[HN Gopher] Job Hunting in 2022
___________________________________________________________________
Job Hunting in 2022
Author : zeroonetwothree
Score : 157 points
Date : 2023-01-20 17:24 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mhlakhani.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mhlakhani.com)
| fnimick wrote:
| This is just depressing.
|
| How is the technical interview process valuable _for companies_
| at this point when it seems to be evaluating how well you can
| prepare for their specific leetcode interview, and how well you
| practice the incantation of the system design problem (make sure
| you follow the template and the pattern!) - do they really think
| they're selecting the best candidates, and not the most practiced
| interviewers?
| abrahms wrote:
| It's a selection for socio-economic status. Hiring people who
| have enough excess time to do this grinding excludes people
| like parents of young toddlers. So.. you'll probably get a
| bunch of young single people w/ enough income to not need to
| have multiple gigs.
| ergonaught wrote:
| They aren't putting much real thought into it.
|
| Beyond the barest basics, 99% of the time the only thing that's
| genuinely relevant is whether or not the team wants to work
| with the candidate. Almost nothing else that is relevant is
| even knowable until after they're actually working. Exceptions
| only prove the rule.
|
| It's a sham but I guess it makes someone feel like they've
| contributed value somehow.
| [deleted]
| Sodman wrote:
| I get that it's still a candidates market (especially for strong
| candidates like OP who can get 11 offers from 13 full attempts),
| but the spreadsheet of questions you should be asking a company
| linked in TFA has some eyebrow raising notes and unreasonable
| expectations imho.
|
| For example - there's a big pushback that any hiring manager
| worried about a candidate who don't have required skills they
| could learn in 6-12 months is "quibbling". Is this a generally
| held belief? In the startup space in particular, most folks I
| interview frequently have consistent < 2 year stints at _most_ if
| not all of their prior companies. Expecting a 12 month ramp-up
| time on a particular piece of technology _needed_ to do the job
| would be an immediate no-hire from me. If I personally joined a
| company and couldn 't meaningfully contribute for the first year,
| I would consider that a complete failure and expect to be let go.
| Do other people feel differently? Perhaps this expectation is
| more applicable to larger companies than startups?
| sbuccini wrote:
| Thanks to the author for taking the time to write this up. I
| think it is a fairly realistic description of what the process is
| like for an engineer who has spent several years working in
| Silicon Valley at a well-known company.
|
| The key takeaways, coming from someone with a similar background:
|
| * Rely heavily on your personal network to both identify
| worthwhile opportunities and for referrals which, in the Before
| Times, pretty much guaranteed an interview
|
| * It's worth thinking through what type of job would make you
| happy _before_ you get an exploding offer
|
| * They had a _full_ pipeline, interviewing every day for three
| weeks straight. It's a grind, but you definitely get "in the
| zone". Additionally, setting this goal ensures that you are being
| properly proactive/aggressive in pursuing opportunities.
|
| * You will probably see a design interview at any FAANG or hot
| startup. The classic one I've seen like 5 times is "how would you
| design a social media feed?" I still do not know the "correct"
| answer to this question.
|
| I don't have hard evidence for this but it seems that the demand
| is still very strong for experienced engineering managers. I am
| curious to hear if the author interviewed for SWE positions or
| engineering manager positions have they have filled both roles in
| the past.
| nvarsj wrote:
| > They had a _full_ pipeline, interviewing every day for three
| weeks straight.
|
| I honestly think I'd be physically incapable of doing this. I'm
| on the HSP side and even a single set of interviews is enough
| to drive me into an insomnia/anxiety cycle for weeks. I can't
| even imagine what this would be like for me. Albeit I admit
| it's the best way to get the job you want. Maybe I'm in the
| wrong industry...
