Newbie Programming Interviews/Get a Job Megathread: Fake it 'til you make it

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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS: Dec 21, 2010

Strong Sauce posted:

Eh, I don't know why you would ever tell someone to accept a lower number. They should accept the highest number they can convince their company to pay them.

I think the point is not shutting yourself out by asking for more than you can reasonably expect to be paid.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 03:27

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# ? May 22, 2024 13:28

NovemberMike: Dec 28, 2008

RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:

I think the point is not shutting yourself out by asking for more than you can reasonably expect to be paid.

Yeah. There's a lot of talk about getting $65-90k starting here and that's realistic for someone that can command some respect from companies, but if you're coming in without a degree or experience you're effectively looking for an apprenticeship, and you are not going to command top tier wages in that situation. Each month you sit unemployed makes you look worse and each month you are employed (even if it's a lovely job) makes you look better.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 03:55

shrughes: Oct 11, 2008; (call/cc call/cc)

tetracontakaidigon posted:

So do they really treat their grad students less like poo poo than their undergrads? Sorry, I'm bitter. My experience at U of R as a freshman majoring in computer science was so bad that I dropped out of school two months into my sophomore year and transferred to a no-name state school to finish my degree. Sometimes I regret not being able to command attention from Google and Microsoft at career fairs, but it's more than made up for by not wanting to kill myself and not being lied to/harassed by multiple people in the CS faculty and administration.

How do CS faculty and administration even get the opportunity to lie to and harass freshmen?

# ? Feb 4, 2014 04:32

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

shrughes posted:

How do CS faculty and administration even get the opportunity to lie to and harass freshmen?

What else do you think they plan out at faculty meetings?

# ? Feb 4, 2014 04:40

HondaCivet: Oct 16, 2005; And then it falls
And then I fall
And then I know

NovemberMike posted:

Yeah. There's a lot of talk about getting $65-90k starting here and that's realistic for someone that can command some respect from companies, but if you're coming in without a degree or experience you're effectively looking for an apprenticeship, and you are not going to command top tier wages in that situation. Each month you sit unemployed makes you look worse and each month you are employed (even if it's a lovely job) makes you look better.

Yeah pretty much. Places are desperate for devs but that mainly goes for EXPERIENCED devs. Even the outstanding new grads are generally outstanding because they got good internships while they were in school. Thinking of your first job as an apprenticeship is really helpful. Hardly anyone ends up with a really amazing first job. I hated my first job but I know people who had it a lot worse who are now really awesome in-demand devs. Just try to find something where you'll learn a bunch and not get paid total peanuts. Don't worry, you'll get to swing your weight around in salary negotiations later once you've got some impressive experience to show off.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 05:23

Infomaniac: Jul 3, 2007; Support Cartographers Without Borders

How far can having developed and published an Android app get a non CS grad whose looking to get an Android dev job. Most listings I see demand that a candidate have at least one.

I just published my first and I feel like it's a big win personally, but I'm not sure if I'm fooling myself about my job prospects.

The app uses sqlite database, broadcast receiver, intent service, and pending intents to deliver daily notifications that take user input and updates the database based on user responses to questions delivered in the notifications.

It's something I'm proud of but definitely my first piece of software other than a couple of websites (WordPress) and a Sencha Touch demo that my artist friend decided not to go with, opting instead for a WP site.

Can I parlay this into a non-poo poo resume?

Am I delusional? Can I call myself an :airquote:

android dev :airquote:

now?

# ? Feb 4, 2014 05:41

Mniot: May 22, 2003; Not the one you know

mobby_6kl posted:

So, would it make sense to add these two under some sort of "Projects" category? Should some key features be listed and descried as above, or wold that look lame? I've never interviewed anyone for a dev position so don't really have a feeling for how this would look from the other end.

Sounds like a cool idea to me.

