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All this talk about lovely interviews, dang. I've always found that it's easiest just to let the interviewee speak to the products they've worked on recently, problems they've solved, accomplishments they're most proud of. Topics that demonstrate technical chops will come up organically as part of the conversation, and are way more meaningful than quizzing someone on some predefined trivia or spending all your time on a whiteboard.
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Mar 20, 2018 03:26
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speng31b posted:All this talk about lovely interviews, dang. I've always found that it's easiest just to let the interviewee speak to the products they've worked on recently, problems they've solved, accomplishments they're most proud of. Topics that demonstrate technical chops will come up organically as part of the conversation, and are way more meaningful than quizzing someone on some predefined trivia or spending all your time on a whiteboard. Yeah, but meaningless trivia and lovely whiteboard problems make the interviewer feel better, don't they? And we can't let that go .
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Mar 20, 2018 03:49
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All that said, it is possible to go too far the other way and prepare too little. I have a habit of not preparing at all for interviews (technically, that is, I tend to prepare a lot in terms of researching the company) and often trip up on basics. I can count the number of times I've used mod outside of interview questions on one hand for my entire career, so if I don't at least do a brief refresher I know I'm going to forget exactly how it works when asked to do fizzbuzz. Also I know if someone asked me an even slightly gnarly CSS question right now I'd have to look it up, because while I've gone deep on that topic in the past I just don't retain the minutia of things I did a year or more ago.
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Mar 20, 2018 08:38
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So how should I review
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Mar 20, 2018 14:24
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Look at all these algorithms I've never needed in my career, sure I totally know them and didn't cram just before this interview. I definitely won't forget them immediately after they become irrelevant to what I'm actually doing. And I certainly can't use the internet to look up how to use them again if they become a useful way to solve some problem!
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Mar 20, 2018 14:31
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Why are people so combative about me sharing my experience? Okay sure maybe I'm interviewing at the wrong places but I'm not lying about what I experienced. I will gladly share names of places I interviewed, many of which are large.
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Mar 20, 2018 14:49
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withoutclass posted:Look at all these algorithms I've never needed in my career, sure I totally know them and didn't cram just before this interview. I definitely won't forget them immediately after they become irrelevant to what I'm actually doing. And I certainly can't use the internet to look up how to use them again if they become a useful way to solve some problem! This is just playing the game. If a job requires this kind of interview and you want the job you have to prepare for the interview to get the job. It's not some absurd notion that someone wanting a job would prepare for an interview that is common in our industry.
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Mar 20, 2018 14:55
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I'm sure we have some hiring mangers here that are hiring in the strictly back-end, service layer, infrastructure-ish, or data pipeline type roles. What do you hypothetical managers ask someone with 4 years of experience? Three Java, One Scala.
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Mar 20, 2018 15:00
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My hot take is that all of it is important for an interview. I’ve been doing a lot of interviews for some roles here lately, and there are different components that are trying to hit different things. For instance the phone screen. It starts with about 20 minutes of near trivia about language of choice. Not full on trivia but near. Mostly do you really know anything about your language or are you just bullshitting to try to get a job. Questions like: In memory models what’s the difference between the stack and the heap? What is a weak reference? What’s the difference between merge sort and quick sort. No single question matters, what we’re looking for is that you know what you’re talking about in the specific. Next is pretty much a pure fizz-buzz coding question. Can you actually write any code at all? Finally some soft questions to try to gauge experience in corporate environments. If they’re remotely competent in that we’ll bring them in. On site we have a version of ‘design instagram’ type but it’s specific for our industry and it’s within the scale we expect. And we’re not Google/Facebook/Amazon et al but our last project had a peak of 320k concurrent users and 2 1/2 years later is still 80k sustained so scaling is important. We have others that involve some whiteboard coding but the importance is in the way you think not the code on the board since like what was mentioned above you have google for construction but hopefully the problems that are faced are more unique than stack overflow. From all of this together I think we have a decent interview process but this thread seems to focus on just one part and say “No doing X isn’t how you evaluate an engineer.” No poo poo, but we don’t do just X, we do W and Y and Z as well as X and maybe from that we can get a decent picture of you in just 6 hours time. Who knows hopefully if we’ve done it right you can get a good feeling for us too. You’re spending 1/4th of your time with us, let’s hope it’s a good match!
