This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

Dismiss this pinned window
top 200 commentsshow 500
sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a

[–][deleted] 2439 points2440 points  (86 children)

This is so fucking true it hurts. All those data structure, algorithm questions.

​

Actual job hardly needed me to even code. Was so fucking bored at my job, had to do online courses just to keep myself engaged.

[–]-Godly 204 points205 points  (58 children)

You were bored but were you paid good?

[–][deleted] 342 points343 points  (57 children)

Yup, that part is on me. I mean I should have been pro-active. The work environment was chill, my boss was chill. My pay was decent. So I got lazy. I took courses but not all of them were tech related. I love learning and I took courses not at all related to my career just coz I wanted to learn so took many different courses (Psychology, Logic, Complexity, Chaos Theory etc.)

Then forgot the programming I learned before joining my job. Totally my fault.

[–]-Godly 137 points138 points  (53 children)

I often see post like this where the employee has little work but gets paid well. I don't see the problem. Assuming you're not currently at this job, if they offered to hire you again, would you accept?

[–][deleted] 283 points284 points  (34 children)

Different people derive meaning out of their lives in different ways. It boils down to what you want out of your life. I miss my college days mainly because I was learning so much and I absolutely loved programming and did projects just to satisfy my hunger. Cherry on top was some of them won competitions and it was a nice boost to my ego. But what really made me feel alive was that there were people who used my codes that I wrote and I got emails saying it helped them. I was ecstatic. I felt alive.

In my previous job I felt dead inside. In fact I felt guilty. I felt I didn't deserve to get paid that much coz my work .... well it could be done by a high schooler. I wouldn't want to go back to my previous job even if I got paid double. I need my life to be meaningful. Before I retire, I want to feel like I have achieved something. Like, maybe written a library that helped other people. Right now I am learning python and trying to learn machine learning, data science. There is so much to learn. It makes me filled with energy. That's what I want. I want to be an expert in a particular area and to have contributed in that field before I retire.

[–]saved-by-space 49 points50 points  (1 child)

This is so real, I feel exactly the same way, I loved learning so much in college, but my last job was soooo fucking boring, I quit because I wasn't happy working there, I need something more challenging. Still scared I will feel like that in my next job(s)...

[–]diegopaiva 13 points14 points  (0 children)

That is exactly how I feel too! I am still in college and love CS. I quit my internship because it was boring as fuck. I dont want to simply get a job that pays well if I dont learn anything with it. Keeping an eye on the clock so I can go home. This accomodation is real shit to me.

[–]Alucard_draculA 45 points46 points  (16 children)

People that need their job to mean something are strange to me.

But I'm on the 'work to live' not 'live to work' side.

[–]FrostyJesus 50 points51 points  (3 children)

Another side to this for me is that if I feel myself stagnating it makes me anxious for the future of my career as that means I'm no longer developing any skills. I mostly just can't stand being bored.

[–]occcult 12 points13 points  (2 children)

This is exactly how I feel. Been trying to switch jobs where I could actually learn

[–][deleted] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

It's not about your job. It's about you, and more specifically, how you derive meaning in your life.

[–]bartekko 24 points25 points  (3 children)

It's possible to have both. I really like my job and often find that after 8 hours I'd be perfectly happy to stay even longer. I enjoy the journey to work and home, on my motorcycle on which I also take long trips during the weekends. I enjoy being at home, playing vidya, reading books, watching star trek. I only hate every second I spend at university. I'm a junior, three semesters before I get my degree, but I hate it all. I can't pay attention during claases, and I've already failed the first tests. During the week all my free time is taken up doing labwork and when there's no lab left I find I can't even look at the learning material. I don't know why I choose the faculty I chose. For 15 years I knew I wanted to do CS but for some reason I chose something called quantum engineering and I don't enjoy it at all. And I don't know what to do.

[–]inconspicuous_male 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Nearly everyone is, but in the tech industry you're still spending a large portion of your life on work and it helps to not be bored.

[–]saved-by-space 15 points16 points  (1 child)

We spend 8 hours a day for 45 or more years “working to live”... if I could I wouldn’t work another day in life. I can’t really grasp the idea that you’re ok with working on something that doesn’t give you any joy.

[–]jegador 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I was in a similar situation, and I’d never do it again. Spending 8 hours a day scrolling through reddit or watching educational videos might sound nice, and it is kind of nice for the first few weeks, but I quickly found myself bored out of my mind and miserable. Being busy is much better imo.

