interviewing: Senior by reference, not by value

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > interviewing: Senior by reference, not by value

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prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

The Leck posted:

i don't remember who posted them originally, but here they are, and they're great:

Rex Goliath. I bookmarked one of the posts with a version of those questions.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2018 05:19

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# ¿ Sep 12, 2024 22:33

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

MononcQc posted:

if the behavior keeps changing so often writing tests is a major slowdown rather than a crucial safety net you might just be writing a prototype that's gonna be pushed in production.

prototype to production is our culture, please do not shame

# ¿ Feb 25, 2018 02:36

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

I like it. Your prototype exists to work out and reduce the risk of the most uncertain parts of the production version while containing flaws to make taking the prototype directly into production obviously risky.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2018 15:22

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

I've not been the decision-maker for hiring, but I have had to say, "did not pass the second half of the whiteboard tapdance due to choking, but if they have the experience they claim to and the intelligence they displayed in the first half of the interview, they absolutely would be an asset to the team."

the other interviewers: "choked during whiteboard, do not hire"

Of course, other people picked the interview format (three people observe 1 candidate at the whiteboard???) and saying "negative, but I think this is a false negative" is awkward at best

Bonus points if you can guess 1. the hiring decision; 2. whether the other interviewers spoke at all during the interview

# ¿ Mar 8, 2018 17:29

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Kudaros posted:

Your experience may not be typical for a software engineer or programmer, but math and physics are really good disciplines for reasoning about and seeing through logical constructs and their practical application. Keep learning skills, asking coworkers how the hairy, complicated stuff works, and thinking and you'll probably do fine.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2018 17:30

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

qhat posted:

My team is relentless when writing unit tests, but not because management told us. It's the other teams that don't write tests that are the real issue, and as a result when we need something released we either get in line, or as suggested, QA the software you just wrote hundreds of tests for. So in fact, putting Devs into QA actively discourages unit testing because well you're just going to be doing the QA anyway so why bother. The whole point of QA is to have someone who isn't the actual developer and who actually understands the real world customer's behaviour testing the code.

do I have this right?
# your team is being asked to do QA for a product that you only wrote some of the in-house parts for
# the problems that you are encountering are caused by parts written by a different in-house team; this team does not write tests

because if so it sounds like you can combine "getting your work done" with a satisfying level of passive-aggression if you start writing tests for this other team's code

# ¿ May 17, 2018 16:59

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Space Whale posted:

The thing is, this is aviation. Not avionics, but more planning and writing the "oh poo poo" contingency plan for a given flight plan.

Fate is fickle but I'm not complaining.

Congrats! Planning / analysis / reporting applications in aerospace are neat because there's lots of cool poo poo in the domain and correct operation is important to safety (or $$$$) but it's not as locked-down as avionics.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2018 04:45

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

I once wrote a very long answer for an ill-posed homework problem where there was no single right answer but e.g. "a regex like _this_ is the first thing you'd think of, but that's incomplete so to handle all cases you'd need an insane long regex like _this_ but the most important thing here is that if someone asked me to do this IRL I would first look at them as though they were crazy and ask Why?"

They really liked my answer. The question was, in the final analysis, real dumb as was the job.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2018 20:34

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

qhat posted:

Er no, the ideal worker is a robot who has no interests other than to work exhaustively and loyally for the wealth of the company, specifically the company owners, for lovely/no pay and eventually die an undignified death. At this point he will be replaced by the next worker robot that comes pre-upgraded to the latest version of JavaScript or whatever awful language you choose to impose on your drones.

those ideal people don't exist and the worker bees who might try to LARP as one will flame out (too)

# ¿ Aug 23, 2018 19:57

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

I'm just thinking about the description of a company as an _actual_ value-maximizing A.I., just a slow one made out of humans instead of silicon. not sure about specific insights but it seems like a good perspective if you need to recontextualize your (real or potential) relationship with an employer or employers

# ¿ Aug 23, 2018 20:01

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

i have been doing this for almost twenty years and i have nothing to show for it but a pile of money

uhh and some p dope shoes, too, right???

# ¿ Aug 27, 2018 05:30

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Pollyanna posted:

I am on the opposite side of the interview process for the first time in my life. knowing what it’s like now, it is extremely hard to take seriously. what a joke.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2018 22:49

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

pointsofdata posted:

What's the biggest red flag you've seen in a glassdoor review. Bonus points for unintentional ones.

idk about "biggest red flag" (that someone discusses in a negative review? or something subtle but wrong about a positive review?) but I thought the following two had plenty of telling points.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Endgame-Reviews-E815564.htm?sort.sortType=OR&sort.ascending=true

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ByteCubed-Reviews-E1001687.htm?sort.sortType=OR&sort.ascending=true

If all positive reviews discuss benefits that are in no way unusual for the industry / type of employment, I tend to read that as either HR faking a review (and forgetting that it should not resemble the job posting they were writing a few minutes ago) or an employee (who has taken off their critical-thinking hat for purposes of) writing something nice but not very thoughtful.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2018 14:46

