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EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

how do y'all handle recruiting while interviewing? we're having some huge turnover, and i'm ready to move on. but i've got to back fill a few roles on my team from people who left, and i'm starting to feel guilty about hiring someone only to say peace out in a month.

also, it's amazing what overhauling your resume can do. i spent some time applying back in december and got no bites. rewrote my resume from scratch with more emphasis on things i've worked on, and suddenly everyone is actually giving me interview. feels good, man

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EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

man, this experience is way different from last time I did it, I dunno if it's all changed or just that I'm more senior now, but it's just a loving flood of interviews and tech screens left and right

got a tech screen in a few minutes for one company, a recruiter call this afternoon for another, and a tech screen and an open house with the tech leadership for a 3rd tomorrow. and there's still 2 companies I haven't heard back from yet. I might have to be choosy about some of this poo poo

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

just went to a happy hour for one of the places I’m interviewing and god drat it was super super nice. like might’ve just jumped to the top of my list nice.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

Space Whale posted:

They like .NET guys?

don't think so, sorry. I do know there's plenty of places in atlanta that do, but it's not usually the cool places. I've heard about a few if you're in the area

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

how long do y’all wait between when someone was supposed to get back to you and a follow up? recruiter was supposed to get back to me Friday with some details she didn’t have at the time but nothing. don’t want to just immediately harass, but I kinda need to know the answers.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

the whole premise of ci/cd and multiple daily deployments is that you're rolling out small changes very often. in theory the smaller changes are easier to review, and thus less likely to have bugs. a side aspect is that if you do break something, it should take only a few minutes more than it takes to fix the bug in the code to get it rolled out.

there's a whole bunch of things that go with it (lots of automated tests, vetting things in a staging environment, people actually reviewing prs instead of auto-merging) to reach that point. but ultimately, I really prefer it to most of the alternatives I've experienced.

one of the places I interviewed apparently does after hours deploys once every couple weeks, and the whole process takes an hour or so. that's a pretty big negative to me really

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

qhat posted:

What do you do when you need to roll out something more substantial?

like it was mentioned, this goes along with an iterative approach. “thin slice” is the term people love to throw around.

that said if you DO need a big change, because it’s foundational or structured in such a way that it’s all or nothing, you just add more process time. I replaced our session framework at work, which really just meant putting together an in person code review and ordering lunch for the group. nothing about ci or cd requires that you deploy 3x a day or anything.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

I seriously bombed my 2nd tech screen for a company yesterday. I knew it was a valley company and they had some of that ridiculous algorithm interview stuff in them, but this was just especially rough for a front end developer.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

so I dunno how or why but I made it through to the on-site from the company I thought I bombed the screens for. 6 hours of interviewing, and 3 more of the pair programming sessions. gonna have to spend the entire weekend practicing algorithms and data structures I guess.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

qhat posted:

IMO a lot of times I thought I nailed an interview I actually got rejected, probably because the interviewers just started taking it easy when they realise I wasn't a good fit.

I have no idea why I would’ve passed this. had two 1 hour pairing interviews online, which were “solve this toy problem”

first one I thought I did pretty well on, solved it and did so fairly efficiently. feedback was they wanted another one because I seemed to struggle a bit.

second one I just bombed completely. after my first attempt was wrong, the interviewer even explained the solution to me, and i still spent most of the time staring at code with no idea. it finally clicked in the last few minutes and I got a mostly working solution together, kind of.

unless the second interviewer was just a lot kinder than the first in her feedback, idk what happened.

on site is 3 more of those problems, and then another 3 hours of talking and white boarding an architecture problem.

but drat, I want this job.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!


i have some friends there who love it, more friends who are also going through the process. the pay and benefits are top-tier. there's good work life balance. it's actually working with people who are better developers than me, so i might learn something. it's a big name that'll look good on my resume. i don't find the work they're doing morally reprehensible.

the interview process has been annoying, especially given that i'm applying to be a web developer, but it's almost done.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

TerminalRaptor posted:

In my experience you learn more about a person when they fail to solve a problem in an interview then when they succeed. Interviewers know people are nervous as hell at these things and sometimes choke on things they'd normally have no problem with.

that's not unreasonable. i think it ultimately comes down to different engineers (they just use random devs not managers) have different standards, is likely my guess?

looking back and reflecting, it's possible i didn't do as badly as i felt at the time. i did ultimately get a (mostly) working solution once i understood, just ran out of time. the problem is apparently a bit notorious that you're not going to come up with the good solution on your own, so having it explained to me probably wasn't a big knock against me? it was take an A1Z26 encoded string and return the number of possible decodings it has

ADINSX posted:

It might also be a sign of a company thats somewhat desperate for people. I know we pay under market rate at our company, and I've been in interviews where we're desperately hoping they'll get our (relatively easy) whiteboard problems just so we can make the offer.

