the gods for medication.
--D-day--
I wake up, put on my nicest clothes and get on the train. I had one hour to spare just in case, which was well needed because the fucking train is late by 30 minutes. I'm still heavily medicated because of my ongoing fever. When I arrive I basically have to run there and somehow I manage to pick up a coffee on the way there which I devour in two seconds. I'm ready for the interview!
Some guy meets me in reception and the first thing he says is "My colleague doesn't speak our language so we'll have to speak english". This is fine, I speak good english but I was not prepared for this so it caught me off-guard and made me even more nervous. We get in and start talking. Things are going OK despite my numbed brain. I try to make eye-contact to make a good impression with the foreign engineer but he keeps staring somewhere which is making me nervous.
We get to the technical part on a whiteboard and this is where my brain decides to stop communicating. I'm presented a simple task which I'm struggling with finishing, and I feel the embarrassment coming over me. "NOOOOO THIS IS MY DREAM JOB, THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING!" I'm thinking to myself. After making myself look like a complete arsehole for some time we wrap it up and just before I step out the door I say to the engineer "You should checkout my Github page, I have lots of interesting stuff there" and he says "I'll be sure to do that" but I don't believe him.
I leave the office in fury (of myself) and make my way to the train station and even though it's the middle of the day I quickly devour two beers to calm my nerves and make me feel a bit better. I was so damn disappointed in myself, I wasted the opportunity of a lifetime! I go back home to my regular (now shitty) job.
--Two days later--
I get a call from an unknown number. I pick up the phone and it's the same recruiter guy. "So how did you think it went?" he says. "To be honest, I think it went really bad", I replied. "What? Really? Because they loved you, you got the job". (this was an obvious recruiter lie) "... wat, are you sure you called the correct person?" I said and he just laughed. The day after I quit my old job the whole department gets fired - such impeccable timing.
--A few months later--
I finish my internship and they want to keep me. I'm so happy. The engineer that was in the interview works on my team. I ask him "Why did you hire me? You know as well as I do that my interview was horrible". It turns out he _did_ look at my Github profile and that's how he knew I could write code. I also heard later that for my position there was about 2000 applicants and somehow I made the interviews.
I still work there today and I couldn't be happier (Sorry for the long text).3 -
It's my end of probation and I just got demoted, from originally "Senior dev" to "dev".
My manager found it a bit difficult to tell me but funny enough, I am completely fine with it apart from the little dent on my pay check. Let me talk about the bad first: money. I believe I have been on the lower end of the market pay range anyways so this step-back gives me about 5% cut, which is acceptable and fair enough.
And the good? Quite a bit. When I got this job offer 6 months ago, it was when everything literally went to shit. I was upset with a somehow not so smart but stubborn tech lead and I desperately wanted to quit. Then I got the offer, which even after 2 interviews I still didn't recall it was a job ads for "technical lead". The manager thought I was not there yet but wanted to keep me as a senior dev. Then, this pandemic almost took away this job. My manager brought my case to the CEO and convinced him to keep me, by saying a lot of good things about me (which I think might not be true for the tech side...)
Throughout the whole 6 months I have been working remotely from home. WFH is not new to me, just this time it's very challenging as I was starting a new job. I have been struggling to keep my pace. All people in the team are nice. However if I don't reach out, no one would notice I need help. And with zero knowledge for this job, I got stuck with "I don't know what I don't know". This ranges from company culture, practice, new tech.. everything. So, that's how this 6 months feels long, but also short.
In our review meeting I think my manager finally realise this. Otherwise he would have gone for the "terminate employment" option. Taking away the "senior" title also takes away the expectation of "I should know XYZ", which I don't. I told him I am kinda happy with it because this sets me up for a more comfortable position to catch my breathe. He told me he noticed my improvement along the way. I told him yes I have been putting in efforts but just given the situation it's not as quick as anyone would expect. We're on the same page now.
So compared to my previous job, I got paid less. But in return, I get many more opportunities to expose myself to new tech. I get a good team who are respectful and open-minded. This is exactly what I was looking for and the drive for me to quit my previous job.
Not to mention I got a reality check. This is also an indicator for me starting to become an imposter, which is the thing I despise most in the industry. I don't want people to value me for how many years I have got in my career. I want to prove myself by what I am capable of. If I'm not there, I should and will get there.
And the last thing which I'm not very keen but it's 100% worth mentioning, is that my manager said I should aim for taking the "senior" role back. He said the salary raise is waiting when I get there. But... Let me just take my time.4 -
So true and why I've gone on and on over years saying technical interviews are just crap... Good solutions cannot be thought of in 30mins unless you recite what you remembered beforehand.
Are you looking for creators and thinkers or robots
-
probably the one who sent me 3 mails within 10 minutes regarding 3 different positions, and all were addressed to someone else (Hello, Mr. Completely Different Name), so i replied telling him that's not me, and gave him the info to fix it in their db. he apologized profusely and said he fixed the error.
Next day I got two mails for another two positions, with the same incorrect name.
Or the one with whom I had half an hour phone "interview" for a specific position, they couldn't answer even the most basic technical question about the project, but invited me to an in-person interview and said my questions will be answered there, the phone interview was just to make sure they don't send completely offtopic people to the interview with the client (so far acceptable).
On the in-person interview, it was partially a repetition of the phone one, but okay, lady from the company is talking to me first time in her life. We get to the part where I can ask my questions, so I ask those basics about the project again, and her answer is:
"Oh, i don't know, i'm not a technical person, you'd have to ask that to the technical person from the company, I'm an hr person from the recruiting company."
"Wait... so... not only was this whole meeting a waste of my time, but you also lied about what it is, when you scheduled it with me on the end of the phone interview?"
"Well... it wasn't a waste of time, we like to meet the candidates in person before we forward them to actual interviews in the company, to make sure that they're not completely offtopic."