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Shit I'm brain-dead by about 3 hours into an interview or set
| of interviews, even if it's not the leetcode type. It's
| draining in a way that no actual work, even hair-on-fire
| emergency work, is (except maybe sitting in very-tense
| meetings--that's got a similar effect on me). Doing that more
| than once or twice in a single week might make me consider
| applying to clerk at a gas station instead.
| grugagag wrote:
| Haha, I feel the same. Luckily it's not everywhere like
| that and you could do much better than a gas station clerk,
| the biggest hurdle is to find the best place where you'd be
| the best fit at, the interview would likely run well and
| everything fall into place after that
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Yeah, I've had the bad kind that's long enough in a day
| to totally wreck me, like... twice. Failed one of those
| two hard, too, LOL. Rest of my experiences have been way
| more chill in my ~23 years in the industry. I can't
| imagine targeting a segment where such processes are the
| norm--which is why, even if I have the talent to work
| there (and, who knows, maybe I don't) I'd never even
| _try_ to apply to FAANG and friends, since there 's a 0%
| chance I'd make it through one of their about-a-whole-day
| processes without bombing the entire back half, no matter
| how much I prepped.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but when I have done that, the first one
| or two are the hardest, then you get in a groove, and become
| more aware that its just a numbers game.
| nvarsj wrote:
| I think we're all affected to different degrees. I've done
| a few interview loops in the space of a couple weeks and it
| never got easier. It just got worse as my insomnia got
| worse. I feel it's a miracle I can pass interviews at all
| since I'm operating at like 10%.
| wikibob wrote:
| Look into beta blockers. Also used by stage performers for
| similar reasons.
|
| https://www.goodrx.com/conditions/generalized-anxiety-
| disord...
| philjohn wrote:
| I feel you - last time I decided to move jobs, back in 2019,
| I had a week where I had an onsite every day, and by the end
| I was just done.
| ketzo wrote:
| The "just done" thing can be kinda dangerous too - I did
| the same thing, and at the end of my hell week, I was
| getting close to accepting an offer I knew was subpar, just
| to be done interviewing.
|
| Hard to find the right balance.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| This is incredibly common. I hate running interviews - we do
| the leetcode whiteboard pressure cooker crap - it's a policy
| I have no say in unfortunately. I've had candidates with
| strong backgrounds go to pieces right in front of me - it's
| awful to watch and I hate that I had anything to do with
| making someone experience that.
|
| More people than you might imagine take Xanax to get through
| interviews.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Don't do it, unless you are also under surveillance? Say
| yes and then run your block more humanely.
| robryan wrote:
| Or if there is some freedom around questions pick
| something that can be worked through. The worst are
| questions where if you don't know the algorithm or data
| structure there is no way to work it out from first
| principles.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| Hmm Xanny... that's not a bad idea.
| nvarsj wrote:
| > More people than you might imagine take Xanax to get
| through interviews.
|
| You know, that's actually a great idea I never thought
| about. I'll see if I can get a script next time I go
| through interview loops. Might make the process less
| hellish for me, I hope.
| mhlakhani wrote:
| author here - glad to see this post on HN, and glad you liked
| it!
|
| re: your last question - I interviewed for both SWE and EM
| positions, depending on what was available at any given
| company. At companies that had both roles open, I talked to
| folks to understand what they expected out of EMs vs engineers,
| as it varied a lot - and then I picked whatever was more
| appealing to me. In aggregate I went for 70% SWE / 30% EM roles
| (roughly)
| veqq wrote:
| > what they expected out of EMs vs engineers, as it varied a
| lot
|
| I'm curious about the rough models which exist.
| theptip wrote:
| Some models I've seen (I'm sure there are some other ones):
|
| Pure people manager - HR admin (compensation evaluation
| etc), professional development, project management, team
| resourcing, etc. Tend to see this less in very small
| companies.
|
| TLM (Tech Lead / Manager) - Does all of the above, plus
| also acts as a tech lead for the project - technical
| design, mentoring, and possibly some coding. Tend to see
| this less in very big companies. TLM are typically first-
| line managers, I've not seen a TLM that manages managers
| (i.e. Director level).
|
| Rarely, hybrid engineer/manager - Does all the above, plus
| expected to contribute significantly to coding. Honestly
| it's a red flag for me to see a team hiring for this
| archetype, in my opinion it's a pragmatic stopgap you might
| find yourself with as a small company, until you can hire
| an engineer or manager to split the role; it's not
| something you should explicitly hire for.