If you've never held a job as a developer, the thing that will scare companies away is the possibility that you know nothing about writing code. Giving them some evidence that you know something is great. Also, it gives them some easy interview questions: ask you to talk about your code. I'd much rather be asking someone to explain their ray-tracer than making them do yet another variation on FizzBuzz.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 06:14

Coca Koala: Nov 28, 2005; ongoing nowhere; College Slice

tetracontakaidigon posted:

So do they really treat their grad students less like poo poo than their undergrads? Sorry, I'm bitter. My experience at U of R as a freshman majoring in computer science was so bad that I dropped out of school two months into my sophomore year and transferred to a no-name state school to finish my degree. Sometimes I regret not being able to command attention from Google and Microsoft at career fairs, but it's more than made up for by not wanting to kill myself and not being lied to/harassed by multiple people in the CS faculty and administration.

Woah. Mind pming me with some more details about your experience? I'm legitimately curious what your story is. I went to the U of R for undergrad in an unrelated field, but was friends with a bunch of the CS program, and I got to know a bunch more of the undergrads while I was a grad there; aside from the standard gripes that students have about their programs (and a few gripes about the poor quality of instruction in the lower level classes, which might be part of what you're referring to), nobody ever really had anything seriously negative to say about the department, especially not on the level of being lied to or harassed by multiple people in the department. What time period were you there?

# ? Feb 4, 2014 06:15

blorpy: Jan 5, 2005

Pollyanna posted:

I'm not getting any responses from my applications anyway, and no recruiters that I submitted my resume to have contacted me yet. So, I'm guessing there's some other reason I'm not getting responses.

Are you including any code samples? Sorry if I'm barging in on a conversation, but I'm curious what you're giving them.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 09:16

Tunga: May 7, 2004; Grimey Drawer

I had an interview which was a bit mixed. Some stuff went fine, general data structures and algorithms, but they kept asking me "what do you know about LATEST CODING BUZZWORD TREND" and I'd say "I've heard of LATEST CODING BUZZWORD TREND SOME TREND but I don't really know anything about it because my current employer is terrible", except not in those words.

It was also all a bit bizarre because it was for an Android position but they just asked me C# stuff for the whole thing because they don't have anyone there who knows Android. The position does involve some Windows coding too but I haven't touched C# for six months at this point and all my learning has been focused around Android so I'm a bit rusty on it.

I realised that I'm at this weird point where I've spent just enough time writing Android/Java to make me seem only half-competent at C#, and yet I've not spent long enough writing Android to make me seem any more than half-competent at Android.

Not officially heard back yet so we'll see what happens.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 15:15

tetracontakaidigon: Apr 21, 2013

Coca Koala posted:

Woah. Mind pming me with some more details about your experience? I'm legitimately curious what your story is. I went to the U of R for undergrad in an unrelated field, but was friends with a bunch of the CS program, and I got to know a bunch more of the undergrads while I was a grad there; aside from the standard gripes that students have about their programs (and a few gripes about the poor quality of instruction in the lower level classes, which might be part of what you're referring to), nobody ever really had anything seriously negative to say about the department, especially not on the level of being lied to or harassed by multiple people in the department. What time period were you there?

I don't have PMs, email me if you want? tetracontakaidigon42 at gmail.

But a tl;dr for shrughes or other interested parties:

I was there 2011-2012. Most of my problems were with a course I attempted to take first semester sophomore year, which every other student I talked to warned me against, but which was required for the major. Highlights include, but are not limited to:
-a half hour argument with the "Undergraduate Liasion" where I insisted that the professor needed to post and follow a syllabus, and not change it without any notice, and she said "well if YOU were a professor you wouldn't necessarily be able to predict how fast your students learned" -- bullshit, he's been teaching the class every fall for at least five years, and moving deadlines up without mentioning them in class is not acceptable.
-the professor of the class yelling at me for not looking at the assignment more than three days before it was due (in front of a class of 50 people, in which I was one of four women) when I asked a question about it in class. This was the week of fall break, so I hadn't had an opportunity to ask in the class earlier that week, because there hadn't been class earlier that week.