So I guess you should ask yourself why a company would be interested in you if you really think you bombed an interview, what else did they see in you? Are they just looking to fill seats?

i don't think they're particularly desperate for people.

i do know my resume is pretty good, i can handle the discussions really well, and web development doesn't have a ton to do with the ability to solve these problems. my code itself comes out good.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

6 hour interview is behind me. it felt fine during the day, but holy crap am I drained now that I'm home.

please don't make candidates do a 6 hour interview

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

I’ve found the external recruiters are legitimately useful at handling a lot of the bullshit. I don’t have to chase them or the company for a response, they handle that. also pretty good on the salary side because they don’t waste the time if the role can’t pay what I want for salary

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

I think the pairing interviews I had recently were good. online, scheduled for 60, basically designed for 45 minutes of work plus 15 for the interviewee to ask about the company.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

take home assignments are bad because they are discriminatory against people with lives outside of work

got a family? gently caress you please ignore your children and put in an extra 8 hours of work to solve this “exercise”

don’t want to spend your free time doing unpaid work? too bad, we’ve gone with another candidate

they’re used to select for people who can be bullied into spending time outside of work coding

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

well, valley company with 6 hour interview passed, with specific feedback to come soon

good thing I had another safer offer that’s still a huge raise and improvement.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

Valeyard posted:

im going to hand in my notice next week :toot:

it feels pretty great

I’m looking forward to my new job in a couple weeks. it’s for a much bigger company than I’ve ever worked for before

and it comes with 5 weeks pto gently caress yeah

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

I just changed jobs in June. I sent out applications to two of the big, high paying tech companies in the area that I had friends at. I’d applied to both in December and heard nothing, but completely redid my resume and sent it. I heard from both within a week. one went fairly quickly, finished the whole process in just over a month, including recruiter screen, 2 technical pairing interviews, and an all day on site. didn’t get the job.

the other one, I had a call with the recruiter quickly, and then 6 weeks of “were still evaluating our openings for this position, I’m meeting with the VP tomorrow to figure that out so you’ll hear back soon”. talking with other friends who applied there, this wasn’t uncommon at all, and they are notorious in the city for having a poo poo hiring process. I know someone who went through the process for 6 months.

aside from that I worked with 3 external recruiters. one I failed the tech screen on (without any details on why, but it was a take home exercise that I put 6 hours into and then just submitted, not entirely done, so I get it), another was too slow, and the third I ended up accepting the offer and am working there now. I turned down quite a few external recruiters for location, pay, lack of details, or just a lovely intro message.

all told I spent about 8 weeks actively looking and interviewing as a senior software engineer in a fairly big tech city, taking a lot of time off to do it.

I’d say if you aren’t getting responses, reevaluate your resume. my first pass got me no responses at all, and was really disheartening. rewriting it with more detail and more self hype got me a complete turn around in responses.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!


had one of their marketing peeps reaching out to me to get me to join, just bad timing

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

pointsofdata posted:

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

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/C...tStatus=UNKNOWN

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

Robert Half is loving terrible and no one should work with them.

There are plenty of good external recruiting companies, where the recruiter does add some value to the process and treats you like a human being instead of forcing you into a job you don't want. They will also buy you lunches.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

qhat posted:

I don't mind a problem like fizzbuzz as much for inexperienced candidates because you're up front with exactly what the program is supposed to do and there's no mental gymnastics with figuring out an obtuse algorithm. My only issue with it is every graduate and their grandmother has trained themselves on that specific question.

you'd think so, but not true in my experience. I interviewed a ton of entry level devs and most of them had never even heard of fizzbuzz.

or if you want to give them a similar complexity problem, write a method to print out if a given year is a leap year. the rules of leap years are divisible by 4 but not 100, unless it's divisible by 400.

it's slightly harder to get the rules across than fizz buzz, but basically the same code.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

we do a lot of pairing at work. I try to keep it to <50% of my time. it’s not especially tiring, but it’s definitely slower, and I don’t get a ton of added value from it.

happy to do it with the juniors when I do though, it is great training

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

Ciaphas posted:

how do i know which ones 'will' do that without taking a chance on one, is my question

What are you afraid of happening with a bad recruiter? What's the scenario where you find out a recruiter is bad that is preventing you from even trying?