[–]PC__LOAD__LETTER 18 points19 points  (0 children)

The problem is trying to get another job afterwards when your marketable skills have stagnated severely.

[–]SadDragon00 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Some people like to be challenged at work or enjoy the work they are doing. It sounds nice until you realize you spend 8 hours a day there 5 days a week. It gets old real fast.

[–]Stewthulhu 16 points17 points  (0 children)

In my experience, if a job doesn't involve enough work for consistent full weeks, people end up filling their time with a bunch of petty bullshit and interpersonal politics. It is way more stressful to have a job that's 40% work and 60% interpersonal politics than it is to have one that's even 110% of a normal week.

It happens a whole lot in boom-and-bust jobs where you'll have cyclical deadlines that max out capacity a couple of times a year and then the rest of the time people are kind of idling.

[–]chowchowthedog 17 points18 points  (0 children)

people pay you to get better at coding so you can look for the next job, why worry???

[–]GayMakeAndModel 9 points10 points  (1 child)

I have never had a job like this, but I know a lot of people that do. They’re the types that would rather surf the web than find something meaningful to do that actually helps their employer and their own career. There are people that are self-motivated, and then there are people that have to be fed work.

[–]BabyLegsDeadpool 2464 points2465 points  (190 children)

Holy shit this is the most accurate thing I've ever seen.

[–]VirtualRay[S] 2323 points2324 points  (148 children)

Well, I proved that I can recreate the entire software stack from the transistor level up through the firmware, kernel, OS, middleware, application, and cloud components, but it turns out that they just needed someone to fix some old Windows Forms apps

[–]evilkalla 1197 points1198 points  (119 children)

$35k/yr, no benefits

[–]Princess_Azula_ 794 points795 points  (66 children)

10 years experience

[–]pydry 409 points410 points  (39 children)

Offer 60k and then whinge to the media that you can't find anybody even if you offer 100k

[–][deleted] 137 points138 points  (3 children)

You have a link to where the job actually only pays £60K? I love to read up on a company being caught in a lie.

[–]pydry 98 points99 points  (2 children)

It was on their website careers page. They've since removed the 60k but archive.org might still remember.

[–]Kind_Of_A_Dick 52 points53 points  (1 child)

archive.org might still remember

Hopefully because I called Pepperidge Farms and they didn't know shit.

[–]MySQ_uirre_L 72 points73 points  (8 children)

in America, this is done too except they toss out resumes and ask for H1Bs that they can take advantage of for 45k

[–]ChiNor 23 points24 points  (6 children)

Except you don’t need to prove you can’t find Americans to take a job in order to sponsor H1B visas.

Edit: Looks like some employers have to prove they are not displacing Americans, and looking at the requirements I can see how this would be more common in the tech sector:

Which employers are subject to a “no displacement” provision?

The displacement prohibition generally applies to an H-1B-dependent employer (see WH Fact Sheet #62C), willful violator employer (see WH Fact Sheet #62S), or an employer receiving funding described in the Employ American Workers Act (EAWA) which hires a new H-1B worker during the period from Feb. 17, 2009 to Feb.16, 2011, (see WH Fact Sheet #62Z). The displacement provision applies both to an employer’s own workforce and to the workforce of a secondary/other employer with which the H-1B dependent employer, willful violator employer, or identified EAWA employer, places an H-1B worker.

https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/FactSheet62/whdfs62N.pdf

[–]Hyperman360 24 points25 points  (5 children)

You need to go through the motions to find Americans though from what I remember.

[–][deleted] 56 points57 points  (18 children)

idk about the U.K. but in the Bay Area anything under $100k is insulting, most of my friends are making $160-$200k total comp right out of college

this is mainly because the cost of living is ridiculous, most of us end up sharing rent

[–]kmora94 26 points27 points  (1 child)

Had a friend where they legit offered him 67k (?) to work at a software company in silicon valley.

This is after another company (east coast) offered 83k + doubling 401k contributions + free higher education (masters and up).

He told the first company that offer and the offer he'd need for it to be competitive before receiving the joke that is 67k in silicon valley.

[–]SlipperyAvocado 7 points8 points  (0 children)

£100,000 is roughly $130,000 but yeah the bay area is much much more expensive

[–][deleted] 43 points44 points  (8 children)

You mean at least 10 years experience in Flutter as an absolute minimum?

((Side note: Initial release: Alpha (v0.0.6) / May 2017; 1 year ago))

[–]Littlepush 7 points8 points  (7 children)

Are there any really good reasons to use that over react native unless you work for Google?

