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qhat posted:My company just tried to fire this dude (who was leaving in 2 weeks anyway) without notice by getting him to sign a document unjustifiably admitting gross negligence. I told him not to sign it and he didn't, so they fired him anyway but now he's getting his 2 weeks of pay. He said he would buy me a beer next week. so when are you leaving?
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Sep 13, 2018 04:51
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ADINSX posted:Wait so what was the incentive to sign?
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Sep 13, 2018 04:54
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I want to know what the incentive was from the company's perspective. What kind of CYA could that document even be used for?
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Sep 13, 2018 05:17
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Gazpacho posted:What songs best describe your work ethic? (Dell) i dunno, does circus music count?
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Sep 13, 2018 06:05
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ADINSX posted:Wait so what was the incentive to sign? Was it "sign this or you're fired" or "sign this and by the way you're fired". I presume it was just a cheap attempt to get him to forfeit his right to 2 weeks termination notice under the guise of "we need this for our records please sign by the end of the day, cheers". In BC you cannot just fire someone and not pay them notice, unless of course you are being fired for gross negligence and then you don't get squat. qhat fucked around with this message at 07:55 on Sep 13, 2018 |
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Sep 13, 2018 07:51
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hobbesmaster posted:so when are you leaving? I've been keeping a constant eye on the job market here for a while, I've got an interview on Friday in Seattle and also an application in the oven with a big shop here.
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Sep 13, 2018 07:53
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Interview today and it's... mostly a formality? Current lead of the team has vouched for me and the person I'd be replacing also suggested me specifically; both are trusted former coworkers. I talked with the latter for an hour plus yesterday and the work sounds really good. I've got a lot of complicated feelings, though- not so much about this potential job as about the good feeling that comes before taking a job vs. the "oh poo poo, really, they didn't mention/lied about X???" feeling that can come later.
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Sep 13, 2018 12:21
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I was sure I hosed up my interview yesterday, I completely misunderstood the interviewer's question about caching objects in python and I went on a bizarre rant about the object model. But I just got an answer and I'm still in the process! 
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Sep 13, 2018 13:54
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Gazpacho posted:What songs best describe your work ethic? (Dell) hell nos and headphones :: hailee steinfeld
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Sep 13, 2018 15:46
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Symbolic Butt posted:I was sure I hosed up my interview yesterday, I completely misunderstood the interviewer's question about caching objects in python and I went on a bizarre rant about the object model. But I just got an answer and I'm still in the process! if your answer was thorough enough the interviewer might’ve thought “wait poo poo did I actually ask the question I thought I asked?”
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Sep 13, 2018 16:06
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ya every time an interviewee answers a question different from the question i asked i just mark it up as a failure to communicate clearly on my part
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Sep 13, 2018 16:20
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i'm still incredibly upset about my rejection yesterday my phone interview question was, given a list of integers, return a list of those integers whose negatives are also present in the list (3 & -3, etc) my first solution--and i said so on the phone--was the naive two-loop n2 way, we talked for a while about why i did that and what i'd do to improve it, talked about his job, hung up rejection 2 days later
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Sep 13, 2018 16:27
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ten years in programming and i cant do better tthan that? god i'm a loving dingdong
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Sep 13, 2018 16:27
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how are you supposed to do it? sort and go middle-out?
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Sep 13, 2018 16:28
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probably sort by magnitude and check adjacent nodes, idk
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Sep 13, 2018 16:31
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Bloody posted:ya every time an interviewee answers a question different from the question i asked i just mark it up as a failure to communicate clearly on my part Nerves play a part too. For one of my recent interviews the interviewer laid out what was essentially a graph problem so I started into how I would model it (a list of nodes each containing a list of their neighbors, etc). He pointed out that, no, there is a graph but we only have one function to query facts about it... and in fact there was a tricky part of what that function told us that I completely missed that allows the solution to be O(n) Which is why all the interview advice says "listen to the problem carefully" and all that poo poo... sure... except its also timed and you only have 40 or so minutes for each problem so.... take your time, in a hurry (interviewing sucks)
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Sep 13, 2018 16:33
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DELETE CASCADE posted:counterpoint: some people are bad at their jobs, and you might even be one of them source: ive never been fired
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Sep 13, 2018 16:35
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Ciaphas posted:i'm still incredibly upset about my rejection yesterday Put them all into a hash table and do a second pass, time (average) O(n) space O(n). You could also do a sort in place where a -n is n < -n < n+1 maybe? Then the negative value would immediately follow its positive pair. That would be time O(n log n) space O(1). I hate these stupid questions. qhat fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Sep 13, 2018 |
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Sep 13, 2018 16:57
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i mean yeah that's a perfectly sensible answer too--and the very first thing i said was 'if I had my full IDE and stuff I'd think for a minute and probably LINQ statement this sort of thing because how am I supposed to know if this is even a performance pinch point or not' but, well, guess that's not good enough anymore
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Sep 13, 2018 17:06
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prepping for interviews really blows, there’s no easy way to get good at it. you just have to practice a lot. think of it as a totally different skill than software development, because it is. being good at writing real software helps, but it’s not a replacement. my advice based on my own experience practicing right now is to get on hackerrank and solve two easy problems or one medium problem a day from their problem solving and interview toolkit collections. train for a few weeks, indulging yourself to research algorithms you’ve forgotten or never encountered along the way. I’ve definitely improved a little by doing this.
