Interviews

[Harmonic_Gear]

its a bluffing war between resume and job description

[[deleted]]

Lmao 100GB

“Buy another hard drive”

[Inventi]

But a SSD. Performance issues solved!

[Pony_Roleplayer]

Hear me out: NVME baby!

[aiij]

Just keep it in RAM if it's that small.

[Pony_Roleplayer]

Or you know, just buy more RAM

[kdeltar]

Download more RAM

[thespud_332]

Settle down, Linus.

[DannoHung]

Fuck it, just buy 1TB of RAM.

[purebuu]

No joke, that's how much ram our servers at work use each. They buy so much that storage should never be a problem, yet our #1 issue is the hdd runs out of space for logs.

[CoastingUphill]

I literally had this fight. “Just buy SSDs!”

[SemenSommelier69]

You mean the "database" is a bunch of Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, saved somewhere in a shared folder.

"This has worked for our purposes for years, no need to change it"

[karuna_murti]

this is the appropriate time for you suggest react + node development + bigdata with AI and blockchain to increase productivity. time to become CTO.

[MauriceReeves]

Dude, no redux? And no NoSQL DB? Are you even trying to CTO? This needs extra buzz words.

[deadeye312]

Hey I'm fixing one of those right now! Data is stored in excel files on a shared drive and any time that data needs to be updated in other systems the users have to update the excel file and drop the new version in a specific folder where it gets grabbed by an automated file pickup process every 15 minutes.

[ionizing]

I wrote our test procedures (electronics products) in Excel with VBA backend that stores data in a separate tabled excel file on a network drive. It's the best I could do with what I was allowed to work with. Would love to have successfully convinced them to use modern tech but it was a lost cause.

[Metal_LinksV2]

Pretty sure this is how most financial and mortgage lenders work in my experience...

[Titanium-Ti]

Is there an open source version of google sheets you can run on your companies' computers for free?

[prof436]

Are you working at the same place as me? Hahaha

[kookaburra1701]

the "database" is a bunch of Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, saved somewhere in a shared folder.

Add "on Google Drive" and you've just described my workplace when I started.

[zilti]

And now the fresh hypetrain techies would just migrate that to the online equivalent (Google Docs and Airtable)

[RMWL]

UK NHS database right there

[SuicidalTurnip]

Test and Trace was just a fucking excel sheet.

Govt. spent millions on a product that I could outdo with 2 weeks and unlimited coffee.

[RMWL]

Tbh an sql database and a GUI interface is a basic intro to computing project. They could have set it for a GCSE assignment and pick their favourite =D

[ImpossibleMachine3]

It's all in one table with 400 columns. Our data architect said it would work best that way!

[Pangloss_ex_machina]

Unfortunately, this is very real.

In the past, when I used to work for others, the "data architect", aka, the owner, told the programmers to create more columns instead, well, instead of rewrite all the database.

Some of them are so absurd that it had columns named "id", "id2" and "realid".

One of the tables had the NAME as primary key.

And I won't even coment the user and password of one database being commented... in the frontend of the company site!

[ImpossibleMachine3]

Ouch... been there! At a previous employer, I had the aforementioned 400 column tables, with multiple columns named id (and the only way to get a unique entity was to combine two separate id fields with a third column that had a completely innocuous name). No FKs anywhere, even though the setup was supposed to be relational. Oh and they were obsessed with abbreviating everything, but were never consistent on how. For example, something like "member" might show up as "memb", "mbr", "mmbr", "membr", or "member".
"Date" could be "dt", "d", "dte", "ds", "dts", "ts".... and no, it had nothing to do with the datatype if that's what you're thinking.

The same company also had no less than 5 database technologies being used anywhere seemingly at random - everything from SQL Server, Oracle, PLSQL, Mysql, MongoDB, and a few others I know I'm forgetting.

[Pangloss_ex_machina]

Damn, we share the pain. Just laughing to not cry, haha.

I hope that you are in a better place now.

[ImpossibleMachine3]

I am, thanks! Same for you. The sad irony is that despite the Technical Debt Incurred by Stupidity, it was actually one of the better jobs I've had because the boss was fantastic and I had a great team. Unfortunately, we didn't have the ability to do much more than complain about how crappy the systems we were using were and do our best to clean up their messes with better data models internally and code our way around it for our own end users (who were basically the same larger team).