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Mar 20, 2018 15:04
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withoutclass posted:Look at all these algorithms I've never needed in my career, sure I totally know them and didn't cram just before this interview. I definitely won't forget them immediately after they become irrelevant to what I'm actually doing. And I certainly can't use the internet to look up how to use them again if they become a useful way to solve some problem! Considering I've had at least two clients who mishired a well spoken "experienced developer" that I would later end up teaching the concept of loops to, I would say at least a little coding is a must, even if it's a little bullshitty, because just a conversation isn't enough to make sure they're not going to torpedo a project.
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Mar 20, 2018 15:11
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There's no way I'd go into an interview now and efficiently solve certain variations of tree traversal or knapsack or other DP/recursive algorithms at a pace or independence that would convince someone to hire me. And if I'm going to spend my time practicing white-boarding and reviewing why not do it right? I'm a bad young dev and I want to be a less bad, and more employable, dev. I'm not memorizing trivia and I actually found a lot of these problems helped me think about things differently, too.
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Mar 20, 2018 15:16
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Why are people so combative about me sharing my experience? Okay sure maybe I'm interviewing at the wrong places but I'm not lying about what I experienced. I will gladly share names of places I interviewed, many of which are large. I think people, including myself, are more-so being combative about it because it's pretty insane. Like, if every interview I could possibly have was like that'd I'd probably just change careers. Working for a place looking for a regurgitation machine sounds awful. They aren't testing for intelligence or your ability to actually get poo poo done, they're testing your ability to spit out some answer that supposedly shows you know what you're talking about. Hit me with white boarding or lets pair on some TDD poo poo, but if you're going to ask me about some poo poo that at the end of the day I can just look up then you either: A. Have no idea what a good developer looks like or B. Really want someone who's either hard up for work straight out of school or you're testing for someone that you can bend over with ease by making them jump through arbitrary hoops. Jose Valasquez posted:This is just playing the game. If a job requires this kind of interview and you want the job you have to prepare for the interview to get the job. It's not some absurd notion that someone wanting a job would prepare for an interview that is common in our industry. Yea, and there's a reason that a lot of bigger places are altering their interview style because they're realizing it doesn't work, and it limits the pool of candidates to people willing to put up with bullshit. BurntCornMuffin posted:Considering I've had at least two clients who mishired a well spoken "experienced developer" that I would later end up teaching the concept of loops to, I would say at least a little coding is a must, even if it's a little bullshitty, because just a conversation isn't enough to make sure they're not going to torpedo a project. Absolutely. I'm definitely not advocating for no interview at all, but heavy CS based questions for the vast majority of jobs is bananas. Show me how you think, show me you can write some clean code, show me you're willing to admit you don't know poo poo and you want to learn/improve. And then most importantly culture fit.
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Mar 20, 2018 15:35
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Good Will Hrunting posted:So how should I review I see a lot of people yelling about how crazy high the amount of revision is you're doing but gently caress it if it works for you then don't listen to this bunch of crabby assholes. I also think it's an awful lot to do, but to answer your original question of "how do people manage to change jobs so frequently", the answer is we don't study for as long as you, either because we don't need to or don't want to.
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Mar 20, 2018 16:20
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withoutclass posted:Absolutely. I'm definitely not advocating for no interview at all, but heavy CS based questions for the vast majority of jobs is bananas. Show me how you think, show me you can write some clean code, show me you're willing to admit you don't know poo poo and you want to learn/improve. And then most importantly culture fit. I don't know when it'll happen, but I'll probably have to be on an interview panel at my current job at some point. When I interviewed, the panel had one of those packets of questions that HR says they have to ask the same way to each candidate, to avoid biases or whatever. I suppose I can phrase it as a problem with me, not the process, in that I can't learn what I need from that kind of interview. This is the place that made me do my first video over a video call, even though I live a mile away, for HR-mandated fairness.
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Mar 20, 2018 16:49
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Its almost like the phrase "programming job" can mean an absolute gently caress ton of different areas, requirements and seriousness. Nah, the process that does not conform to what I prefer must be crazy 
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Mar 20, 2018 17:23
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Perhaps if I share some of the problems I struggle with people here can shed some insight into what I can do to improve and make me a more efficient preparer (and dev!) over the course of this search and even help others who are interested in these types of interviews.
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Mar 20, 2018 17:28
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Perhaps if I share some of the problems I struggle with people here can shed some insight into what I can do to improve and make me a more efficient preparer (and dev!) over the course of this search and even help others who are interested in these types of interviews. Yes! Also, can you explain what form your studying takes? I bet there's better approaches / resources, at least from a time-saving point of view.
