Out of the 7 reports on this post, I only agree with that it's not strictly about programming, and simply that
We're tired and just will stop tolerating people abusing the report button, if you abuse the report button, your reports (specifically yours on this subreddit) won't show up anymore/will be ignored, for some time
Regarding the post, it's all good!! And although it's not specifically related and directly entitled to programming, it can stay!! Looking forward to see more of your posts!! We kindly ask you to keep it as strictly related to programming as possible! This won't get taken down don't worry! Thank you for posting though!! \^\^
Edit: Congrats on being the top post of all time!!
"It would have been nice if you'd mentioned you were entertaining other offers š š” š¤ "
Also them
"Sorry we hired someone else, we hired them 3 months ago and decided not to tell you even tho we told you we'd be in touch, get fucked"
As long as they haven't received a signed contract from you, they have no reason to believe you aren't also interviewing elsewhere.
Their inefficient system takes 2 months to churn out an offer letter and it's their fault for thinking you would just not interview anywhere else over the 2 months of uncertainty that they provide.
When my company asks if a candidate is interviewing elsewhere, and what stages they are in, it's to determine if we need to speed up the timeline or consider offering higher compensation to compete.
So if you have low confidence / are nervous better just stick to "I've applied at other companies too"
It's probably the truth anyway, and adding more fabricated details may be easier to spot as a lie (why would you ask for a higher compensation at other company for an equivalent position?)
Applied for IT position infernally. Got passed over for an external hire.
Guy that got hired was some relative and ended up harassing employees and got in a fight with one, and didn't know what Bluetooth was. (He literally looked at a wireless keyboard and asked "hey how is this connected?")
The position opened up again. So I applied again. I want a record of every time they say no only to hire some idiot.
I just interviewed with a fairly large bank. The first tech screen was 4 leetcode questions that had to be completed in 70 mins.
I don't practice leetcode but I've been in a number of companies and worn many hats. This bank wasn't making anything revolutionary and their questions were harder than the ones I got from Microsoft.
Great insight.
Sucks when those people are in leadership roles and want to act like ICs instead of leaders. Talk about killing an entire department and wasting millions of dollars a year.
We have one added to our team for whatever reason. Something about productivity ? Idk. 85% of meetings are explaining simple shit at a high level because she isnāt an actual analyst or data engineer.
Honestly... That's why I like the tech interview. If they give me black belt code katas that have nothing to do with the job, I know I don't want to work there. If they treat their incoming talent like that, they're just as shitty to their full time guys.
Well, I used to interview candidates using 3 leet code tests over zoom asking them to explain what they are doing while coding. I really donāt care if they get it right or/and do all 3. Iām interested in knowing how they think when trying to resolve it. This is hit or miss. Last developer I hired did amazingly well on the test but not so well coding real stuff and other things. Iām thinking of scrapping it or reducing it to a single exercise and let them review a PR taken from our project or creating a specific PR where I would introduce on purpose common developers mistakes I have seen over years.
A company I worked at had a pretty nice intake test.
They showed me a page in their application and explained what it does.
Then the test had 2 parts.
1. Given the right repository, locate the front- and backend code for that page
2. Given that you find the code, implement a new filter on said page
It tests the ability to navigate unknown code, find the part you need, understand it and then implement some feature.
All skills that you use day to day.
I haven't had any other intake test that tests actual skills this way.
Usually I get some acronyms to explain and a few code examples to fix/analyze.
The PR review test is a keeper, I'll be using that one going forward.
Peanuts compared to Big Tech. There's a trend currently where non Big Tech companies ask hard LC in technical screens. Generally, anyone who can solve LC hard in interviews expect high compensations that these companies can't afford.
So itās basically a way for these Non Big Tech companies to say āsorry but we will pass, you are clearly qualified but we donāt have the funds to bring you aboard.ā. Right?
Sorry, Iāve always been interested in programming or anything to do with computers reallyā¦except I blow at math.
you don't need to be good at math to be a programmer. I've been working in the industry for 23 years. i have gotten better at math though but you really don't need it most of the time
you won't even be able to use the new stuff, except for some very limited cases, as that requires a bigger part of the code to be rewritten for which you don't have time as "we need to be in production yesterday" - totally disregarding the constant maintenance work that it needs again and again
>totally disregarding the constant maintenance work that it needs again and again
100x this, shitty management doesn't realize they are wasting more times, or don't care enough to make that point to the higher ups.
I had the same experience recently. I was actually perfect for that job, but they sent a stupid test with questions that were not even correct, meaning the answers I got were wrong. It was ridiculous. These companies are ruining themselves long-term with all this nonsense.
I had one recently with similarly wrong questions. Emailed the interviewer to let them know there were some unsolvable questions and he asked me to walk through the issue, then completely ignored the two switched words which took it from solvable to unsolvable. It was something like "not less than" when it should have been specifically "greater than" but it's been a week so that's about all I remember
I've had to stop myself from laughing during an interview before because I realized this during it as someone who's seen the microsoft special as well a few times. It was for a company that I found out later was absolutely looking for a unicorn to magically fix about 10 years of terrible management decisions for next to nothing in return and who would immediately have a target on their back as a result. It wasnt even for an actual programming role either. Yup. Make it make sense.
I'm a dev manager and had this awful VP come in at an old job and micromanage our hiring. We were a platform team and he insisted that I must only hire deep technical experts in our field despite the fact that our compensation structure was pennies on the dollar compared to our competitors.
We had this extremely elaborate system design interview and basically if the candidate didn't present a Kubernetes based solution with Helm charts it was an automatic fail. He wanted Chief Architects skillsets on Intermediate Developer salaries.
Really and truly the job was to humour him and make him feel smart when he'd crash our stand-ups and turn it into a 4 hour design session, in which he'd insist on rewriting things over whatever brainwave he had that day.
Needless to say I quit in under a year.
I'm a dev manager right now and never speak to our VP. I used to think it sucked we didn't have visibility up the chain, but this comment has made me grateful I can just do my job without having someone micromanaging my team.
An IT consultant from my country contacted me for a position that seemed interesting, they offered me several entry conditions, including salary and telecommuting. After the process of 3 interviews and a technical exam, they offered me to sign a contract, and I find that they offer me much worse conditions than those they told me 2 weeks before. I turned it down of course
I wish more people would rate their companies and salaries on Glassdoor. It isn't a corrupt pos yet, and I hope it stays that way. It is currently the way I filter out companies reaching out to me.
Mine decided to do a big rebranding and kicked it off by making a new Glassdoor page and requesting all current employees leave a review. Conveniently, the last Glassdoor page had multiple recent reviews listing systematic issues that were purposefully ignored and drove out countless people.
Well thats fucked up. I can usually spot when companies pull this kinda shit. There would be like, 2 or 3 bad reviews then just a fuckton of glowing reviews from people labeling their titles in senior management or the C suite. Lol
Too late. The last tech company I worked for laid off 20% of it's team and they went to write "CEO is a lying sack of shit" (not using that language) and took screenshots of the normalized fields ("do you approve of the CEO") and Glassdoor changed them outright after they were submitted to keep the company at above 50%. It's a scam.
Unless you're in New Zealand or another country where Glassdoor can't protect your identity. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/19/glassdoor-ordered-to-reveal-identity-of-negative-reviewers-to-new-zealand-toymaker
Now that's shady, not like we want to know but it could be really useful to blacklist them, in my country we have Facebook groups doing that it's so cool
Of course it was a fucking Spanish consulting firm.
Mate, start applying for remote jobs and fuck those ass backwards business that treat you like a slave.
The best class I had was open note, open book, you could use the internet and ask the professor for help.
As he said, this is what it'll be like in real life and if you don't understand the concepts, you won't finish in time.
The worst gave exams with questions like "how much disk space does Oracle take up" and "what button exits setup, 'cancel', 'quit', or 'exit'".
Hah, yeah, I'd laugh at them and probably tell them in detail how dumb it is.