I was struggling with some problems in other aspects of my life, so this wasn't the only factor causing me to transfer, but I'm still going to say pretty strongly that I wouldn't recommend the CS program at the University of Rochester to anyone.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 16:21

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Added USSMICHELLEBACHMAN's resume to the appendix. Thanks Michelle! You're a great guy, you do great work, you're gonna do great.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 18:36

Strong Sauce: Jul 2, 2003; You know I am not really your father.

RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:

I think the point is not shutting yourself out by asking for more than you can reasonably expect to be paid.

This seems unlikely to happen. You are what they are looking for, but you ask for a bigger number. They will negotiate. Whether you are happy with what the counter-offer is another matter.

NovemberMike posted:

Yeah. There's a lot of talk about getting $65-90k starting here and that's realistic for someone that can command some respect from companies, but if you're coming in without a degree or experience you're effectively looking for an apprenticeship, and you are not going to command top tier wages in that situation. Each month you sit unemployed makes you look worse and each month you are employed (even if it's a lovely job) makes you look better.

I agree with you statement wise, but I think instead of telling people to accept lower numbers we should be trying to help people figure out ways to get more money by increasing their experience/skill set. I think that is the statement that I feel is "not good" to tell people.

Strong Sauce fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Feb 4, 2014

# ? Feb 4, 2014 18:55

Strong Sauce: Jul 2, 2003; You know I am not really your father.

Tunga posted:

I had an interview which was a bit mixed. Some stuff went fine, general data structures and algorithms, but they kept asking me "what do you know about LATEST CODING BUZZWORD TREND" and I'd say "I've heard of LATEST CODING BUZZWORD TREND SOME TREND but I don't really know anything about it because my current employer is terrible", except not in those words.

It was also all a bit bizarre because it was for an Android position but they just asked me C# stuff for the whole thing because they don't have anyone there who knows Android. The position does involve some Windows coding too but I haven't touched C# for six months at this point and all my learning has been focused around Android so I'm a bit rusty on it.

I realised that I'm at this weird point where I've spent just enough time writing Android/Java to make me seem only half-competent at C#, and yet I've not spent long enough writing Android to make me seem any more than half-competent at Android.

Not officially heard back yet so we'll see what happens.

I would send an email back to them. Thank them for the interview and all that. I would say that you were a bit worried about how the questions were all in C# and that since you had mainly focused on Android programming you were somewhat rusty on C# syntax. Then write something about what you've done with Android in the past 6 months and how you think that applies to the current job.

However, If the problems were in C# but it didn't actually matter that they were in C#, I would drop the part about being rusty in C#.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 19:00

Infomaniac: Jul 3, 2007; Support Cartographers Without Borders

I didn't mean to get ahead of myself, I have followed the thread for a long time and I guess I was looking for a little encouragement.

I'm working on my resume today and and I picked up my copy of cracking the coding interview again last night -- it is still mostly way over my head. Is there a particular section that best applies to android application positions for lets say apps that have a social component? I would guess that it would be quite different from the required data structures found in a manga content delivery app.

This thread is really helpful, I'll come back when I have a resume for critique.

Infomaniac fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Feb 4, 2014

# ? Feb 4, 2014 19:38

New Yorp New Yorp: Jul 18, 2003; Only in Kenya.; Pillbug

Infomaniac posted:

I didn't mean to get ahead of myself, I have followed the thread for a long time and I guess I was looking for a little encouragement.

I'm working on my resume today and and I picked up my copy of cracking the coding interview again last night -- it is still mostly way over my head. Is there a particular section that best applies to android application positions for lets say apps that have a social component? I would guess that it would be quite different from the required data structures found in a manga content delivery app.

This thread is really helpful, I'll come back when I have a resume for critique.

That book is focused on platform-agnostic, basic data structures and algorithms, and how to solve problems focusing on those things. Understanding the data structures and algorithms will help you see when one of those things might apply to a problem you're solving.