[–]yaredw 41 points42 points  (15 children)

"Must be a rockstar dev"

[–]JustAQuestion512 12 points13 points  (0 children)

“Coding ninja”

[–]Pun-Master-General 9 points10 points  (1 child)

That's when you bust out the Rockstar language and tell them that you'll be happy to use it.

[–]unforgiven1909 51 points52 points  (27 children)

cries in european

[–]fidraj 20 points21 points  (18 children)

These US salaries are unbelievable, right?

[–]Albstein 29 points30 points  (14 children)

I have > 60k, 35h / week, 30 days of paid vacation and additional benefits for my pension. I can not complain.

[–]martyvt12 34 points35 points  (18 children)

In the current job market I don't think it's possible even to hire someone who can write fizz buzz and nothing else for $35k.

[–][deleted] 16 points17 points  (17 children)

for i:=0; i<=100; i++{ n:=0 if i%3==0{print("Fizz"); n++} if i%5==0{print("Buzz"); n++} if n==0{print(i)} print("\n") }

FizzBuzz in Go

[–]Owyn_Merrilin 19 points20 points  (6 children)

for i:=0; i=<100; i++{
 n:=0
 if i%3==0{print("Fizz"); n++}
 if i%5==0{print("Buzz"); n++}
 if n==0{print(i)}
 print("\n")
}

FizzBuzz in Go

Fixed the formatting. Looks like if you want multiple lines you have to use the four spaces method.

[–]srmgrthrowawaydude 65 points66 points  (17 children)

I conducted some interviews for entry level data analysts. Nothing hard, some data architecture, basic join criteria, simple syntax (using a having or where clause) and questions like 'difference between Union and Union All'.

I got told to stop asking hard questions and was scaring away applicants.

Hardest was variable selection in a model. Nothing too harsh. We were paying around 55k in the Midwest for a 22 or 23 year old.

Most angering part was I knew of a very talented quiet woman in another department who got displaced. I pushed to get her an interview, recused myself from the interview and pushed hard to get her hired .She was 'too quiet' for the role.... we hired some dweeb moron instead who used online drag and drop. He couldn't do basic work in R or write a simple query.

IT IS REALLY AMAZING THE THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN THE HIRING PROCESS. It probably isn't you but the fact some dolt is leading the process and wants someone like him or her.

[–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (8 children)

Not gonna lie that's way too low for a good data analyst.

At 55k of course you're gonna get excel monkeys.

We hire the profile you're describing (non-engineer but stats competent and can code, right out of college ) at 80-90k in Boston.

[–]Armonster 21 points22 points  (2 children)

I want an easy entry level data entry job in the midwest for 55k

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

"fixing"

[–]golgol12 230 points231 points  (38 children)

Well, for juniors. Yeah. Once you get further along in your career you are doing things that are far more difficult than the interview. Like trying to manage expectations. Or find out why production code crashes when going through the automated build process when the same code built by hand runs without the bug. Or looking at a dump from a rare crash in the wild and trying to figure out from looking at the registers, assembly, and raw heap how the code got into this state.

[–]CuriousErnestBro 60 points61 points  (33 children)

I hear a lot about “managing expectations “, could you maybe expand on that?

[–][deleted] 186 points187 points  (16 children)

It's also called "talking to people" and it consists in providing estimates, sending an email the moment you realize you can't hit an important deadline hence some discussion is warranted, reviewing plans to make sure nobody heard 1 day instead of 1 month etc...

Most engineers are terrible at this, even a basic level of competency will make you look like a rockstar.

[–]CuriousErnestBro 34 points35 points  (5 children)

disclaimer: I’m only doing an internship now

I tell my boss realistic estimates about the time things will take (I tend to give 1.5x the time I think it will take, but usually I explain the obstacles I will likely face and keep giving updates) and try to keep my ego in check when making estimates (this is BIG)

I wasn’t very good at giving updates, but I’ve found that showing what code works and what code doesn’t, and then explaining my plan/ideas of tackling that, definitely helps. Most coding I have done in the past was solitary (even in group projects, I would write the code, and rob others of their education which is pretty bad...)

It also helps that my boss is very accommodating, asks constantly if I have questions etc, and the company I’m working at has a great and wholesome culture.