If they gently caress up, you can tell them you're done, or block the number and ghost them. Don't sign anything, that's a scam.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

Progressive JPEG posted:

gonna second just getting some interviews/conversations going, if only because the first impressions of a company or position can often be very wrong

yeah, i gotta echo this

when i was interviewing and a recruiter hit me up for this job, word of mouth from some friends had been "very corporate, not a tech company, prepare for beige everything and a lot of stupid poo poo", and the postings looked similar. i took the interview anyway, just to have some practice/get a safety offer. the interview kind of showed me a different vibe for the place, but even then it wasn't until i actually took the job and started that i saw a lot of those impressions were wrong.

of course, a friend going at the same time took a very corporate job in health care software and now loving hates it.

it all kinda sucks.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

Not a Children posted:

In my experience companies and even recruiters are very loathe to send you anything in writing until they think you're a lock these days

I wonder if it's because they're worried you'll bounce your offers off someone else? But you can do that anyway so I don't really see the point.

because some people are fine with just an email as evidence to counter offer on. i had numerous coworkers who would go to our boss with an email from a recruiter and say "I have an offer from so and so for x, will you match it?" and end up getting a raise and not leaving.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

DONT THREAD ON ME posted:

$135k for a senior software engineer at an SV company. remote but it sounds very high stress and lovely. my situation atm is a little bit desperate but i really don't want to do it unless they're gonna pay me a lot.

lol that's a joke, I make nearly that working at a big corp and putting in 20% effort, the idea of that in california for a valley company is a laugh

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

Piano Maniac posted:

Oh man my new job is all about Ruby on Rails. Sure all the cool kids on the block are using "node.js" or "angular" or whatever, but drat it,
if they pay me for RoR, then I will write ruby like my life depends on it. I don't know what the migrations or whatever do, but I'll get by. Wish me luck, my goons, as now I am just studying at my company, but once 22nd comes, I'll be a bona-fide developer.

welcome to the cult of ruby

we all work 30 hour weeks and contribute nothing of value to society

but it pays the figgies

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

had my phone screen with cool place i very much want to work yesterday afternoon and i think it went well, got the details on how we're gonna proceed, just waiting to hear from recruiter person

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

Steve Jorbs posted:

Got a request for an onsite at a company that seemingly ghosted me 4 weeks ago. That puts me at like 3rd on their ranking list right?

No, some companies legitimately suck at hiring and routinely do this.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

“outside perspectives are literally worthless” an idiot hell fucker.

finally heard back from local place I’m talking with, only 3 weeks after the phone interview. moving forward with in person, but it’ll be another week or two before scheduling

lol if I didn’t have the inside scoop on this poo poo, I might be worried.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

still waiting to schedule my on site at this place, annoyed at how slow it is but it’s worth it in the end

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

Scott Baio Nudes posted:

at any point is more than two weeks expected is what i meant

If you are not in an at-will state and it's written into your contract.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

had my interview Wednesday, finally, after applying in March. now just waiting to hear, supposed to know next week.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

got a note from the recruiter last night that ill be receiving an offer, hopefully today

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

iospace posted:

Remember: discussing pay and benefits in the US (and likely elsewhere) with your coworkers is 100% legal, and if HR gives you pushback, tell them that is a "protected employee action".

at my last one on one with my boss, at the very end, he goes "oh, I have one more piece of feedback for you. I'm not telling you you can't, because it'd be illegal. I wouldn't tell you you can't. but just think about the context before you tell you coworkers your salary" kinda sucks, cause otherwise he's been a good boss

well, only 2 more weeks at this place

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

I’ve worked in a functional software company. biggest problem is they got bought out by private equity and went to absolute poo poo. so even when you find a good one, it’s not gonna last.

new job (start the 12th!) seems to be a great place, and I’ve got a lot of friends inside already telling me it’s great. here’s hoping.

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

mekkanare posted:

Speaking of phone interviews, is there a reason places won't do them outside the day? I am finding that companies do not want to schedule interviews for 18:00-19:00 on week nights and I honestly don't understand why if the business is running 24-7 the interviews can't be as well.

because gently caress you i am not staying til 8pm to interview your dumb rear end then write down my thoughts and discuss with others

if the role is for normal business hours, the people involved in the interview are there during normal business hours

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EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

the best places will tell you up front when you're first talking to the recruiter. "Phone interview w/ the director and then about 2 hours in person with the team" was what I went through in this last cycle.

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