For day-to-day use, you'll probably get the most out of really understanding hash tables. Those pop up everywhere and are incredibly useful.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 19:45

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

Infomaniac posted:

Is there a particular section that best applies to android application positions for lets say apps that have a social component? I would guess that it would be quite different from the required data structures found in a manga content delivery app.

There's no a priori reason to think this.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 19:47

Infomaniac: Jul 3, 2007; Support Cartographers Without Borders

JawnV6 posted:

There's no a priori reason to think this.

Thanks, i see how that makes sense.

And thank you Ithaqua.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 19:55

perfectfire: Jul 3, 2006; Bees!?

Ithaqua posted:

For day-to-day use, you'll probably get the most out of really understanding hash tables. Those pop up everywhere and are incredibly useful.

Hash tables are my favorite.

I grabbed the pdf Cracking the Coding interview and for at least the first 8 chapters, other than the brain teasers, about 80% of the problems were either super trivial or only required a few minutes of scribbling on graph paper to complete. There was usually only 1 or 2 questions per chapter that might be challenging enough for an actual interview.

I found the recursive ones to be much tougher, which probably indicates what my weakness is. The problem is that the solutions in the back don't ever give you the crux of the solution; the one thing you need to understand to crack the problem. It just throws out the solution code or whatever and then you have to work backwards to understand it.

I got kinda bored after the recursion section.

In retrospect I should've gone online for tougher problems, especially recursive ones. I also should've studied up a lot more on OO design. I find real design to be a > 1 person task and doing it alone is weird.

I could go into more detail about my Amazon interview if people are interested (I didn't get into an argument with an interviewer even though I really wanted to).

# ? Feb 4, 2014 20:15

New Yorp New Yorp: Jul 18, 2003; Only in Kenya.; Pillbug

perfectfire posted:

I grabbed the pdf Cracking the Coding interview and for at least the first 8 chapters, other than the brain teasers, about 80% of the problems were either super trivial or only required a few minutes of scribbling on graph paper to complete. There was usually only 1 or 2 questions per chapter that might be challenging enough for an actual interview.

I thought that a lot of the problems were pretty tough, but my fundamentals are admittedly weak after a decade of disuse.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 20:19

NovemberMike: Dec 28, 2008

Strong Sauce posted:

I agree with you statement wise, but I think instead of telling people to accept lower numbers we should be trying to help people figure out ways to get more money by increasing their experience/skill set. I think that is the statement that I feel is "not good" to tell people.

They shouldn't accept a lower number than they can get, but they also wont' necessarily be able to get a high number. It's all about being realistic about your situation.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 21:30

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Strong Sauce posted:

This seems unlikely to happen. You are what they are looking for, but you ask for a bigger number. They will negotiate. Whether you are happy with what the counter-offer is another matter.

Agreed, but the original context wasn't about negotiating once an offer was presented, it was a recruiter telling Pollyanna that her salary expectations were out of line with her experience and education in terms of which jobs to look at, which seems accurate enough. I don't want to say this in a mean way, but if you have no or almost no programming-related education or experience, your first programming job is likely not going to pay much. That's ok though, after six months or a year of working that job, you'll have significantly more leverage the next time around.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 21:55

Fuck them: Jan 21, 2011; and their bullshit

To be honest, I've had recruiters hyper-lowball me before. The first time I should have gotten up and walked off was when someone wanted me to do android dev full time for $35K annually. Even now they love to do that poo poo.

I think some businesses just have busybody HR departments who get off on keeping costs low, especially in race to the bottom markets.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 22:22

Stanos: Sep 22, 2009; The best 57 in hockey.

There's a difference between lowballing a fresh CS grad and getting the payment you'd expect for a self-taught newbie with no formal CS experience. If you have a CS degree from a good school, yeah you can probably do that. But for self-taught people like me (and others, I'm sure) with no degree experience or minimal ala MIS it makes sense to not expect a large salary out the gate. You get paid poo poo (compared to what others would make), you get experience, you use it to get better pay later down the line.