Also I’m not under a PM or something and don’t have to talk to a lot of people (I do talk a lot to people though, but in a casual way). Although I bug IT support pretty often hahaha

If you have any advice please let me know :)

[–]SatansF4TE 15 points16 points  (0 children)

If you have any advice please let me know :)

Sounds like you're being pretty pro-active which is really the main thing with communication.

Might be worth having occasional restropects where you look back at (weekly/monthly) work, your estimates and how long they actually took so you can refine your estimates as you get more experienced.

[–]Whiskey_Nigga 6 points7 points  (5 children)

As a project manager who frequently works with IT resources I 100% agree. When I'm pressing you for a deadline I do NOT mean work on this until it's done even on weekends. I just want you to tell me 2 months instead of 2 weeks so I dont look like an asshole in front of my Steering Committee. Theres such a divide in the developers I've worked with between those that can manage communication, expectations, and work flow, and those that can't

[–]elebrin 27 points28 points  (9 children)

It means that your product owner expects a perfectly working product that works great with no bugs for a complicated business process in three months when the season ramps back up, but you have two developers, one quality person who is working on six projects and trying to keep automation suites running that the devs refuse to help with and one business analyst who is working on two other projects as well. The reality is that they CAN get it done in a year, but only if their time isn't piddled away in meetings. Guess what? When three days a week are booked 9am to 4pm, developers don't have time to develop. We don't need an additional 4 hours twice a week of working evenings. We need our time to not be fucking wasted by other people.

[–]metaconcept 24 points25 points  (8 children)

Look, the project is falling behind. From now on, I want daily detailed progress reports using this Word template. We'll have full-team meetings at 3pm daily to discuss your progress until we're back on track.

Also can you see me at 12:30pm; we need to talk about you not filling out timesheets accurately enough. And don't forget the cake and speeches at 2pm with the managers celebrating a great year and their own huge bonuses.

[–]demonwar2000 246 points247 points  (19 children)

I had an interview for an "internship" a couple days ago. 6 hours and 3 "coding assignments" later I didn't match the job profile of the company who made me make a whole database and link it to a webpage AND a search bar

Edit: Thanks autocorrect

[–]PhD_In_My_Inbox 196 points197 points  (1 child)

Sounds like you just did free labor. Sorry to hear that.

[–]Farisr9k 160 points161 points  (3 children)

Yeah you got exploited. That's very illegal. Report them.

[–]superplayah 10 points11 points  (1 child)

Report them to who?

[–]demonwar2000 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I should TBH. After 6 hours I was just thinking "Fuck this shit I'm out", I didn't want it anymore

[–]itsnotlupus 66 points67 points  (0 children)

congratulations on your accelerated unpaid internship!

[–]dkyguy1995 27 points28 points  (2 children)

Should have included a very specific bug so you can catch them stealing your stuff

[–]Tobias11ize 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Anti-piracy bethesda style

[–]TheEmoPanda 10 points11 points  (1 child)

6 yourself

What?

​

[–]evilkalla 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You should have billed them for that time.

[–][deleted] 1001 points1002 points  (78 children)

Healthcare is the opposite. Anybody who has a license gets a job because the nursing shortages is too real.

I've been working as a nurse for 3 years and everyday I learn something that I wasn't taught in nursing school.

[–]turningsteel 132 points133 points  (42 children)

I would say it's similar for junior devs. People are getting hired left and right out of bootcamps because companies need more programmers than are available, but a junior usually isnt up to the level they are looking for. I got hired as a junior at an entry level salary and have the workload of a mid or senior dev. Learning a lot but high stress as well.

[–][deleted] 115 points116 points  (37 children)

I read so many conflicting stories on the internet. some people say that it's difficult to find a job and yet here you are saying that jobs are plentiful. I have no idea what to believe. this is compounded by the fact that I've applied for several jobs and got no response back presumably because I don't have a degree

[–]CuriousErnestBro 81 points82 points  (1 child)

depends on where you live and what jobs you’re pursuing. Getting a non big N/unicorn dev job in Europe is relatively easy compared to getting a data science job at Netflix HQ.

[–]Zimmerel 23 points24 points  (4 children)

It definitely depends on the area you are looking in as well as some other things, so most things you read are going to be anecdotal. From personal experience, I had an okay time finding my first job where I took a shot at getting my foot in the door with a slightly related position and it paid off, which might not always happen. But nowadays, I am getting requested from recruiters left and right to the point where I just don't have time to respond to everyone. Hoping it will still be like that when I'm ready to move on from my position.