"... and how exactly do you think you'd be able to evaluate that, since you're not at all a technical person and know nothing about the project??"
" Well, i talk to programmers a lot, so i've picked up quite a bit of the terms."
...7 -
I had 5 round of detailed technical interviews on java, springboot, React and Google Cloud.
Finally it seems they are going to make me an offer.
Last conversation was with the team I should work with.
They use dot.net, AWS and maybe maybe some angular.
I wann cry.
I'll say yes anyway.
Maybe the idea is to get some new perspective from me?
Or they want to be sure they will be better than me?
Or otherwise, fuck them?5 -
So here's my problem. I've been employed at my current company for the last 12 months (next week is my 1 year anniversary) and I've never been as miserable in a development job as this.
I feel so upset and depressed about working in this company that getting out of bed and into the car to come here is soul draining. I used to spend hours in the evenings studying ways to improve my code, and was insanely passionate about the product, but all of this has been exterminated due to the following reasons.
Here's my problems with this place:
1 - Come May 2019 I'm relocating to Edinburgh, Scotland and my current workplace would not allow remote working despite working here for the past year in an office on my own with little interaction with anyone else in the company.
2 - There is zero professionalism in terms of work here, with there being no testing, no planning, no market research of ideas for revenue generation – nothing. This makes life incredibly stressful. This has led to countless situations where product A was expected, but product B was delivered (which then failed to generate revenue) as well as a huge amount of development time being wasted.
3 - I can’t work in a business that lives paycheck to paycheck. I’ve never been somewhere where the salary payment had to be delayed due to someone not paying us on time. My last paycheck was 4 days late.
4 - The management style is far too aggressive and emotion driven for me to be able to express my opinions without some sort of backlash.
5 - My opinions are usually completely smashed down and ignored, and no apology is offered when it turns out that they’re 100% correct in the coming months.
6 - I am due a substantial pay rise due to the increase of my skills, increase of experience, and the time of being in the company, and I think if the business cannot afford to pay £8 per month for email signatures, then I know it cannot afford to give me a pay rise.
7 - Despite having continuously delivered successful web development projects/tasks which have increased revenue, I never receive any form of thanks or recognition. It makes me feel like I am not cared about in this business in the slightest.
8 - The business fails to see potential and growth of its employees, and instead criticises based on past behaviour. 'Josh' (fake name) is a fine example of this. He was always slated by 'Tom' and 'Jerry' as being worthless, and lazy. I trained him in 2 weeks to perform some basic web development tasks using HTML, CSS, Git and SCSS, and he immediately saw his value outside of this company and left achieving a 5k pay rise during. He now works in an environment where he is constantly challenged and has reviews with his line manager monthly to praise him on his excellent work and diverse set of skills. This is not rocket science. This is how you keep employees motivated and happy.
9 - People in the business with the least or zero technical understanding or experience seem to be endlessly defining technical deadlines. This will always result in things going wrong. Before our mobile app development agency agreed on the user stories, they spent DAYS going through the specification with their developers to ensure they’re not going to over promise and under deliver.
10 - The fact that the concept of ‘stealing data’ from someone else’s website by scraping it daily for the information is not something this company is afraid to do, only further bolsters the fact that I do not want to work in such an unethical, pathetic organisation.
11 - I've been told that the MD of the company heard me on the phone to an agency (as a developer, I get calls almost every week), and that if I do it again, that the MD apparently said he would dock my pay for the time that I’m on the phone. Are you serious?! In what world is it okay for the MD of a company to threaten to punish their employees for thinking about leaving?! Why not make an attempt at nurturing them and trying to find out why they’re upset, and try to retain the talent.
Now... I REALLY want to leave immediately. Hand my notice in and fly off. I'll have 4 weeks notice to find a new role, and I'll be on garden leave effective immediately, but it's scary knowing that I may not find a role.
My situation is difficult as I can't start a new role unless it's remote or a local short term contract because my moving situation in May, and as a Junior to Mid Level developer, this isn't the easiest thing to do on the planet.
I've got a few interviews lined up (one of which was a final interview which I completed on Friday) but its still scary knowing that I may not find a new role within 4 weeks.
Advice? Thoughts? Criticisms?
Love you DevRant <33 -
I recently accepted my first "real" Dev position. This has been a huge hurdle for me.
So my degree is in graphic design and it's pretty much what I spent the first 2-3 years after university doing. In fact, when I started at the place I am now (I am still working my notice) I was hired as a creative artworker.
I had always had a website I put together with some basic frontend skills, but always assumed the backend stuff was "beyond me". But, given the option here, I asked to be sent on a PHP course. Holy shit I took to it like a duck to water. Over the next few months I got my feet wet building a new website for the company, building out a little intranet, all that good stuff. I went from procedural spaghetti monstrosities to nice, OOP, documented code. It was beautiful. And no one here really have a fuck.
About 6 months ago, I started trying to leave. This was hard. I actually had several interviews for design positions, but always got turned down for some variation of "you're very technical and we think you'd get bored here" and thank god really, because they're right. I could never get a look in for Dev jobs though, because on paper I had no experience, hell my job title was still "Digital Designer" despite over a year of developing here.
But it finally happened. Through someone I used to know I got my foot in the door for a developer position. In the interview they even told me if it was a junior position they'd hire me on the spot - but sadly it wasn't. I had a good time though, a good laugh, and had a lot of fun finally, for the first time in my life, "working" and talking with other developers.
Over the next couple of weeks the agent kept telling me I had done really well and they were just dragging their feet getting things sorted, but I gave up hope a little. So imagine my surprise when I found out they turned the role into a junior one for me!
