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Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

a long time ago, possibly in a previous incarnation of this thread, someone posted a list of questions to ask when interviewing. does anyone still have that?

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Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

Bloody posted:

check the op

wow thanks i am a fool

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

had my first coding interview in a long while and my nerves got the better of me. even though the questions were easy i got anxious, tongue-tied, and struggled to debug some dumb mistakes.

made it to the next round but they let me know i would no longer be considered for the "senior" level role. oh well. guess ill just try not to sweat it too much and keep practicing.

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

i need some advice: i'm interviewing with two companies. company A has been moving things along pretty quick and called today to let me know they're planning on making me an offer. company B has been moving more slowly and i'm currently trying to schedule an onsite interview with them. is it fair to let company B know that i'm currently negotiating another offer and would like to speed things along? all things being equal i think i would prefer to work at company B (assuming they even make me an offer).

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

Gazpacho posted:

constantly bummed in phone interviews about having to choose whether to pause and gather my thoughts, which makes interviewers panic, or just speak from the cuff and come out completely incoherent

its definitely fair to say "wow, thats a great question, let me consider that for a moment..." and then gather your thoughts before responding

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

just accepted an offer with a company that im super stoked on that comes with a nice pay bump and a drastically reduced commute. thanks to the folks itt for encouragement and answering my dumb questions

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

is it a dumb idea to try to push my start date back a week after i've already accepted the offer? worried it might come off as a bad look but dang it'd be really nice to have a little extra breathing room.

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

that's what i figured. thanks for the confidence boost.

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

Gazpacho posted:

whenever this happens (e.g. "API experience") I can't resist the urge to argue with the recruiter, tell them that X either isn't actually a skill or isn't one that requires development. which is of course pointless, beep boop what is your number sir

have you considered lying

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

I'm attempting to transition to being a remote contractor. I have an initial call with a recruiter from a large tech company tomorrow and I realized I have no idea what sort of questions to ask or what red flags to watch out for. Anyone have experience here or know of good resources I can use to educate myself? I don't wanna get ripped off and I'd like to look like I know what I'm doing.

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

yeah, its a risk i'm taking. i pushed myself to the point of total burnout at my previous salaried job. that taught me an important lesson. i was supposed to be taking 6+ months off to hike the pacific crest trail right now but that aint happening. figured i might as well make an attempt at finding flexible work. i've gotten a pretty good response so far from recruiters, so that's encouraging. plus ive got a good amount of savings and relatively low cost of living atm, so this won't put me on the street or anything.

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

drat that sounds like the dream!

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

today i got rejected from datadog after spending nearly enough 10 hours on a take home assignment. recruiter told me this was because my work failed to meet two requirements. my program did in fact meet the first requirement, and the second was never given in the instructions.

pretty lame.

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

today i got rejected from datadog after spending nearly enough 10 hours on a take home assignment. recruiter told me this was because my work failed to meet two requirements. my program did in fact meet the first requirement, and the second was never given in the instructions.

pretty lame.

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

PCjr sidecar posted:

did you forget a unique constraint?
lol

raminasi posted:

what were the requirements?

1. the instructions asked for an aspect of the program to be configurable. i did this via a constant variable at the top of the file. i noted this inline and in the README, and also made a TODO stating that in a production setting it should be set via a command line arg. i thought that for the purposes of a demo project the simplicity of a hardcoded variable would be preferable to adding argparse logic as long as i made a note of it. obviously they disagreed or didnt bother to read my comments/documentation. the instructions did not specify how the variable should be configurable.

2. they complained my test coverage was inadequate. the instructions stated to add a unit test for one specific part of the program. i did so. the instructions did not ask for "thorough test coverage" or "at least n% coverage."

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

PIZZA.BAT posted:

that sucks though, dude. interviewing is garbage. i'm working on a take home assignment too and i'm concerned the same thing is about to happen to me

my advice: do not assume that meeting the stated requirements is sufficient. instead, assume you will be judged relative to the perceived quality of other submissions in your pool.

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

yeah that criticism was more understandable to me. tbh it was kinda lazy of me, i just wanted to be done by that point. the test coverage thing was irritating to me though because they never indicated that they expected thorough coverage.

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

Blinkz0rz posted:

maybe you missed testing some edge cases that were important or something

thorough coverage can mean both depth and breadth

they were looking for more breadth. the feedback i got was that my test coverage was "only 20%" or something. the instructions said to "write a unit test for feature X" and i took that pretty literally, so i only wrote a test for the part of my code that implemented that feature. my code was very modular, resulting in low coverage overall (but that test itself was thorough).
of course its obvious in retrospect that i should have just taken a little more time to add the polish of command line args and more unit tests. it would've been easy and wouldn't have taken _that_ long. gotta chalk this one up to a learning experience i guess.

fritz posted:

i got a rejection from them about a year-ish ago, worked out for the best & i'm now in a job i actually like
:hfive: nice. i'm currently interviewing with a couple other companies that i'm more interested in anyway. still salty though.

Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

had a final interview round with a nonprofit today. feeling conflicted because on the one hand i sincerely believe in their mission and they offer surprisingly reasonable compensation for a nonprofit (haven't received an actual offer yet though; we'll see). on the other hand, the day to day work sounds unpleasant to say the least. the project involves working with a 3rd party entity to overhaul their 15 year old legacy system that has had ad-hoc features tacked on over the years but never refactored. from talking with engineers the institutional challenges around this are more significant than the technical ones. if this was "just another tech company" i'd run away screaming but it feels like i could have a (potential) unique opportunity here to do something good for once. i know this isnt the kind of advice this thread can really provide but if anyone has thoughts i'm all ears.

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Kind Friend
Sep 9, 2013

i've verbally accepted an offer from the nonprofit I posted about earlier. their contract contains a bunch of stuff about binding arbitration that i dont pretend to fully understand but i do find it annoying and i know it basically eliminates my ability to ever take them to court (not that i'm a litigious person, but still). is it worth it to complain about this? or do i just sign the thing and accept it?

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