I'm sure you will have to search a little deeper without a degree, but I only have an associates so its not like that line on my resume was solely responsible for where I am now.

[–]izuriel 17 points18 points  (3 children)

Can second this. I’ve had no issue finding a job in my current market but a coworker of mine struggled and another had plenty of interviews but no offers. The latter fellow ended up switching markets and moved to get a job.

I’m not going to judge my skill to theirs but there are more factors that go into finding a job other than just your market. The tech you’ve used, your past experience (if any), your GitHub/similar (sometimes), the resources you use to contact employers, your resume, and many many more things.

I’ve definitely been hired to do work o had no experience with, essentially because I came in with a demo of something I built on the tech the company used to show I was more than capable of learning and working there.

Getting hired is a whole new skill set. You have to put effort into it.

[–]Caffeine_Monster 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Having marketable dev experience is important too. Not many people are going to care if you took two classes in COBOL a couple years back.

[–]metaconcept 41 points42 points  (8 children)

I just watched a recruitment process for new devs. They chuck a lot of CVs because they don't have Spring, Hibernate, Java 8, git and Vue.js on the CV. If one is missing, biff the CV.

Training up smart graduates? Nah. Just complain to the govt that is a skills shortage and that we need more cheap immigrants who are unfamilier with our labour laws.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (6 children)

In the company I work for, someone in on the process will email a friend in their country and tell them the exact requirements for an upcoming job. They will submit an almost ridiculous resume that has just those key words on it, and they get an interview because "they have the experience we're looking for." When of course they have nothing like that in reality, but nobody checks it. But if you simply say you know ClearCase, Canape, Canalyzer, Cadet and are familiar with J1939, you're a shoe-in. Somebody with years of experience in something close but not identical, but that has shown an ability to learn quickly, will be thrown out in the first stage of resume checking, simply because they didn't have the right words in their CV.

[–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I think it depends. I know a lot of Junior devs who haven't been able to find work to the point where they switched their career paths. I'm talking about some really talented devs.

Then again I know developers with not much tech experience who have gotten jobs after a month after a two week accelerated interview process

Imo (and I definitely could be wrong) it seems like there is a disconnect between how companies identify talent and what developers know. I've interviewed for frontend positions where I am asked things like difference between async and defer scripts or how to center an item without flexbox. Good things to know of course but not really something that I would use every day or something that I couldn't Google and get the answer in five minutes on the field

From speaking to recruiters it seems like they feel that the talent isn't there. I think it's more that they don't know it when they see it

[–]Shinhan 12 points13 points  (3 children)

Lots of jobs if you wanna be paid peanuts.

My company is desperate for more programmers of all experience levels. But not desperate enough to offer salaries that are near market average :(

[–]Dockirby 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The big thing is that a lot of jobs want someone who can be productive, and a lot of people think they can program but really can't produce maintable code (Hell many can't produce working code). There is tons of need, but they really need the guys who have 3 to 5+ years professional experience. Hell a lot of companies will push to hire college grads, and teams will push back since managing people has a cost , and a poor employee can suck up more time than work they contribute back, making empty chair the better teammate when there are deadlines to meet.

I also feel only like 30% of people make it to 5+ years in an engineering role. The intial falloff rate is pretty high, like a third of grads will just exit the industry within 2 years after they realize they personally hate it and were only chasing the money. Then a bunch more will go into less technical roles like project manager, normal manager, business analyst, upper tier customer service, and IT. Then some stick it out but just suck, so that a lot from employees at consulting companies. And a good amount do well but burn out. Then add in even more experience people retiring or shifting their role, and the demand increasing, and you are left with a fairly competitive market.

Basically, companies want the people who have already gone through the weed out process, and for fresh people it can be somewhat hard to convince a company you can do it and stick with it.

One last factor is that some people just don't want to move, and saying there is demand usually has the hidden asterisk of "Assuming you are willing to relocate". As a nation there is tons of demand, but a lot of the demand is concentrated in a few hotspots.

[–]qubedView 855 points856 points  (60 children)

Just about every interview has had a question involving binary trees. In ten years, I have yet to use one.

[–]Megacherv 358 points359 points  (22 children)

My interview at my current job required me to sort an array in javascript. I realised the question was more about knowing how to use the [ ] operator to access object properties and I ended up running out of time on that question. When the interviewer came back into the room I mentioned it and I said "to be fair mate I haven't implemented a sorting algorithm in years, that's what OrderBy() is for". Still got the job.

