interviewing: The Land of the Rising Fig

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > interviewing: The Land of the Rising Fig

«‹›14 »

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Pulcinella posted:

Well the interview with the hiring manager went well. There were basically no technical questions; brain chugging those two Staff Engineer books really helped. I should hopefully scheduling panel interviews soon.

consider that a tentatively green flag; at some shops "staff engineer" is putatively as described as in this thread but in practice means "senior engineer with more money and prestige but less accountability," and those interviews are identical to senior engineer interviews.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2023 20:25

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 08:04

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Corla Plankun posted:

I've found in my struggles (which are hopefully over for a while now because I finally got a Senior job) that Staff-level interviews are WAY more about stupid trivia like "how kafka does X" and "what does Y PaaS thing call its partition key" or whatever than dev ones.

it seems like they want staff engineers to be encyclopedias about the specific technologies the team already picked, so i got a lot of "the team loved you but are getting a more 'senior'-y vibe from you" followups which were equal parts humiliating and infuriating

i feel learning trivia about a specific bus/db/kvs implementation is a waste of time because the problems never wind up being caused by the underlying mechanics, its always people loving up like 2+ layers of abstraction above them, and it is trivial to google if for some reason it turns out to be important. I guess kafka is a bad example because you really do need to memorize a lot of that crap because it absolutely does not work out of the box last I checked (i've been using sqs for the past few jobs because kafka was so annoying to manage and use 5 years ago)

that's lame, sorry. it's usually ok/good to have one living encyclopedia for each of your technologies but you don't need more than one and you shouldn't go out and interview for them.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2023 05:25

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

well-read undead posted:

�we�ll keep your resume on file in case we ever need a fuckin clown lmao�

i vented about this once and someone i knew who did hiring was like �no it�s real, i keep resumes on file in case more appropriate roles open up!� ok sure lady i guess you�re the only one in the world who does. the tech major who just rejected me definitely is not calling me back next year with an exciting new opportunity i�d be great for.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2023 12:20

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

KidDynamite posted:

looks like they wanted me to finish because i just got the rejection email. also i'm going to straight up stop interviewing with companies that don't provide feedback. if i spent 5 hours on your onsite you can figure out how to write a 2 paragraph email on what can be improved.

what about that feedback do you think could possibly be actionable? it's not like you're going to go through the same interview process with the same people again, and even if you somehow could, why would you trust anything they'd write?

# ¿ Dec 1, 2023 20:26

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

bob dobbs is dead posted:

the only real feedback is offer letters

# ¿ Dec 2, 2023 03:18

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Private Speech posted:

Is the job situation particularly rough right now, for C/C++ with about a decade of experience but a "legally can't discriminate but we did anyway" issue?

I've been thinking about switching for more money and because of some restructuring at work (no job losses outside of middle management though)

figured I might as well ask ITT

it's either good and you should start looking asap or it's rough so you should start looking asap

(always be interviewing)

# ¿ Dec 2, 2023 14:02

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Its a Rolex posted:

Is there any red flag outright to very flat org structures? I'm interviewing at an R&D joint that sounds incredibly flat, where "You may be asked to work on something very different or outside your area of expertise because we all wear many hats, but saying 'no' is always allowed," and "work is determined by proposals from all members of the team"

AFAICT they sound like they believe very strongly in some sort of "converging to local optima per person leads to a global optimum of output" organization, which sounds like it would work well until you get someone who doesn't pull their weight on the team (for any number of reasons)

Also there's always work that nobody wants to do, but it still has to get done, so I don't believe "saying no is always allowed" is true in any meaningful sense when asked to do work

A "flat" organization has no hierarchy the same way that schoolchildren have no hierarchy. It's still there, it's just non-obvious and unofficial.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2024 16:53

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

i wish, when i was considering joining a startup, i'd asked myself how much time i was willing to spend managing the egos of a pair of twenty-somethings who have lots of authority but absolutely zero leadership experience. i don't regret my decision but i wish i'd been a little more conscious about it. (i also wish that employee #1 hadn't accepted 0.3% ownership and therefore hosed a bunch of other people over.)

Esposito posted:

I am just before an offer for a senior dev title, they're just checking references. It's a 50-people fintech firm, I've met the CEO, CTO, and software lead, and have passed the final culture fit or company vision alignment check.

does this mean you actually applied for the senior title? because i had to deal with this once at that level and my response was "as a senior, the things you're hiring me to know are broader than the minutiae of any particular technology or stack. you can see from my resume that i've consistently picked up new stuff, and I'm confident i'll do that here." it worked, but my resume did actually say that, and idk whether yours does.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2024 15:11

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Armitag3 posted:

I wonder if they were testing how you�d respond to review or criticism of your code

both this and "trained on the question as though it were an exam, are looking for a canonical 'right answer', cannot adapt to an alternative solution that is also correct" seem equally plausible to me

# ¿ Feb 7, 2024 13:50

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

lord fifth posted:

maybe but if so i dont want to work with a team that thinks gaslighting an intern into believing they dont know how to do baby's first C structure is an effective interview tactic

"now let's see how you respond to working with rear end in a top hat coworkers" provides quite a bit of interview signal, just not in the direction that's usually intended!