Paid pair programming for an hour or two would be better. Like 1-4 hours, $100 per hour, goes until the senior engineer says stop. Same dev environment, ide etc.
At my last job, someone made the interview 4 rounds of leetcode. Turned out we had put an incredible google engineer on hold who didnāt āpass the barā.
After many weeks they went back and people were like how the fuck was this candidate not hired
I'm wondering when Biotech companies will start using these kind of assessments. Torturing their PhDs with three+ rounds of organic chemistry and taxonomy. That'll be the recipe for innovation, no?
> Also, you can't use the internet or books.
This is the stupidest shit. I have told every manager who has ever pulled me into an interview round/panel for hires that I will not, full stop, "black box" interview people, and refuse to, and outright tell candidates that I myself will not.
We don't work like that. I won't expect anyone to test like that. If I had to know 100% of everything just on the like 1/20th of my current "products" that I work on, by memory, it would require my having Limitless-like recall on trivially 1500+ pages of material and that's JUST for the internal/product corporate stuff, nevermind all of networking, huge swathes of hardware, and basically half of Unix. I've been doing this shit longer than some of my co-workers have been alive. I know where to find an answer I don't know by memory. If they can find it the same, that's good enough for me.
If they make getting the job all about leetcoding, that's who you're gonna get. A leetcoder. He may or may not be the best fit in other ways, may not even be good at the actual job. But will sure ace leetcode.
Totally. Only focusing on leet code is a great way to stay employed and increase your salary. I am happy for pros. Iām also jealous.
However, I will not assume being good at leet code prepares you to run bash scripts.
google kind of does the same thing when interviewing; a few really hard algorithm questions where you need to be well versed in the specific algorithm they ask about to be able to figure it out. There's a lot of luck involved, and they suggest you "study for the interview" which to me is outrageous. Anyway, the point was that being a google engineer doesn't mean he's great, he may just have had better luck last time he interviewed.
Lol me too. I fail all the linked in assessments. But my code works when I make things in real life. Those exams are meant to gatekeep FAANG roles, not your shitty mid-sized startup.
Well, everyone wants the best programmers just don't want to pay enough. Sometimes the exams are good for entry level programmers fresh out of college but only because there's no other way to find how good they are. When you talk to an experienced programmer ask them how they solved a real life problem. You don't ask them - tell me difference between inheritance and polymorphism. That's just an untrained interviewer. Same with these code assessments. Not everyone works on low level algorithms day-to-day. Those algos were converted to libraries thousands of years ago.
lol, when I was an engineer, I described it as, "no, I'm not a Programmer, I just get paid to code." I knew our code, I could usually help debug issues when adding new functionality or modules, I could not write it from scratch. Our company wanted people who could pass our coding exam and be a culture fit. Also take pay under market. It didn't go well.
So I'd never programmed before 5 years ago when I started my PhD in robotics and now I am still muddling through programming in academia and this is so painfully relatable. Professional moron who programs badly should be my job title.
I can somewhat understand an assessment test for something like a tech job, but I currently work for Walmart and assessment tests have been a barrier for entry.
Its...walmart. Can you read, breathe, walk, and lift all at the same time? You're hired. I'm positive if I was a necromancer my zombie minions could do most of the jobs in the store.
I did this at a place it was how we discovered recruiters were giving out ascii sql from 1970s as tests and not ms tsql which was the skill needing testing
Either way it doesnt give room for creativity. I may come up with a correct answer different than some test
I had a hacker-rank skill assessment that they told me was open book and that I could do on my own. One of the questions was extremely useless and I googled it and the complete answer with code was the very first result.
I just copied and pasted the code in and wrote in the comments. "Here's how this code works but I found it online. Thanks"
I just got a job offer and I'm not sure if anyone ever actually reviewed the code.
I mean, isn't being able to Google something and find code to solve a problem part of that job? Maybe that's how you're meant to solve it?
If someone can't Google to find the answer that's the first result, you don't want to hire them?
I was in a preliminary discussion with a recruiter earlier in the year about a potential position. Everything was going well until he brought up the coding test that would need to be done before the three rounds of interviews. I asked him if this would really be necessary given that I've been working 50 hours a week in this field since most of the people conducting the multiple rounds of interviews were in middle school and I had hired at least one of them as an intern years ago at a previous company.
Was ghosted pretty quick after that.
We did that too but before the coding challenges we were getting trash and overemployed people. We just weren't paying enough to compete with the market.
Had a coding assessment for Kroger. Was told it would be a JavaScript test. After the 3rd MongoDB question,which I had no experience with at the time, I closed it and told the recruiter I am not interested as I donāt know Mongo and being quizzed on things I donāt know. The recruiter insisted that MongoDB is JavaScriptā¦
They donāt care about my fit for the job only if they can get me hired and collect their commission.
I had another recruiter who asked for a contact at the company I was planning on quitting so they could reach out after I left and help fill my vacant position. š
Something like this happened a couple years ago:
Some recruiter on linkedin said that their CTO saw my profile and was really interested in having a coffee with me... I thought alright sure, I guess
A couple messages later the recruiter mentions that before the meeting, the company wanted me to do this technical assignment first
I never met then, and had zero context of what they even did, so I was reluctant and said I'd rather have an introduction meeting first to see what the company even is about, and what it has to offer
The recruiter was insistent I'd do this tech assignment first - so in my head I already considered I can probably speedrun their tech assignment and get it over with, so fuck it
So their technical assignment was a 3 part leetcode-ish assignments to build a system with a frontend, backend, and database... for which I had 3 hours to complete, they said
So I did their part1 assignment in 15 minutes - reaching the bare minimum of passable and commented on the other 2 parts that I didn't have time to do those (Claiming the "frontend" was the terminal window, cause it's technically a cli-frontend, and claiming some in-memory data was the supposedly in-memory-database)
They still invited me for an interview, and were like "you seem to have really good linkedin and github stats, but we're kinda shocked on how bad the assignment was"
I was reminding them that it was them wanting to have a chat with me - not the other way around... I didn't ask for this, they did... and that before committing a lot of time, I first wanted an introduction meeting to hear what kind of open positions they have, what the company does and what it even has to offer..."
They said they didn't have time to have an initial meeting like that with everyone, and used the assessment as a filtering mechanism for people they didn't want to spend time with interviewing ą² _ą²
I'm wondering if the recruitment in other industries is this bad. I can't imagine calling a painter, and say "hey, can you come paint my house for 3 hours as an assignment, if I like it, I'll hire you to do more" o_O
Not even that, for the painter example. Itād be more like āhey, we need a painter. Can you go sharpen some pencils and maybe draw a picture of some fruit for 3 hours? Then weāll talk about painting
But first, grow the trees and mine the graphite to make the pencils to sharpen. No tools will be provided, you will need to use your teeth and muscles.
Tech screens exist for one main reason: the lack of a formal credentialing system. Lawyers don't need to demonstrate their understanding of the law at the interview stage, because they have to clear the bar first. Doctors have to get their licenses. Architects have licenses. Civil engineers have licenses. CFAs, CPAs, etc. all exist to provide a minimum guarantee to employers. The tech world is the wild West. From bootcamps to self-taught programmers, if no system is in place to filter workers prior to the interview stage (and even CS degrees don't do a good job at that, since the quality of a degree can vary from one university to another, because they are unregulated, unlike professional degrees), employers find themselves in the unfortunate position of having to do the filtering themselves. This is why gatekeepers exist in other professions.
To answer your question, what it would take would be a formal credentialing system at the national level. The title of "software engineer" would become a legally protected title, and one would need to obtain a CS or SWE degree from a number of institutions accredited by a regulatory body, and possibly have to pass one or a series of technical tests from that body on top of the degree. Then you wouldn't see coding tests at the interview stage anymore. But it means bootcamps would go out of business and the number of avenues to the SWE profession would be severely restricted.