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Sep 13, 2018 17:21
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Bloody posted:ya every time an interviewee answers a question different from the question i asked i just mark it up as a failure to communicate clearly on my part clearly you haven't even met a bullshit artist
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Sep 13, 2018 17:26
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Janitor Prime posted:clearly you haven't even met a bullshit artist yeah im real bad at interviewing people lol
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Sep 13, 2018 17:57
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i've been interviewing over the last month and my nerves blow it every time. emails and phone call screenings go really well but it comes back negative after every in person interview. i asked the last one for feedback and they mentioned that i came across as way too high strung and, while the technical portion was great, my answers to the regular "talk about a time you received direction from above and how you responded" questions were not. anybody got some advice on conquering nerves/having answers to those questions that doesn't involve lying?
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Sep 13, 2018 18:20
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idk i give horrible answers to those questions
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Sep 13, 2018 18:28
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uh, can you tell us about a time that you got direction from above and how you responded? like i've heard awful, awful answers to behavioral questions. i dont think "lying" is strictly required, but take a sec to dress up something in agreeable language bad: "yeah those wankers tried to get me to use 'version' 'control' but i laughed in their faces. when can i start?" good: "while our relationship was not stellar, they did recommend a tool that i hadn't previously incorporated into my workflow. i reluctantly investigated it, but determined the velocity of our release schedule couldn't accommodate it"
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Sep 13, 2018 18:28
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think of questions you'll be asked and come up with answers in advance in fact, just use this table straight out of cracking the coding interview and fill in the boxes 
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Sep 13, 2018 18:35
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Disappointing Dollhouse posted:i've been interviewing over the last month and my nerves blow it every time. emails and phone call screenings go really well but it comes back negative after every in person interview. i asked the last one for feedback and they mentioned that i came across as way too high strung and, while the technical portion was great, my answers to the regular "talk about a time you received direction from above and how you responded" questions were not. hm, maybe practice interviews at a dev meetup? Those are the questions I have the easiest time with. Things I think about while I'm doing them... good eye contact, make sure you're nodding and maybe saying "yeah" or something as the other person is talking (visibly attentive listening). When I get a good question I'll usually say so, and think for a bit, instead of stumbling and trying to think of the first thing that comes to mind. Be ready with answers to questions like "what is your biggest failure" or "tell me about a time your team had an unreasonable deadline" or "What was the most interesting thing you ever worked on", but don't make it look like you have a prepared answer, always do a bit of fake thinking. I try and be humble during the process, I think sports interviews are a good model for this. Emphasize that any success is a team effort, but take personal responsibility for your part in failures (What could you have done better, what do you know now?). I also try and be almost entirely honest during them, of course I'm gonna naturally spin it in my favor but keeping things honest brings down my stress level... Failures aren't a bad thing so long as you learned something.
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Sep 13, 2018 18:45
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For a concrete example, my most recent example of "how did you respond to an unreasonable deadline from above" is an honest story about how we were supposed to ship a product in 6 months. I explain the product (to demonstrate technical knowledge) and explain why its an unreasonable amount of time... And in this case, I just went along with the deadline... I had just been hired and didn't want to seem too negative. The lesson learned here is that I probably should have spoken up, and should have also encouraged the team to focus on an MVP version of the API we were building instead of performance improvements, optimizations, etc.
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Sep 13, 2018 18:48
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Bloody posted:how are you supposed to do it? sort and go middle-out? Literally use a hash set and walk the input once. 
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Sep 13, 2018 19:05
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JawnV6 posted:uh, can you tell us about a time that you got direction from above and how you responded? pretty much all my disagreements with management have been over conflicting instructions. i ask for clarification and roll with the answer. it's only been a big problem once when the manager wanted to break corporate policy and also refused to have it on record that they were telling me to break policy. i responded to that by finding another job. you're probably right about agreeable language. in mock interviews when i'm relaxed people have said i come across fine. under pressure i lock up, start thinking very literally, and answer very clinically. i've got a feeling that people used to interview euphemisms interpret those answers as having other meanings. "while we didn't get along too well" is something i've said recently and it meant "once we realised we had nothing in common we didn't socialise". not "gently caress that guy" that table seems helpful, i'll definitely write something out for everything in that.