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Mar 20, 2018 17:41
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I didn't study CS in undergrad, I've only been coding 5? 6? years with any seriousness I bet this is why you're getting grilled about algorithms more than most of the posters ITT. They see your degree wasn't in CS so they crack their knuckles and think better make sure this isn't some dogshit imposter to the brotherhood  * because your prep work is nuts compared to what I'd realistically do, even for a big 5*realistically, this is the word they'd use, unfortunately
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Mar 20, 2018 19:14
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I'm just practicing things I haven't looked at in a while. Whether that's algo things, nuances of garbage collection and java.util.concurrent, various other types of arbitrary review.. I was rusty during my last search and it wasn't until I hammered down prep that I felt comfortable. After that I started to do a lot better.
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Mar 20, 2018 19:23
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^ You will literally take a shot at me in any way possible, it's kinda incredible lolMunkeymon posted:I bet this is why you're getting grilled about algorithms more than most of the posters ITT. They see your degree wasn't in CS so they crack their knuckles and think better make sure this isn't some dogshit imposter to the brotherhood You could certainly be right. Also, my experience has sucked the last 2 years of working compared to the first two, so they might be grilling me because of that and I might feel the need to do extra prep because of that as well. Also of note, if I wasn't employed I'd likely spend half-ish the time actually prepping due to sheer productivity boost by being able to only review when my brain is cool and good and not entirely burnt out from a long work day. It took me about 6 hours to work through CTCI chapters 1 and the first half of 2. Nothing was difficult, but I enjoy reading the solutions and the "optimizations" they come up with (even if I think some are such unnecessary minutiae).
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Mar 20, 2018 19:26
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Good Will Hrunting posted:^ You will literally take a shot at me in any way possible, it's kinda incredible lol Thread Star Mad Plebe Posts At Him. I asked what your syllabus was, how you were tracking your efficacy, and got back handwavey garbage "from DP to java.util.collections." A far as I can tell you don't have a coherent plan you just blow free time on a whiteboard making yourself miserable for 2 months and want us all to... idk, celebrate it? I've got a sneaking suspicion you're studying like the guy in my chem class who didn't want to understand math and memorized all 18 flavors of PV=nRT rather than just do the symbolic manipulation on the fly, just doing every single CTCI problem with the handicap of a whiteboard rather than breaking those into distinct areas of practice and doing the CS bits on a computer. But you're withholding any and all detail of how you're spending 100+ hours despite more folks than me pointing out that seems extreme. Do you want commiseration about the state of the NYC whiteboard or do you want to actually explain how you're spending this time and get advice about it?
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Mar 20, 2018 19:52
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Here is my NYC study experience and outcome for comparison: I studied about 20-30 hours for my big 5 interview and 2 other, slightly less prestigious but still well known places in NYC. I got the big 5 offer and did not get the other two. I do have a CS degree and about 5 years experience. I used only Hackerrank practice problems and CTCI. I found that I mostly remembered about half of my study material from my last study sessions ~2 years ago. For many topics I only needed to briefly review the details. I chose not to study any graph theory beyond Dijkstra's (and I was pretty shaky on that tbh) and it never came up in interviews. I could have spent more time studying, but I don't think it would have helped much. I felt like I did decently at both places I did not get an offer from. It was also a struggle to start each study session because I would get frustrated at how stupid interviewing practices are in our industry. Studying with friends helped motivation quite a bit. None of my interviews relied on whiteboarding for the code writing portions, and I'm eternally grateful for that. I perform so much better on a laptop. I start my new job in April. I took off a month of funemployment! brainwrinkle fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 19:55
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My plan is to literally do CTCI chapters on all topics that I've experienced in the past in interviews, get an idea of where I'm rusty and what concepts would likely cause me to struggle or get tripped up, and do more problems in those domains. I resent your suggestion that I don't "want to understand".
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Mar 20, 2018 20:07
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JawnV6 posted:I've got a sneaking suspicion you're studying like the guy in my chem class who didn't want to understand math and memorized all 18 flavors of PV=nRT rather than just do the symbolic manipulation on the fly, just doing every single CTCI problem with the handicap of a whiteboard rather than breaking those into distinct areas of practice and doing the CS bits on a computer. I honestly haven't spent that much time with CtCI or Hackerrank or anything but anytime one of those problems is thrown at me, I typically feel comfortable deconstructing the problem space and applying the tools I have from a thorough CS background. Maybe I don't always get the perfect, "ha, I saw this in CtCI already!", regurgitated answer but my interviewers generally seem happy with my ability to discuss the problem, implement solutions, and let me identify shortcomings in the solution I present.