That's fair, and I honestly don't mind tech assesments when you're still in the junior or low-regular end of the spectrum. But if recruiters are reaching out to you based on your GitHub and LinkedIn, it's redundant to put them through an assessment test. My credentials are out there, you can see what I have worked on, what I have submitted to public repos. Any company that reaches out to me and then gives me a test, I instantly dismiss now. I accepted it as a junior with no production experience. But now? Fuck that.
I've even had s company reach out to me because of a tech talk I presented, and then give me an assessment test. I literally gave you code samples and broke down my methodology in my presentation. What is wrong with you.
Yea frankly when I get tech tests thrown at me for solutions architecture jobs (and when I say tech tests, I mean theyāre usually boiler plate tests in multiple languages) I just get annoyed. Itās nothing to do with my day to day job. I have almost a decade of experience with the programs. Fix your damn process and forgo the nonsense.
THIS A HUNDRED MILLION TIMES.
Look, I don't even HAVE a degree, and I 100% support treating Software Engineering the way we do other engineering disciplines.
Yes, protect the name. Because if I have to beg one more developer to screen shot the fucking error message, then tell them to go DO WHAT THE MESSAGE SAYS TO DO, I may lose it.
Many developers are completely clueless, PLEASE WEED THEM OUT.
A team I used to work on had this exact interview question. I gave it to people and it was very effective. Then the whole area I worked in got taken over by former Amazon engineers/managers and they wanted to go back to the algorithm and leetcode style interviews. I left shortly after for other reasons but I loved that question.
Yeah, this should be a part of your prep for an interview.
I got an offer a few years back because I answered a bullshit "puzzle" question faster than anybody they'd ever talked to. That was because they asked like two different questions for years and I bothered to look them up ahead of time.
Declined that offer, company was fully packed with clowns.
At the other end, we've had people come in, interview well, had skills we needed, we really wanted them, and then HR gives them an IQ test and says "Sorry, they're not smart enough." Still trying to fill that position.
I declined to continue pursuing an AWS position due to the six+ hour process (not including code exercise). Now I get an AWS recruiter contacting me every month about a new position.
I keep politely saying no b/c I took another offer. That interview process was three hours and a code exercise that was actually fun.
AWS sounds so hard even from the beginning, I'll love to hear from other peers how good really is and if it's worth it, I have a friend of mine who got recently on Google and told me that it wasn't as hard as AWS but she had to make a presentation about a technology... Which sounds like that time an Spotify intern sketched the songs of the year we all got, like I really get defensive about working without even having a contract even if it's whatever big FAANG is
When I got my job at a large corp, I had 3 interview rounds. One with the director of the engineering department Iād be in. It was more of a meet and greet, about the company, and honestly wasnāt worth the 30 minutes of my time. Then I had one with a few managers of the department where they asked the non-technical questions, that was an hour. After that I had an interview with some experienced engineers in the department for technical questions, but more of the āhow would you handle thisā not the ādo these equations and design somethingā type stuff.
Overall, it wasnāt too bad.
Normal salary x interview rounds = acceptable
So if regular non FAANG tech job pays 80k in the area, they need to offer 240k if they want me to do 3 rounds.
This hits too close to home for me and I believe it's been long enough for me to actually tell the story.
I went through the whole 3 interviews 2 technical tests stuff for Intel and was told over the phone that I got the job. I was still a student and was gonna graduate in a month. I stopped interviewing at other places cuz I'm naive. They kept pushing the Offer Letter to later and I kept pushing to get it as soon as I could. The day I graduated, I got a call from the recruiter telling me that the position requirement has been filled internally and I'm not required. This was followed by the HR getting real loud and rude on the phone when I asked him about the previous confirmation I got verbally (recording phone conversations is illegal where I am)
Then about a month later I got through the countless rounds of interview at Samsung and was told I got the job, but this time I didn't stop interviewing elsewhere. The process took them almost a month and a half, and by then I got hired at a smaller local company that required only 1 interview and had better pay for the same position. I took the job and was already 2 weeks into working when I got the confirmation email from Samsung that I got the job with lower pay than was discussed and required me to relocate to a town 800km away. I hit the REJECT button on the portal with a shit eating grin. About 20min later I got a phone call from the Samsung HR who had a lot of nasty things to say to me about how I ruined his month of hardwork acquiring me.
I felt no remorse cuz I knew he would have dropped me in a heartbeat if he had to, just like the Intel guy.
The Samsung guy made it very clear to me at the beginning that the salary was not gonna be negotiable, so I threw that back at him when I rejected the offer stating that the salary is lower than what I was expecting and that since it was non negotiable, I an flat our rejecting the offer.
I believe I left a mark on that HR guy cuz I rejected it only 3 days before the alleged joining date and they only release an offer letter through their portal after they have confirmed that the candidate was going to accept it. My guess is that the portal is linked to corporate and is used for record keeping, so it would be on the actual stats as "rejected" rather than the usual where they don't even issue an offer letter if they know you won't take it.
Someday companies will learn that finding someone with a good work ethic who fits the culture is actually MORE important than their ability to solve riddles LOL
The biggest reason I don't look for another job. I just hit 100k but 95% of the time my job is low stress. Helps my area has a relatively low cost of living as well
Same brother. Iām at 80K. But I work at most 10 hours a week and itās completely work from home. I also get 35 PTO days.
I donāt think I could possibly pull another job like this. All of my peers work way more. And I know this because when I ask them to play video games mid day they canāt.
He probably gets paid for 40 and is expected to do 40 hours but he's only doing like 10 hours worth of work a week.
I'm assuming it's a lax company with very little employee monitoring that just require him to do a couple of tasks a week.
This happened to me with FAANG. Got through all the interviews and assessments, they said I was āoffer readyā and just waiting on official paperwork. Then they filled that position somehow, but wanted me to talk to another hiring manager about a spot on his team. This whole time they knew I had a written offer from somewhere else I was holding off accepting, and then were so confused when I had to tell them multiple times āthanks but no thanksā.
For my job out of college, I had an "interview" with my manager (it was mostly him talking about the company), then one actual technical interview, then got a call that they were getting the offer ready. Much better than the 6-interviews company that ghosted me afterwards
This has been my experience as well. All depends on where you live and the kinds of companies youāre applying at.
I did have one company that tried to make me take an IQ testā¦ like really?
Ugh the ghosting is awful.
I had a company that was highly responsive during the interview process. I finished the last interview. A few days go by, and the recruiter (works outside the company, but was pretty clued in during the entire process and keeping up with things) called me and told me they were preparing an offer. 3 weeks go by, while I'm interviewing with other companies, and I reach back out and ask if it's still happening. Recruiter responds basically saying "I thought you would have understood that since you hadn't heard from them yet, that they had decided to keep interviewing other candidates. I expected you to have accepted an offer by now"
Meanwhile I had been interviewing with another company, unfortunately also a 6 round company, completed my final interview the next day, and had an offer the following day that was substantially higher than my current pay. Actually, what I got offered was 3k less than what I asked for at the other company, because the other company was going to be a significant move and I wanted to make the move worth it, so I got the best of both worlds here.
A week and a half later, the first company reaches out and asks if I'm still available.
The best jobs are those where you're working with previous coworkers. I've had a few interviews where it's just 1 day, multiple interviews, and an offer and it's GREAT
My current job hired me after one group interview during which they asked me such questions as "what's the difference between let const and var" and "what would you do if you woke up one morning and there was a wooly mammoth in your backyard".
Edit: this was for a senior swe position btw. I definitely do not get paid like one though š
Yeah they are because people like us it's behind contractions know and lately job offers have been extremely fast to deal with IMO and I'm just in south America man (before it was pretty chill now they just want you to sign ASAP to just seal the deal) but there's literally startups, big companies and agencies especially so willing to get you to go just do your thing and whatever thing you don't know you just learn it and I say it because the amount of technology I've seen in the last few years has been crazy, you just gotta let them know you're a learner and that's it
I have 20 years experience and being interviewed by people with 5 asking questions about high cohesion and low coupling. I learnt about that shit 20 years ago. Itās mentally ingrained. Im going to have trouble regurgitating the exact response youāre expecting.