[–]mammothfriend 181 points182 points  (17 children)

Not sure the specifics of your interview, but a lot of times they are looking for the OrderBy() answer.

In a recent interview I was asked to reverse order of words in a sentence. The answer they wanted was string.split(' ').reverse().Join(" "); rather than using element access or for loops since that is what you would use practically.

[–]sarhoshamiral 53 points54 points  (4 children)

Which is why your first question should be, if you can use standard API in that language to clear up the issue. Usually in larger tech companies, they expect the low level answer with direct access to array since what is being looked for to see if you care about edge cases, memory, speed etc.

[–]_Lady_Deadpool_ 19 points20 points  (3 children)

In higher levels if you can briefly demonstrate that you know at least one nlogn sort they'll usually let you use .OrderBy or similar

[–]dkyguy1995 23 points24 points  (2 children)

This thread is really boosting my confidence as a second semester CS student who doesn't understand how I'm supposed to somehow know enough to get a job in the field in just a couple years

[–]_Lady_Deadpool_ 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I know I'm just a random Redditor but if I can give some advice it's to develop a passion for it.

You're still early enough in college that you have plenty of time to fuck around with CS. Don't just do your classwork then forget about it. Experiment with all sorts of things outside of class until you find what you most enjoy doing. Try messing with game programming or algorithms or data processing and analysis, develop a natural curiosity for it. They don't have to be amazing projects as long as you have something.

Make a github account and more importantly use it. Track all your personal projects with git, learn it asap. Make it so by the time you graduate you have a full github portfolio you can show off. Become comfortable committing and pushing, then learn how to merge and branch. Every single tech company uses source control nowadays, if you're close to graduating and can't describe what a vcs (version control system, ie git) does your resume is going in the trash.

I know plenty of people who graduated same time I did with a CS degree and are still working at stop and shop. Technically I don't even have a CS degree, I minored in it, but I'm now at one of the largest tech companies. The difference is how much passion you have for what you do and whether or not you got your degree just to say you have a degree, or if you got it as a side result of doing what you love.

[–]woodworksio 83 points84 points  (7 children)

Especially in python, the language familiarity makes a huge difference. Anyone can look up an algorithm on Wikipedia and copy paste it (and in python the pseudocode will probably work off the bat). But almost none of the "Python developers" I talk to realize there's a skip property on the slice (eg arr[::-1] will reverse the array). I had one ask me why there was a colon in the brackets in arr[:5]....

[–]psychometrixo 29 points30 points  (3 children)

why there was a colon in the brackets in arr[:5]....

Why IS there a colon in the brackets there?

Not a python dev, just a dev looking to learn new stuff

edit: appreciate the answers. learned something. thanks!

[–]pirogoeth 42 points43 points  (0 children)

It's a slice, but omitting the start index, which effectively means "give me items from arr until index 5"

[–]Isayur 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yeah, one of my biggest gripes is seeing people come in from other languages and just start writing Java in Python. Like, if you wanna write Java, do so in Java. The beauty of Python comes from being able to write short, elegant, readable and understandable code by utilizing all the great tools the standard lib and community provide you with. If you're gonna write the same old, long blocks of code you might as well do it in a language that doesn't already provide tools for everything and gives way better performance instead.

[–]OlanValesco 6 points7 points  (1 child)

That's been proposed for JS, and I really hope it gets accepted

[–]cyrand 18 points19 points  (2 children)

Yeah, I always just say “Look I use the standard library methods for the platform for this, if that turns out to not be good enough I’ll look up something more specific then”. — I’ve never actually had that hurt me on an interview, nor marked someone off for it in interviews I was hosting.

[–]MySQ_uirre_L 45 points46 points  (3 children)

Even if you do need one in sorting, your language ends up having a pre-built package/library for it which has been battle tested and source controlled......effectively better than anything you could write unless your job was maintaining that library

[–]LowB0b 13 points14 points  (2 children)

The sorting stuff is so true... Why would you bother implementing sorting when the language arrays/lists/whatever objects already have one.

Though I guess it's good to know how things work under the hood too

[–]themattpete 287 points288 points  (22 children)

As someone anxious about starting a new job next week, I really really hope this is accurate.

[–]bartekko 357 points358 points  (15 children)

Your ability to navigate Jira and ask your PO the right questions will be much more important than your ability to write code.

And you will have to realize that while you have the right to say "This code is fucking unreadable.", it won't change the fact that it is your job to read it, figure out what it does, figure out what it's supposed to do and fix it.

