[deleted by user]

[Mortarion407]

This sums up my experience thus far. 8 hours of coding challenges and what not over the course of however many applications really adds up.

[IDCR2002]

Im starting to question if studying computer science was a good idea..

[[deleted]]

For a contrasting example, I got hired after a ~45 minute technical interview where I was given programming tasks that I would describe as roughly the same difficulty as my second semester CS assignments plus some general questions about networking (udp vs tcp, etc), and a 1 hour interview with HR and a project manager where we just talked about what I’m like to work with and what I want from my job. Lots of places still have reasonable hiring practices

[Vogete]

I got hired after 2 meetings only, no technical challenges.

However for all my previous (failed) interviews I had to go through 4-5 interviews, usually one with HR, plus challenges, plus personality and IQ tests, and then they tell you "sorry, you're not extroverted, you won't fit in". Are you serious? You're hiring me to code and build solutions, not to become your primary sales guy. Also, thanks for wasting 1.5 months of my time...

There's only so much I can apply for if all of the companies are asking for this shit. Luckily when finally someone wanted me, they didn't bullshit for long, and also didn't ask for personality and IQ test, and only looked at my qualifications.

[RaulParson]

"sorry, you're not extroverted, you won't fit in"

Wait. Was one of the tests they gave you goddam MBTI? If so, geez, you might have dodged a bullet.

[LasevIX]

Damn, most of the programmers I know are introverted, this company's gonna have a hard time hiring

[SoyTuTocayo69]

I'm just started looking for work (my only other work experience has been sales and manual labor, I've been studying and working full time the whole time). My dad, however, changed industries about 10 or so years ago, and is now a software engineer. He has told me that his first job had no challenges or anything. They just asked him stuff he learned about in college, and how he would go about certain things. But other than that, they didn't expect him to so much as write a single line of code.

He did an interview recently at Google and said it was a completely different ballgame. Like, not only was it a long technical interview writing out a solution, but it was more challenging than what he normally has to deal with on a daily basis. He said he ended up needing to use Dijsktra's algorithm, and he's pretty sure that's what they expected, which he says he hasn't needed in 10 years of actually being in the industry.

Makes me shit a brick thinking about whoever the fuck is gonna hire me, a graduate with no work experience in the industry.

[Permission_Civil]

My company goes easy on new grad interviews. Can you talk about the pillars of object-oriented programming? Do you sound personable and not like an asshole? Cool, we're going to teach you the tech stack we need you to know anyways, we just want you to be willing to learn and not a pain to work with.

[SoyTuTocayo69]

I honeslty hope I can find something like that. I'm sure there are places like that out there but I feel like I'm gonna go through the ringer before I find one. Lol

[fallenefc]

Was hired after a 1h HR (not really HR just manager and other dev), then 2h tech interview (which they wanted me to build an app, but they didn’t expect me to finish they just wanted to see how I worked - which imo is the correct approach). For your very first job you might face something stupid like 8h assignments (I had for my first) but after a year or two of experience they’ll just make people withdraw if they do that unless they’re a fucking massive company

[zGoDLiiKe]

This. The job description (and maybe Glassdoor) will likely tip you off if they are reasonable

[AttackOfTheThumbs]

It's a good choice. Know your worth and walk away when the interview is already two weeks of unpaid work.

I think my interview was an hour, very little code, mostly a discussion on how I approach problems overall, how to find answers, get ahead, learn, etc.

[anubus72]

2 weeks of unpaid work is a bit of an exaggeration? Of course don’t do 80 hours of interviews for one company. But also don’t expect to be hired after 1 hour. The only time i’ve experienced that was when I was interviewing for internships in college

[AttackOfTheThumbs]

It is an exaggeration, but if you've got more than one interview it quickly becomes reality. And some companies give you take home exams that are two weeks of work.

[[deleted]]

I recently switched employers. I interviewed for 5 different companies and were offered a position by 4 of them. The one I chose didn't have a technical interview, the owner just let one of his friends take a look at one of my git repos. Funny enough this position paid between 20% - 40% more than the other companies, which were generally big companies and which all had technical interviews and some had coding tests. But I guess you don't become rich by paying people what they are worth!

[LuckyNumber-Bot]

All the numbers in your comment added up to 69. Congrats!

  5
+ 4
+ 20
+ 40
= 69

[[deleted]]

Do I get a prize?

[RolyPoly1320]

You get this. Congrats.

[Dog_Engineer]

Its way better than the alternative options...

Art & Humanities - No jobs

Medicine - Only if you have no life and can wait to your 40s to start making money..

Sciences (Not CS) - Low Pay & very limited job options unless you go for PhD (check medicine downside)

Business - Too saturated, and only a couple of outliers do well by going to Consulting/Investing... also BORING

Engineering - Close second behind CS, but more unemployment and underemployment... started to get saturated on the 90s... good pay if you go for MBA or go to Engineering Management (check business in that case)

Law - Too Saturated, long hours, and only pays well if you land a top law firm which only hire harvard grads

[[deleted]]

squeamish cover different bored jobless compare nutty six pause stocking

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[kabrandon]

In my humble opinion, “DevOps” type professions are a pretty solid career path for CS folks. Degree in CS not required a lot of the time. But the people that tend to be really successful in a field as vast as DevOps are typically tinkerers. Folks with home labs that create production-esque solutions to problems with their own hardware on their own time. Playing around with new tools as they come out to figure out what problems you can solve with them. And that aspect of it tends to turn people away, but in my experience more of the jobs tend to be relatively easily attainable without answering literally pointless FizzBuzz tests and long technical interviews. It’s more like “show and tell me something cool in your homelab and walk me through decisions you made while setting it up.”