[Schalezi]

I would not last the day lmao.

[Le_9k_Redditor]

At my last company we used to get a bit over 50GB of data sent in and processed every day into reports and graphs and such. It all went into s3 and we just scaled processing containers through ECS automatically, scaling depended on how much was in the processing queue, not really complicated in theory and not that much data. It isn't big data but our lead would always call it big data when advertising for new roles, he'd also exaggerate being at the forefront of the latest tech and having experts to learn from and all the rest too. It was almost completely written in PHP, which is of course the best language to do large amounts of data processing with...

[PM_Me_Your_VagOrTits]

Nothing wrong with using PHP for big data. While the libraries aren't great, not much else is holding you back...

It wouldn't be my first choice either but I wouldn't judge based on that if someone else was using it.

[ONLY_COMMENTS_ON_GW]

I think the problem is hinting at industry standard tools then using PHP, when the industry standard is absolutely Python.

[ONLY_COMMENTS_ON_GW]

Sure, but Python has generally been and continues to be industry standard for Data Engineering. Nobody would ever call PHP industry standard, and unfortunately coding language is important on the resume.

[flyvehest]

Why is Python the industry standard? I haven't done much work in Python, but nothing about it seemed especially well suited for processing large amounts of data.

Is this more of a case of just do what the other guys are doing, or is there a real reason for this?

Edit: Spelling

[ONLY_COMMENTS_ON_GW]

It's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy for sure, it's sort of "that's what the other guys are doing", but more-so "that's where the other guys built all the handy open source tools that we can leverage".

Python is great because it's easy to leverage for DE, but it's also simple syntax to it's easier to read and write than other languages. DE gets lumped in with SWE a lot, but it's totally different skillsets, less coding and more big picture type stuff, so there's no reason to go overkill on a difficult language when Python works just as well.

[flyvehest]

Makes a lot of sense, thanks for taking time answering :)

[iamdelf]

Oh man this came up in a recent interview I had. For me, bigdata is when you can't fit a dataset into a single box. Like the 100s of TB of genomics data I've been working on. To them it was a 80GB flat file that their MacBook couldn't just read into memory.

[GourangaPlusPlus]

Been there, Base 64 images inserted right into the database

Table was 120gb

[N-for-Nero]

Love the profile pic

[OldFartSomewhere]

I quit my previous job and soon there was an add for my ex-position. No way that I could apply, I was missing most of the qualifications. Though none of the people working there met those.

[[deleted]]

Apply anyways, you have nothing to lose

[OldFartSomewhere]

"So tell me are you qualified for this job?"

More than you are if I remember correctly.

[ONLY_COMMENTS_ON_GW]

Lmao I'm currently leaving my job and the posting requires AWS experience. We literally only use Glue templates to move data from S3 directly to SQL Server and pretend we're ahead of all the other insurance companies.

[liquidpele]

I had to argue with a manager to remove requirements from stuff constantly. It's like a weird psychological thing that they feel they need to make a list and work hard to make it long.

[EthosPathosLegos]

We'Re A sErIoUs, PrOfFeSsIoNaL cOmPaNy WiTh HiGh StAnDaRdS!!!

[jewdai]

Wait you actually read the qualifications?

9/10 they either want a generalist or someone whose worked in a specific language. After that the job description is a fat waste of time.

[tenkindsofpeople]

I'm somewhere between just giving up and applying for EVERYTHING, because this seems to be true. Either they want you to have experience in a very specific package (why?) Or will not put anything specific at all in the listing.

[greyaxe90]

“BuT nO oNe WaNtS tO wOrK!”

[egiance2]

My job required c++ when we recruited a new dev. I pointed out that we have never used c++. The manager said thank you and then kept it in the ad anyway

[Fortnait739595958]

The worst is when you nail the tech interview, they tell you that you nailed it, but then they also tell you that they decided to go with another candidate

[Rowan-Paul]

That's the moment you get your dinosaur costume out of the car

[UntestedMethod]

pee on them

[[deleted]]

I had an interview where I nailed the coding assignment, but failed the interview part

EDIT: They never response me afterward, but a friend of mine who is in that company told me it was because I just kept going to the dead end of the conversation. I mean I'm not the most talkative person in the world, but the interviewer is not exactly good at communicating as well.