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

jit bull transpile posted:

guys I'm whacked up on ambiem so u should probably disregard everything but my original post lol

new thread idea: "We Are The Walrus: ambienposting ONLY! (~~DON'T DOX YOURSELF YOSPOS GHOST~~~)"

# ¿ Sep 5, 2018 16:27

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

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.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2018 12:21

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

jesus WEP posted:

yeah but like management never has the first clue who the least valuable people are

source: ive never been fired

but your excellent username indicates you know how to present yourself

meatpotato posted:

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

Ty, tyvm

Peeny Cheez posted:

Mostly it's just dick-waving and shibboleths

From the outside, yes; from the inside it's the hard-to-execute secret handshake of the """Real Coders' Guild"""

Sorry, I can't resist waving the old e-peen-- Knowing nothing else, my gut solution would be sort the array, then initialize two index vars to be the first and last elements of the array and walk them towards each other to find dupes--

code:


//slightly excessive termination condition
//but "gotta go fast"
while(ix < jx && a[ix] < 0 && a[jx] > 0) {
  if(-a[ix] == a[jx]) {
    pairs++;
    ix++;
    jx--;
  } else if(-a[ix] > a[jx]) {
    //no pair for element at ix
    ix++;
  } else if(-a[ix] < a[jx]) {
    //no pair for the element at jx
    jx--;
  } else {
    assert(false, "why are there NaNs in this array???");
  }
}

This solution is optimal because you're supposed to be trying to prove to the interviewer that you are A Very Smart Person

# ¿ Sep 13, 2018 23:42

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Christ, I'm an rear end in a top hat, sorry.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2018 01:11

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Penisface posted:

told my bosses to either give me a 2x raise and let me clean up the poo poo show that claims to be a software development process here, or switch me to a 4-day work week where I clock in to fix whatever stuff they need to get done this week

i put up with a lot of poo poo but don't come giving me attitude on top of lovely management, below market rate pay and having to unfuck phd code on a windows

dang, let us know how it goes

# ¿ Sep 14, 2018 15:51

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Xarn posted:

dunno I don't think creating overly complex sub-optimal solutions is a good way to wave your dick around

It is kinda amazing how this derail always happens tho (yes, I am not helping either )

it's funny that I agree with you but also want to be like "noooo algorithm above is actually very good!!! (because I am good, please approve of me)"

In an interview I was asked a question where they explicitly said to do the simplest version fast, and the complexity was n^2, largely because the size of the output was n^2 in the worst case. So I wrote the n^2 thing. Then they asked if I could think of "some ways to make it faster". I then wrote something (uncannily similar to the algorithm above) that had runtime proportional to n log n + size of output and I think they didn't want that; they just wanted me to suggest things like "use a cache" or "sort the input".

guess who has never fully grown out of being a child who likes being the smartest and getting the right answer? that's right, this poaster.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2018 16:03

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Pie Colony posted:

so i tried some practice interview sites this week

thanks for the report, this is good to know

# ¿ Sep 14, 2018 19:06

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Penisface posted:

sherlock holmes the requirements and macgyver together all the bikes

this is a pretty great description of working as a software dev in a poorly-organized shop

if being exasperated make you eloquent, maybe you should write some poems or a short essay

# ¿ Sep 15, 2018 15:29

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

homercles posted:

In retrospect I think a lot of it comes down to the system of managerial deference that I got ingrained into me at some impressionable point in my life, to the point where you don't undermine your boss under any circumstance. Somehow the system managed to fillet my spine right from my body without me realising.

we are all taught subordination by like a bazillion things in life so you probably shouldn't feel like you are extra bad or culpable, imo

# ¿ Sep 17, 2018 15:48

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Bloody posted:

my first several managers were absentees of one sort or another so now I mostly just ignore managers or strive to placate with the least amount of effort possible such that I can better continue to ignore them

# ¿ Sep 17, 2018 15:49

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

hobbesmaster posted:

https://www.cloudkitchens.com

food delivery businesses are ubereats' "complement"

"commoditize your complement" (by getting people to start sharecropper businesses?)

Like the uber lease program, but restaurateurs instead of taxi drivers

# ¿ Sep 26, 2018 04:50

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Gazpacho posted:

"feedback came in, the interviewer thought you just didn't know as much about the company as he, who works there, did. gliyjs"

"you seemed unwilling to live harmoniously in the people's village, we were especially concerned about your willingness to drink the kool-aid"

# ¿ Sep 26, 2018 22:27

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

qhat posted:

If they actually said that, then lol, the PhDs aren't the problem.

yeah, who is hiring these phds and setting the boundaries and expectations for them such that they have the problem they are describing

or is the problem Not With the PhDs

# ¿ Sep 30, 2018 02:37

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Boiled Water posted:

how do i politely tell a startup that no i'm not interested in being their python dev / backend dev / frontend engineer and data scientist?

"You've identified that I have expertise and a broad set of skills that could address several needs at your company and I appreciate that, but I would prefer a role with a clearer set of responsibilities, perhaps at a company further along in its growth trajectory. Cheers!"