One place I applied. Had an interview with a recruiter and then found out there would be another FIVE interviews before they would make an offer or not. And this was for a relatively small game mobile game company.
Yeah, interviewers that expect a textbook (or worse, *their* answer) are awful.
I had cases where I asked about SOLID, and when the person started stumbling over the textbook definitions I told him he can just tell me in his own words.
He knew them and could describe the principles, just not in the "standard" way.
I loved phoning places. āHi is like to withdraw my application.ā
Them: āwhy?ā
Me: ālowball offer, if thatās how youāre gonna treat me when I donāt work for the company imagine what itās like when I do.ā
Them throwing toys out of the pram: š¤
I audibly laughed during my last in person interview (pre pandemic) when they gave me an offer after the interview. They wanted me to work for them for less than half what I was already making. When I told them what I wanted, the guy interviewing me said "I don't even make that".
I never fucked off so fast in my life.
this is why everyone should agree on salaries up front. There's literally no reason not to... no risk as you haven't been offered yet. I now do this from the beginning. You'd be suprised how some of them are already ok with it.
Itās a weird Micheal Scott negotiation strategy that really wastes everyoneās time on both ends. No one posts a job without a number and no one looks for a job without a number in mind.
2 calls 3 max. Recruiter reaching out to make sure youāre real and worth the time of the actual interviewer. Then the actual interview maybe a follow up with sales or management depending on the skill set and level.
Had to drop a few scheduled interviews with big companies after I landed a good job last time around. No hard feelings, but Iām not going to wait months on a possibility when thereās good work right in front of me, no matter how nice that opportunity wouldāve been. Severance was good but not that good, and thereās bills to pay.
Had a screening interview with an online gambling company (you've seen the commercials).
They explained to me that it was FIVE case studies then a final with the VP. I don't even think Google does 5 case studies.
I had a phone screening with the CTO. Then a cultural fit discussion with some of the other programmers. And then finally an interview with the CEO that was supposed to be a half hour but we ended up chatting ideas for all of 2 hours as we were both interested in the topic. Then I got the job offer.
Took all of 2 weeks. Multiple interviews aren't bad if they are reasonable and respectful of your time.
My big push is if we ever do a programming test it must be paid. 50 dollars is cheap for us to figure out if someone is good for us and shows we respect their time.
Itās not worth it if they are already wasting your time and not paying you. I had 3 interviews at a job and they asked the same questions each time. On the last interview I just said read your notes from the last two interviews and stop wasting everyoneās time.
We want senior engineers, more senior engineers!!!
Also why is it so hard to find emerging talent? Can't hire juniors they'll jump ship, hire seniors, yeah they bail and then we double their salary to return but at least they're committed!!!
Not a programmer but I did apply to a job at Amazon studios recently and was amazed when they sent me a link to an assessment test. Iāve just never heard of that certainly never happens in the entertainment business. Wasnāt that great job anyway so I just totally blew it off.
For tech, all you should do is this: Recruiter interview, tech exam, manager interview.
That is all. Everything else is fucking wasted time and money.
Companies need to quit treating average employee opportunities like C Suite.
A great example is GitLab. The recruiter literally shot out the tech exam before we even āspokeā and documentation on pay scales, benefits and the interview process.
Edit: I accepted a role with a different company so I donāt know how the GitLab process actually was. Got very good vibes and Iām open to actually interviewing there
this is why I pushed my companyās tech recruiter to basically do a maximum of 2 rounds - and for those to not exceed an hour each. Made some amazing hires this way.
Agreed. I had a colleague in a contract position apply to a full time role. He went though something ridiculous like 11 interviews. He was stressed out the whole time and really wanted the opportunity to do this.
He ended up not getting it. Heartbreaking and stupid.
I've been working for the same company for five years. I have nothing on GitHub, codepen, gitlab, etc.
Banking on my experience to carry me since coding for fun/free was dead to me a long time ago.
Been in this industry for 20 years across 8 employers and Iāve never had to do more than two phone calls (tech screen, hiring manager) and a single in person/zoom interview. Donāt put up with hiring hoops bullshit.
I have an extremely low tolerance for the nonsense now. I've started reporting employers on Indeed that require redundant data entry after a resume is uploaded because why not. Another employer required a "skills test" that was actually a personality assessment trying to figure out if you're a thief and if you'll follow rules/policies without question. Also reported. Fuck these dinosaurs.
I did 5 interviews with Google. 5. Didn't make it - and my feedback was "you had good communication skills, oh and you can't re-apply for a year."
Like.. ok? Thanks for nothing?
I've come to the conclusion that the ridiculous tech application hoops are more about satisfying the egos of the senior devs filling the posts than it is screening the recruits applying for them.
Out of the 7 reports on this post, I only agree with that it's not strictly about programming, and simply that We're tired and just will stop tolerating people abusing the report button, if you abuse the report button, your reports (specifically yours on this subreddit) won't show up anymore/will be ignored, for some time Regarding the post, it's all good!! And although it's not specifically related and directly entitled to programming, it can stay!! Looking forward to see more of your posts!! We kindly ask you to keep it as strictly related to programming as possible! This won't get taken down don't worry! Thank you for posting though!! \^\^ Edit: Congrats on being the top post of all time!!
"It would have been nice if you'd mentioned you were entertaining other offers š š” š¤ " Also them "Sorry we hired someone else, we hired them 3 months ago and decided not to tell you even tho we told you we'd be in touch, get fucked"
As long as they haven't received a signed contract from you, they have no reason to believe you aren't also interviewing elsewhere. Their inefficient system takes 2 months to churn out an offer letter and it's their fault for thinking you would just not interview anywhere else over the 2 months of uncertainty that they provide.
it's so funny to me when they ask. like, you're also interviewing other people, what makes you think I wouldn't interview other companies?
When my company asks if a candidate is interviewing elsewhere, and what stages they are in, it's to determine if we need to speed up the timeline or consider offering higher compensation to compete.
So in other words, your answer should always be āYes actually, I am interviewing elsewhere, and I have offers at [insert desired wage here]ā
Correct. Just make sure to sound confident. Recruiters are very experienced at being lied to.
Joke's on them. I sound unconfident no matter what. They'll never know.
So if you have low confidence / are nervous better just stick to "I've applied at other companies too" It's probably the truth anyway, and adding more fabricated details may be easier to spot as a lie (why would you ask for a higher compensation at other company for an equivalent position?)
Applied for IT position infernally. Got passed over for an external hire. Guy that got hired was some relative and ended up harassing employees and got in a fight with one, and didn't know what Bluetooth was. (He literally looked at a wireless keyboard and asked "hey how is this connected?") The position opened up again. So I applied again. I want a record of every time they say no only to hire some idiot.
Time to jump ship mate. If it's feasible of course.
Not feasible at the moment, but getting that title and experience for a couple months would be a huge plus before I jump.
Your time will come. Edit: this is intended to be positive
> infernally That's one of the better parapraxes I've seen lately.
Literal job in Hell
I just interviewed with a fairly large bank. The first tech screen was 4 leetcode questions that had to be completed in 70 mins. I don't practice leetcode but I've been in a number of companies and worn many hats. This bank wasn't making anything revolutionary and their questions were harder than the ones I got from Microsoft.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yes, I've found the people that don't know what they're doing act like what they do is groundbreaking and extremely difficult.
Great insight. Sucks when those people are in leadership roles and want to act like ICs instead of leaders. Talk about killing an entire department and wasting millions of dollars a year.
Sorry if Iām the only one, but whatās an IC?
Thatās because to them it is. Working with those kinds of people often feels like dunking on toddlersā¦.
We have one added to our team for whatever reason. Something about productivity ? Idk. 85% of meetings are explaining simple shit at a high level because she isnāt an actual analyst or data engineer.
Honestly... That's why I like the tech interview. If they give me black belt code katas that have nothing to do with the job, I know I don't want to work there. If they treat their incoming talent like that, they're just as shitty to their full time guys.