|
| Sometimes, product lead as "mini-CEO" - manages the
| team/org and owns product direction. Typically will have a
| tech lead on the team to own that side of things. This can
| grow into a Director position, managing the team managers
| and still owning the product function.
|
| Some archetyes for dedicated Staff engineers (typically the
| equivalent IC-track level to a team manager):
| https://staffeng.com/guides/staff-archetypes
| mhlakhani wrote:
| thanks for hitting the nail on the head - this is what I
| saw. I was comfortable with TLM/pure people manager, but
| not the hybrid (been there, done that - it was rough).
| ketzo wrote:
| One of the most basic is "do your managers write code?"
|
| My first company out of college actually banned it as a
| practice - EMs were not allowed to be active contributors.
|
| I know at some companies, it's actually a _requirement_ ,
| or at least heavily encouraged, for a manager to spend at
| least 20% time writing code.
|
| And then some places are a mixed bag.
|
| I can see both arguments! Just good to know that a company
| has a coherent philosophy on the issue.
| shagie wrote:
| > The classic one I've seen like 5 times is "how would you
| design a social media feed?" I still do not know the "correct"
| answer to this question.
|
| There is no "correct" answer to it. It is an investigation into
| how you break the problem down and approach it. When presented
| with a challenge to it, how do you then look at it and consider
| how to solve it.
|
| The Codeless Code - Case 83 Consequences
| http://thecodelesscode.com/case/83?topic=interviews
| angarg12 wrote:
| > * They had a _full_ pipeline, interviewing every day for
| three weeks straight. It's a grind, but you definitely get "in
| the zone". Additionally, setting this goal ensures that you are
| being properly proactive/aggressive in pursuing opportunities.
|
| As a married man nearing his 40s I can't imagine doing this. I
| need to keep my full time job to support my family, so just
| quit and focus 100% on prepping is not an option. Assuming a 5
| 1-hour round interview, I would need to take PTO or somehow
| juggle my calendar to take interviews. I'm horrified at the
| thought of taking one week off and doing interviews for 5 days
| straight. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. Congrats to the author. 11 offers is amazing
| I doubt one can get so many in today's market but the good thing
| is you dont really need so many, 1 good one is enough. Ideally
| you have 2 so that you can nagotiate more easily.
| mhlakhani wrote:
| thanks! I agree that you don't need this many offers - I took
| the time to interview at more places since I wanted to explore
| what was out there. Wouldn't recommend interviewing this
| heavily.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| Those are some impressive numbers. While it seems clear that you
| can get interviews applying through websites and recruiters, I'm
| amazed by how effective networking is. Any suggestions on how I
| should manage that? I add people on LinkedIn, but that's about
| it. Don't really socialize or make friends with people at work.
| wikibob wrote:
| The answer is to socialize and make friends at work.
|
| People who try to "Network" artificially won't see great
| success.
|
| People who are genuinely take an interest in what others are
| doing, and are intentional about meeting once or twice a year
| for coffee to catch up, are the ones who can call in a favor in
| the way described in the blog post.
| ghaff wrote:
| And attend events, make an effort to work with people at
| partner companies/clients/customers/etc. That's how I've
| always landed new positions. I've never actually applied for
| a position since grad school years ago.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| > Don't really socialize or make friends with people at work
|
| Well there you have it. No need to be besties, just spend time
| with people you like. Be it at work or elsewhere. The rest
| follows.
| [deleted]
| ssundarraj wrote:
| > Focus on your physical self: make sure you've gotten enough
| sleep, have food ready to go for lunch, and have breaks between
| the interviews if possible. If the interviewer asks if you need a
| minute at the start, and you do - please take it.
|
| This is great advice! I interviewed in 2022 and found that I
| performed significantly better when well rested. I also found
| that eating healthy helped during the post-lunch interviews.
|
| Thanks for sharing your experience.
| asadlionpk wrote:
| Sounds about expected even in current conditions.
|
| If you are fairly skilled programmer, somewhat senior. These
| layoffs don't matter.
|
| I assure you that you won't die of hunger if you quit/are laid
| off. Plenty of demand for non-coasters.
| paxys wrote:
| Anecdotally, a large number of experienced engineers I know at
| big tech companies have been secretly hoping to be included in
| an upcoming layoff round.