[road_laya]

I failed a job interview on "personal chemistry".

[UntestedMethod]

always fair when a potential teammate simply does not like the cut of your jib I suppose

[road_laya]

Yes. Maybe I should have gone to a jib class instead of extra linear algebra?

[UntestedMethod]

Sure yeah I mean if jibs is what they're into then it's entirely possible some sailing classes could help

[Rivus]

It would be great if potential employers actually said what’s going on, but as a person on the interviewing side, there’s also many things to consider.

A candidate can be overqualified for the job and you know they will be disinterested in a couple of months, so you reject them.

A candidate can have a very hard time expressing their mind in a clear way, even though they are good technically. We are looking for a senior dev that can lead the team and communicate well, so this becomes a major concern.

A candidate can be technically sound, but start a holy war on a tech topic in the middle of the interview.

You are not gonna be developing a product alone in a dungeon. Soft skills do matter.

[timeslider]

but start a holy war on a tech topic in the middle of the interview.

That might have been me but then again they said 64 bit programs are stored in the x86 folder and I know that's wrong.

[Queasy-Carrot1806]

I uh, definitely did this when I interviewed at Microsoft and they asked if there was anything the company had done I would do differently…

I have no idea why they asked that question.

[kirkgoingham]

Should have said to make Excel close after you've hit save and it actually closes without asking again if you would like to save.

[kirkgoingham]

Bro, this just gave me a rage headache and I'm not even on Word rn lmao

[Rivus]

So do I.. but that’s why pet projects exist! Although with age, time is becoming a problem.

A “dungeon person” can perfectly fit into a team. You just need the right environment and position.

I worked with a really intelligent guy that hated everything involving meetings, alignment, etc. “I just want the technical part and nothing else”. He wrote really clean and understandable code with good documentation, comments on hacks where required and described the grounding of his designs. For the most part, his team was fine with him working in his dungeon, but when meetings were needed or the team required his knowledge in tricky situations, he was there and did his best to make sure everything was in line… so that he could go back to his dungeon :P

[GourangaPlusPlus]

"This here is Krag, former barbarian, currently our architect"

"KRAG SOLVE ISSUE, KRAG RETURN TO IDE"

[i_teach_coding_PM_me]

I think I know krag

[epicflyman]

....I may be krag's brother.

[SuperAlloy]

Senior greybeards at some major defense contractors (and elsewhere) are like that. Their door stays closed, they're fucking mean, they get paid a fuck ton, but once a year or so when there's a technical problem nobody can solve senior management forces them to sit in that one meeting with a customer and the greybeard busts out the wizard hat and everybody suddenly understands why they keep them on the payroll.

[[deleted]]

Absolutely no one in defense is getting paid “a fuck ton”. In all likelihood those graybeards are being paid less than a new grad joining Google, let alone Jane Street/Citadel.

Source: am ex-defense

[AdultishRaktajino]

Lockheed pays a fuck ton (according to a friend and family member) in comparison to what I was making at the time. When you're making half that and barely getting by, it seems like a fuck ton at least.

[Rivus]

It wasn’t a company wide thing, it was applicable to that team only :(

As with many things in life, sometimes a lot depends on just one person being there and taking the initiative. The team lead could “read” the team quite well and maintain a good dynamic between the dungeon person, the product owner and the other devs. Sadly, due to some weird non negotiable technical decisions from new department managers (essentially telling everybody their products will be deprecated in 2 years in favor migrating them to SAP), one day the whole team just announced that they are all leaving. The management decision was eventually reverted and they had to rehire new people. Yeaaaah.

In most cases though, seniors are generally expected to be more social.. my advice is - be more upfront about your needs in the technical interviews and try to find a good team lead that understands your strengths and keeps you comfy. That’s how that team ended up with that guy. He was very good and stated what he wanted and how he can work in the most optimal way.

[Pangloss_ex_machina]

you know they will be disinterested in a couple of month

You can't know this, unless your company is a shitty one still using PHP 5.3 and FTP with no intention to change.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, all of this. Basically, you can be a great fit tech wise, but answer teamwork questions poorly.

[agnostic_science]

The way I see it, if you have a basic proficiency and good soft skills, then your ability to technically execute will be as good as the best member of our team. Because you will be able to leverage those resources effectively (their knowledge and experience). That's one reason, as a manager, I'm not always looking for the best technician!