And so now, I get to go to a job where my job title includes the word "Developer". To some of you that might not mean much, but to me it's a fucking medal I wish I could mount on a plaque on my wall.4 -
I recently quit a job which I excelled at technically, but professionally I struggled. The best way to put it is that I was incompatible with my newly appointed manager. My frustration with that manager led to many inappropriate comments that I made in front of him and a couple of other senior leaders. To be clear, I never cursed at them or called them names or raised my voice, but I did make (multiple) comments about their ignorance of projects or lack of experience in this speciality. I’m sure you can tell that didn’t go over well.
Ultimately, my behavior got me put on a PIP by my manager. He explained that I was excellent at the job, but not mature enough to do well. This obviously greatly upset me, and I quit on the spot. I know what a PIP means and I wasn’t about to get fired. I had been at the company for about three years and have dozens of excellent professional references (at this company and others) from as high up as the C-suite to as low as individual contributing peers who I worked closely with. They can all honestly and passionately speak to my technical and soft skills very highly. However, this doesn’t seem to matter in my situation.
Overall, I excel at interviews. Within days after quitting I had over eight different interviews lined up. I made it to final rounds of five and got two offers already (still waiting to hear back from the other three). The offers were both contingent on passing employment and background checks. Well, I gave my references, have no criminal history and never lied on any part of my background or history (though I did not admit to my emotional issues with my previous management team). Needless to say, I was shocked when both offers got rescinded.
One company claimed it was due to a change in the role, and the other told me frankly that the “manager did some digging on my history and unfortunately doesn’t feel like I would be a culture fit.” I looked up the manager on LinkedIn and lo and behold, they are connected with my former manager. This has me worried as back-channel references are super common in my industry, and my industry is not very big overall. My manager appears to be very well connected with many of the companies I am interviewing with or hope to in the future.
I will admit that my behavior previously was very disrespectful and probably deserved the reprimand, but now I feel that I am not able to move past it and learn from this experience as my reputation in the industry seems to be damaged. I’m still fairly early in my career overall and am learning how to handle office politics. It’s been a big struggle for me, but I do get better with each passing year.
Anyway, I’ve decided to wait for the other three final stage companies that I’m in talks with before I officially decide that this manager is my blocker, but assuming he is, what do you recommend I do to get past this? Should I talk to him? As this is all fresh, I’m not sure I can do that now, but maybe in a few months? Either way, I need a job now and can’t afford to go more than two months without a paycheck (and I don’t qualify for unemployment as I quit). What do you recommend I do?7 -
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...8 -
Took me a year after graduation to land a job that stuck. Submitted about 100 job applications, most of which were immediate or semi-immediate denials. Got through one screen call and one technical call with Google before getting passed on. I did two technicals with G.E. where I really thought I knew my stuff...but didn't make the cut. I finally landed a job with a contractor for the Department of Defense, but my clearance was going to take over a year to finish, so they let me go after a couple weeks.
Every day, I would sit at Starbucks for eight hours; four of which, I would apply for jobs and practice for interviews. The other four I would self-medicate on Steam and wonder if the last six years of schooling was worth it. I was ready to move out of state and/or cut my losses to find a new industry when I was blessed with my current job.
For anyone going through what I did, don't jump straight to doubting your skills. Breaking in to an industry can be very hard. Have patience, keep getting better at what you do, and be open to opportunities. 💯👍 -
I have some phone interviews coming up next week but I've never had these before. Usually I do online tests, shared code, or in person as I'm deaf.
This time I just want to try using a voice relay, so v basically whatever the person says it's transcribed... So wondering what do you actually talk about in these "quick calls"?
Party of the reason I don't like phone is because there are a lot of technical terms which will probably screw it up... But just wanted to give it a try and not 100% interested this time...
Was intending to, applied, then other things came up so now not so sure, some came back so just gonna wing it for the experience I guess1 -
It’s funny being on the other side of interviews. People say how complicated it is to get a job, and it is. But then they show up to a third round Senior Software Engineer technical interview and is unable to write a function on the white board in any language or even pseudo code to reverse a string. That isn’t complicated stuff...
Argh, very frustrating.2 -
What do you tell interviewers as a "Senior developer" when they ask you what you do at your current job.
I've been with my current for almost 8 years, since graduating... Few different time but not very well managed (semi/barely agile). Hasn't really provided any skill growth opportunities. Mostly fixing production issues, chasing other teams.
The projects I've worked on are in many different languages either enhancements or some standalone stuff. But nothing that's huge and I don't think I've learned anything from them. I usually apply what I learn and practice outside of work to work.
So to me I can probably list a whole lot of projects but to me their not that amazing, I didn't learn anything from them.
Also about those algorithm questions. I've never used any of this stuff actually at work. Concepts yes but not how do you implement ... And honestly I've never once had a situation that required algorithmic thinking other than maybe writing recursive functions in rare occasions...
But to me I've never once done anything harder or new which I haven't already done on my own....
Sorry for the disorderly rambling this turned into... which is sorta a problem too.
Everytime I think about interviews, I want to give rants about we technical questions are BS, how I probably have enough real experience to tackle any problem and come up with a good plan/solution (in a realistic timeframe, not 20 minutes from design to implementation)2 -
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....4 -
Worst recruiter experience wasn't mine, but it was one I overheard:
Buddy of mine who, like me, was older does a couple rounds of interviews at a nice place and gets a call back from the company recruiter. He puts the recruiter on speaker phone so I can hear too.
They are very nice and tell him they selected another candidate, bummer but no big deal.
Hey I the age of ghosting at least they called right?
He is still upbeat and asks if there was anything he could do better interview or technical stuff.
She tells him "We weren't sure you would fit into the culture."
This is a bit odd as this guy is outgoing and one of those folks that everyone loves being around and working with, just a naturally likeable guy.
He asks what she meant about culture fit and she responds "Well you're older..."
He thinks he misheard her and asks again "Your older and we don't think you will fit in that way."4 -
Had a technical interview with AWS on Wednesday. Woke up Thursday with the flu. Thanks, body, good to know the long tradition of sickness following completion of highly anticipated task is alive and well. Had to reschedule interviews and hold off on scheduling other interviews. (Damn it!)
