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Tech Phone Screen 4: Here's a NxM array, what's the largest island? Snooze fest in terms of difficult, tedious as gently caress in terms of typing it all out. What are they even testing at that point? Like I obviously understand the concept of flagging the array to prevent double counting, going through the whole set of data, etc. Are they testing speed at which I code?
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Jun 20, 2018 19:04
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| # ? May 18, 2024 00:40 |
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there's no trustworthy guild or central authority that certifies people can actually code, so each employer needs to duplicate effort on testing if you can code
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Jun 20, 2018 19:16
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being a computer toucher today is like being a traveling doctor in the 1800s no credentials required, you just show up with your hack saw and say "im a doctor lol" and they let you start cutting ppls legs off
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Jun 20, 2018 19:22
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That isn't what I meant I meant for tech screens at least - what's the rubric that they're filling out that says "pass" or "fail"? Did I not do it sufficiently fast enough? Was I bad at explaining poo poo while trying to type 50 lines of code? That kind of thing. The bar seems so arbitrary.
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Jun 20, 2018 19:24
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Good Will Hrunting posted:That isn't what I meant I meant for tech screens at least - what's the rubric that they're filling out that says "pass" or "fail"? Did I not do it sufficiently fast enough? Was I bad at explaining poo poo while trying to type 50 lines of code? That kind of thing. The bar seems so arbitrary. Probably that you were able to solve the problem at all. It's not a good question because it pops up pretty frequently on interview prep sites, but I think you'd be surprised at the number of interviewees that couldn't figure out a correct algorithm to that question.
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Jun 20, 2018 19:28
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But this is a followup interview, so presumably he's already passed the "can tell a for loop from an assignment operation" tests.
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Jun 20, 2018 20:00
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:But this is a followup interview, so presumably he's already passed the "can tell a for loop from an assignment operation" tests. Oh no, this is round 1 of the tech interviews at another company. Yes, I'm currently interviewing with 5 companies and have 10 in the back-burner post-recruiter chat 
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Jun 20, 2018 20:01
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So what is your complaint again? They're testing that you can code. Sorry the whole world isn't tuned into your life and already aware of that fact.
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Jun 20, 2018 20:27
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I'd rather be asked harder questions that are more about coming up with solutions and explaining them than the same poo poo over and over but I guess that doesn't happen.
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Jun 20, 2018 20:47
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I'd rather be asked harder questions that are more about coming up with solutions and explaining them than the same poo poo over and over but I guess that doesn't happen.
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Jun 20, 2018 20:53
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I'd rather be asked harder questions that are more about coming up with solutions and explaining them than the same poo poo over and over but I guess that doesn't happen. Generally if you don't explain the solution that's a red flag. If you ask something too out there then you risk the candidate not having an epiphany. A good interview question is one that most decent programmers can answer in under 45 minutes if you give them a few hints. Then, once they've given the solution you ask about why they did a few different things and you ask how they'd change their solution if something changes (and usually a few other types of questions). The extra questions help you figure out if the person just memorized it or if they actually understand the problem.
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Jun 20, 2018 20:55
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:Why are you complaining now when the game is exactly what you expected it to be? I was the one who said "yeah this is how it is, it sucks but it's how it is" and people said "no it's not like that" so I'm circling back now that I'm literally experiencing it and saying "yeah it's exactly how it is".
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Jun 20, 2018 20:56
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I was the one who said "yeah this is how it is, it sucks but it's how it is" and people said "no it's not like that" so I'm circling back now that I'm literally experiencing it and saying "yeah it's exactly how it is".
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Jun 20, 2018 21:00
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Ideally the questions being asked should start with a simple "prove you have fundamental skills" question that takes 5 minutes to write out, and transitions smoothly to a more complicated and interesting problem that occupies the rest of the time. If you get hung up on the first part, that's a very bad sign, because it should be trivial, but if you find it to be trivial, then it occupies very little time of the interview.