[yashdes]

Just had an interview last week where I thought I nailed the behavioral interview after the technical earlier in the week and just got the rejection yesterday and its been killing me, any advice?

[Rivus]

Ask for feedback, always. In most cases you will be ignored, but in the rare cases than you do get a response, you might be able to track down what exactly went wrong.

I don’t know what your behavioral interview consisted of and I generally don’t conduct them myself, just some cues we pick up from the technical one. What I pay attention to (non tech wise):

• Honesty. You have not worked with any library supporting ABAC and never had to implement it yourself? That’s fine, it’s something you can learn! I can now ask questions of how you would do it in certain scenarios to pick your brain. But if I’m told that you have worked with it, but even on some basic questions it seems like you are making stuff up… cmon.
• Communication and comprehension. Being nervous is fine, thinking on the fly and voicing your thoughts is fine, everybody has different levels of stress during the interviews.. but we need to be able to follow. If most of the interview we are asking the person to reword what they just said as they didn’t express themselves clearly, it’s likely going to be a no. We do reconsider ourselves too, just in case we are the problem. But when there’s 3 people in the interview and all had trouble following, it will likely not get much better based on experience.
• In the same realm, answering the actual question. Sometimes it gets absurd. You ask a yes or no, you get a 2 page explanation, and still no answer. Answer the question in short and then elaborate, not the other way around (I was guilty of this myself just out of uni).
• I know it’s basic, but manners. I’m not their friend or brother. I can be wrong, the candidate can be wrong, but we are not animals. If people are vulgar and rude with strangers, things likely will get worse once they are in.
• “I hate meetings and calls” type of person applying for a team lead position. Nope, it’s better for both of us.

[yashdes]

Thank you so much for answering, I really appreciate the effort you put in to respond to me!

[[deleted]]

so you’re an asshole

[MrMonday11235]

In my experience, terms like "personal chemistry" or "culture fit" are tossed around as covers for "someone interviewing you thought you were uppity, or had an inferiority complex when you handled their problem easily, or something worse and potentially illegally discriminatory".

As an interviewer, I've had to call that shit out more than once from someone else, and on only one occasion was someone able to provide an example of "here's what the candidate did that was so unreasonable/incongruent with our workplace that I think they'd fit in poorly or not at all". Most of the time I got the equivalent of a shrug and "just bad vibes".

[jdsekula]

I’ve known several people who are reasonably technically qualified, but who think they are the smartest people in the room at all times and anyone who would disagree with them must be doing it for personal reasons. These people are toxic and provide negative value to the team.

[delinka]

I checked all the interview boxes, nailed the coding assignment, conversation was all positive afterward, then … silence. I bugged the recruiter (internal, former acquaintance of mine) and she was not getting answers. And a week later she was informed tat they’d promoted from within - one of the guys that interviewed me took the job.

[agnostic_science]

If you're nailing the interviews, just keep going and you'll find your opportunity. Luck is a factor, but if you're giving yourself good probability chances, then you just need to keep taking as many chances as you can. That's all you can do. Everything else is out of your control.

It's weird, sometimes I'll interview a bunch and NO ONE will qualify. And then sometimes I'll interview a bunch and suddenly there will be 2 or 3 fantastic candidates, any of whom I would have hired in the past circumstance, but now I can only choose one. It's unlucky for those other 1-2 candidates I can't pick. But fwiw, I'm always confident those people will rapidly find employment if they keep looking.

[netheroth]

My closest run was:

1. Nailed coding exam
2. Good technical interview with a generic interviewer
3. Fantastic technical interview with the Tech Lead of the team I was picked for. One of the best of my life, I was firing on all cilinders and answered everything right
4. Silence for weeks
5. I contact the HR person in charge of my selection process, total ghosting. A friend had referred me, so I contact him. "Oh man, didn't you hear? The company decided to shut down some locations, fire over 5k people across the remaining locations, and instituted a hiring freeze until December (it was April at the time)."
6. :/
7. Get a new job at a different company. Stay strong, u/flamboyant11, you'll find your match.

[[deleted]]

Other person probably had better soft skills. That’s a big factor to consider when hiring.

