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

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

Not having finished any education, and writing code during interviews.

I have a pretty nice resume with good references, and I think I'm a reasonably good & experienced dev.

But I'm absolutely unable to write code on paper, and really wonder how some devs can just write out algorithms using a pen and reason about it, without trying/failing/playing/fixing in an IDE.

Education I think.

I can transform the theory on a complex Wikipedia page about math/algorithm into code, I can translate a Haskell library into idiomatic python... but what I haven't done is write out sorting functions or fibonacci generators a million times during Java class.

I don't see the point either... but I still feel utterly worthless during an interview if they ask "So you haven't even finished highschool? Can you at least solve this prime number problem using a marker on this whiteboard? Could you explain in words which sorting algorithm is faster and why?"

"Uh... let me fetch a laptop with an IDE, stackoverflow and Wikipedia?"

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?

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).

Whiteboard interviews. Would say "my first whiteboard interviews", but I think they will always have the magic to make developers feel stupid.

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

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

Whiteboard interviews

Several years ago, I interviewed for a popular site and it was the only one of the many interviews I did that suffer that did Google-style whiteboard problems and nobody peppered me. I didn't recall the optional way to reverse a linked list right there and then. I think I came up with the right solution and failed to communicate it well.

When we got done, I could feel their eyes trying to burn holes in me for wasting their time.

Pro whiteboard interviews or against?

Is knowing how to solve code challenges and whiteboard interviews normal?

Those infamous whiteboard interviews: As if the pressure of solving complex problems on the spot isn't enough, now I have an audience watching me scribble code like I'm Picasso with a marker.

Carpel Tunnel has actually made me a far better programmer.

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

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

Hi friends of devRant. I'm looking for some advise.

I love learning new things(tech). I want to try out a lot of things like crypto, game dev, AR/VR, etc. I'm also a student and worried about my career. You know you just can't keep exploring technologies and not focus on a single track. Currently, I'm good with web dev. It feels so difficult at times. I hate leetcoding/competitive programming. So you can guess I'm not great with whiteboard interviews. How do I manage time to learn new things and also be able to land a job in a domain? Do you ever feel the same? Any career advise?

What does everyone think about whiteboard interviews?

Craziest prep for interview :

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are your thoughts on whiteboard interviews fon entry level positions?