To protect my repos from my brain on brain fog, anything I’ve done the past few days have been on branches titled “fever” or some variant thereof (“fever1”, “fever2” when there were two approaches I was trying).2 -
During 6 months I updated myself day and night on java, springboot and AWS.
I failed most of the technical interviews on my preferred stack, however I got a job, where the probable stack is C#, dotnet and Azure.
So, I have a couple of weeks of very good quality rant ahead.
I just started.
hmmm let's see, should I use Visual Studio or Visual Studio CODE. I spent the morning before understanding they were different. I could have spent the morning Studying how To Visually fuck you, lame name chooser.
Now I'm following a tutorial.
I need .NET 5.0, but guess what, I have .NET core 3.1.
But wait, fuck, .NET and .NET CORE are not the same thing! Will .net core 3.1 work for a .NET project or not?
And there goes the afternoon. Is he the same guy who choose the names?
I'll tie you with a barbed wire net and fuck you to the core, you asshole7 -
I dedicate this to all of those hr gurus from top tech companies that rejected me cause they think I won’t fit their culture despite me crushing all their technical interviews, fuck them and their soft skills stupid questions.
I won’t fit there anyways cause I can express my own thoughts using sarcasm and irony and I’m not scared of doing it cause I don’t care about your amazing company culture that prefer robots not people with a little sense of humor. I don’t care about my failures cause there was so many I don’t give a fuck. And by the way if you ask me why I want to work in your amazing company I would always say cause you asked me to work for you and now you treat me like shit. Then 10 years later you blame everyone for toxic culture lol.2 -
How would you all suggest preparing for technical interviews? What has worked for you? What hasn't? I know it varies by person and company but I'd love to hear your experiences!2
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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.9 -
!rant
Does anyone know what the **day-to-day** differences are between working in IT (banks, hedge funds) vs tech (Google, Facebook, Netflix).
In my mind, I see Hell and Heaven. And there's a giant wall in between called "technical interviews + algorithms and data structures".
I'm on the Hell side... And not sure if I should climb the wall 😔
Is the wall even that big?8 -
1. Applied to a company as a senior dev and sent them my prefered rate
2. Got rejected
3. Contacted recruiter and asked why. The rate seems to be not within their budget
4. Knocked down my rate by 15 percent, did their intro and technical interviews
5. Received an email with feedback that on some topics during technical interview I displayed senior knowledge and on others a very strong mid knowledge. Basically they are trying to gaslight me and presented me a final offer with a knocked down rate by another 30 percent this time. Bitch thinks if I reduced my rate I will do it that for second time.
And they are supposed to be US based company. Offering me a rate that I could get 10km away from my home lol.
Gonna ghost them for a couple days and respons them on Monday that I would like to proceed with the original rate that was quoted by them.
Fucking idiots expect a senior to know everything. If there was a person like that he would be charging at least double of what they are offering.3 -
To all people attending technical interviews.
If the job spec asks for a specific toolset (SQL server and ssis in this case), small hint.
Mention the fucking tools in your answers to questions!4 -
I just had a thought while thinking about Algorithms and data structures. Honestly other than for technical interviews I have never really had to use specific implementations.
Then I suddenly had a thought... What if I wanted to build my own operating system... I would also learn c++ as well....
I can't think of a reason to build my own OS though... Hm.. What about a programming language? Would that be like a mini-OS, and also need all this stuff?2 -
"The thing I want to change is very simple.."
Day starts off great again by manager saying the above - which is already problem with her limited technical knowledge - and then she proceeds by wanting to change multiple properties of a primary key in our live db.
I really hope my interviews go well this week and I can leave this place soon.. -
I need help and advice!
I currently work as an consultant at a large corporation. Came onboard for 1-2 years to help rebuild one of their platforms. From the beginning the mindset was that the finished product should not be developed based on anything else than customer testimonials and interviews regarding functionality and design. However, they’re building their platform developed and distributed by this other company. Basically they bought a system that is incomplete regarding to being compliant to the specifications brought to them when they decided which system to go with. Now we’re trying to build around all the issue this platform is causing us. The code base for the system is like something a monkey did with their feet. Nothing makes sense and it’s layers on top of layers of 10 year old code. I f-ing hate it. I don’t know what to do. We have some many technical limitation that it’s impossible to create the vision they had from the start.
I’ve been thinking about talking to the highest chief in the department as he has been pissed earlier about project managers not escalating issue to him earlier. But I don’t want to step on anyones toes. Should I leave the project? Should I talk to the chief? What do I do? I’m miserable🤯7 -
I fucking hate my job! This site sucks ass and I have no motivation to work on it! Would love to get a new job with a fresh sleek site, but unfortunately my autism kicks in bad during technical interviews. Oh fuck me!5
-
1) Learning little to nothing useful in formal post-secondary and wasting tons of time and money just to have pain and suffering.
"Let's talk about hardware disc sectors divisions in the database course, rather than most of you might find useful for industry."
"Lemme grade based on regurgitating my exact definitions of things, later I'll talk about historical failed network protocols, that have little to no relevance/importance because they fucking lost and we don't use them. Practical networking information? Nah."
"Back in the day we used to put a cup of water on top of our desktops, and if it started to shake a lot that's how you'd know your operating system was working real hard and 'thrashing' "
"Is like differentiation but is like cat looking at crystal ball"
"Not all husbands beat their wives, but statistically...." (this one was confusing and awkward to the point that the memory is mostly dropped)
Streams & lambdas in java, were a few slides in a powerpoint & not really tested. Turns out industry loves 'em.