You might be able to roll over and get the big bucks, I certainly wouldn't count on it however.

Of course, you never name a number or something dumb like that but I'm not expecting to get a job and get 65-70k with my experience.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 23:18

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

Cracking the Coding Interview arrived today. Thumbed through it a little. :stare:

Glad I ordered this early, guess I'll be spending a lot of my spare time this semester and this summer absorbing everything in this book.

Have a few applications out for internships this summer, hoping to hear back soon from some of them. I'm a little worried since my grades are pretty bad (I was a very indifferent student the last time around at college, and it took a while to shake those habits in my first semester back) but I guess there isn't much I can do about my past grades at this point.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 23:39

Good Will Hrunting: Oct 8, 2012; I changed my mind.
I'm not sorry.

CTCI seems overwhelming at first but for Junior developer positions I can't imagine you'd need anything other than the first 4 chapters + trees and recursion.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 23:40

NovemberMike: Dec 28, 2008

Stanos posted:

Of course, you never name a number or something dumb like that but I'm not expecting to get a job and get 65-70k with my experience.

Here's the thing, you can totally still get a job for $70k+ starting out, it's just not something that you can reliably do. Never name a number first because a lot of companies will be used to dealing with developers and just hand you a $75k offer with no prodding, but otherwise figure out what your realistic low end is and accept something that hits that.

# ? Feb 4, 2014 23:50

No Safe Word: Feb 26, 2005

NovemberMike posted:

Here's the thing, you can totally still get a job for $70k+ starting out

I know of at least one consulting company locally in a low cost-of-living area (Houston) that hires college hires around that figure (plus they have a very decent benefits package). Though they're relatively picky and look for business-minded tech-savvy best-of-both-worlds types since they're onsite at clients a lot. So yeah, don't underestimate the your worth by what other people say they think you're worth. Do some research on compensation in your area before assuming "well I couldn't expect $N".

# ? Feb 4, 2014 23:57

perfectfire: Jul 3, 2006; Bees!?

Good Will Hrunting posted:

CTCI seems overwhelming at first but for Junior developer positions I can't imagine you'd need anything other than the first 4 chapters + trees and recursion.

And OO design. I've gotten elevator twice and deck of cards once in real life and once in a mock interview. Out of those 3 real interviews 2 of them were when I was a college student.

Oh and memorize a few software design patterns. I remember someone once saying that he would ask candidates about design patterns and when he asked them to name some most could only think of Singleton. The overused and abused as a substitute for global vars pattern. Which ever ones you decide to memorize or study make sure you know Composition. It literally means putting an object in another object like this:

code:

class EmotionChip {
    // implementation details
};

class Robot {
private:
    EmotionChip myEmotions;
};

The Robot class is using composition because it has another object as a member. This is opposed to having one class inherit from the other.

# ? Feb 5, 2014 00:04

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Brannock posted:

How much does university pedigree matter in terms of getting a job?

I'm going to end up with a degree from Wisconsin (which I gather is one of the better-regarded programs out there) but I don't know how much it's worth especially when I'm reading about people graduating from MIT or Stanford.

I wanted to come back to this post. I think the name of your college matters significantly with a high variance for initial job-getting (in particular, the way some companies target specific colleges the way perfectfire was talking about). That's intentionally ambiguous, because it tends to vary a lot from company to company. A place like Facebook probably focuses on recruiting from top 20 CS schools, and probably won't have much interest in normal, non-superstar CS students from lower-ranked universities; I have decent confidence in that because their recruitment form auto-rejected me after I submitted back when I was in college. But there are other companies that won't really care at all about the name.

Once you have a a year or two of experience, it doesn't matter nearly as much as before, and as you get more senior than that its meaning tends to disappear entirely under the weight of your real world experience. That's the impression I have anyway.

perfectfire posted:

I grabbed the pdf Cracking the Coding interview and for at least the first 8 chapters, other than the brain teasers, about 80% of the problems were either super trivial or only required a few minutes of scribbling on graph paper to complete. There was usually only 1 or 2 questions per chapter that might be challenging enough for an actual interview.