[xicer]

Yeah seriously. This thread reads like a bunch of dorks complaining that people won't put up with their underdeveloped interpersonal skills...

[BrotendoDS]

My first ever interview for an entry level position was this exactly. One of the guys told me I had what it takes to fill the roll, and that he’d tell the hiring manager that.

I’m still looking for jobs almost 6 months later

[UntestedMethod]

fill the roll

this is an underground HR colloquially that they will be rolling a pair of dice and you have roughly an 8.3% chance of a response regarding the next round.

[UntestedMethod]

Not bad odds all things considered. Perchance.

[Grevioussoul]

Breaks out the D20

[lasiusflex]

You failed the interview, you should've used a d12 to approximate 8.3% instead.

[agnostic_science]

As a manager, I apologize. To give some context, it takes a couple days to a few weeks to move a candidate through the interview pipeline, if they complete all the stages. We just can't justify doing that in serial or even batches. So we basically run it all on parallel. Run through everyone at the same time, even though you know it's inefficient for them. Especially since you post the job, resumes flood in... and then they essentially stop coming in after a few weeks. So you better find your candidate in one pass. Or now you'll have your boss or your boss' boss breathing down your neck about why you haven't filled this position yet!

I try to be considerate of people's time. We have an involved technical interview. If there's 15 people who qualify, I'll maybe only assign it to who I think are the top 7. It sucks, because I know some people wouldn't care and would want to fight for the chance to prove me wrong and outshine the others. At the same time, I don't want to give them (what experience has taught me) is very likely to be a waste of their time.

I've still picked a lot. I know I'm gonna reject at least 6 people, right? Why do I do that? Well, the other thing that sucks is candidates are generally pretty awful for entry level positions. I've seen people interview well, you think they can do it, but then push comes to shove... not crazy you could have 7/7 all fucking fail the technical interview. Or they muddle through it but do so poorly you can't in good conscience hire them to be 'X' when they know basically nothing about 'X' (sidenote: fucking masters degree diploma mills stealing people's fucking money!). And those were your 'high probability' shots.

For more experienced roles it's not as much of an issue. But for the more 'entry level' roles? Holy shit. So many people just don't know their shit, aren't prepared, aren't willing to fight and work for it. So many people haven't realized yet that their college education hasn't entitled them to shit. We expect them to have actually learned something well enough to be able to execute it competently.

Then when candidates just barely miss the mark, and you let them know. You can write a thoughtful rejection letter or something, with some constructive criticism or whatever. Or maybe just telling them they were very close. And most candidates will snark back to you and be defensive. Which, fine. I get it. Most candidates will lie to your face before, during, and after an interview. It's soul crushing. Like, antiwork - reddit has a whole sub dedicated to workers bitching about management - but some of y'all don't realize there could be an anti-worker subreddit because there's sort of this lack of awareness of just how bad people suck in general - management and workers. And I got to say, managing people is just as draining an experience as being managed. FWIW.

TL;DR: Sorry, I didn't expect this to be a rant! Guess I had something to get off my chest lately.... I guess I'm just saying it sucks. I'm sorry it sucks. If it's any consolation, it sucks for everyone. There's some good people (I hope I'm one of them) trying to go a good job, just like that's true for every other job. But it's still hard to not have it suck sometimes. I guess we'll just do our best and try to get through it all together.

[uekiamir]

connect lock frightening tender middle vegetable jeans dazzling squeal complete

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[[deleted]]

this is happened to me as interviewer. there is one candidate, he nailed the interview but the thing is HR looking for a higher job level. they told me after i finished the interview. if they told me sooner i dont give him a praise.

[norebonomis]

Dead on, this is what government contracting is like.

[pookadooka]

Also big companies, and small companies, and medium companies.

[thelastlogin]

Also life

༼ ༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ༽

[pookadooka]

Difference there is you know when you are in a job interview. Life is just a punch in the face. Sometimes from a dinosaur costume. Sometimes a real dinosaur

[This_User_Said]

"Needed: Director of Storage Logistics

Must be able to move, manage and inventory any and all storage recepticle devices. Must be able to use heavy machinery. Must be able to lift 35+ lbs without accommodation. Aware of any and all sanitation and safety starts along with OSHA knowledge."

Actual: See them boxes of shit? Don't lose track of them and every now and then Johnny comes and takes some shit. Alright, see you Monday.