2) Landed my first student job and get shoved on an old legacy project nobody wants to touch. Am isolated and not being taught or helped much, do poorly. Boss gets pissed at me and is unpleasant to work with and get help from. Gets to the point where I start to wonder if he starts to try and create a show of how much of a nuisance I am. He meddle with some logo I'm fixing, getting fussy about individual pixels and shades, and makes a big deal of knowing how to use GIMP and how he's sitting with me micromanaging. Monthly one on one's were uncomfortable and had him metaphorically jerking off about his lifestory career wise.
But I think I learned in code monkey industry, you gotta be capable of learning and making things happen with effectively no help at all. It's hard as fuck though.
3) Everytime I meet an asshole who knows more and accomplish than I do (that's a lot of people) with higher TC than me (also a lot of people). I despair as I realize I might sound like that without realizing it.
4) Everytime I encounter one of my glaring gaps in my knowledge and I'm ashamed of the fact I have plenty of them. Cargo cult programming.
5) I can't do leetcode hards. Sometimes I suck at white board questions I haven't seen anything like before and anything similar to them before.
6) I also suck at some of the trivia questions in interviews. (Gosh I think I'd look that up in a search engine)
7) Mentorship is nigh non-existent. Gosh I'd love to be taught stuff so I'd know how to make technical design/architecture decisions and knowing tradeoffs between tech stack. So I can go beyond being a codemonkey.
8) Gave up and took an ok job outside of America rather than continuing to grind then try to interview into a high tier American company. Doubtful I'd ever manage to break in now, and TC would be sweet but am unsure if the rest would work out.
9) Assholes and trolls on stackoverflow, it's quite hard to ask questions sometimes it feels and now get closed, marked as dupe, or downvoted without explanation.3 -
Just had my reasoning for not doing technical projects for interviews proven.
Pass the first 2 stages of interview (including showing some personal portfolio projects) then after a week of hearing nothing get sent a technical project to complete.
Spend every spare moment for a week polishing this thing, decent front end, quick and efficient back end, low traffic between fe, be, persistence etc.
Submit the code at midday ready for the interview the following day, only for the company to phone at 5pm and say all is fine and the code is great for the final interview (walkthrough) the next day, then phone 5:10pm phone and pull the position.
That company has just had free work done which should have cost 1 weeks worth of fees, using the premise of a job at the end of it, only to take the code that they are super happy with and run with no payout.10 -
Know your shit and don't give a fuck.
Sometimes interviewers are just idiots or monkeys.
I dunno, I've had a few interviews where it just doesn't click. While I'm sitting there, I say to myself: this is nothing like what you said on your job description.. and I've seen all your "technical questions" on Google -
Anybody else sometimes do not like being a team lead?
I am the senior most person in my team (in fact took interviews of the rest of them). While I love the work and the team, I sometimes feel that I do not get to code that much. I am mostly assigning work, or helping others. Even if I get in the zone, there is always someone who needs some assistance or some meeting, which breaks the flow. Also the tension about non technical stuff like salary increments, giving feedback and assigning backups. I do love it mostly, but my ass is nearly always on fire. The team loves me though. I am still young, took this responsibility because the owner trusted me with this (he has no complaints). Thoughts ?2 -
After working three months on this company I quit today. And with this would be 3 different jobs on the current year.
Rather be the rat who leave the ship than the drowned captain.
Only thing I can get out of this experience is don’t trust on companies that doesn’t do technical interviews.7 -
**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...).2 -
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.5 -
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)_/¯1 -
Again with the fucking idiot recruiters...
Wasted several hours in interviews only to find a significant travel requirement that I can't do. Wouldn't have gone beyond the initial email because a fuckwad recruiter didn't think to ask all the questions recruiters should.
Are recruiters just 'developers' who didn't have the smarts to develop code and so settled for technical recruiting? They sure seem stupid sometimes6 -
A few months back, I was having the last few days of my college / university. Already had a job offer, wasn't fond of attending classes, so I had not much to do. I had been a student placement coordinator, and a few of other student coordinators along with the University Placement Cell decided to overhaul the current placement structure with a new, more efficient one. So, they asked whether I could take interviews (along with a few others) for new placement coordinators, who'd take over the following year, making the existing posts null and void.
So, I was interviewing a 2nd year girl for the technical team. In her form, she had mentioned that she'd been an executive member of the programming club of our University, founded the previous year, was peaking in terms of popularity among other clubs.
I found it strange, and during the interview, I kept pushing it until she accepted that she was just a member and not an executive member.
Then, I asked, do you know Bugs Buggy (name changed)... She said, yes, he is the founder of that club. I said, I am, Bugs Buggy.
Felt thug life B)1 -
Been tasked with writing a simple Magento module as part of a technical test. It's doable but damn, it's a bit intimidating lol. Part of the test is rewriting the Core while I'm at it to display some extra stuff regarding this module.
Then I have another test after that. And who knows how many more with the rest of this week's interviews 😱1 -
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.7 -
Interviews... How many of you practice technical questions like from HackerRank, foobar?
How many try but then get so frustrated after 3hrs of getting stuck that you give up and decide to just wing it?3 -
i have a very casual and boring job. it's a b2b company and you can get an idea of how less work we get (or how fast i am) that it's day 1 of the sprint and i have almost finished all my tickets. my manager always praises me as someone fast whereas i see myself as pretty slow and this company even slower.
i feel like quitting, but the relax environment and stability of the company on paper makes me wonder of that would be a correct decision.
It's a deep tech company (not just meat e commerce or car rentals, a proper b2b analytics giant startup with good profitability) , our sdks are used by major startups and yet i find it boring.