|
| So many people have mentally checked out of their current jobs
| but are too lazy to grind leetcode and go through interview
| loops. Unless you are in a financial crunch or have other
| issues like visa sponsorship, getting paid for 6+ months to
| fully focus on the next step of your career sounds like a
| dream.
|
| Microsoft/Google/Meta/Amazon/Salesforce and the like are
| spending many billions of dollars and unknowingly setting up
| the largest startup incubators in the world right now (and
| getting nothing out of it in return).
| symlinkk wrote:
| "Lazy" is the wrong word. People work for 8 hours a day and
| then are expected to cook, clean, exercise, and maintain some
| sort of social life. Adding in Leetcode on top of that is
| going to cause something to give. There's only so many hours
| in the day.
| bradlys wrote:
| As evident by my current habits - I'm far more willing to
| walk in the cold wind and workout at the gym for two hours
| than I am willing to do even one leetcode problem.
|
| I've been going to the gym 4-6x/week for the last couple
| months. I cannot get myself to do almost any leetcode even
| though I should be doing it. I've just accepted I'll not
| work for a while longer and keep going to the gym anyway.
| tester756 wrote:
| Sorry, but in my opinion your logic is very weird.
|
| It's a fucking investment dude.
|
| You invest those hours to have higher salary / cooler job /
| be better, etc.
|
| You don't want to put X hours of effort into something that
| may make your 8h/day work better?
|
| Your social life probably ain't gonna disappear if you'll
| spend a few hours a week for a month or two on learning
|
| I've been working + getting degree on weekends for 6 years,
| so I kinda know something about lack of time.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everyone should be doing
| LC. Just don't act as if there was some tremendous trade
| off required to learn it
| mythhouse wrote:
| >unknowingly setting up
|
| Wondering why they are giving such big serverences. Surely
| its not out of goodness of their hearts. 7 month severance at
| google seems a bit over the top to me.
| askafriend wrote:
| Yeah if you're good and have the resume/experience to back it
| up, you won't have any issues getting great offers even in this
| market. Great candidates are not easy to find in any market.
| bradlys wrote:
| You're not getting roles at FAANG or most any place in SV
| without doing leetcode.
| avmich wrote:
| This must be extremely subjective. Many times over I see very
| well qualified candidates spending months in this market
| looking for a position - when it took them weeks before.
| asadlionpk wrote:
| Well qualified != useful for the role.
| notch656c wrote:
| Exactly. I was fired from a tech job a decade ago and I found
| plenty of food to eat in the dumpsters and it wasn't hard to
| get enough day labor cleaning up puke that I was able to buy a
| tarp to sleep under.
|
| Joking, but this also a true story.
| all2 wrote:
| I now want to hear the very detailed version if this story.
| angarg12 wrote:
| I know it's a very touchy subject, but it would be immensely
| helpful if OP posted numbers about the offers he got.
|
| Personally, my compensation is underwater due to the recent stock
| crash, and leadership has insinuated to expect zilch for 2023.
| I'm not in the job market due to visa, but I feel the insane comp
| bubble has burst, and I missed the train. I'm anxious to see how
| the job market evolves over the next year, but I'm afraid we
| won't see compensation packages nearly close to how they were the
| last couple of years.
| mhlakhani wrote:
| I agree it's touchy unfortunately. I'm not comfortable sharing
| in public due to $REASONS, but I have been sharing with
| friends/family/folks who've been looking.
|
| I will say I got offers comparable to my pre-stock crash comp,
| but I hit a comp cliff either way in 2022 (even without the
| crash).
| bubba_sparks wrote:
| I'd rather be tortured by al qaeda than go through all that. I
| wish someone would write an article on how to hack this process.
| There's always a back door. Then again if there were I wouldn't
| be sharing it here.
| [deleted]
| vsareto wrote:
| That first impression (and how you tackled it) of system design
| interviews makes me question their usefulness. Like, how good of
| a signal can companies really be getting if it's too different
| from real world systems?
|
| Feels like an artificial wall too - many companies don't approach
| the scale where this stuff matters, so getting that experience is
| hard.