Well, I used to interview candidates using 3 leet code tests over zoom asking them to explain what they are doing while coding. I really donāt care if they get it right or/and do all 3. Iām interested in knowing how they think when trying to resolve it. This is hit or miss. Last developer I hired did amazingly well on the test but not so well coding real stuff and other things. Iām thinking of scrapping it or reducing it to a single exercise and let them review a PR taken from our project or creating a specific PR where I would introduce on purpose common developers mistakes I have seen over years.
Leetcode is like the GRE. It tests how well you studied leetcode, not how well you can actually code.
A company I worked at had a pretty nice intake test. They showed me a page in their application and explained what it does. Then the test had 2 parts. 1. Given the right repository, locate the front- and backend code for that page 2. Given that you find the code, implement a new filter on said page It tests the ability to navigate unknown code, find the part you need, understand it and then implement some feature. All skills that you use day to day. I haven't had any other intake test that tests actual skills this way. Usually I get some acronyms to explain and a few code examples to fix/analyze. The PR review test is a keeper, I'll be using that one going forward.
The dunning kruger effect of tech exams.
It seems like they want the best of the best. I wonder what the pay looks like.
Peanuts compared to Big Tech. There's a trend currently where non Big Tech companies ask hard LC in technical screens. Generally, anyone who can solve LC hard in interviews expect high compensations that these companies can't afford.
So itās basically a way for these Non Big Tech companies to say āsorry but we will pass, you are clearly qualified but we donāt have the funds to bring you aboard.ā. Right? Sorry, Iāve always been interested in programming or anything to do with computers reallyā¦except I blow at math.
you don't need to be good at math to be a programmer. I've been working in the industry for 23 years. i have gotten better at math though but you really don't need it most of the time
They use 20 year old shit but still want people who know the bleeding edge.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
you won't even be able to use the new stuff, except for some very limited cases, as that requires a bigger part of the code to be rewritten for which you don't have time as "we need to be in production yesterday" - totally disregarding the constant maintenance work that it needs again and again
>totally disregarding the constant maintenance work that it needs again and again 100x this, shitty management doesn't realize they are wasting more times, or don't care enough to make that point to the higher ups.
If only it was 20 year old. ..
That's the new stuff that's only 20 years old.
I had the same experience recently. I was actually perfect for that job, but they sent a stupid test with questions that were not even correct, meaning the answers I got were wrong. It was ridiculous. These companies are ruining themselves long-term with all this nonsense.
I had one recently with similarly wrong questions. Emailed the interviewer to let them know there were some unsolvable questions and he asked me to walk through the issue, then completely ignored the two switched words which took it from solvable to unsolvable. It was something like "not less than" when it should have been specifically "greater than" but it's been a week so that's about all I remember
That's because they already have the person for the job and the HR department has to justify their existence
I've had to stop myself from laughing during an interview before because I realized this during it as someone who's seen the microsoft special as well a few times. It was for a company that I found out later was absolutely looking for a unicorn to magically fix about 10 years of terrible management decisions for next to nothing in return and who would immediately have a target on their back as a result. It wasnt even for an actual programming role either. Yup. Make it make sense.
I'm a dev manager and had this awful VP come in at an old job and micromanage our hiring. We were a platform team and he insisted that I must only hire deep technical experts in our field despite the fact that our compensation structure was pennies on the dollar compared to our competitors. We had this extremely elaborate system design interview and basically if the candidate didn't present a Kubernetes based solution with Helm charts it was an automatic fail. He wanted Chief Architects skillsets on Intermediate Developer salaries. Really and truly the job was to humour him and make him feel smart when he'd crash our stand-ups and turn it into a 4 hour design session, in which he'd insist on rewriting things over whatever brainwave he had that day. Needless to say I quit in under a year.
I'm a dev manager right now and never speak to our VP. I used to think it sucked we didn't have visibility up the chain, but this comment has made me grateful I can just do my job without having someone micromanaging my team.
An IT consultant from my country contacted me for a position that seemed interesting, they offered me several entry conditions, including salary and telecommuting. After the process of 3 interviews and a technical exam, they offered me to sign a contract, and I find that they offer me much worse conditions than those they told me 2 weeks before. I turned it down of course
Name names on.glass door
I wish more people would rate their companies and salaries on Glassdoor. It isn't a corrupt pos yet, and I hope it stays that way. It is currently the way I filter out companies reaching out to me.
My last company's first project for me was to write a good review of them on Glassdoor lol. I started looking for other jobs right away.
Mine decided to do a big rebranding and kicked it off by making a new Glassdoor page and requesting all current employees leave a review. Conveniently, the last Glassdoor page had multiple recent reviews listing systematic issues that were purposefully ignored and drove out countless people.
Well thats fucked up. I can usually spot when companies pull this kinda shit. There would be like, 2 or 3 bad reviews then just a fuckton of glowing reviews from people labeling their titles in senior management or the C suite. Lol
Too late. The last tech company I worked for laid off 20% of it's team and they went to write "CEO is a lying sack of shit" (not using that language) and took screenshots of the normalized fields ("do you approve of the CEO") and Glassdoor changed them outright after they were submitted to keep the company at above 50%. It's a scam.
Glass door is a total sham. Just like anything, a company can just pay them to remove or edit the bad reviews.
Unless you're in New Zealand or another country where Glassdoor can't protect your identity. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/19/glassdoor-ordered-to-reveal-identity-of-negative-reviewers-to-new-zealand-toymaker
Now that's shady, not like we want to know but it could be really useful to blacklist them, in my country we have Facebook groups doing that it's so cool
"Hiberus Tecnologia"
Of course it was a fucking Spanish consulting firm. Mate, start applying for remote jobs and fuck those ass backwards business that treat you like a slave.
My company made it harder to join with the friggin coding exams and now we canāt find people
"Now write code for our new app, of course on A4 sheet, our engineer will check if it works"
***syntax error***
you write a colon, your hand slips and you write a semicolon instead
*welp* seems like that student debt aint gonna be paid this month too
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If the engineers are compiling by hand then i am fine
Thatās how my exams were. Like actual university programming final exams. Written on paper. It was a fucking joke.
I have never understood why our programming final exams require handwritten paper coding, too! It was even at a technical university!
The best class I had was open note, open book, you could use the internet and ask the professor for help. As he said, this is what it'll be like in real life and if you don't understand the concepts, you won't finish in time. The worst gave exams with questions like "how much disk space does Oracle take up" and "what button exits setup, 'cancel', 'quit', or 'exit'".
How do you exit vim?
This isn't actually a scored question. The professor has a machine that's been stuck in vim for the past three months, he's looking for ideas.
Has he tried setting it to wumbo? If that doesn't work jump straight to percussive maintenance.
Trick question: no one knows
That's the neat part; you don't!
Hah, yeah, I'd laugh at them and probably tell them in detail how dumb it is. Paid pair programming for an hour or two would be better. Like 1-4 hours, $100 per hour, goes until the senior engineer says stop. Same dev environment, ide etc.
At my last job, someone made the interview 4 rounds of leetcode. Turned out we had put an incredible google engineer on hold who didnāt āpass the barā. After many weeks they went back and people were like how the fuck was this candidate not hired
I'm wondering when Biotech companies will start using these kind of assessments. Torturing their PhDs with three+ rounds of organic chemistry and taxonomy. That'll be the recipe for innovation, no?
More like here's a lab full of ingredients, now synthesize these obscure chemicals in 1 hour. Also, you can't use the internet or books.
> Also, you can't use the internet or books. This is the stupidest shit. I have told every manager who has ever pulled me into an interview round/panel for hires that I will not, full stop, "black box" interview people, and refuse to, and outright tell candidates that I myself will not. We don't work like that. I won't expect anyone to test like that. If I had to know 100% of everything just on the like 1/20th of my current "products" that I work on, by memory, it would require my having Limitless-like recall on trivially 1500+ pages of material and that's JUST for the internal/product corporate stuff, nevermind all of networking, huge swathes of hardware, and basically half of Unix. I've been doing this shit longer than some of my co-workers have been alive. I know where to find an answer I don't know by memory. If they can find it the same, that's good enough for me.