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Mar 20, 2018 20:09
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I did get to that point in my last round of interviewing. I began to welcome those types of problems and enjoy them. And it was from studying CTCI type problems and learning the concepts, and reviewing things I was shaky on. Also, I've taken algos courses. I remember the concepts. It's using them, efficiently, in multiple ways, and remembering implementation details enough to discuss tradeoffs and evaluate things that I haven't done in a while. Good Will Hrunting fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 20:11
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Keep doing whatever works for you then.  You asked how people get by without spending 2 months reviewing almost every day, and then people responded "not doing what you're doing." I'm not really sure what advice to offer for your studying process if you're saying that's what's necessary for you to succeed in interviews.
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Mar 20, 2018 20:17
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:Keep doing whatever works for you then. The trick is that most of us at some point received a formal background in this stuff, whether or not it regularly comes up on the job. So we only need a light refresher. For people without that background, I can imagine it gets more backbreaking. The advice of taking a course is probably reasonable if not helpful in the short term. I’m personally of the opinion that heavy algo stuff is useful to know, but heavily overweighted in interviews. I’d probably get more information out of a candidate by having them explain their favorite algorithm or data structure to me; it’s directly related to something I have to do with junior staff. *haven’t made final hiring decisions, but am put on interview loops
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Mar 20, 2018 20:25
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I certainly remember things from my DS course and for some topics a light refresher is more than adequate. I'm not spending like 3 weeks hammering down linked lists or something, but I do need to do a little practice as a refresher if they were to come up. It's the harder problems that I'm spending the bulk of my time on. One I really struggled with last time was Towers of Hanoi. Regardless of being able to solve most of the other recursion problems I saw - that one still kicked my rear end to conceptualize.
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Mar 20, 2018 20:28
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Good Will Hrunting posted:One I really struggled with last time was Towers of Hanoi. Regardless of being able to solve most of the other recursion problems I saw - that one still kicked my rear end to conceptualize. 
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Mar 20, 2018 20:32
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Munkeymon posted:I bet this is why you're getting grilled about algorithms more than most of the posters ITT. They see your degree wasn't in CS so they crack their knuckles and think better make sure this isn't some dogshit imposter to the brotherhood Granted I've never worked in ~NYC~ but my degree is in history and I've never had to deal with that level of grilling in the 20 odd years people have been paying me to write code.
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Mar 20, 2018 20:43
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There was someone in this thread that had a similar experience to me interviewing here who ended up saying gently caress it and just going to Google. Maybe mrmcd?
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Mar 20, 2018 20:48
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feedmegin posted:Granted I've never worked in ~NYC~ but my degree is in history and I've never had to deal with that level of grilling in the 20 odd years people have been paying me to write code. Oh, it probably depends on your industry and market, too. Aren't you hardware/embedded in the UK?
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Mar 20, 2018 20:54
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Staying current in tech is always an oldie concern and to that end the stackoverflow dev survey came out today: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#technology How do people feel about this measure of hot tech? I had no idea that JavaScript and Node.js were actually that popular. Unsurprising that MySQL is still undisputed king of databases.
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Mar 20, 2018 21:38
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85% say they do Agile ... but do they?
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Mar 20, 2018 21:41
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Paolomania posted:Staying current in tech is always an oldie concern and to that end the stackoverflow dev survey came out today: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#technology It's a measure among people who choose to contribute to the survey, so there may be a popular skew, but it's perhaps the best representation we have at the moment. That said, w3techs has a crawler that indicates 95% of sites use JS in some fashion in their front ends. Node seems to be way less (like 0.4% of sites), but it seems to constantly pop up in personal projects I hear about.
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Mar 20, 2018 21:59
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The really sad bit was that ~30% of professionals reported using PHP.
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Mar 20, 2018 22:08
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:The really sad bit was that ~30% of professionals reported using PHP. Can you write php and be a professional?
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Mar 20, 2018 22:14
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apseudonym posted:Can you write php and be a professional? Professional Home Page
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Mar 20, 2018 22:16
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apseudonym posted:Can you write php and be a professional? All that is required to be a professional is for it to be your profession, i.e. you're getting paid. So yes, according to that survey, ~30% of respondents are being paid to work in PHP.
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Mar 20, 2018 22:20
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Munkeymon posted:Oh, it probably depends on your industry and market, too. Aren't you hardware/embedded in the UK? I spent about 10 years living in Michigan and New Jersey sometimes doing a variety of non-embedded things too. I've kind of been all over the place.
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Mar 21, 2018 00:32
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