I am an android dev who would love to stay at top of the game. my previous company used latest jetpack libraries, kotlin, modular architectures and stuff. everyday was a hectic chaos of life where there were deadlines, new requests coming in every few days and i was becoming the awesome fast android dev that i am now.
in this company there is no challenge for me.But the amount of free time has helped me grow beyond a single domain. i am currently hustling in 3 areas : my body( i started working out regularly, got my tummy under control), my technical skillset( started taking web dev classes) and my physical skillset (started taking driving and swimming lessons) . the amount of self growth time increases since company has a good leave and PTO policy
it all feels pretty good but the constant feeling of being left out from the android domain makes me think if i should give interviews. am i being stupid or what? my friends are all growing up with better salaries and packages. i am way better than some of them and equally capable as a few of them, so i sometimes feel being behind in finances too :/7 -
Am I the only one to think companies asking questions such as those for technical interviews don’t understand what software engineering/development is about ?
- How many layers does a webservice have?
- What framework do you use for unit testing ?
- How do you do dependency injection ?
Essentially questions that they deem black and white but really aren’t. Besides isn’t the core of the work to just adapt and learn while being smart about what things you implement ? I don’t get these questions for me it’s a sign that a company doesn’t understand the work I’ll be doing.
I think for a technical interview I’d much rather spend my time on a difficult algo question in the language of my choice for 30mins - 1h than 20mins answering close minded questions that don’t have to be.
This rant is mostly due to the fact I’ve done a few interviews with two companies and both behaved like that, I’m 100% certain I had the skills to do the jobs they were offering me (they both contacted me first) but both ended up denying me because my knowledge on their specific questions wasn’t detailed enough. I could have learnt their stack in about a week so I don’t know why that mentality exists.
I might be wrong about the core of the work though… what do you think?3 -
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(maybe)
So after taking a long weekend and applying to some different companies, doing some cultural fit and technical interviews, I thought to sit down and take a different look at my situation (with the help of my partner, of course, bless her patient soul).
* My work output isn't bad; all things considered, it's the people I work for who are doing a shitty job. If my project fails, I have to remind myself it's not my fault or my team's because we're doing all we can to the best of our abilities. I mean, it's not our fault we're being mismanaged.
* The best way I can effect change is if I am in a position to do so. Instead of looking outside, I should be challenging my way up - and if no opportunities are there, then I have to make them myself.
* This is still a year of uncertainty - starting fresh isn't going to be easy. In contrast, I've already built a rep in my current company - why throw it away because I work for sucky people?
Looking at my previous rants, they were definitely coming from a place of frustration; but as the saying goes, if I'm not part of the solution then I'm part of the problem. I'm gonna see how I can fix that then without clamboring for an escape hatch.
Yes, it was a very insightful Valentine's dinner conversation.1 -
A: Do you know Big O?
B: Yea I know Big O. Who doesn't know Big O?
A: So what's the Big O of X?
B: It's ....
A: Oh what about Y?
B: Oh that has a bigger Big O.
A: Hm... how about this one?
B: That's a really big Big O. Why not use mine?
A: Ooh that looks impressive, very small. So which Big O should we use?
B: Well there's a constant trade off, even though small is good, in this case I think the bigger one works better.4 -
Spent days telling people what to do. What the database fields should look like, went down to every little bit, which was annoying because I hired them to think for themselves.
Spent a couple days verifying this and that. "Is this field really needed?"
Of course it's needed, otherwise why would it be in the specs? It took me two fucking days to communicate on these things they could have just done in half an hour.
They do it wrong. It's been clearly outlined and it's still wrong.
Management then insists on more communication so things don't go wrong. We have meetings every day to discuss what must be done. Every other day we have meetings between another project leader to discuss what we just discussed. Every two days we have progress report meetings.
We spend 70% of the time communicating now and everyone still gets everything done wrong. This is why you have to be really, really careful when hiring. Technical interviews can just be giving someone a spec and seeing whether they can do it. -
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? 😀
1 -
!rant
[Update on previous rant at the bottom]
So I had the technical test last friday. I did not try to implement any automated test as it is not my forte.
I had three hours to showcase my knowledge of data structures and OOP so I did that.
The test was somewhat long actually, so I left out one part that I did not have time to implement: validation of input files.
Today I got feedback, everything went well, they liked my code and I only got two negatives: Error handling and automated tests xD
Now I'm going to the second phase: phone interviews and they are gonna asks the whys of my implementation.
I'll have to explain why I did not implement automated tests and the girl on the phone told me "they didn't like it much that you had no tests because tests are very important for us".
I guess I'll have to come clean and say that I'm not very strong on that but willing to learn, so I didn't want to risk it doing something I'm not really good at.
I hope it ends up well.
prev rant:
https://devrant.com/rants/1607302/...4 -
It started when life caught me off guard. It was one of those transition moment when you realized you are no longer a college student and you need to get a job.
I was clueless that time (still clueless - smh) that I didn't prepare my CV nor interviews. I got into panic mode and ask help from career service in my college (I rarely ask for help, and when I did that, I am really desperate).
Long story short, I got a job from the career service's connection. I don't think I did well in both the interview and technical test (of course, no prep or whatsoever, what do you expect?) but seems like we both in need of each other (maybe because my grades when I was in college is good... and maybe because my starting salary is low enough... and maybe because there was no better candidate at that moment) that I get picked.3 -
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!1 -
After over 250 hours of studying since October, and doing multiple mock interviews a week, I'm finally starting to feel more confident in myself. I feel confident in the work I've accomplished over the time at my current company, and can think about it more critically.
It also helps to know I have my first "on-site" next week, have multiple technical phone screenings set up, and know that I'll be jumping to a new company sooner than later.
Studying really pays off if you do it well. -
So, I've been at my current job for 2.5 years, I think I'm pretty close to a promotion.
Problem is, I'm feeling fucking burnt out, I don't enjoy my work at all. Part of it is office politics, part of it is my work feeling meaningless.
I've thought of looking for other jobs, but they all either want a ton of experience I don't have, or they pay way less than my current job.