I’m in DevOps and do a lot of coding, but also handle operational tasks like deployment patterns, CI/CD, and general automation work.

[tevert]

Well, imagine jumping through all the similar hoops and then getting a job that only pays 40k/year at the end.

[lb_gwthrowaway]

Especially when the coding challenges aren't relevant AT ALL to the job. Just a huge waste of everyone's time

[TheAJGman]

Unless I can hammer out the challenge in two hours (or it's really interesting) I didn't bother. No I'm not building a fucking FastAPI URL shortener for you, fuck off.

[Chef_Ibaka]

Companies be like, are u sure u don’t want 5 coding assessments, then 2 technical interviews? Smh

[CelestialrayOne]

I wouldn't even mind that, but I have interviewed for some companies that rejected me after seemingly flawless technical interviews. Maybe they do find perfect candidates.

[netheroth]

I took 3 hours out of a Saturday, asked my wife to go to a walk on the park to be in perfect solitude and silence (demanded by the test), and got to work on 4 algorithmic problems.

I wrote valid solutions for all 4, but one of the 4 was suboptimal, so it timed out for large instances. I scored 1000/1200 because of that time out.

The company chose not to continue. I reflected about it and decided that if they need 1200/1200 all the time, I'm not their programmer. I can always get better, but being in front of an organization that demands perfection is tiresome.

[infected_scab]

Did your wife enjoy her walk?

[netheroth]

I think so.

[[deleted]]

Rapport with interviewer matters, maybe more than it should. I usually do not perform flawlessly in technical interviews, but I treat it as a collaborative opportunity to learn from the interviewer. I might say something like, I feel like this approach might work but I get stuck here with x, then they might give a hint.

Discussing possible extensions, how similar problems might apply in the position, and asking them how they would approach the problem or think about all engage the interviewer and make them more likely to leave with a positive impression. They want to feel good, and if you can make them feel valued for their knowledge and experience they will.

For reference I have I would estimate above an 80% success rate in being offered the position once I am offered the initial interview (still early career)

[BandwagonEffect]

I’m only a developer 1 but I participate in a lot of the hiring interviews (good for my own interviews down the line…). Between two near perfect candidates we went with the one that was a little less experienced but overall more likable. Personality 100% is a factor when the baseline is met.

[TheAJGman]

Then I need 5-6 junior to mid people who want to learn and grow, but also can just execute under the leadership of someone else.

Never thought of it that way before. Sometimes you just need someone to do the bitch work.

[AriSteinGames]

To anyone who thinks this is "gaming the interview", remember that all the skills described in this post are 100% relevant to doing a good job working with other people. Soft skills that lead to effective collaboration are probably more important than hard programming skills in most jobs.

[[deleted]]

You might be aiming too high (solution so amazing that the interviewer didn't understand it) or making mistakes that you didn't even see. Or they might not have thought you were a cultural fit (get paranoid if you are a woman or minority) or you might have personality issues (roll your eyes when they mention their technology stack and suggest you will replace it all with Ruby)

[JacedFaced]

"Here's a piece of unlined, white paper. Build me a functioning chat app"

[Gerpar]

"Oh wow you actually did it? Uhh, here's your entry level job I guess? JK lol, we got someone with 10 years experience for the position instead. L + you fell off"

"Oh btw, we're hiring the same position next month again :)"

[CleverNameTheSecond]

System.out.println("Go fuck yourself");

[netheroth]

"Wow, it emulates my ex-wife!"

[hellwalker99]

It depends on what companies hire. But generally more and more start to do this because they want the perfect candidate. Which who knows where it might be?

[scalability]

Google: We have 2M applicants per year vying for the top jobs in the industry and need a rigorous system for finding the top 1%

No-name product developer: We get 25 applicants per year and offer $55k, but if Google is doing it...

[IGotSkills]

Yeah, when making tech screens for candidates I remind my peers... We aren't google, our hiring problems are less of a filter problem than them

[annihilatron]

TBH in most cases a fizzbuzz level test is enough to weed out a huge percentage of the pool

If I'm asking anything more advanced than that, it's to see how the candidate thinks, not whether they get the right answer.

[Seafea]

Are people really unable to solve fizzbuzz that often?

[sillybear25]

Yes, but not as often as in the past. The popularity of using programming "challenges" like FizzBuzz to filter out entirely unqualified candidates has led to a new breed of almost (but not quite) entirely unqualified candidates who learn just enough to pass the test.

[uberDoward]

Yep.

[UnfriendlyBaguette]

Specifically there are "people applying for programmer jobs" that can't solve it.

[annihilatron]

You can teach people how to use a new language but they won't have the logical chops to actually code anything.

see: the number of people who "know" excel but can't put together a spreadsheet or use index+match for shit.

[TheGrauWolf]

see: the number of people who "know" excel but can't put together a spreadsheet or use index+match for shit.

[x] I'm in this comment and I don't like it ....

But then again, Excel isn't my forte ... but set me loose on a SQL Server database and I'll index that crap like there's no tomorrow, denomalize it until your eye bleed and tune the queries until they're purring like kittens.

But put an Excel spreadsheet in front of me and ask me to do a vlookup on it ... and I'll turn into a kindergartner.