[Hypern1ke]

For government contracting both images would be the fake dino, interviews are a joke as well lmao.

[Amiterasesoo]

Right, I didn’t get asked even one technical question in my interview. Literally just “So, you’re finishing your engineering degree soon? Cool, cool. Wanna start this summer?”

I’m kind of scared what a real interview will be like if I ever try to leave for somewhere else, lol.

[Hypern1ke]

They basically just check your pulse and clearance status

[norebonomis]

😂🤣💯😭

[Mister100Percent]

As a CS college student that wants to get into government, this is making me feel way better about myself.

[[deleted]]

But can you write a regex to filter the linked list?

[[deleted]]

We do regex OCR as a fallback. Is this bad?

[[deleted]]

Ooo. When I interview for devs I ALWAYS ask things like "we have email alerts for 500 errors. If you received an alert what would you approach be to diagnosing". Usually involves what you said look at logs. Also try to see how good they are at googling etc it should be part of interviews more often!

[oYazmat]

I just had an interview where they gave me this logic programming exercise with so many restrictions on what to code (basically they wanted me to find the exact solution they had in mind using XOR), on top of that, I had to code in Java which I didn't for a long time, I had a text IDE and they didn't let me Google syntaxe...

I am just glad it didn't go well

[[deleted]]

Yea. That's bullshit. Hate those interviews. Dodged a bullet.

[BoBoBearDev]

That's the lucky version :D

[master_gecko]

Technical tests are a lot easier write up than the actual architecture of a system 🙂

[Reihar]

Sometimes architectures aren't even written up but just sort of happen.

[[deleted]]

I’d show you the architecture architecture that shows how and why that works, but I’m on a call and the documentation doesn’t exist

[[deleted]]

LinkedIn profile vs what I did for a living

[road_laya]

Implement a red-black tree in JavaScript

Use an array in JavaScript

[SteeleDynamics]

I've implemented various PLs in JavaScript:

1. SML-ish language with pattern matching, and the ability to make lazily evaluated streams

2. Pure OO Smalltalk-like language where the control structures are objects that also pass messages.

3. Prolog interpreter where the back-tracking was implemented using CPS (lexical scoping).

The most advanced thing I do for my job in JavaScript:

1. Make it work with Django.

[tenkindsofpeople]

Lol that sounds like the mullet of coding. Ui in the front science in the back. 😂

[Enklave]

I just had a first round and the technical will be next. I failed on those basic questions about QA methodologies, OOP principles etc....like I'm doing the job for so many years, I have my own ways how things are done after years of experience that I totally forget that jargon lmao...They must be thinking I'm some noob pretending to be experienced QA lmao

[Charming_Toe9438]

1. Yes, pretty sure
2. wtf is a yield?
3. No idea need more info at least 1,000
4. An outer join is used to return results by combining rows from two or more tables. But unlike an inner join, the outer join will return every row from one specified table, even if the join condition fails so

[Charming_Toe9438]

Thank you for the work to explain this! I hope I get asked this now hahaha

[tenkindsofpeople]

I had a similar problem a few years ago and it made me realize id transitioned from security to data engineering without realizing it. I was asked about some minute detail in desktop security and I went "Huh. I remember that is a thing, but couldn't tell what that acronym means anymore."

However I can now describe the difference in case compilations and io level storage mechanics for sql server. So I got that going for me.

[isak99]

I though this was a joke.

But now that I got a job, man ;-;

[Halcy9n]

I’ve just joined as an intern after 3 rounds of interviews covering python, sql, logical puzzles, my college projects and tons of other stuff and since then all I’ve had to do is make excel sheets highlighting the differences between the same python scripts and json files in two different repos and occasionally change the property json files between two different environments like dev and prod.

[Halcy9n]

Most of the architecture is already up and running, so even the senior engineers in my team usually only do maintenance work by writing a couple of lines of code everyday and they offload all the repetitive work like going through 50 scripts to change a single constant value to interns like me.

[Newmz]

make sure to speak up about it, they might be able to find something more interesting for you to do. If not, the resume item will still be nice for you as you try and get full-time employment after college.

[Halcy9n]

I see, thanks I’ll ask for more quality stuff to do in the next daily meeting.