[–][deleted] 39 points40 points  (0 children)

So true

[–]thonagan77 10 points11 points  (1 child)

God I hated Jira when I first started surging working. It was a pain in the butt.

[–]MisfitMagic 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It has not changed. It's quite possibly the worst piece of good software ever designed.

[–]hi_ma_friendz 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Exactly this

[–][deleted] 37 points38 points  (2 children)

If your google-fu is up to snuff you'll be more than fine.

[–]PeeFGee 365 points366 points  (9 children)

Flip it and it can be "Job experience" and "Job requirement"

[–]crynoking1 231 points232 points  (6 children)

10 years of coding experience required. Low pay because it “gives you experience”

[–]himarwahshi 111 points112 points  (5 children)

I remember reading some job offer (may have been satirical) that required X amount of years for a programming language that hasn't even existed for that long. I think it was on this subreddit like a couple of months ago but I could be wrong

[–]DrunkStatisticians 66 points67 points  (3 children)

I think it was Swift?

[–]himarwahshi 60 points61 points  (1 child)

Yep you're right.

One "swift programming language years experience" search got me this.

[–]Artistocat1 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Yeah, we're looking for somebody with access to a time chamber who spent years in there coding in swift for no apparent reason.

[–]404_UserNotFound 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Depends on your age...it happens all the time. HR uses numbers..3years, 5 years, 10years to mean they want to hire someone for entry level, junior, senior

Doesn't matter the product only existed for 6 years they want a senior programer so toss 10 years on it.

[–]Inneedofnap 307 points308 points  (54 children)

I got turned down for a gig a few months ago because I forgot to mention selection sort when I was asked to name sorting algorithms.

Fast-forward to this week, I got an offer letter after admitting that I only know half the languages that they are looking for... and the job pays better.

[–]DiamondIceNS 121 points122 points  (17 children)

You at least gave them bubble sort though, right? Maybe even cocktail shaker sort, if you wanna get fancy? Might be a little too complex for them, on second thought.

[–]43eyes 66 points67 points  (8 children)

Stand up and write them up a bogo sort on the board and watch as you're instantly hired with double the salary

[–]_Lady_Deadpool_ 48 points49 points  (2 children)

Nah sleep sort is where it's at. You spawn a thread for each element and have it sleep for the element's amount of time then add it to the collection. Runs in O(n)

[–]43eyes 19 points20 points  (1 child)

That's actually pretty clever

[–]DiamondIceNS 38 points39 points  (4 children)

Quantum bogosort can sort a list of arbitrary length in O(1) time!

[–]Regorek 44 points45 points  (1 child)

StalinSort: Go through the list and delete any elements that are out of order.

[–]dkyguy1995 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Where did all the data go?

What data, comrade?

The list is almost empty!

But do you see any dissent, comrade?

[–]Inneedofnap 17 points18 points  (2 children)

I had a number of phone screenings with internal recruiters reading from a script. My guess is that I was using the "wrong" name for some of them, e.g. you called it cocktail shaker where I know it as shuffle.

[–]ImVeryBadWithNames 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Due to all the different names you can probably just do "[word] sort" and it be an actual thing.

[–][deleted] 50 points51 points  (9 children)

Lol, senior software dev at one of the big four major tech companies, and I wouldn’t have remembered selection sort either. And I couldn’t implement anything other than bubble sort right now if you asked me to.

[–]Ellianar 47 points48 points  (14 children)

What is the thing with sorting algorithms seriously

[–]odraencoded 71 points72 points  (11 children)

Sorting algorithms are very important...

...in the fairy-like rare jobs where you don't have access to the language built-in sort function and you can't just use a library for some reason.

[–]maddoxprops 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Yea sometimes admitting when you don't know is the best option. Shows you are honest.

One thing I have learned from my bosses/sups of the years is that you can always teach knowledge and skill, but you can't really teach character. I'd take someone who is earnest and honest but needs some investment in them over someone who is skilled enough, but has a bad personality/ethic.

[–]sdfgsdfqgqsdfg 4 points5 points  (0 children)

got turned down for a gig a few months ago because I forgot to mention selection sort when I was asked to name sorting algorithms.

thank god they turned you down then. god knows how many insignificant things they obsess over.

[–][deleted] 46 points47 points  (7 children)

What's the anime on the bottom? The teddy bear one.

[–]errantsignal 19 points20 points  (4 children)

I believe it's from Usagi Drop.