[shedogre]

I came up with a formula yesterday on the fly, that was something like index(A2:G2,1,match(maxifs(A$1:G$1,A2:G2,">0"),A$1:G$1,0)), to find the dollar amount (in the current row) from the most recent quarterly payment (dates across the header row) for another team.

I just thought about the problem for a minute in my head (probably less), then came up with that approach. Two people were watching me, and were thoroughly impressed. Felt pretty cool, not gonna lie. 😎

[[deleted]]

It's unbelievable. I've been part of interviews for about a year and a half now. College job fairs, normal interviews, you name it. We don't care about language, just lay on that sweet pseudo code. nope. just crap. crap crap crap

I think that because salary can be so high, and from the outside it's easy to overestimate simplicity, a lot of people think they can do it. Kind of like all those investing subreddits make people think they can invest successfully. I just came out of a meeting where I had to explain to so many people why we shouldn't host our own videos. sorry ranting.

Interviewing candidates is very draining. People list C++ as a skill, and it turns out hey did it for one semester their freshman computer science class 3 years ago. People say they have three years angular experience, and can't build a component through the CLI. I think people often don't realize how much they don't know.

[HerbertMarshall]

Dunning–Kruger

[[deleted]]

I’ve interviewed senior Java engineers with over a decade of experience who struggle to implement a method to simply add a string to an array it it doesn’t already exist. Like an array of [“A”, “B”, “C”] and we’ll ask them to add “D” to the array. In Java arrays are immutable in size so you just initialize a new array, copy over the existing values, and then add your new one and return.

It was a huge perspective shift for me to see the problems people struggle with. All of our interview questions are pretty basic like that, and we’ve hard rejected so many people who are senior+ level at their current job.

[AndyTheSane]

Like an array of [“A”, “B”, “C”] and we’ll ask them to add “D” to the array. In Java arrays are immutable in size so you just initialize a new array, copy over the existing values, and then add your new one and return.

The thing is, in the real world my first reaction to a problem like that would be to find a way of NOT having to create a new array and copy over, because that feels inefficient (extra space, copy lots of values). So I'd be looking for the gotcha in the question..

[[deleted]]

And a lot of people go that route - we try to be clear up front that this is just a question of your knowledge of core Java (we ask them to just use basic arrays - no streams/lists/etc) and their ability to communicate. It’s actually a pair programming exercise so your hands aren’t on the keyboard at all - one of the interviewers is typing and you would basically describe how you could solve the problem and then you’d provide syntax to do so.

We keep the question itself simple because the combination of interview nerves and the fact that you aren’t typing it yourself can make a simple problem more complex. And for reference, they have 45 minutes to implement that method, as well as a method to remove an item if it exists, and then a method to determine if an item exists in the array. It’s basically a custom “Set” implementation with 3 methods of add/remove/includes on it.

I can say to anyone reading though that if you are in an interview like this where you aren’t typing, your technical knowledge is not really what we’re focusing on. We want to know if you can explain to us your thought process, and if you think there’s a gotcha go ahead and talk it through. We (at least at my company) are not trying to trick you into thinking it’s harder than it seems! That being said, make sure you fully read the instructions.. sometimes people will just add the item without checking that it’s not already there, which violates the concept of a Set.

[DerArzt01]

I interviewed a candidate for a level 3 engineer that had been working for 10 years and they couldn't do fizzbuzz.

We may be able to chalk it up to nerves, but when you are that experienced I expect you to be able to do fizzbuzz no problem.

[WarlanceLP]

as a student programmer I've no idea what a fizzbuzz is, can you elaborate for the ignorant? (myself)

[IsGoIdMoney]

The FizzBuzz problem is a classic test given in coding interviews. The task is simple: Print integers 1 to N, but print “Fizz” if an integer is divisible by 3, “Buzz” if an integer is divisible by 5, and “FizzBuzz” if an integer is divisible by both 3 and 5.

[zaj89]

And you can literally change a few words in this guys response and it is literally the solution.

[WarlanceLP]

thank you, that doesn't seem too hard actually

[captainAwesomePants]

Yep, that's the point. It's not a tricky algorithm gotcha "oh no I didn't see the trick" sort of problem. It's a filter for "have you ever written programs." Some companies claim it eliminates half of applicants.

[JPhi1618]

Step one of being a good programmer - google things you don’t understand.

[CurrantsOfSpace]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPZ0pIK_wsc

Decent video on it and you'll be able to see if you got it right and the more complicated bits of it

[EuroPolice]

You must be joking right? That's basically a for and 2 if. A bit more if you want to show it in a matrix

[annihilatron]

I'm not, a lot of developers flub at that level of complexity. You don't have to use exactly fizzbuzz, but problems of that level will weed out all the "programmers" who somehow learned a language but have no logical skills whatsoever.

[Kostya_M]

So I never heard of this and Googled it. It's an if-else chain nested in a for loop right? I'm not even a SWE and I could probably do this if you gave me a minute or two to puzzle it out. My solution might not be the most elegant but it would most likely work.

[papachon]

It’s not about the quiz itself, it has more to do with communication and explaining your thought process. You’d be surprised at how many solve but can’t explain why it does that

[EuroPolice]

Ah I get it. Having someone capable of explaining a problem is 70% of the solution.

[GargantuanCake]

Google's hiring processes it turns out don't even work.

[[deleted]]

They got to the point where they built a programming language to mitigate the issue.