I completely disagree. I mean, the problems are generally trivial, yes, but that's because in an interview you usually only have a half hour or so to finish a problem, sometimes less if your interviewer wants to ask two technical questions. Plus, people respond differently when under pressure in an interview than they do while coding at home or work. I think the questions in CTCI are basically on target.

No Safe Word posted:

I know of at least one consulting company locally in a low cost-of-living area (Houston) that hires college hires around that figure (plus they have a very decent benefits package). Though they're relatively picky and look for business-minded tech-savvy best-of-both-worlds types since they're onsite at clients a lot. So yeah, don't underestimate the your worth by what other people say they think you're worth. Do some research on compensation in your area before assuming "well I couldn't expect $N".

Pariveda?

# ? Feb 5, 2014 00:29

Good Will Hrunting: Oct 8, 2012; I changed my mind.
I'm not sorry.

Brannock posted:

Cracking the Coding Interview arrived today. Thumbed through it a little. Glad I ordered this early, guess I'll be spending a lot of my spare time this semester and this summer absorbing everything in this book.

I'm around the same level as you so here's my advice:

Focus on Chapters 1 (Arrays and Strings), 2 (Linked Lists), 3 (Stacks and Queues), 4 (Trees and Graphs), 9 (Recursion and Donkey Punching), and 11 (Sorting and Searching). Don't even stress yourself out over the later chapters. Own these questions and you should be perfectly fine.

# ? Feb 5, 2014 01:04

KidDynamite: Feb 11, 2005

Strong Sauce posted:

Err did they miss a scheduled interview? Regardless if its been a while since last contact, you should probably send a polite email asking what's going on.

So to follow up on this the interview was supposed to be today. Amazon dude e-mails at 7pm EST Friday me giving me the date and 3 time windows, saying to pick 2 time windows. I email back at 9pm EST(when I saw the email). No reply. I email yesterday for a confirmation. No reply. No interview call today just sent dude an e-mail asking what's up. I hope I at least get an email back saying something, anything. I really just want the interview even if I bomb it.

# ? Feb 5, 2014 02:15

DONT THREAD ON ME: Oct 1, 2002; by Nyc_Tattoo; Floss Finder

KidDynamite posted:

So to follow up on this the interview was supposed to be today. Amazon dude e-mails at 7pm EST Friday me giving me the date and 3 time windows, saying to pick 2 time windows. I email back at 9pm EST(when I saw the email). No reply. I email yesterday for a confirmation. No reply. No interview call today just sent dude an e-mail asking what's up. I hope I at least get an email back saying something, anything. I really just want the interview even if I bomb it.

I have a similar thing happening with the place I just sent in a code test to. Sent it in Friday, haven't heard anything back yet (except that it got picked up by their virus scanner for obvious reasons, I replied with a dropbox link). Oh well.

# ? Feb 5, 2014 02:19

A Banana: Jun 11, 2013

I applied for a job interstate that was advertised through a recruiter. It went well enough that they want me to fly out for an onsite interview. Except the recruiter said I'll only be reimbursed for the flights if I actually get the job, refused to pass a request for unconditional reimbursement on to the company and acted like I was crazy for expecting the company to pay for flights to the interview.

I'm guessing its an issue of the company farming the whole thing out to the recruiter and not wanting to deal with it, and the recruiter not wanting to cover the cost of flights and then not earning any commission if the job doesn't get filled.

Any suggestions on the best way to negotiate with the company or recruiter to get the company to cover flights. Or at this point am I stuck with either eating the cost or more likely telling the recruiter to get lost?

# ? Feb 5, 2014 03:37

kitten smoothie: Dec 29, 2001

They think you're potentially good enough to hire, but they don't want to spend a couple hundred bucks on a plane ticket? Unless it's your dream job I'd just tell them to go piss up a rope.