# ¿ Feb 7, 2024 20:24

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Corla Plankun posted:

being forgotten by, and not having to worry about, my coworkers anymore is the main advantage of leaving a job; and now I have to actively maintain a rolodex of trustworthy bosses because it is not enough to please hiring managers now, I must also have--verifiably!--behaved in a way that they liked before I ever met them

how are you developing a professional network if you're actively attempting to lose contact with all your former coworkers?

bob dobbs is dead posted:

yeah, but they're 40-hours-per-week sociopaths

ours aren't sociopaths, they're just bad line engineers, but the company is still small enough that we haven't had the conversation about taking their repo keys away yet so there's a lot of personality management.

and it's not less personality management than any other executive needs - it just hits a little different when the executive is noticeably younger than me.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2024 15:28

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Quackles posted:

Once, I submitted an application to a company that had a bit of a former startup vibe. For reference, I was just coming off a Master's in Compsci, with some minor work experience.

Their first email back, apart from the automated stuff, was them saying, "We're sorry, but we don't think you have experience for the Intermediate Developer position, but we'd interview you for a Junior Developer position." You know, the one you give someone fresh out of their first degree.
I was not too happy about this, but I did need a job, so I resolved to go see what all the fuss was about.

I ended up sitting down with a few important people, including the company founder, who was a young guy. He said to me, "I don't think your Master's degree's worth anything, because I'm not educated myself."

Apart from that, the interview went vaguely OK. On the way out of the building, I noticed a photo hung up in pride of place in the lobby: it was a Christmas photo of the office team... dressed up as a happy family, with one person in costume as the family dog.

Thankfully, I did not get the job.

i ran into a variation of this once where apparently the only information the recruiter extracted from my entire resume was my latest graduation date. they concluded that i had only two years of work experience because they just skipped right over the big block of time between my bs and my ms.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2024 23:02

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

lord fifth posted:

my recruiter was adamant that this is the very top of the pay range and i should be very happy. but i'll push back a little more since i really like the opportunity compared to what i have lined up (worlds most dunked on database company)

all recruiters lie constantly about this stuff. once i countered an offer at like 4% higher and the guy was like "aw jeez i've never heard of us doing anything like that, i'll see what i can do i guess, but don't hold your breath..."

# ¿ Feb 17, 2024 01:36

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

i would feel comfortable politely checking in to ensure nothing got lost and to ask for a ballpark timeline after a week of silence

# ¿ Feb 29, 2024 19:46

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

LanceHunter posted:

Hrm... I did finally email the recruiter to follow up, and haven't heard back. But I did get an email this morning titled "How was your <company> recruiting experience?" and a link to a survey. I'm guessing that means they went with someone else.

sorry for your loss but lol

# ¿ Mar 5, 2024 15:22

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

occluded posted:

what the gently caress is this going to be, are they going to ask me the trolley problem

this doesn't mean anything, every shop describes all of their technical interviews like this no matter what they actually entail

# ¿ Mar 27, 2024 19:35

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:

speaking of monies, is refusing to say any number until they do the way to go with these things? i hate this stupid song and dance i have to go along with to the point i'm way more inclined to apply for any position that just tells me what the salary range is gonna be right upfront

it's not even a matter of wasting my time interviewing and then finding out they're paying way below average, since with what i'm used to they could offer me pocket lint and a stick of beef jerky and i'd probably take it. it's the principle of the thing

yeah. if you have a good sense of your value and it's actually possible they can't pay you enough (e.g. they're a tiny lil' startup) it can work out to open with a big number just to avoid wasting everyone's time and anchor high but that's rarely the case. it's almost always better to shut up and let them pitch you.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2024 23:48

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:

i was mostly wondering about how likely it is that staying tight-lipped would be a deal breaker, but i guess it's pretty unlikely to factor into the final decision, all things considered

0% chance at anywhere you'd want to work (which might not be relevant if your batna is dismal enough)

# ¿ Mar 28, 2024 00:09

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 08:04

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Kazinsal posted:

my guess was either that or they internally promoted someone into the role yeah

i once interviewed for a computer touching position at the mta. i went into an office at 10:30am on a saturday where a guy named "dino" asked me some pro-forma questions. i was 0% surprised to lose the job to whoever dino had preselected for the role.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2024 18:08

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > interviewing: The Land of the Rising Fig

«‹›14 »