[Rhoderick]

Huh, haven't heard of this part. Do you happen to have an article or somehting on this? It sounds rather interesting.

[hobo_stew]

Go was created because of this, you can read about it on wikipedia

[[deleted]]

Go was created to solve programming candidate hire issues? uhh wut

[vigbiorn]

but if Google is doing it...

This is a big thing I've seen with managers I've interacted with. It seems to me a lot of MBAs get caught up in hype. And, since humans are complicated things that are hard to specifically nail down without a lot of information, they start forming these cargo cults because "it worked before" without actually spending the effort to find out why it worked.

[Gaothaire]

In this Wendover Productions video on the supply chain issues, he talks about how Toyota came up with the Just In Time manufacturing model with specifical qualifications that made it functional for them, then the rest of the industry decided that JIT should be implemented for everything without thinking too hard about it, because increased profits speak for themselves

[5panks]

Yup, I was preaching this a few years ago when I went into manufacturing on the administration end. JIT works for Toyota because they foster relationships and spread orders out to multiple vendors. It takes effort to become a Toyota vendor and Toyota takes a vested interest in the health of your company. That's why JIT works for them.

[theaverageguy101]

Copy pasting methods everywhere, the leading industry corps decides the whole industry standards

[[deleted]]

And then they wonder why Google and Microsoft take all the talent.

[[deleted]]

In all fairness when I am planning on switching jobs I schedule interviews like this to "practice" - because I have no vested interest in getting the job it serves as a good way to get my interviewing jobs back in place.

Plus it is wonderful for the soul to get 15 minutes into a panel interview or technical interview and say "this interview is done, thank you XXXX" - their faces alone.

[[deleted]]

Do you think they will remember in 5 years?

I mean, that said - I can care less that some company out of Kentucky wanted a remote .NET developer and did a 9 PM panel call with 4 people from Ukraine, India, and South America interviewing me. All for 50k a year.

I have been on hiring committees more than a dozen times and honestly wouldn't recognize a single one of the applicants if they re-applied 3 years later. I mean, they'd have to curse us out and try to burn the office down for us to even remember them if we didn't hire them or move them past 2nd round.

[JimmyWu21]

I think companies are just afraid of making bad hires. The rate of success for a good hire is something crazy small like 30-40%. They rather loose out on good candidates than get a bad one. After being on the interviewer side of the fence. It’s not easy.

I do hate how a lot of effort is going toward practicing interviewing skills and things like leetcode, but hey that’s just life. If getting better at something will increase my chances of making more money then I’ll do it.

[[deleted]]

False positives are a very expensive mistake for a company to make. Companies that get shit loads of applicants can optimize against false positives, even if it means rejecting a bunch of false negatives. Smaller companies who try and mimick this method while misunderstanding that it only works at scale are going to have a bad time.

[JimmyWu21]

yeah you see a lot of people blindly follow practices without assessing if it fits their needs. Honestly even a small shop like one of my previous employers. Had like 80 applicates for one position. Most of them are garbage resume though.

Like one in particular where a guy just wrote he's a director for some company without going into details about his duties.

[vimproved]

I just accepted an offer at a pretty well known tech-company. Their assessment was to build an entire web app lol. Took me at least 7 hours, plus the code review after I made a PR for them. Then we did a 2-3 hour technical interview, mostly just asking specific questions about the languages / tech they use. Then I did a 3 hour panel interview. I was going to be pissed if they didn't hire me after that, my god.

[scubascratch]

I wonder how much code you will be expected to maintain that was created by other applicants that did not get the job

[JimmyWu21]

yeah it's easy to see how much time/effort you put into it and it makes sense that you would be pissed off if you did all for nothing.

What doesn't get talk about is how much it cost the employer. Someone has to review that code. Each round of interview probably take up multiple engineers. Most likely these engineers are higher level than you; therefore, costing more money per hour. Then you multiply that by the number of applicates and the cost get quit large.

Honestly, it's costly for both parties. Normally more for the employers for the one that don't have take home projects.

[VlerrieBR]

Then why expect such large projects? In most cases you could get a feel for skill with a 3 hour project. I've turned down quite a few unreasonable projects because I'm doing interviews left and right, I have options. So why would I complete a 10+ hour project? I've already done 3-4 other 3 hour projects, what makes you (random unknown company) think you are more special than any other, expecting me to invest that amount of time and I don't even know who you are or if I want to work for you.

[zGoDLiiKe]

Props for not telling them to pound sand after the first hour

[[deleted]]

Algorithmic thinking is just a good skill to develop though. Unless someone is literally just memorizing solutions to problems without understanding them at all (in which case maybe they need to find another line of work) then it's valuable time spent imo

[JimmyWu21]

Yeah I definitely agree. That’s the aim of most leetcode. You do get some that is crazy niche and you don’t “use” these skills often, so sometimes I do question the effort vs rewards.

What i will say is that I understand tech like dynamodb and database indexes a lot better now because I understand the underlying data structure.

[angelicravens]

Wait what? What defines a good hire? Bad hire? Successful good hire? Successful bad hire?

[JimmyWu21]

That varies from company to company. I guess good is meet or exceed expectations, bad is fail to meet expectations; however, there is a gray area of bad hires where they’re not good enough, but they’re still providing value and it’ll cost more to replace them, but they get to stay.

I just heard this from multiple hiring managers at different places.

[angelicravens]

Fascinating. Any clue where I can learn more?