# ¿ Oct 2, 2018 17:28

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

yeah, my experience with seeing any form of in-office drinking (other than beer) is uniformly negative

# ¿ Oct 2, 2018 18:43

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

i missed the era of hornt echinopsis. i'm sorry to infer that we now live in the era of sad echinopsis

be well echinopsis

# ¿ Oct 3, 2018 17:11

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

just my lived experience that I have seen good in-office beer drinking and I have never seen good in-office liquor drinking

over in the drinking thread I mentioned wanting to get mezcal for my office so... I guess I want some things that have always been bad ime

# ¿ Oct 3, 2018 22:39

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

someone has already said it in some other phrasing, but there's a lot of discussion of _what_ you did but not the impact, complexity, challenge, level of success, nature of the responsibility, etc. it's good to be able to describe just nuts and bolts, but it seems like there would be some sorts of more narrative descriptions of what you did. I'm not encouraging you to weave your resume into a saga, but at least try to tell a little fragment of a story here and there.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2018 17:26

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Achmed Jones posted:

don�t lie or mislead, but don�t shy away from being like �yo I did a hard thing and did it well�

yayuhh

Ciaphas posted:

for some reason at 2am the whim took me to go ahead and do the triplebyte signup and send my fixed up resume out, programming quiz included. said i did 'exceptionally well' despite a couple best guesses and four outright idk's out of 35

guess i'm talking to someone on hangouts this afternoon to see if they like me or not and want to send me on somewhere

knock 'em dead, tiger

# ¿ Oct 8, 2018 16:22

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Pendragon posted:

and it turns out the awesome job at my current company that I thought I could apply for ended with HR sending me an email that can be summarized as "don't bother."

welp, back to looking at other companies!

yikes. is HR speaking for the hiring manager?

# ¿ Oct 8, 2018 17:14

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Ciaphas posted:

between those, taking $1600 of medical benefits away from us over the last summer, cutting our retirement match by a quarter, my anemic raises and the Internet Free Zone nature of the workplace I'm still considering taking $10k cash out of retirement and just loving quitting until YOTJ happens on its own, even if it means forfeiture of unemployment and insurance for a while

being here makes me loving cross and mentally upset as we know by now

don't. don't?

try to find a way to continue being employed without going nuts. having a job sends a signal about you to potential employers. you want them to get that signal. you don't want them to get the other signal.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2018 22:04

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

PokeJoe posted:

Americans are constantly bombarded with ads and cultural cues to convince you to blow all your money on poo poo you don't need, don't feel bad about it. Just try to be aware of it

this, yeah. I don't think I can fully deprogram the consumerist mindset out of my own head

# ¿ Oct 10, 2018 22:28

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

bob dobbs is dead posted:

yes

it's why the nsa can't hack worth poo poo anymore, they have to start peeps at 75k and government pay in the payscale only goes up to 140k or so, lol

you can find nsa job postings on stackoverflow careers and the pay ranges are sh-sh-sh-shameful for the skills being requested

# ¿ Oct 11, 2018 22:14

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

it's really weird and arbitrary how certain jobs are compensated

I got a bite from a recruiter looking to hire a head instructor for a coding school. responsibilities to include preparing courses, reviewing and improving courses prepared by other instructors, teaching and assisting students, reviewing other instructors' performance-- multiple critical aspects of a business that's supposed to turn out (at least baby) coders. salary on offer was less than I made as a sw dev w/ 1 year of experience.

afaict, even specialized educators who create other skilled people in highly-demanded areas are ridiculously undercompensated. CS professors at the moment e.g.

assuming the nsa has its arms around the problem and isn't already getting pay scales bumped or just Contracting Out Everything, the nsa is gonna have to pay a private company to make (and maintain / update) the curriculum for a training program that takes people who don't have very good aptitude for everything that the NSA does and gets them up to a basic level. then those people will leave the nsa for industry where they will get paid a lot more until the labor market gets saturated

# ¿ Oct 11, 2018 22:29

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

carry on then posted:

are you surprised a new york finance guy is completely out of touch with anyone who isn’t exactly him?

comes by it honestly? I get the sense though that if you are not self-absorbed and self-important in that particular industry, you're likely to get walked on

# ¿ Oct 14, 2018 20:49

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

edit: to be real clear, i get testy just because it means it's impossible to recruit these motherfuckers.

u monster, how dare you try to pay these people more money

# ¿ Oct 16, 2018 18:00

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# ¿ Sep 12, 2024 22:33

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

gonna just go out on a limb here and claim that while human beings remain image-conscious and hierarchical to some extent, not every workplace is quite so image-conscious and hierarchical as the one in which nbsd works

e: of course I feel this way, I just ordered myself some nice (fake!) shearling lined clogs

e^2: if we're gonna have shoe chat again, can we please attempt to discuss what the underlying signalling and relationship dynamics are instead of just calling people names

# ¿ Oct 16, 2018 22:13

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > interviewing: Senior by reference, not by value

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