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Jun 20, 2018 21:06
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Good Will Hrunting posted:That isn't what I meant I meant for tech screens at least - what's the rubric that they're filling out that says "pass" or "fail"? Did I not do it sufficiently fast enough? Was I bad at explaining poo poo while trying to type 50 lines of code? That kind of thing. The bar seems so arbitrary. Get on the other side of the table at your next place. Join somewhere that's ramping up and will immediately task you with interviewing others and helping to build out a team.
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Jun 20, 2018 21:17
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Getting a question I can knock out of the park easily is the dream scenario
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Jun 20, 2018 21:34
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Jose Valasquez posted:Getting a question I can knock out of the park easily is the dream scenario I end up feeling like I'm over-explaining or over-engineering and babbling like a dumbass nervous about whether it's too easy and what edge cases I'm missing. If it's way too easy I finish it and start writing tests. JawnV6 posted:Get on the other side of the table at your next place. Join somewhere that's ramping up and will immediately task you with interviewing others and helping to build out a team. I actually spoke with a place like this earlier today, very early stage company looking for mid-level people to come in and help do mid-level things. I'm planning on completing their Codility test this weekend if I don't get an offer from last week or tomorrow's on-sites. Working at last week's onsite would definitely afford me the opportunity to do this and it's still my top pick so fingers crossed.
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Jun 20, 2018 21:39
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What Good Will Hrunting's situation sounds like to me is having a bunch of people litigating over the complete structural correctness of code being shat out in a text editor in real-time while a bunch of people are watching. He can't even sit back and think for himself every little bit to catch stuff because somebody's just peck, peck, pecking at it. It's the worst kind of paired programming. Edit: "He," I think.
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Jun 20, 2018 22:14
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Today I interviewed at a place that seemed to really like me, and I'm pretty sure I nailed all 3 of the interviews. They checked pretty much all the boxes except one: a lot of their back-end code is Rails services and a Rails monolith-type app. Not all of it, but as far as I could gauge they were still in the process of shifting gears towards Scala micro-service architecture. The most senior person I interviewed with said that teams are structured so that each team is allowed the autonomy to choose their tech at this point and you're placed on a team based on how it fits you plus what you're interested in which is nice, but I'm still a bit concerned about making a decision if I do get an offer. Also got my first rejection and it was that place I mentioned last week that was 6 hours of design-type interviews. The recruiting company says they're gonna push back even though I told them not to really worry about it.
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Jun 21, 2018 22:07
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Today I interviewed at a place that seemed to really like me, and I'm pretty sure I nailed all 3 of the interviews. They checked pretty much all the boxes except one: a lot of their back-end code is Rails services and a Rails monolith-type app. Not all of it, but as far as I could gauge they were still in the process of shifting gears towards Scala micro-service architecture. The most senior person I interviewed with said that teams are structured so that each team is allowed the autonomy to choose their tech at this point and you're placed on a team based on how it fits you plus what you're interested in which is nice, but I'm still a bit concerned about making a decision if I do get an offer.
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Jun 21, 2018 22:16
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:talking a big game about the future while being stuck somewhere? I'm worried that I'll get stuck working on the Ruby monolith as opposed to the Scala micro-service side. I feel Scala and the JVM (and even something like Python or C#) are more future-proof judging by my current job search and more along the lines with what I'm interested in working on in terms of scale problems.
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Jun 21, 2018 22:19
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I'm worried that I'll get stuck working on the Ruby monolith as opposed to the Scala micro-service side. I feel Scala and the JVM (and even something like Python or C#) are more future-proof judging by my current job search and more along the lines with what I'm interested in working on in terms of scale problems. There is no such thing as future proofing except your own flexibility. Also i wouldn’t call scala future proof.