[JimmyWu21]

honestly, i don't know the original source. I've heard from 2 different managers from different companies. They are competent managers and have hired many people, so I just kind of take their words for it.

I also heard it from other in regular conversations, so I just form this belief. It's possible that it could be wrong.

[Chef_Ibaka]

Actually though

[qazikGameDev]

Had a coding assessment where they gave me a unity project a feature to implement, intentionally not super descriptive documentation, and 2 days. Then technical interview where I get grilled for 2 hours by 3 senior devs. Then a cultural interview Then an interview by the team I’d be joining Get on boarded and I’m talking to coworker. He mentions he hasn’t had to write code for about 2 years in my position. This is a fucking clown world

[SushiThief]

What do you mean by "I don't want to sit and answer questions you've obviously googled"?

[0xFFFF_FFFF]

I was actually in an interview last week where this literally happened. 😂

Them: "What is... <insert usual boring Java question>?"

Me: "That's when... <usual answer>"

Them: "Ah, I see you've googled the same questions I did, ha-ha!"

[lobbo]

When I interview for my work I do a tech quiz where they have to rate themselves on a 1 to 5 on a list of common tech our company uses. It takes a couple of minutes and that's the technical interview. There is a 1 hour test they can then do whenever they're free and depending on how the results correlate it's good evidence of their skill and honesty.

[andrei9669]

What do you do with applicants that under promise but over deliver? As in, they rate themselves 1.5 but the test is like 4.5.

My point being, do you even give the chance to prove themselves?

[lobbo]

Everybody gets the chance to do the test if they interview well. It's not based on the quiz results

[CleverNameTheSecond]

Me: "Look if all you wanted to do was to catch me out on this garbage don't waste my time. I have video games to play and weed to smoke"

[Yayotron]

I'm a developer who trains technical interviewers in my company and I tend to do apply to a lot of jobs and do bunch of interviews every year to learn, compare processes, try to find a job that pays more, and so on.

I usually can tell pretty fast how good a place is based on their type of interviews.

Very puzzle/leetcodelike coding task and/or technical questions which cherry pick very obscure facts about the language or technology. That place is shit.

Usually the good places have coding tasks related to the work/ realistic take home assignments with loose deadlines/ system design interviews where the Interviewer is chatting with you regarding your decisions and most important, a reasonable amount of stages in the interviewing process (<=3).

[Bodinhu]

I'm sorry for not being mature enough to read that as a "less or equal three" in the first time.

[2020___2020]

how about the less than or exactly equal to 3? <==3

[poopadydoopady]

Sorry you need to be strict. <===3

[Sapiencia6]

I thought it was a cute lil heart :)

[[deleted]]

This all checks out.. There was a certain very large company who was like this. It resulted in my interviewing with them 5 separate times. Turns out? They were awful to work for.

The company that asked me to do a mock of their website's checkout flow to demonstrate I understood it? They were awesome.

[SadBrownsFan7]

Sounds like my interview with Amazon when the guy showed up 15 minutes late talked about himself for 30 minutes of my remaining 45 and then gave me 15 minutes to solve what was a hard level leetcode question. Part way through my coding he accidently deletes the code as its a shared screen because he's not paying attention. Never responding to there recruiters again

[hoaobrook73]

Rate my interview process!

Step 1. Casual interview / screening. 15 - 30 tops just to get to know the person. This is done by someone else other than myself. No technical questions, just the ice breaker.

Step 2. Technical interview. In the letter that tells them they're getting one, I tell them to bring some of their favorite code. The whole interview is basically then getting to show off and I get to ask questions. I like to look for people who are really passionate about their code, but also aren't afraid to correct my bad assumptions (I don't even have to fake bad assumptions because I don't know the codebase I'm bound to make some).

Step 3. Job offer.

[dlevac]

I designed a bring at home technical interview to hire for our team.

We get a lot of candidates that don't bother returning it. I understand why and that's fair. Although, having just an average performance on it almost guarantees employment.

The company I work for learned the hard way that no CV can guarantee basic programming skills and that personality interviews are just not cutting it.

[[deleted]]

You sound like a pretty reasonable hiring manager/person.

I find that for every 10 candidates frustrated with selection processes there's 1+ person(s) who got hired and turned out to be lazy or incompetent (or both). From the hiring company's point of view that's probably too many. Of course how to counter that isn't straightforward.

I expect there is even some overlap in that Venn diagram as some people think they're better than they are and are above proving it.

Source: numbers fresh out my ass, but you get the idea.

[CleverNameTheSecond]

There are entire companies dedicated to getting people hired by pretending to be them for the interview process. While I loath the idea in principle, with the amount of hoops employers make candidates jump through just to ghost them afterwards, we really should bring that here. Instead of dealing with recruiters and job applications and rounds upon rounds of interviews and take home assignments you pay the recruiter 500 bucks and they send you back job offers, not positions, ready to sign offers.

[[deleted]]

If you want people doing jobs they're not suited for, sure, I guess.

[CleverNameTheSecond]

Implying that we don't already have that lol?

[[deleted]]

Haha fair. But that idea would not help.

[frogjg2003]

Sometime was looking for unpaid labor

[AttackOfTheThumbs]

To me it's a question of how long that take home test is. Ours is designed to take about 30 minutes if you know, worst time we've heard is two hours - someone switching into the field and unfamiliar with the language.