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Sep 13, 2018 19:12
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Xarn posted:Literally use a hash set and walk the input once. this is what's loving frustrating me and still leaving me visibly upset today i have no loving idea what the problem was was the problem my usual programming approach, which is to make something that works asap (without making fundamental errors like bad organization ofc) then make it performant if necessary? was it that my first solution was the naive one rather than a hash set or a linq statement? did i not ask enough questions about initial requirements? did i not spot a trick in the problem statement and it was secretly a test of my critical analysis skills? did i just sound like a complete oval office, somehow??? i have no idea and i'm pissed off because what do i improve?
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Sep 13, 2018 19:16
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bullshitting an interviewer is a valuable skill, especially if you're on the phone and you need to fill otherwise dead air while you think of a solution to the moderately complex algorithm question that you were just asked
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Sep 13, 2018 19:38
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Ciaphas posted:this is what's loving frustrating me and still leaving me visibly upset today The Microsoft was the red flag. Hth
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Sep 13, 2018 19:41
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Also bad programmers can reject highly skilled candidates because of dunning Kruger or even just plain intimidation. It's also possible there was not even a position open and they were just testing the market. If they didn't give you feedback then it can be literally anything. Maybe you cleared your throat too loudly idk.
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Sep 13, 2018 19:44
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qhat posted:The Microsoft was the red flag. Hth it was on coderpad, i had my choice of language and the interviewer expressed no preference also said interviewer is apparently a smart person because he's one of my referrer's contacts (and said referrer indicates said interviewer is a smart dude) so the usual excuses of 'gently caress the other guy anyway' don't work (e) and finally the lack of feedback is apparently company policy
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Sep 13, 2018 19:46
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Ciaphas posted:it was on coderpad, i had my choice of language and the interviewer expressed no preference The fact that you answered correctly and that you were not given the benefit of the doubt due to being a referral indicates that he is not as smart as your referrer thinks. But idk how you actually came across over the phone.
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Sep 13, 2018 19:51
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Ciaphas posted:
I usually go into interviews and when/if they ask for a programming problem I go "well the simplest solution that can work is this <...> but it will be slower for large inputs. What did you have in mind for that?" Like if they don't give you details, force them to give them to you. Turn the drat interview interactive. "ah yeah if you have dozens of thousands of these, then you might want to sort-then-elimintate. That will change it from O(n˛) to something like O(n log n) since the sort is a boundary there, and the implementation will be simple and predictable. Would that be good enough?" They'd probably hint at "I'm looking for something even faster" after which you get stuck at knowing the trick they expect you to know. You're almost guaranteed to get stuck on some minute details like "oh you need to know if the numbers' negative version is in there, but do you need to know how many pairs of dupes there are?" because for these algorithmic cases, you generally don't have a choice but to exploit one of these corner cases that lets you leverage a data structure or procedure that is more or less well-known. Like the "fill a hash of all numbers that are positive, check the negative ones for a match" works well until you need to know how many pairs match, at which point you need another hash (one to increment on positives and decrement on negatives, one for the total number seen, then do a subtraction of both hashes' identical values to know how many pairs of each were matched). It would be trickier to come up with the general case before the tricky optimized one, and doing it iteratively makes it easier. Even then, you may not find the solution they wanted. But by that time, you've interacted with them, you've been past the initial blocker you had on the simple solution you froze on with, and you've been far enough in the interview and have asked enough questions that the interviewers themselves may start to think "holy poo poo that was a bad exercise to propose" and will take that into consideration as well --- at least as long as you don't visibly ask questions to tank their problem, but really go "here's a solution but is this what you really wanted???" It'll turn their initial judgement from "this idiot didn't know the secret trick to this problem I have known for years" to "well all things considered I liked how they refined things iteratively" or something to that effect. Like the interviewers who put the most emphasis on stupid technical problems of the kind may want to either focus on "can they program loops" in which case it won't matter, or will want "are they clever at solutions" where either you'll have to know the thing first, or play them into showing how you work in a way that changes what they expected to get out of the interview. It won't always work, to be honest. I've had a technical interview turning me down because the 2-3 methods of "finding all duplicates in two binary trees" were not the one implementation they were looking for, but at that point, gently caress these people.
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Sep 13, 2018 19:54
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I've reverted to not practicing whiteboard problems beyond a basic strategy of how approach problems in the general sense. At the end of the day you can't know every variation to every problem and trying to just makes me ultra anxious, I'd rather just walk into the interview calm and collected and at least I stand a fighting chance.
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Sep 13, 2018 19:59
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i mean the thing is that's what i did, mononcqc, right up to saying 'i guess for large inputs it'd be better to sort magnitude then check adjacency' i even said aloud 'ok this is kind of a crappy naive solution but it'll work fine on the quick for short inputs' or something very to that effect so i don't know. was i just totally outclassed by my competition, did i speak badly, um and ah too much, did i show too little confidence, hosed if i know, and even with a massive amount of weed i seem to be unable to fuckin let it go 
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Sep 13, 2018 20:08
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they probably just had a person lined up for the job and have spent less than 0.01% of the time you have thinking about your answer to that question
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Sep 13, 2018 20:13
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