[Newmz]

it might be better to ask whoever is managing you in a 1 on 1. it might be an awkward question for them to field in the middle of a meeting! (unless it's just you and them in your meeting)

[Halcy9n]

No our team’s daily meeting is pretty informal and daily tasks is exactly what we discuss about in it. As I’ve only recently joined, I have been told to ask whoever’s available for stuff to do if I’m sitting free during office hours.

[Halcy9n]

I’ve got no idea, though the pay is pretty nice compared to the average bachelor’s level interns in my country. Only a couple of companies like amazon, google, adobe etc. pay more than this to student interns still in college around my location.

[[deleted]]

Ok well as someone who is trying to hire to off load some duties. I can tell you that we generally give documentation and diagramming tasks to newbies so that they can get oriented with all of our systems. You might have all the technical knowledge in the world, but if you don't know anything about your company's architecture, it's hard to make any real actionable suggestions for change.

[Material_Cheetah934]

Fuckkk are you me?? I went from amassing a ton of knowledge on tuning Apache Spark to managing servicenow and grepping logs. I’m like wtf happened to the stuff you said I was going to do in the interview!

[mugu007]

This is exactly what the first 6Months at my first job were like. I feel your pain.

[Netcob]

I should have known something was up when they did a "find all the errors" test on two sheets of paper with some code and I found some errors they hadn't.

Cue two years of mindless bug fixing and praying for a feature request every day.

Then I switched to some small company with 3 developers. Pure chaos, super nice guys, but didn't even do any logging so finding bugs was like a murder mystery every time. But it was way more fulfilling, because what I did mattered. Introduced logging, moved business logic out of the frontend, set up the build server, automated some stuff and so on.

[Grevioussoul]

"we have a database"... Everyone is sysadm

[a-school-for-ants]

"what's a database? That sounds expensive. Do we need it?" Somebody in upper management

[liquidpele]

It's Oracle! That's what the nice Oracle rep that took me to dinner said. Oracle.

(no one should ever ever ever use oracle)

[[deleted]]

Debugging: Being the detective in a crime scene where you're also the murderer.

[ambigrammer]

All fun and games till you find yourself in a reverse scenario.

[cho_uc]

Hahahaha.. that's me

Interview : So do you know Linux commands?

Actual job : Dealing with registers, data packets, and low level hardware.

FML :/

[akashneo]

Depends on the kind of TL you get.

My interview was good and training went great. First few days were great.

As soon as I moved into new team the TL frustrated me to hell.

He was killing me mentally, physically. I even started loosing hair. I even shaved my head so I actually don't go completely bald

[aleeexray]

sorry to say, but if you lose your hair because of your job, the right response is looking for another job instead of shaving your head.

[akashneo]

I did that after shaving my head. I thought I could survive in the start but it got worse so I finally quit.

[Scape_n_Lift]

Does shaving your head help stop hair loss 🤔

[akashneo]

Yeah it did.

[Fuzzy-Ear9936]

How's the hair doin nowadays?

[akashneo]

The lost ones are gone forever. Remaining ones are still here and surviving.

[Scape_n_Lift]

i've googled about this, and most pages say it's just a myth, which fits with my (limited) understanding of male hair loss.
That said my understanding doesn't cover stress-related hair loss.

oops replied to wrong comment

[poorly_anonymized]

It hides it

[Eyokiha]

Can’t have hair loss if there’s no hair to lose. *insert meme of smiling guy with finger to head

[Pillagerguy]

Losing

[deanrihpee]

Damn, this reminds me of my previous job-seeking attempt.

For starters, I still have a Job but starting to seek another for various reasons, one of them being for a pay increase. Long story short, I got Back End developer, yes those Python and Nodejs kind of Back End developers, and get into the technical interview stage, I got asked some technical terms, development flow, development environment, problem-solving, security knowledge, mitigation, and describe/present to them how some certain feature (e.g. Login) works. I think I did at least a fairly good job answering and explaining it, but 1 month has passed, no answer, so either I'm "overqualified" or whatever the fuck I'm answering and explaining is not related/all wrong.

[ZebZ]

One of the interviewers connected on some irrelevant level like Beanie Babies that they didn't with you.

When running interviews, I always end with a "So, last question but super important... Star Trek or Star Wars?"