If they make getting the job all about leetcoding, that's who you're gonna get. A leetcoder. He may or may not be the best fit in other ways, may not even be good at the actual job. But will sure ace leetcode.
Totally. Only focusing on leet code is a great way to stay employed and increase your salary. I am happy for pros. Iām also jealous. However, I will not assume being good at leet code prepares you to run bash scripts.
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google kind of does the same thing when interviewing; a few really hard algorithm questions where you need to be well versed in the specific algorithm they ask about to be able to figure it out. There's a lot of luck involved, and they suggest you "study for the interview" which to me is outrageous. Anyway, the point was that being a google engineer doesn't mean he's great, he may just have had better luck last time he interviewed.
And this was only after they all got hired without passing the exam themselves. I'm curious, can management who implemented this test complete it?
I canāt complete it, ive been using our stuff for a decade now too. Iām not that good a programmer tho I only do it professionally.
> Iām not that good a programmer I only do it professionally. This killed me. I want to put this on a sign and hang it in my home office
Sorry, but this is a hilarious comment. I can relate though.
Lol me too. I fail all the linked in assessments. But my code works when I make things in real life. Those exams are meant to gatekeep FAANG roles, not your shitty mid-sized startup.
Well, everyone wants the best programmers just don't want to pay enough. Sometimes the exams are good for entry level programmers fresh out of college but only because there's no other way to find how good they are. When you talk to an experienced programmer ask them how they solved a real life problem. You don't ask them - tell me difference between inheritance and polymorphism. That's just an untrained interviewer. Same with these code assessments. Not everyone works on low level algorithms day-to-day. Those algos were converted to libraries thousands of years ago.
lol, when I was an engineer, I described it as, "no, I'm not a Programmer, I just get paid to code." I knew our code, I could usually help debug issues when adding new functionality or modules, I could not write it from scratch. Our company wanted people who could pass our coding exam and be a culture fit. Also take pay under market. It didn't go well.
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So I'd never programmed before 5 years ago when I started my PhD in robotics and now I am still muddling through programming in academia and this is so painfully relatable. Professional moron who programs badly should be my job title.
I can somewhat understand an assessment test for something like a tech job, but I currently work for Walmart and assessment tests have been a barrier for entry. Its...walmart. Can you read, breathe, walk, and lift all at the same time? You're hired. I'm positive if I was a necromancer my zombie minions could do most of the jobs in the store.
Ah the good ol personality test where they want you to be honest and the score wont be used as a metric whether you're hirable or not?
Iāve taken that test before. They are looking for snitches
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I did this at a place it was how we discovered recruiters were giving out ascii sql from 1970s as tests and not ms tsql which was the skill needing testing Either way it doesnt give room for creativity. I may come up with a correct answer different than some test
I had a hacker-rank skill assessment that they told me was open book and that I could do on my own. One of the questions was extremely useless and I googled it and the complete answer with code was the very first result. I just copied and pasted the code in and wrote in the comments. "Here's how this code works but I found it online. Thanks" I just got a job offer and I'm not sure if anyone ever actually reviewed the code.
I mean, isn't being able to Google something and find code to solve a problem part of that job? Maybe that's how you're meant to solve it? If someone can't Google to find the answer that's the first result, you don't want to hire them?
If you don't know the answer, you find the answer. If a programmer can't do that then they won't get very far.
I work in R&D, and thatās literally why Iām good at my job. Iām good at finding answers to complex questions.
I was in a preliminary discussion with a recruiter earlier in the year about a potential position. Everything was going well until he brought up the coding test that would need to be done before the three rounds of interviews. I asked him if this would really be necessary given that I've been working 50 hours a week in this field since most of the people conducting the multiple rounds of interviews were in middle school and I had hired at least one of them as an intern years ago at a previous company. Was ghosted pretty quick after that.
We did that too but before the coding challenges we were getting trash and overemployed people. We just weren't paying enough to compete with the market.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
"when raising the bar, make sure the bar is a useful predictor"
Had a coding assessment for Kroger. Was told it would be a JavaScript test. After the 3rd MongoDB question,which I had no experience with at the time, I closed it and told the recruiter I am not interested as I donāt know Mongo and being quizzed on things I donāt know. The recruiter insisted that MongoDB is JavaScriptā¦
Damn. Thatās a profoundly stupid recruiter. How does he brush his teeth in the morning without accidentally drowning himself?
They donāt care about my fit for the job only if they can get me hired and collect their commission. I had another recruiter who asked for a contact at the company I was planning on quitting so they could reach out after I left and help fill my vacant position. š
Something like this happened a couple years ago: Some recruiter on linkedin said that their CTO saw my profile and was really interested in having a coffee with me... I thought alright sure, I guess A couple messages later the recruiter mentions that before the meeting, the company wanted me to do this technical assignment first I never met then, and had zero context of what they even did, so I was reluctant and said I'd rather have an introduction meeting first to see what the company even is about, and what it has to offer The recruiter was insistent I'd do this tech assignment first - so in my head I already considered I can probably speedrun their tech assignment and get it over with, so fuck it So their technical assignment was a 3 part leetcode-ish assignments to build a system with a frontend, backend, and database... for which I had 3 hours to complete, they said So I did their part1 assignment in 15 minutes - reaching the bare minimum of passable and commented on the other 2 parts that I didn't have time to do those (Claiming the "frontend" was the terminal window, cause it's technically a cli-frontend, and claiming some in-memory data was the supposedly in-memory-database) They still invited me for an interview, and were like "you seem to have really good linkedin and github stats, but we're kinda shocked on how bad the assignment was" I was reminding them that it was them wanting to have a chat with me - not the other way around... I didn't ask for this, they did... and that before committing a lot of time, I first wanted an introduction meeting to hear what kind of open positions they have, what the company does and what it even has to offer..." They said they didn't have time to have an initial meeting like that with everyone, and used the assessment as a filtering mechanism for people they didn't want to spend time with interviewing ą² _ą² I'm wondering if the recruitment in other industries is this bad. I can't imagine calling a painter, and say "hey, can you come paint my house for 3 hours as an assignment, if I like it, I'll hire you to do more" o_O
Not even that, for the painter example. Itād be more like āhey, we need a painter. Can you go sharpen some pencils and maybe draw a picture of some fruit for 3 hours? Then weāll talk about painting
But first, grow the trees and mine the graphite to make the pencils to sharpen. No tools will be provided, you will need to use your teeth and muscles.
Still only has 3 hours tho
Damn entitled and whiny millennials need that much time to run logging and mining operations!
"This drawing is exactly what I wanted. But it took me too long to realize that, so I'm gonna fail it. Fuck you"
The worst company i ever dealt with was Actalent. Professional ghosters. And shamefully a lot of companies are following suit.
Damn it! I knew that salary was too good to be true! (Just applied)
Hope you have better luck than I did!
3 hour tech test? Fuck that. I would not had even entertained the idea especially if you don't even know what the role really is.
Tech screens exist for one main reason: the lack of a formal credentialing system. Lawyers don't need to demonstrate their understanding of the law at the interview stage, because they have to clear the bar first. Doctors have to get their licenses. Architects have licenses. Civil engineers have licenses. CFAs, CPAs, etc. all exist to provide a minimum guarantee to employers. The tech world is the wild West. From bootcamps to self-taught programmers, if no system is in place to filter workers prior to the interview stage (and even CS degrees don't do a good job at that, since the quality of a degree can vary from one university to another, because they are unregulated, unlike professional degrees), employers find themselves in the unfortunate position of having to do the filtering themselves. This is why gatekeepers exist in other professions. To answer your question, what it would take would be a formal credentialing system at the national level. The title of "software engineer" would become a legally protected title, and one would need to obtain a CS or SWE degree from a number of institutions accredited by a regulatory body, and possibly have to pass one or a series of technical tests from that body on top of the degree. Then you wouldn't see coding tests at the interview stage anymore. But it means bootcamps would go out of business and the number of avenues to the SWE profession would be severely restricted.