I've also screwed up a couple of interviews because I just didn't seem interested in the other company (I think, it's hard to get good feedback from interviews, but when you get screened out by the recruiter it's not because of technical skills).
I'm just feeling fucking exhausted and wanted to vent, anyone else felt similar?4 -
I been casually looking for a new job as a senior software engineer. I have about 7 years of experience, mainly back end, and it seems like everyone has a different way of doing technical interviews. What type of questions would you expect to be asked? I've gotten everything thing from white board code and solutions (expected), technical questions (expected), to code an API from scratch (not hard, but not really a good judge of skills). How do you identify whether a job is a sweatshop vs. a good job?2
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Nothing much to ready today, keep scrolling..
I just asked you to keep scrolling, I am using this space to think out loud...
Damn you bloody rebel.. whatever..
Finally after a rough week, festivals, interviews, work stress, and pending tasks, I got a free weekend for myself to be with myself.
I managed to do bare minimum at work. My new line manager isn't quite pleased with how team and I am functioning but whatever.
On Fridays, I usually end the day early and start with personal tasks. I managed to finish some long pending activities.
Today, I was able to do a deep cleaning of digital housekeeping. Sorted some clashes with parents. manage to de-stress and relax my stiff neck muscles.
Apart from that I guess, I am all prepared to interview and get hired for a company on foreign land. I am confident that I can relocate to EU.
And for now, I am actively pursuing two of my hobbies, Music and Finances. I love managing my finances and learning more about technical aspects of audio and listening to more and more music.
I feel happier, relaxed, and calm. Having things under control is such a wonderful feeling.
And I am slowly building a framework to earn, manage, invest, and grow my finances. It's turning out really well. I have setup the base infrastructure.
For music, I have figured the fundamentals and now I will go out buy myself an DAC/AMP to build a portable rig.
This shit is so awesome and makes me happy. I am able to socialise at the end of each day so that keeps me going during the lock-down phase.
I have figured the top key and important things to do at work for my profile and I actually enjoy those.
1. Product discovery - talking to users/customers and finding their pain areas and opportunities to build the solution
2. Product vision/strategy - Dreaming on how the product would evolve and laying out a solid plan to materialise those dreams.
3. Roadmap and prioritisation - this should be self explanatory
4. Success metrics - I really want to get into data and I am getting opportunities to do so. This is super fun. This will help me analyse and show the impact of the what we are building and measuring it while making sure that LT recognises my and my teams' efforts.
I want to and I will excel these 4 keys skills of my profile and be more efficient at my job.
This will give me more time to pursue my hobbies (which will change over time and want to enjoy them the most while I am at them).
Guys, after a rough 2021, the end of the year seems promising with a lot of leaves and short vacation coming up.
Apart from all this, what is more important here is that I got the career and life clarity that I was struggling with for past few months.
For whoever has read till here, YOU ARE BLOODY AWESOME and thank you from the bottom of my heart for being there for me always.
I am grateful to be a part of this community and have awesome friends like you all who have been with me though my ups and downs since 2016.
LOVE YOU ALL :)3 -
I think studying engineering has really fucked up the way i learn new things...i find it nearly impossible to commit anything to memory that could easily be looked up. On its own it doesnt sound so bad but now I keep forgetting simple programming syntax and android design patterns because my brain just keeps saying
"You dont need to remember this, you can find it online is 2 mins"
Id rather just keep a bookmark of a great navigation drawer tutorial as opposed to learning it myself...i worry now what will happen in my technical interviews even though I consider myself a good programmer -
How are you dealing with imposter syndrom and general self doubt?
More specifically on technical interviews, how do I know if what I am saying is reasonable and not just some gibberish of keywords I picked up over the years...4 -
A new position is opened at my company and I am tasked to conduct interviews for the candidates. I have no experience whatsoever in this.
If you’ve had any experience, how did you approach this? How did you conduct technical interviews with the candidates? We’re talking about candidates that have 3+ years of experience.
The position is for front end, mainly ReactJS.8 -
So technical interview time but whenever I look at algorithm, data structure questions now I feel demotivated... it sort of feels like boring pointless work.
But if i remove the context of preparing for an interview and say I have as much time as i need, it feels like a logical puzzle, challenge, something interesting I could use to kill some time, learn something new...
It feels like there's a divide like how I can go on and on about my personal projects but if you ask about work projects, I give you the boilerplate or have to really think about what to say...
And so now I'm feeling fucked for the phone screens and algo interviews that I'm supposed to be having soon... and let's just say one of them may be with a really really big tech company... -
Some had teased me a bit on my previous meme so let me tell my anecdote...
I have to tell you a rather funny anecdote that happened to me during a job interview..
To put you in context, I am a front/back developer and the language where I perform best is JS. I started learning JS at an early age during an open source project to make animations on websites then I also quickly moved to the backend using NodeJS. I gained a lot of experience by going to small start-ups and this time if I wanted to try my luck on big companies in the field of video games.
So I wanted to present some projects to my interlocutor who seemed to be someone with an important position in the company, about 26 years old and we talked about the JS language. I showed him all my projects including those where I was doing free/open source and also in the field of video games such as volunteering like the back off https://mylolmmr.com And suddenly he called out to me and said "JS is not a real language".
I must confess that I was quite disturbed by his assertion and did not understand his condescension or his belittlement. This mind...
Especially since I find it extremely misleading to say that the JS language is not a real language when you know its advantages and disadvantages, but I did not dare to express myself on this subject and we continued the interviews, even though he saw that it bothered me.
The funny thing is that once the interview is over and I decide to go home and I receive a call from the company in question who wanted me to take a technical test telling me that the oral interview was successful...
I reassure you right away, I refused.. For a question of salary which was extremely low and obviously the bad experience with this famous director.
3 -
Is HackerRank a good site to prepare for technical interviews? And I guess the general question is how to best prepare?