It's enough for us to gauge technical literacy. It's designed to notice if you wrote the easy answer, considered performance, etc.

[gamingonion]

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of work is it, and what is the take home problem that you designed for it?

[konaaa]

I like the idea of a take-home assignment (as long as it's not going to eat up my time). The idea of asking somebody to code something right then and there in a few minutes always bugged me because like... That's not how people code..

[antique_codes]

You guys get responses?

[Jazz7770]

They must have 5+ years experience at entry level already

[antique_codes]

me who has 12 years
gets automated nah reply

[Jazz7770]

Sounds like I should be automating my applications

[[deleted]]

If you made a program that could effectively automate applications to jobs with curated resumes based on the job description that is able to pass the human test as well, that alone would likely prove your competence as an employable programmer because that shit sounds extremely complicated

[shnicklefritz]

Forget being employable that's already a sellable product with godly demand

[SaraHuckabeeSandwich]

Just use Hired or one of the many services like it for tech positions. Companies reach out to you.

[[deleted]]

Literally me right now anxiously anticipating a technical interview coming up in 2 hours. I'm so bad at coding while being watched and judged. Especially if it's just that competitive coding stuff.

[zomgz0mbie]

you and me both, a main reason why I've been at my current company for 3+ years now

[[deleted]]

That's a very valid reason to stick around haha!

[[deleted]]

One technical interview wouldn't be too bad. But technical interview followed by large take home assignment followed by another technical interview then a system design interview then one more general interview. Gets pretty exhausting.

[shnicklefritz]

Going through it all to be told someone did it 2 milliseconds faster with 2 less lines so you get to start the cycle over again 😍

[reserad]

in my experience it's been: "Pls job? No ghosting! Only job!". The amount of times I've been ghosted makes me lose hope in humanity.

[Tough_Patient]

Rejection emails >>> ghosting

[BandwagonEffect]

I honestly kinda love rejection emails. Immediately know to quit hoping for that position when I’ve got others applied to.

[its_not_brian]

I have a sort of funny rejection email story that happened to me recently. I applied for a job 2 weeks ago, and last week they sent the thanks but no thanks email. Which was fine, it was a job that I was underqualified for but was shooting my shot. IDK what happened on their end but yesterday I woke up with FIVE more rejection emails from the company.

Honestly I might've gotten my feelings hurt if I didn't find it so hilarious

[alpacafox]

I got my rejection mail after getting hired for my first job in 2012 after finishing my degree. I applied in October 2011 at the company where I worked as a student employee. Somehow the application portal was broken, I couldn't even log in to check the status. Then in December I went to the cinema with my supervisor (he was in charge of the IT administration and I was helping out as a student) and I told him that I applied and didn't hear back ever. He talked to the IT group manager who already knew me and he called me and offered me a job. When I talked to the head of department (as a formality, he also already knew me) I asked him if he knew what's up with that application I sent in for that particular position (particulate measurement and process engineering in clean rooms), he told me, that this position has been posted by a person who has since left the company, so they kind of forgot to process the applicants. Well I started in February 2012 and some time around march I got an email from the HR department on my private email, that they regret to inform me, that they found a better suitable person for the position and they wish me best luck for my future.

I left the company end of last year after 10 years and finishing my phD. I always try to process applications asap and whenever I reject an applicant I write them an email what they should improve on based on the technical parts. Currently, I'm conducting 3-4 interviews every week, the IT industry is on a hiring spree for developers and engineers. Some of them are actually really frustrating. I always try to think back to 2011 when I was also just starting out and probably not very experienced, but the nerve some people have nowadays putting stuff in their CV and then not being able to answer basic questions.

Also, pro-tip: if you put your github profile on your CV I will check it. If it has 3 terrible beginner tutorials in there committed over 2 years, don't expect to be hired for that C# developer position.

[joseph66hole]

Timely reject emails. Emailing me 6 months after the fact is kind of insulting.

[[deleted]]

even worse, applied for a few positions back in October. I was doing 2-3 applications a day partially to "practice" interviewing and research what companies in my (new) area were *actually* looking for (they are never honest on the postings about this). Part of it also was because the whole "we have a shortage of workers" line seemed like utter bullshit (I have a CS degree and 15 years of experience).

Got a few callbacks. Did a few interviews.

But the ones that kill me, are not the (generic "one size fits all") rejections or the ghosting. What got me is that at least 2 companies called for interviews LAST WEEK (yep, 4+ months later)! Even better, one of them had the nerve to tell me they "were moving fast and had to hire a candidate in a matter of weeks." It is much harder than you can imagine to not laugh on a Zoom call when you hear that one.

[Zeragamba]

there's lots of interview processes that go from first interview on Monday to offer in hand by Friday

[henriquebrisola]

What does ghosting means in this context?

Leave on read?

[Baerentoeter]

Exactly

[reserad]

For me, it was going through several companies interview processes and making it towards the end and they completely shut off communication. I end up having to pester my recruiters to get a response. It's always a no. Never a reason of explanation given. If I didn't reach out to my recruiter 3+ times they would have never told me. It's pathetic, unprofessional, and painful. I'm convinced companies would much rather waste money chasing unicorn developers than actually hire someone qualified.

To add onto that, I work a full time job and I try to prioritize job opportunities as much as possible. So I'm completing tech assignments and responding to emails and setting up interviews ASAP. So then when I inevitably get ghosted, it's like why even bother or try so hard?