| mhlakhani wrote:
| To be fair, these interviews provide a lot of valuable signal
| in terms of how you approach tradeoffs and explore a problem
| space. In that sense they're quite similar to the work I did at
| $dayjob, just in a compressed timeframe (which makes it
| challenging). As you said, the questions are similar to real
| world systems _at these companies_ -- it 's just that you won't
| have experience with these systems unless you've worked at
| these companies before. It's a catch-22.
| [deleted]
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| > Like, how good of a signal can companies really be getting if
| it's too different from real world systems?
|
| There are "layers" to the signal you can get from system design
| interviews:
|
| 1. Are they aware of "big concepts", indexing, sharding,
| queues, scheduling, etc.
|
| 2. Are they comfortable actually using and manipulating these
| abstractions in an academic sense? e.g. new college grads may
| have never used an index, but can walk me through how we might
| use one to solve a given problem.
|
| 3. Do they have experience operationalizing these concepts?
| e.g. in DB design questions I love it when candidates are able
| to walk through a zero downtime migration plan from before and
| after we add a feature.
|
| 4. Related to 3, How do they weight tradeoffs in the system? Do
| they drill down into product requirements to help inform these
| tradeoffs?
|
| A system design interview often lets me say: "They're not
| experienced enough at our scale for me to want to hire them at
| level X, but I'd hire them at level X-1"
|
| All this said, I do think more companies should try to draw
| design interview questions directly from their own company
| experience e.g. imagine we didn't have feature X, how would you
| add it to the product?
| [deleted]
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| > imagine we didn't have feature X, how would you add it to
| the product?
|
| I think pulling specific ideas from your actual system is
| full of traps. These are probably problems you've thought of
| - both actively and passively - for days, months, or even
| years.
|
| The person you're interviewing has had no such benefit, and
| it might be very hard for the interviewer to be able to
| separate what they think is reasonable and what is actually
| reasonable.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| > I think pulling specific ideas from your actual system is
| full of traps. These are probably problems you've thought
| of - both actively and passively - for days, months, or
| even years.
|
| The first time you give the interview certainly, but you
| have time to formalize and tune the interview. Write down
| what you're going to ask, what signals you're looking for,
| the quality of a solution you expect. Socialize this with
| engineers who weren't directly involved in the design of
| the system, ask for their feedback.
|
| You can usually iron out a question in 10-20 interviews and
| make it really stellar within a 100. I know that's a lot of
| potentially wasted hours, but the ROI in terms of candidate
| quality is worth way more.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| On my last job search I found that overloading myself with
| interviews was very stressful. It's one of the reason I will no
| longer continue with any process that has take home assignments -
| at one point I had 4 different assignments with overlapping due
| dates. Far too much stress (and I was ghosted on all of them).
|
| It's also not fun to be waiting to hear from the places you're
| really interested in while you've multiple exploding offers. One
| of the offers exploded before the date I was told it would. On
| the plus side I was able to use the offers as leverage to speed
| up the process at the job I finally did take.
|
| If I have to do it again I will set some sensible limits on
| myself.
| majormajor wrote:
| I always thought the idea of a take-home sounded appealing,
| especially when I first heard of them ~15 years ago.
|
| The first time I found a bug in a company's take home project
| spec rather spoiled them for me. And sadly, that's not the only
| time that happened! A candidate who puts more effort into it
| than the person who created it gets rewarded by feeling
| confused or like they're missing something because it doesn't
| add up? Nope, not great.
|
| And now, 15 years further along, the idea of investing 4+ hours
| of my own time _without even a human to ask questions of or
| discuss things with_ just has no real appeal (I 've seen some
| that expect 8+, even).
| remote_phone wrote:
| I felt exactly the opposite.
|
| Having so many interviews makes you feel more relaxed for every
| interview because you become numb to it. You don't care if you
| flunk your FAANG interview because you already have a good
| chance with a mid-sized smaller company, which makes you even
| better for the FAANG interview.
|
| I did over a dozen interview loops when I was looking last year
| and I felt great and at the top of my game.