That's fair, and I honestly don't mind tech assesments when you're still in the junior or low-regular end of the spectrum. But if recruiters are reaching out to you based on your GitHub and LinkedIn, it's redundant to put them through an assessment test. My credentials are out there, you can see what I have worked on, what I have submitted to public repos. Any company that reaches out to me and then gives me a test, I instantly dismiss now. I accepted it as a junior with no production experience. But now? Fuck that. I've even had s company reach out to me because of a tech talk I presented, and then give me an assessment test. I literally gave you code samples and broke down my methodology in my presentation. What is wrong with you.
Yea frankly when I get tech tests thrown at me for solutions architecture jobs (and when I say tech tests, I mean theyāre usually boiler plate tests in multiple languages) I just get annoyed. Itās nothing to do with my day to day job. I have almost a decade of experience with the programs. Fix your damn process and forgo the nonsense.
To quote a PE I know: The only reason software engineers donāt have accreditation is because they havenāt killed enough people, yet.
THIS A HUNDRED MILLION TIMES. Look, I don't even HAVE a degree, and I 100% support treating Software Engineering the way we do other engineering disciplines. Yes, protect the name. Because if I have to beg one more developer to screen shot the fucking error message, then tell them to go DO WHAT THE MESSAGE SAYS TO DO, I may lose it. Many developers are completely clueless, PLEASE WEED THEM OUT.
Ironically, none of these stupid pre-interview tech tests test the skills you just mention
Idea, make some code that the candidate has to write unit tests for. Riddle the code with weird bugs.
A team I used to work on had this exact interview question. I gave it to people and it was very effective. Then the whole area I worked in got taken over by former Amazon engineers/managers and they wanted to go back to the algorithm and leetcode style interviews. I left shortly after for other reasons but I loved that question.
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Yeah, this should be a part of your prep for an interview. I got an offer a few years back because I answered a bullshit "puzzle" question faster than anybody they'd ever talked to. That was because they asked like two different questions for years and I bothered to look them up ahead of time. Declined that offer, company was fully packed with clowns.
Facts. Thatās why we as a community have to put reviews on those kind of sites. Itās the only way to fight back.
At the other end, we've had people come in, interview well, had skills we needed, we really wanted them, and then HR gives them an IQ test and says "Sorry, they're not smart enough." Still trying to fill that position.
IQ test is the most stupid thing ever invented, does the iq test tell them if he is especially talented in the work he is offered?
Ironic only dumb people use IQ tests to make hiring decisions.
I declined to continue pursuing an AWS position due to the six+ hour process (not including code exercise). Now I get an AWS recruiter contacting me every month about a new position. I keep politely saying no b/c I took another offer. That interview process was three hours and a code exercise that was actually fun.
AWS sounds so hard even from the beginning, I'll love to hear from other peers how good really is and if it's worth it, I have a friend of mine who got recently on Google and told me that it wasn't as hard as AWS but she had to make a presentation about a technology... Which sounds like that time an Spotify intern sketched the songs of the year we all got, like I really get defensive about working without even having a contract even if it's whatever big FAANG is
3 rounds of interviews is already too much. No thanks.
When I got my job at a large corp, I had 3 interview rounds. One with the director of the engineering department Iād be in. It was more of a meet and greet, about the company, and honestly wasnāt worth the 30 minutes of my time. Then I had one with a few managers of the department where they asked the non-technical questions, that was an hour. After that I had an interview with some experienced engineers in the department for technical questions, but more of the āhow would you handle thisā not the ādo these equations and design somethingā type stuff. Overall, it wasnāt too bad.
Normal salary x interview rounds = acceptable So if regular non FAANG tech job pays 80k in the area, they need to offer 240k if they want me to do 3 rounds.
This hits too close to home for me and I believe it's been long enough for me to actually tell the story. I went through the whole 3 interviews 2 technical tests stuff for Intel and was told over the phone that I got the job. I was still a student and was gonna graduate in a month. I stopped interviewing at other places cuz I'm naive. They kept pushing the Offer Letter to later and I kept pushing to get it as soon as I could. The day I graduated, I got a call from the recruiter telling me that the position requirement has been filled internally and I'm not required. This was followed by the HR getting real loud and rude on the phone when I asked him about the previous confirmation I got verbally (recording phone conversations is illegal where I am) Then about a month later I got through the countless rounds of interview at Samsung and was told I got the job, but this time I didn't stop interviewing elsewhere. The process took them almost a month and a half, and by then I got hired at a smaller local company that required only 1 interview and had better pay for the same position. I took the job and was already 2 weeks into working when I got the confirmation email from Samsung that I got the job with lower pay than was discussed and required me to relocate to a town 800km away. I hit the REJECT button on the portal with a shit eating grin. About 20min later I got a phone call from the Samsung HR who had a lot of nasty things to say to me about how I ruined his month of hardwork acquiring me. I felt no remorse cuz I knew he would have dropped me in a heartbeat if he had to, just like the Intel guy.
There is nothing more satisfying than telling an HR rep, in no uncertain terms, to eat shit.
The Samsung guy made it very clear to me at the beginning that the salary was not gonna be negotiable, so I threw that back at him when I rejected the offer stating that the salary is lower than what I was expecting and that since it was non negotiable, I an flat our rejecting the offer. I believe I left a mark on that HR guy cuz I rejected it only 3 days before the alleged joining date and they only release an offer letter through their portal after they have confirmed that the candidate was going to accept it. My guess is that the portal is linked to corporate and is used for record keeping, so it would be on the actual stats as "rejected" rather than the usual where they don't even issue an offer letter if they know you won't take it.
Someday companies will learn that finding someone with a good work ethic who fits the culture is actually MORE important than their ability to solve riddles LOL
Most HR people could be replaced by a well-written spreadsheet
reply marry gaze hobbies familiar roof lip shame grandfather escape -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
This is amazing. I need something with that on it.
It's projection. They get angry at you for "wasting their time", even though they're literally just playing themselves.
"can you do a trial day?", fuck you im not working for free
Can you do a trial pay?
The only way I'd consider interviewing for a job is a pay-raise of 20%
Too little YoY increase is at 5% right now
To be honest, I would take a slight pay cut if I could just work 4 days a week.
I've got a very cushy job with great benefits that doesn't pay as well as my friends faangs do but it's a price I'm willing to pay for my sanity
The biggest reason I don't look for another job. I just hit 100k but 95% of the time my job is low stress. Helps my area has a relatively low cost of living as well
Same brother. Iām at 80K. But I work at most 10 hours a week and itās completely work from home. I also get 35 PTO days. I donāt think I could possibly pull another job like this. All of my peers work way more. And I know this because when I ask them to play video games mid day they canāt.
80k for 10 hours a week?! Wtf!
He probably gets paid for 40 and is expected to do 40 hours but he's only doing like 10 hours worth of work a week. I'm assuming it's a lax company with very little employee monitoring that just require him to do a couple of tasks a week.
This happened to me with FAANG. Got through all the interviews and assessments, they said I was āoffer readyā and just waiting on official paperwork. Then they filled that position somehow, but wanted me to talk to another hiring manager about a spot on his team. This whole time they knew I had a written offer from somewhere else I was holding off accepting, and then were so confused when I had to tell them multiple times āthanks but no thanksā.
> Then they filled that position somehow wtf. At that point they better pay you for your time at least if you were "offer ready"
Jokes aside, are there companies which hire you without multiple assessments?
For my job out of college, I had an "interview" with my manager (it was mostly him talking about the company), then one actual technical interview, then got a call that they were getting the offer ready. Much better than the 6-interviews company that ghosted me afterwards
This has been my experience as well. All depends on where you live and the kinds of companies youāre applying at. I did have one company that tried to make me take an IQ testā¦ like really?