# ? Feb 5, 2014 03:40

wolffenstein: Aug 2, 2002; Pork Pro

If they won't pay for a flight, suggest a video conference. If they turn that down, tell the recruiter to get lost. Flights are pennies in a bucket to most companies.

# ? Feb 5, 2014 03:40

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

If you have a contact at the company you could go over the recruiter's head to ask. The recruiter would be pissed of course. But if you can't do that I'd say to tell the recruiter, "Either I get unconditional reimbursement or I don't fly out." Even that kind of sucks IMO, companies that flew me out always arranged flights and hotel through their own company or agency so no reimbursement required for the big stuff.

# ? Feb 5, 2014 03:42

Neo_Reloaded: Feb 27, 2004; Something from Nothing

I'm in a frustrating interview situation at the moment.

The listing looked tailormade to my skillset, and the recruiter called me within two hours of me applying, saying the hiring manager thought I was a great fit. I had a phone screening last week that went really well, and then they scheduled a coding test over the weekend. 1 problem, 1 hour, email my solution back to them. They wanted a directed acyclic graph library from scratch, and I wrote about 150 lines of syntactically correct code implementing node, edge, and graph classes. I ran out of time before writing the acyclicity test so I commented a description of the algorithm steps quickly.

After submitting, I looked over the problem description again and realized they asked for nodes to be inserted without dependencies - I overcomplicated my member function and tried to enforce an always-connected graph, so dependency information was required. I shot an email to the recruiter saying the coding assignment went pretty well but I did realize I made a small mistake right after submitting.

Yesterday the recruiter called me and said they weren't sure they wanted to continue to an onsite interview, but were curios to hear what the mistake was and maybe that would help them decide. I sent an email describing the mistake and how to fix it.

There's been no followup from anyone since and I'm eating my liver over it, trying to figure out other reasons they didn't like my implementation.

# ? Feb 5, 2014 03:51

Strong Sauce: Jul 2, 2003; You know I am not really your father.

KidDynamite posted:

So to follow up on this the interview was supposed to be today. Amazon dude e-mails at 7pm EST Friday me giving me the date and 3 time windows, saying to pick 2 time windows. I email back at 9pm EST(when I saw the email). No reply. I email yesterday for a confirmation. No reply. No interview call today just sent dude an e-mail asking what's up. I hope I at least get an email back saying something, anything. I really just want the interview even if I bomb it.

Welcome to the wonderful world of interviewing. Not much you can do if they don't reply back but wait another day or two to send a follow up. It could just very well be that you fell through the cracks.

A Banana posted:

I applied for a job interstate that was advertised through a recruiter. It went well enough that they want me to fly out for an onsite interview. Except the recruiter said I'll only be reimbursed for the flights if I actually get the job, refused to pass a request for unconditional reimbursement on to the company and acted like I was crazy for expecting the company to pay for flights to the interview.

I'm guessing its an issue of the company farming the whole thing out to the recruiter and not wanting to deal with it, and the recruiter not wanting to cover the cost of flights and then not earning any commission if the job doesn't get filled.

Any suggestions on the best way to negotiate with the company or recruiter to get the company to cover flights. Or at this point am I stuck with either eating the cost or more likely telling the recruiter to get lost?

The recruiter should be working for _you_ and if they pull any of this bullshit I would just stop talking to them.

If you really want to work for this company, demand that the recruiter send the request along with CCing you on the email. If the recruiter again refuses tell them to piss off and go over the recruiter's head.

Edit: Also stop using recruiters.

Strong Sauce fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Feb 5, 2014

# ? Feb 5, 2014 04:02

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# ? May 22, 2024 13:28

Don Mega: Nov 26, 2005

I feel like I hear about 10 awful stories about recruiters for every 1 decent experience. Don't waste your time.

# ? Feb 5, 2014 04:34

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Newbie Programming Interviews/Get a Job Megathread: Fake it 'til you make it

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