| mikedelago wrote:
| I don't blame you. Take home assignments are ridiculous,
| anyway. My personal time is valuable to me and it's unrealistic
| to expect me to do homework just for the privilege of an
| interview.
|
| In my last job hunt, I flat out declined further interview if I
| was requested to do a take home assignment.
| dirtbag__dad wrote:
| Would you prefer a take home or a live coding challenge?
|
| I have the total opposite experience. I have rarely done well
| on a live code problem, I clam up. Tbh it's humiliating, not
| representative of my actual skill set, and a waste of
| everyone's time.
|
| The amount of time I'd need to study to be good at live
| coding is less than doing a couple take homes for companies
| I'm actually interested in.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| The idea of a take home originally appealed to me, but my
| actual track record with them is very poor. They are
| usually too open ended - sometimes they'll say to write
| some service, that it shouldn't take more than an evening,
| and then you're left questioning how much they're
| expecting. Do they want a quick proof of concept? Do they
| want unit tests? Acceptance tests?
|
| Then there's the follow up - often a rejection with no
| comments on the code whatsoever. Or you get completely
| ghosted. Or, and this is the real kicker - they finally ask
| you to come in, where they have you do leetcode on a
| whiteboard anyway.
|
| If the process was "Here's what we're expecting, turn it in
| by X date, we'll have you do a review with the team, and
| assuming all goes well, we'll talk about an offer at that
| point" I would be a lot more open to them. But that's never
| the process.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The advantage of live coding challenges is that they
| require the employer to put skin in the game by allocating
| 1 hour of their own engineers' time. This encourages them
| to filter candidates beforehand and discarding bad-fits
| early rather than wasting every applicant's time even if
| they have no chance to begin with.
| dgunay wrote:
| I personally prefer take home problems (I also have a bad
| track record on "speedrun this Leetcode problem"
| interviews). However I think it'd be great if applicants
| could choose one or the other, without any bias in either
| direction.
| bitL wrote:
| It could be worse; imagine you go through multiple
| algorithmic rounds and a take-home task to get into TopTal,
| then when finally there you still need to bid for jobs
| against 1000s other developers with a TopTal matcher picking
| the cheapest ones (imagine $30/h for ML gigs), and even if
| you are picked by the matcher, you still need to pass client
| interviews.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Granted I've only attempted the Amazon interview of the FAANGs,
| but good job to the OP for cracking the FAANG interviews with
| only 60ish leetcode questions. I'm at 150 and have yet to crack
| any.
| mhlakhani wrote:
| To be clear, I explicitly chose to _not_ interview at FAANGs
| since I was previously at a FAANG and wanted to try my hand at
| a different type of company. I 'd probably practice a bit more
| for FAANGs
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Can we just call it BigTech? Silly revolving acronym is
| probably closer to MAMA now... why is Netflix even a member
| other than to avoid a slur?
| bradlys wrote:
| Is the comp comparable to FAANG or is it a big step down? (At
| least in terms of liquid compensation)
|
| This is partially why I haven't been interviewing. All the
| big p(l)ayers have slowed down their hiring so much - why
| bother taking a role that pays less than half.
| [deleted]
| gymbeaux wrote:
| Cheat where possible using OpenGPT.
|
| Cheat where possible using OpenGPT.
|
| Cheat where possible using OpenGPT.
|
| We must prove to companies that leetcode is not the way.
| paxys wrote:
| You don't need OpenGPT (or whatever else) to "cheat" at
| interviews. Simply copy pasting the prompt in Google is going
| to get you much better results, most often the exact leetcode
| page that the question was lifted from (with very useful
| discussion and solutions).
|
| Of course most competent companies will ask a minor follow-up
| which will stump candidates who are relying on such tools.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| "most competent companies" wouldn't rely so heavily on
| leetcode in the first place.
| jrockway wrote:
| I asked ChatGPT one of my company's interview questions (which
| involves designing a bloom filter). It got it very subtly
| wrong; when asked to fix things, it made it worse. I would
| definitely not use it to interview for jobs yet, but I do think
| it would be good for training interviewers to detect BS and
| suggest "hints" that lead things in the right direction.
| Practice interview without wasting any human's time!
|
| Meanwhile, humans have not really struggled with this problem.