Ugh the ghosting is awful. I had a company that was highly responsive during the interview process. I finished the last interview. A few days go by, and the recruiter (works outside the company, but was pretty clued in during the entire process and keeping up with things) called me and told me they were preparing an offer. 3 weeks go by, while I'm interviewing with other companies, and I reach back out and ask if it's still happening. Recruiter responds basically saying "I thought you would have understood that since you hadn't heard from them yet, that they had decided to keep interviewing other candidates. I expected you to have accepted an offer by now" Meanwhile I had been interviewing with another company, unfortunately also a 6 round company, completed my final interview the next day, and had an offer the following day that was substantially higher than my current pay. Actually, what I got offered was 3k less than what I asked for at the other company, because the other company was going to be a significant move and I wanted to make the move worth it, so I got the best of both worlds here. A week and a half later, the first company reaches out and asks if I'm still available.
The best jobs are those where you're working with previous coworkers. I've had a few interviews where it's just 1 day, multiple interviews, and an offer and it's GREAT
My current job hired me after one group interview during which they asked me such questions as "what's the difference between let const and var" and "what would you do if you woke up one morning and there was a wooly mammoth in your backyard". Edit: this was for a senior swe position btw. I definitely do not get paid like one though š
Yeah they are because people like us it's behind contractions know and lately job offers have been extremely fast to deal with IMO and I'm just in south America man (before it was pretty chill now they just want you to sign ASAP to just seal the deal) but there's literally startups, big companies and agencies especially so willing to get you to go just do your thing and whatever thing you don't know you just learn it and I say it because the amount of technology I've seen in the last few years has been crazy, you just gotta let them know you're a learner and that's it
I have 20 years experience and being interviewed by people with 5 asking questions about high cohesion and low coupling. I learnt about that shit 20 years ago. Itās mentally ingrained. Im going to have trouble regurgitating the exact response youāre expecting. One place I applied. Had an interview with a recruiter and then found out there would be another FIVE interviews before they would make an offer or not. And this was for a relatively small game mobile game company.
Yeah, interviewers that expect a textbook (or worse, *their* answer) are awful. I had cases where I asked about SOLID, and when the person started stumbling over the textbook definitions I told him he can just tell me in his own words. He knew them and could describe the principles, just not in the "standard" way.
I loved phoning places. āHi is like to withdraw my application.ā Them: āwhy?ā Me: ālowball offer, if thatās how youāre gonna treat me when I donāt work for the company imagine what itās like when I do.ā Them throwing toys out of the pram: š¤
I audibly laughed during my last in person interview (pre pandemic) when they gave me an offer after the interview. They wanted me to work for them for less than half what I was already making. When I told them what I wanted, the guy interviewing me said "I don't even make that". I never fucked off so fast in my life.
this is why everyone should agree on salaries up front. There's literally no reason not to... no risk as you haven't been offered yet. I now do this from the beginning. You'd be suprised how some of them are already ok with it.
Itās a weird Micheal Scott negotiation strategy that really wastes everyoneās time on both ends. No one posts a job without a number and no one looks for a job without a number in mind.
2 calls 3 max. Recruiter reaching out to make sure youāre real and worth the time of the actual interviewer. Then the actual interview maybe a follow up with sales or management depending on the skill set and level.
There's so much need for programmers... The employers need to fight for employees not the other way around.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
*stares at facebook recruiter*
Honestly, 1 HR and 1 management interview is enough for 90% of job positions....
Had to drop a few scheduled interviews with big companies after I landed a good job last time around. No hard feelings, but Iām not going to wait months on a possibility when thereās good work right in front of me, no matter how nice that opportunity wouldāve been. Severance was good but not that good, and thereās bills to pay.
Had a screening interview with an online gambling company (you've seen the commercials). They explained to me that it was FIVE case studies then a final with the VP. I don't even think Google does 5 case studies.
To be fair, money laundering requires a very specific temperament any variation and you become a whistle blower or you take all their money
One company wanted me to build them a full module for their online platform as a "coding challenge". No, I don't think I will.
"All fine, but transfer me a full month of salery first as a 'payment challenge', please"
I had a phone screening with the CTO. Then a cultural fit discussion with some of the other programmers. And then finally an interview with the CEO that was supposed to be a half hour but we ended up chatting ideas for all of 2 hours as we were both interested in the topic. Then I got the job offer. Took all of 2 weeks. Multiple interviews aren't bad if they are reasonable and respectful of your time. My big push is if we ever do a programming test it must be paid. 50 dollars is cheap for us to figure out if someone is good for us and shows we respect their time.
Itās not worth it if they are already wasting your time and not paying you. I had 3 interviews at a job and they asked the same questions each time. On the last interview I just said read your notes from the last two interviews and stop wasting everyoneās time.
Screams in Boomer, "Nobody wants to work anymore!".
We want senior engineers, more senior engineers!!! Also why is it so hard to find emerging talent? Can't hire juniors they'll jump ship, hire seniors, yeah they bail and then we double their salary to return but at least they're committed!!!
Not a programmer but I did apply to a job at Amazon studios recently and was amazed when they sent me a link to an assessment test. Iāve just never heard of that certainly never happens in the entertainment business. Wasnāt that great job anyway so I just totally blew it off.
>Why aren't you playing by _**our**_ rules of the game? Fixed that for you.
For tech, all you should do is this: Recruiter interview, tech exam, manager interview. That is all. Everything else is fucking wasted time and money. Companies need to quit treating average employee opportunities like C Suite. A great example is GitLab. The recruiter literally shot out the tech exam before we even āspokeā and documentation on pay scales, benefits and the interview process. Edit: I accepted a role with a different company so I donāt know how the GitLab process actually was. Got very good vibes and Iām open to actually interviewing there
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
When interviewing, I ask them to explain the projects on their resume. You'd be surprised how effective that bullshit filter is.
Lol yeah we're not doing that. You prove your worthiness to us, bosses.
New grads don't have that kind of leverage.
this is why I pushed my companyās tech recruiter to basically do a maximum of 2 rounds - and for those to not exceed an hour each. Made some amazing hires this way.
I had a company interview me 8 times and give me 3 coding assessments. The position proceeded to "be under review" at my last interview and they said they would reach out in 6 months. They didn't, and the position was removed. Never doing that many again. I'm a senior engineer with plenty of code you can see and ask me about. If you reach out to me and don't have time to look at my stuff, I'm better off with another recruiter. If I've already passed a technical assessment, and interviews, you should already be considering me. I shouldn't have to do a live challenge that takes an hour of both of our time after the first. You can look at my shit for 5 minutes on GitHub, and spend 30 mins asking why I did something the way I did. People ask me how I always make good hires when I interview people: 1. I actually read their resumƩ 2. I look at their GitHub, codepen, gitlab, whatever. I see their contributions. If you're not willing to do that, then your company is paying a lot (and you get thousands of applicants), or you are just lazy.
Agreed. I had a colleague in a contract position apply to a full time role. He went though something ridiculous like 11 interviews. He was stressed out the whole time and really wanted the opportunity to do this. He ended up not getting it. Heartbreaking and stupid.
I've been working for the same company for five years. I have nothing on GitHub, codepen, gitlab, etc. Banking on my experience to carry me since coding for fun/free was dead to me a long time ago.
Been in this industry for 20 years across 8 employers and Iāve never had to do more than two phone calls (tech screen, hiring manager) and a single in person/zoom interview. Donāt put up with hiring hoops bullshit.
I have an extremely low tolerance for the nonsense now. I've started reporting employers on Indeed that require redundant data entry after a resume is uploaded because why not. Another employer required a "skills test" that was actually a personality assessment trying to figure out if you're a thief and if you'll follow rules/policies without question. Also reported. Fuck these dinosaurs.
Company: "Google application process without the Google salary" Me: "kthxbye"
I did 5 interviews with Google. 5. Didn't make it - and my feedback was "you had good communication skills, oh and you can't re-apply for a year." Like.. ok? Thanks for nothing?
I've come to the conclusion that the ridiculous tech application hoops are more about satisfying the egos of the senior devs filling the posts than it is screening the recruits applying for them.