The problems are interesting but it seems most of the Medium+ ones require knowledge of a specific approach or the large test cases will terminate with timeouts or out of memory.
Been sitting on this for a week. Just implemented the recursive versionwhich is better but now times out.
https://hackerrank.com/challenges/...6 -
Whats the point in interviewing now? My country still has quarantine untill end of March. Quarantine might be extended and nobody knows how many weeks or months it will take for things to go back to normal. I already did 4-5 interviews with technical tasks and now will have to wait for a response which might take months. After that waiting most likely I will have to do technical interviews once again. Its as if they are trying to give something to do for their internal HR staff just so HR would keep their jobs. What a waste of time.2
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The following piece of advice will be for those aspiring for an IT service desk position:
When companies are looking to hire service desk agents, they're primarily looking for socially skilled people with strong communicative skills, rather than primarily technically skilled people. When I first joined the IT world, I went on different interviews for that position and across all of them there was one truth: all the interviewers were eyeballs-focused on my social and communication skills and a mere thin layer of technical skills was required (depending on how technical the service desk). In fact, I immediately got aggressively dismissed twice for two of those when I filled in a Myers-Briggs personality test according to my Sheldon-type personality (selfish, condescending etc). Conversely, when I applied for a new position and I faked that test into answering everything focused positively on the social aspect, I was an immediate top candidate.
Here's a definition from the ITIL Foundation course, chapter Service Management: Because of how lateral the function of the service desk has become today (not only used to solve technical issues, but also company-wide issues), the most important and valued skills when hiring a service desk agent are fully focused on empathy and soft skills and none of those are technical skills. This is because the service desk has people that are the front window of your company and thus you can't make social mistakes as to protect your company's reputation. That risk has to be minimized and you need the ideal people. The people who in fact solve the technical problems are behind a back-office and they are contacted by the service desk agents.
In the beginning, when I did my first service desk job, I also thought: "Oh, I'm going to have to convince them I'm this technical wizard". In the end I got hired for being able to explain technology in human language and because in the interview I successfully communicated and explained ideas to both the team manager and the CEO, not because I knew what goes on inside a computer. This is a very important distinction.
My friends have also been in service desk positions and ironically they were the most successful when they were empathetic slimeballs (saying: "of course, anything for you" while not meaning it, constantly making jokes), rather than people with integrity (those got fired for telling the customer they were wrong while being unfriendly).
I hope this helps.8 -
Got offered a new job with a 50% pay increase after 3 interviews, which only one of them was more technical, and it didn't involve any leet code or anything.
My friends coworker tried applying and failed
multiple times previously, so I'm feeling wayyy under qualified because my OOP knowledge sucks, I'm a self taught developer. They asked me more about engineering web solutions - how I would handle a lot of traffic , how I've designed a system where it holds a lot of requests, what do I know about databases, what engines I used and why. I'm very scared to accept, and I like my current company. What do?7 -
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.5 -
A friend of mine gone through 6 interviews, 2 Technical Interviews with tests, 1 personality test, the overall of all of this process was positive . As the recruiter feedback of each step of the recruitment process.
Yet they didn't hire him because they wanted a "Senior senior" as they said.
What does that mean ?
(he already has 6 years of experience and a bachelor's degree. The job is based in holland)5 -
I think for this one i had higher expectations which let to me being disappointed. Was a fun experience nonetheless.
So i am junior dev in a bigish company and i am pretty comfortable where i am, its challenging enough and fun enough. Pay is fine nothing out of ordinary but perks are nice.
But this job is the one i got out of college and it did feel that i got really lucky as i was preparing for leetcode and what not but the interviewer was pretty linient and asked me technical questions out of my cv. The questions were mostly about what i used and all felt quite easy and i was offered a role with a decent salary. Since then i have been working and learning and thing been pretty stable.
Recently i was hinted at a promotion by my manager so i have been working towards that. I have in the past got a lot of messages on LinkedIn from different recruiters but never tried because i was satisfied with my job and my visa condition made it a little tricky to hope jobs ( i work in eu as a non eu citizen). But i did fantasize that if i could just get an interview with a decent company and clear the technical round without much preparing and get offered a decent package just to inflate my ego and maybe use that to increase my current package.
So i got another message on LinkedIn and a startup was looking for a developer and i gave it a go. I asked the recruiter what is the expected compensation and he instead asked me. I said i want a big enough increase tk even consider leaving my comfortable spot, so i am looking for more than 35-40% increase If they can then i am willing to try. The recruiter said that their range is between 25-35 but can try 40 if the interviews goes well.
I went ahead with it and gave the interview, the first one was simple and the next one was supposed to be technical and was told its not leetcode but i will have to implement a feature into a project live on the video call. Which i did with some success, i was quite clumsy but i was able to do it with tests passing sl i guess that was fine.
I was really happy that i didnt prepare much and still passed a tech interview. I was recently told about the offer, its around 40% more than my current but there are no yearly bonus or even health insurance. If i consider the bonus and health insurance then the offer becomes like 20% increase. Considering i am already expecting a promotion and some salary increase this offer seems really lack luster.
Just wanted to talk about all this, can you get a really big jump generally or is it only 15-25 ?1 -
How do you deal with technical interviews that are not in your native language?
I speak English fairly well. But when you are in pressure or want to explain of course I feel that urge to switch to native and explain concepts.
What's your trick ?3 -
I think here the CS degree/experience just gives you training basically to pass this technical interviews which has been a constant problem because 99% of the work you actually do, you ain't gonna need it. (I don't work at big tech companies but pretty sure it's the same, have to be very Senior and leading a project before you really need to think about this stuff?)
I don't have a CS degree unfortunately, completely self taught, but that experience while "impressive" to interviewers doesn't seem to matter much when do how do you implement a red black tree or quick-sort.
I may know the difference in general but I don't fucking care to remember the details as YAGNI... If rather remember the things I need every day
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