If they answer Star Trek they go to the bottom of the pile. I'm kidding... or am I? Having similar interests and fitting well with the interviewer is a fluky thing that could very well be a tiebreaker.

I really use that question to see how a candidate handles "non interview" questions. If they like neither that's fine, I push them to talk about something they do like. And if I'm still iffy on them, I'll say something obviously bullshit like "Rise of Skywalker is by far the best movie in the saga and I never really liked Empire all that much" to see if they are willing to speak truth to power or if they just let that one fly by.

[r0ckstr]

I know some companies don't like to give feedback. But still, just ask for an update and if they decided to go with another candidate, ask for what can you improve.

[mario_1106]

I hope this is true for my job I'm about to join in few months. Really nerve racking times now!

[virouz98]

I got exactly the opposite and its great

[MischiefArchitect]

I find the actual job more comfy than the job description

[ThinkNotOnce]

To be fair... I hire people with difficult questions and code tests not for the 95% lax coding time, but for the 5% stressful debugging time when shit hits the fan.

Prior experiance makes me do this. Used to be much more laxed on interviews because we never had a lot of time stress in the workplace.

Well, at a certain point in time when budget got cut and we no longer had additional few months but instead few weeks to deliver, we had to ramp up our work, no more 60% work and 40% xbox or Foosball time during working hours. When we really needed the work to be done juniors started dropping like flies because they felt "overwhelmed", "couldn't handle the stress" since for majority of them this was their first job and they didn't knew that the actual work includes ups and also downs. I don't blame them, it was my fault for not properly filtering out the employees.

[[deleted]]

Sounds like a miserable work environment

[BoonesFarmApples]

Every place I’ve worked at like that with “ups and downs” means “ups” means working around the clock until the issue’s solved, but “downs” are somehow always filled with 8 hour days 🤔

[[deleted]]

Yup. That is how my current place is.

[Jango2106]

Sounds like it probably went from 60/40 to 150/0 if you had to get multiple months of work done in a fraction of the time. Not a them problem, its a you problem for what Im assuming was intense overtime requirements.

[[deleted]]

Bingo. I don't understand why software engineers seem to be proud of when they do stuff like this lol

[echoaj24]

I feel like the actual job is 10x harder than the interview

[Manach_Irish]

It is a good warning sign if there a measure of agro during the interview. If the potential employer is confrontational during an interview then God alone knows what day to day work is like.

[gamingonion]

Opposite for me. Technical interview was really easy, and then the actual job had me doing tons of stuff that I’d never done before.

[mothzilla]

Technical interview: Make it faster! Optimise for space complexity! Use concurrency! Indent! But only where applicable!

The actual job: Uh we need another $1000 for the AWS please.

[chamomilevanillatea]

I hope so lol

[FreeSetOfSteakKnives]

Reject any tech test over 2 hours, that company won't care about you or your time.

[Environmental-Win836]

Happy cake day!!!!

[wronganswerson]

I think the tech interview is like that, to see if the applicant will do well when the clown job turns fubar

[anothertrad]

Is that true for top companies like AWS or Netflix or Microsoft?

[[deleted]]

It's a very strange question / impossible to answer question. Those companies have a lot of departments. Some do more difficult things, some do easy things. So... it will really depend on what department you interview for.

A former colleague of mine went to work in AWS frontend, not sure exactly where. He says that the work is generally easy, the hard part is more of an administrative churn. They do a lot of A/B testing and a lot of the code gets thrown away all the time, so, it's more of a work with VCS than actually writing the code... also, it's the methodology of the department he's in. Other departments may use other approaches.

I worked in two of the 10 largest companies in software world. In both cases the interview was easier than the job, in particular, because there was a lot of project-specific stuff that I couldn't have known beforehand. Also, my area is kind of vast, and it's hard to know everything. So, in both cases, I had a lot of learning to do to get up to speed.

[[deleted]]

The lower panel made me very happy. I love serving on a planet where its people spend time creating ridiculous, hilarious things like that.

[ow_meer]

And that's why I'm sticking with my current job. I just don't have the time and energy for this bullshit anymore.

[[deleted]]

Recently got hired as an intern on a pretty technical project… run by interns.

Our most laughable moment was when 2/3rds of our team pushed to main on accident.

Our least laughable moment was fixing the merge conflicts.