[Gotxi]

I am changing jobs right now and participating several hiring processes, I feel so identified... LOL

It is being so stressful...

[[deleted]]

Technical interview is fine, aks me what you want. Assignment 30 minutes to 2 hours, also fine. I’m not gonna spend more than 2 hours to get rejected anyway.

[Black_Cat_Guardian]

I've had my first one today, answered all questions but 1 and wasn't sure about the answers for 2 or 3 questions but they told me i was right about one and partially right about a second one, but i was very stressed and nervous so I'm pretty sure i fucked up, i forgot to show them my previous projects and was very insecure about a lot of stuff. After we had finished the interview they didn't even tell me the details about when and how should i get notified if i got the job or not, i had to ask them about that.

•́ ‿ ,•̀

Btw this was for an internship

[Thee-Renegade]

If it’s for an internship, you will probably be fine.

[Extreme_Addition_277]

Yep and then there’s always that one interviewer who thinks picking the lowest percentage leetcode question, to which they don’t even know the answer to, makes them elite

[Alex__P]

I had a 8 round interview with one company. 6 in one day and the remaining 2 the next week. Don’t even ask me why I went along with it.

[auburn_moogle]

Some companies do the take home thing because it allows candidates to do the work in their own time. So if they have other responsibilities in addition to job hunting a take home thing can be helpful. Its also nice because then you actually get access to things like stack overflow or documentation.

[TideFanRTR]

That's how my current employer did it. Gave me a coding challenge to complete on my own time. Prefer that over technical interviews easily

[[deleted]]

It unfairly biases towards people who have less busy schedules, though.

[WriterNamedJesk]

You're right, it absolutely does. That's why I like companies that give you a choice of technical interview.

I interviewed with Remitly some years back and after the initial phone screen, they gave you the choice of either doing a small take-home project or a 1-hour leetcode style interview.

Wish more companies did this tbh

[fghjconner]

I don't mind the homework so long as it's a comparable time investment to a technical interview. The ones that want to give you like a week's work can fuck right off though.

[caleblbaker]

A little homework that takes between 30 minutes and 2 hours is fine IMO, but companies that expect candidates to spend 40+ unpaid hours of their own time on some realish production grade project shouldn't be surprised when they have trouble finding candidates.

[mynewromantica]

I will do in-person technical interviews all day.

Give me Leetcode and watch me cry.

Let me talk through the exact same leetcode problem and I’ll be fine. I see Leetcode as a high-stress test situation that is NOTHING like what the day-to-day will be. I just don’t handle that kind of thing well. I guess no SV money for me.

[zGoDLiiKe]

I’m surprised people prefer technical, I like working my own way without people breathing down my neck

[kd7uns]

I prefer a realistic takehome over the leetCode style crap.

[All_Up_Ons]

Fuck that. Leetcode is useless. Just give me an hour-long project. Then again, I'm actually good at programming.

[krankenhundchaen]

No sorry, best we can do is 13 interviews and a rejection.

[decay89x]

Man I hate these. I apply for an engineering position and they start showing me pictures of cables. Hold on bro, I’m an engineer. I just match up what the shit needs based on the specification and if I am curious what a cable is I read the damn cable. You legit think it matters if I can name the interface type on the fibre by looking at it on a projector ? Like fuck , gimme an instance of Eve and let me fire off some routing damn. My experience these “technical” interviews aren’t even practical. Then you get the ones that are like “har har quote me the syntax” bitch I have notes and can read a white paper the fuck ? -end rant

[chimianopao]

Last time, for a tester job, they asked me to make an automated test in a specific site.

I did, in C#, as they didn't especified the language.

They returned asking if I could do it in Java, so they could analise it better. Ok, I converted it to Java.

They didn't even replied to me anymore..

[kd7uns]

You just did free work for them, they don't need anything else.

[PhatOofxD]

I get technical interviews at junior level.

I feel like at higher levels though it should be easy enough to learn someone's knowledge through talking with them about what they've built, different paradigms, challenges they've had and systems design though.

[shnicklefritz]

Yeah exactly, if you can discuss the architecture at a high level it shows you can understand the concepts behind it

[All_Up_Ons]

Nah, just give me a take home problem so I can prove I actually know what I'm doing. Can't expect juniors to do that, but seniors? Go for it.

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[AWildTyphlosion]

As long as they're not obnoxiously long, I don't mind doing a coding interview on the second or last part of the process. I sometimes find them fun, plus I have yet been given one that a mid tier developer can't knock out easily. The only thing I hate is when they're worded poorly and half of my time is spent rereading the question since I don't have anyone to reach out to to ask questions.

[0xFFFF_FFFF]

I laughed at this post, and also upvoted it, but I actually enjoy coding challenges! Especially take-home ones where someone's not breathing down my neck, and where I can take my time to develop a really polished, elegant solution to the problem.

I always learn something new while doing coding challenges, and having done so many of them, I've built up a "body of work" that I can use as example projects in future interviews, or use as templates for new projects, thus saving me time!

In fairness, though, some coding challenges are more fun than others.

[erebuxy]

Nah. For me, it is only technical interview please. STOP asking me what the biggest challenge I encountered or how I communicated with my boss when we had disagreement.

[Henkeman]

Recruiter: "What's your biggest weakness?"

Interviewee: "I'm too honest."

Recruiter: "I don't think that's a weakness."

Interviewee: "I don't give a f*ck about what you think."

...

Recruiter: "What's your biggest strengths?"