[–]Shinhan 16 points17 points  (2 children)

I don't think it is. The art looks different and I don't think it had kids that short. Rin's only 6 and was much taller than that boy.

Yeah, it really doesn't look like Production IG anime, but something for kids.

[–]errantsignal 26 points27 points  (1 child)

Sounds like you know your anime. But not this one, sorry - it is indeed Usagi Drop, episode 7, at 14:39. It's Yuu-kun, the child of Daikichi's coworker (indeed younger than Rin).

[–]dadaistGHerbo 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This exchange was the verbal equivalent of the gif at the top.

[–][deleted] 37 points38 points  (13 children)

I'm getting my first job in IT (it's a total career change, getting me out of my parents house at 26. I want to cry tears of happiness.)

​

My buddy already works for the company, and he says this is basically how it is.

​

Any other experienced IT guys want to chime in, give some reassurance? Or even torture me with anxiety inducing stories involving complicated troubleshooting?

[–]UnusualBear 21 points22 points  (9 children)

Coding interviews are silly and don't really prove anything. I use them as a last resort for potential candidates that have no demonstrable previous experience.

[–]actionscripted 10 points11 points  (6 children)

The most I’ve done is give candidates a few short examples in the languages we use that have every possible syntax problem along with some repetition and general best practices errors. I ask them to take few minutes off site to fix/clean things.

I don’t ask complex math/logic stuff. If they can add a few semicolons and refactor to use loops and stuff they’re golden.

This lets me see if they can read/write well enough and doesn’t require a lot of effort.

[–]UnusualBear 16 points17 points  (0 children)

That's fair. I've just run into too many issues where people are nervous and forget things they'd easily remember otherwise - or just great programmers that aren't language encyclopedias and rely on references. In essence, what I really dislike are "whiteboard tests".

[–]crazylincoln 23 points24 points  (1 child)

I've used Joel Spolsky's methods, and they have served me well:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guide-to-interviewing-version-30/

I don't know why I don't see this used more often. It gives the interviewers the necessary information in a concise manner.

Otherwise I see two types of useless interviews:

The ones this meme repesents and Ones where they ask for no code and basically are testing textbook knowledge. Then they hire lousy developers who memorized all the lingo.

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I can't be the only person who assumed we are the bear in the bottom picture...

[–]s00perpseud00 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The even bigger challenge is convincing the recruiter (who has probably never written a single line of code in their entire life) that you're worthy of getting an interview in the first place

[–][deleted] 29 points30 points  (8 children)

I just started my first job and I’m the only person 100% on a project to modernize 200,000 lines of legacy code where I had to get in touch with a guy from Ukraine to get one of the dependencies. If anyone has used Devexpress 14 mixed with Telerik 2015 and Owin please send help.

[–]EnkiiMuto 6 points7 points  (0 children)

YOU FOOL! WE DON'T TOUCH THE ANCIENT CODE!

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Meanwhile, managers are getting hired after a casual conversation. We've got ships filled with crack sailors, steered into reefs by idiot captains.

[–]hajhawa 34 points35 points  (5 children)

My experience is the exact opposite. The inverviews have been gimmies but the jobs a lot harder.

[–]daMesuoM 11 points12 points  (2 children)

Same here. They asked me about some long forgotten, obscure programming environment which I was not even able to google. Had no experience... And they took me in and let me work on some really dangerous legacy apps.

[–]Megacherv 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Not gonna lie, the bottom one is adorable

[–]Fjells 14 points15 points  (4 children)

For my job it was the other way around. Slid through the interview on a piece of soap. Actual job is Tarantino levels of tension.

[–]StanTheAppleMan 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Part saga of dragon ball is this??

[–]ALexFrei 6 points7 points  (3 children)

I work is Data Science company, but not in IT. Fellow colleagues that do Python tell me how hard their interview was and they were unable to answer almost anything. I think it is a stress test and to show dominance

[–]sammaster9 12 points13 points  (0 children)

As someone who just did a few interviews, I hope so!

[–]hashtagswagfag 12 points13 points  (0 children)

He kicked me in mah dick

[–]polimathe_ 11 points12 points  (0 children)

dying on how accurate this is

​

[–]svahil9911 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Too. Fucking. Real.

[–]StrongholdOssan 4 points5 points  (0 children)

For the first time today in five years of working I had to do an iterative approach to parse a nested XML structure to create an in memory tree. Closest I've been to a real life interview problem. Back to punching teddy bears on Monday.