| We tell you what a bloom filter is, you just have to write the
| code to spec. (This is different than some interviews where you
| need to know the answer to the trivia question; know what a
| bloom filter is and how to implement one, or you fail. ChatGPT
| was not capable of either.)
|
| Overall my take on the current state of AI-produced computer
| programs is that the programmer is forced to take on the role
| of code reviewer and detail checker, which I think is a more
| difficult problem than just typing in code in a green-field
| environment. The thing that's difficult about reviewing code is
| that things can diverge away from your mental model so quickly,
| that you don't know which details you should be checking up on.
| When you're writing it from scratch, you don't lead yourself
| astray in the same way.
|
| In a few years this could be completely different, of course.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| It's been working well for me all things considered. The
| harder the leetcode problem, the more I have to ask it to fit
| the answer it gives me, but I have always gotten it to arrive
| at the correct (and most efficient) answer. I'm impressed.
| You'll have a better time with it if you can tell it what's
| wrong with the code, even if it's just "given this test case,
| I expected X but this code gives me Y".
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| If you're good enough at prompting ChatGPT to get a working
| leetcode hard solution in the time allowed, you're good enough
| at writing complete and correct code for the job.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| I wrote a similar post but my search was in May instead of at the
| end of the year:
|
| https://www.observationalhazard.com/2022/05/my-experience-wi...
| avmich wrote:
| I wonder, if somebody has not a happy story, but an ongoing
| story of failures in job search - would he write such a story?
| Or we hear only from those who succeeds? Or, assuming that
| everybody eventually succeeds, those who take years to find a
| position won't write about it, as they are too exhausted or
| embarrassed?
| ergonaught wrote:
| 7 months deep, hundreds of applications, blah blah, so to
| answer your question, for the most part people in this
| particular situation don't write public stories about it.
|
| 1) It can feel like it will sabotage your chances even if it
| raises awareness of your situation. Firstly because you
| cannot help but "call out" some of the hiring
| practices/people, and secondly because, well, must be
| something wrong with you if no one is snapping you up, right?
| Which leads into...
|
| 2) A lot of really obnoxious folks like to pounce on this and
| "blame the victim", and then reference stuff like this post
| to show how "it must be your fault", etc, and "ain't nobody
| got time for that". It's hard enough to deal with impostor
| syndrome kicking the brains in without inviting the mob to
| kick as well.
|
| 3) It's depressing to think about it, much less to write all
| that down where it becomes an objective thing that cannot be
| ignored. Especially if you've tracked everything in detail (I
| have). Much more pleasant to sell off your belongings and
| pretend you're just embracing minimalism and forget about it.
|
| 4) Feels a lot like begging, and there are many complicated
| reasons why people mostly don't like to do that.
| bradlys wrote:
| People write them - they just don't gain traction. You also
| don't tend to write them with your name attached because that
| literally throws your own name down the drain.
|
| People are also not interested in hearing troubling stories
| because everyone has a troubling story. They want to hear how
| you succeeded because they want to emulate that success. They
| want to learn the "one small trick" that will lead them to
| finally getting the job of their dreams.
| mhlakhani wrote:
| I've heard / read stories from people who tried really hard
| and failed to find jobs (both within tech, but unfortunately
| more common outside of tech). Unfortunately they don't get as
| much traction as people prefer to hear stories with a happy
| ending
| blobbers wrote:
| [flagged]
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| If you would be very successful in that role... but the company
| says no... that is a poor fit and is a reflection of their
| ability to hire qualified candidates to meet their real needs.
|
| I'm confused why this is funny ha ha to you...Care to expound?
| dnissley wrote:
| Sounds like sour grapes / cope, presumably. I didn't get that
| vibe reading it though.
| mhlakhani wrote:
| I was genuinely glad I didn't get those offers as it would
| be awkward turning them down. As an example, in one of the
| cases they were looking for someone who could do a lot more
| frontend/product work (something I don't have much
| experience in) so even if I did join, I wouldn't do well.
| That would suck both for me and the company.
|
| (yes, it is a bit of cope - but hey, it's only through
| interviewing/learning more that you find bad fits)
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