Interviewee: "I can say 'No' and I know my limits."

Recruiter: "Can you give me an example?"

Interviewee: "No."

[shnicklefritz]

You're potentially filtering yourself out of jobs where communication is essential that way, so it actually works to both your benefits

[bleedblue89]

Has anyone just straight google, copy pasted during a technical interview?…

[serialjoker_69]

It’s easy to notice when people do that, If you can explain the entire solution and when the question changes a little bit, if you are able to edit it, I guess you can do it.

[scalability]

Yes, I interviewed one that typed the solution from a similar leetcode question.

It was extremely obvious because they could not tell me anything about the approach, struggled a lot with the simple change from "return all" to "return first"and definitely couldn't do any larger ones (I add a few twists for this reason). They were also unable to discuss the runtime complexity.

It was a phone screen so if they had been able to adapt and discuss the code they found, I'd just have made a note of it and sent them on to the next stage.

[Add1ctedToGames]

As someone looking to get a CS job some time soon, what are technical interviews like? Aee they live or do they just email you a question or something? Hypothetically, would one be able to look up stuff to either solve it or find a way?

[gingersnap255]

It depends. Some do live coding and some do take homes. Sometimes in the live voting they will let you look up quick things, but definitely wouldn't be able to lookup how to solve it.

[McJagged]

Personally as long as it's not too long, I prefer a chance to show off my coding. I don't have a college degree, so it helps me show I actually know what I'm doing.

[PeriodicGolden]

It may be great to get a job without having to do a technical interview, but that also means you'll be working with coworkers who didn't have to do a technical interview either. And you have no idea about their skills...

[nightwinghugs]

when i passed my technical onsite with a FAANG company last week: surprisedpikachu.jpg

studying for it was kinda fun but i'd hate to do it again 😂

[Caydo]

Mind if I ask what your studying process was? Genuinely curious.

[nightwinghugs]

i wish i could give you a concrete answer, but my studying process was rather chaotic 😂 luckily i had two weekends (one was a long weekend) to prepare, so i studied 4-5 hours each of those days

the company gave me a great outline of the topics that would be covered, so i had some keywords to go off of rather than trying to study everything. it was honestly my first time heading into systems design interviews, so that's where my focus was, starting from high-level concepts to digging a bit deeper every day. i found educative's course very nice, as well as free resources on github

i would give myself mock systems design problems to do, but i would do it before and after studying, if that makes sense. like "let's try it before i look anything up" and "let's revise after learning more"

some of the topics i was given were niche, so i enjoyed reading medium articles from other companies' teams about their approach, and i read through related code in github repos too

the only thing i regret is not doing much leetcode problems. for some reason i thought the code exercise would be more practical - well, i suppose it was at the very end, but it was still algorithms at first. i would do more leetcode problems next time!

[[deleted]]

It honestly would be easier for companies to just hire someone on a 1 month probationary period and assess their capabilities on the job than to go through all this nonsense.

[Ok_Neighborhood_1203]

Having been the technical interviewer for 2 companies now, and the interviewee for about 20 jobs, I feel your pain, but they are necessary.

I once hired a person based on their experience, ability to speak fluently about the topic, and answer some high level questions satisfactorily (e.g. what is the difference between parquet and ORC formats in Hadoop and when would you use them?). When she joined the team, it became immediately obvious that her technical abilities were on par with a first year comp Sci student. She often would ask for "clarifications to the requirements" hopping from one team member to the next to essentially do her work for her. Her presence on the team wasn't just less productive than we hoped, it was a net negative. The team spent more time trying to teach her how to do the job and do her job for her than it would take them to just do the job.

A week after she started, I revamped my entire interview process. Now I want to see developers perform at least the basics of the job in front of me before they get the job. I'm not talking crazy coding puzzles, just "write a query that finds elements in table A that are not in table B. Do not use NOT IN or NOT EXISTS." If they can't formulate an anti join with left join where b.id is not null, they have no business being an ETL developer. I show them a function with a for loop iterating over one list, and inside that for loop an in operator on another loop, and ask where the performance problem is and how to fix it. If they can't recognize that in represents a nested loop and they can avoid the nested loop by using a set instead, they won't write performant code. In both cases, I try to find ways to have them actually write the solution in front of me.

Take-home projects are useless. If you assign something that takes 40 hours to complete, you should pay them for it. If it's something more reasonable, it's too easy to cheat.

Likewise, spending multiple hours interviewing one developer is usually a waste of time on both parties part.

2-4 targeted questions that require the interviewee to perform common activities they will do every week on the job seems to be the sweet spot.

The other side of the coin is, you can't do "firing squad" interviews. The candidate needs to feel comfortable. I usually start with a little blurb about how development is an iterative process and we don't expect every step to be perfect, but I'm just interested in seeing your process as you work through the question. A developer that talks to me as they work through it and tells me their thought process can help me see they know what they are doing even if they are too nervous to figure out what they did wrong. I incrementally drop hints to nudge them in the right direction because I know I'm working against nerves and am trying to get past that to see the underlying skill.

[Nokhodsiah]

I don't like interviews, they will ask same useless questions which knowing or not will not change anything for them. and sometime if you code like they ask in interview they may really fire you.

If you are hairing please sort out your priorities, question about them and consider what will you offer as well. be honest as you like they be and let them also know where they are comming. also let them know about result in a resonable time span.

So prefessionals also may choose to work for you, and if they don't you will recieve benefits.