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Jun 21, 2018 22:23
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Pollyanna posted:There is no such thing as future proofing except your own flexibility. Also i wouldn’t call scala future proof. The JVM is not going anywhere lmao
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Jun 21, 2018 22:26
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Good Will Hrunting posted:The JVM is not going anywhere lmao But boutique scripting languages are our industries mayflies.
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Jun 21, 2018 22:52
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I'm worried that I'll get stuck working on the Ruby monolith as opposed to the Scala micro-service side. Reasonable. Good Will Hrunting posted:I feel Scala and the JVM (and even something like Python or C#) are more future-proof judging by my current job search I mean, my experience is different, and judging the future based on your current job search is a losing proposition. Good Will Hrunting posted:and more along the lines with what I'm interested in working on in terms of scale problems. Also reasonable. Good Will Hrunting posted:The JVM is not going anywhere lmao Ruby isn't either. If anything I'd be wary of putting all your eggs in the microservices basket, regardless of what language it's in. Don't worry too much about the future, is my opinion, even if nothing in tech changes in the next 5 years (lol) it's very likely that you will have.
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Jun 21, 2018 22:54
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BurntCornMuffin posted:But boutique scripting languages are our industries mayflies. May I pop in to say gently caress Groovy and gently caress Grails?
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Jun 21, 2018 23:18
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There are basically three "areas" within back-end dev on which I've worked: API/service layer, data pipelines, and "systems" (real-time bidding slash trading). To me it seems Ruby/Rails is very tightly coupled with the first of those three and not really applicable to the last two, which I find myself more interested in but then again, I'm still fresh so what the hell do I even know?
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Jun 21, 2018 23:22
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Good Will Hrunting posted:The JVM is not going anywhere lmao The only JVM language I'd put money on being relevant in 10 years is Java
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Jun 21, 2018 23:22
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Jose Valasquez posted:The only JVM language I'd put money on being relevant in 10 years is Java That's fine, my point was that working with Scala absolutely helps in terms of they way you think about writing things in a Java style and the familiarity with many components of the ecosystem.
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Jun 21, 2018 23:23
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Jose Valasquez posted:The only JVM language I'd put money on being relevant in 10 years is Java Scala is 14 years old. Just putting that out there. A lot of languages are older than most people realize.
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Jun 21, 2018 23:24
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Scala is 14 years old. Just putting that out there. But it is still only the 4th most commonly used JVM language behind Java, Groovy, and Kotlin
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Jun 21, 2018 23:39
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Good Will Hrunting posted:There are basically three "areas" within back-end dev on which I've worked: API/service layer, data pipelines, and "systems" (real-time bidding slash trading). To me it seems Ruby/Rails is very tightly coupled with the first of those three and not really applicable to the last two, which I find myself more interested in but then again, I'm still fresh so what the hell do I even know? I would say Rails is even further to the left of that, it's mainly used in web development because a) text processing b) fast development and c) its performance issues can be covered by caching. The API and service stuff is only to serve the needs of the web frontend and would probably be written in something else if the dev team wasn't already full of Ruby people. If those are your focuses then yeah absolutely shy away from Ruby and towards Java. TooMuchAbstraction posted:Scala is 14 years old. Just putting that out there. Ruby is 23 years old, and Rails is 13.
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Jun 22, 2018 00:06
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Good Will Hrunting posted:That's fine, my point was that working with Scala absolutely helps in terms of they way you think about writing things in a Java style and the familiarity with many components of the ecosystem. The only scala I've had to deal with is Gatling, but it's a real pain in the rear end. I love classic functional languages like LISP, but scala ticks all the wrong boxes for me. I don't like its readability, debugging and refactoring utils suck, and its API is prone to changes.
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Jun 22, 2018 00:43
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baquerd posted:The only scala I've had to deal with is Gatling, but it's a real pain in the rear end. I love classic functional languages like LISP, but scala ticks all the wrong boxes for me. I don't like its readability, debugging and refactoring utils suck, and its API is prone to changes. That's all fair but my dilemma isn't a love of Scala, it's the feeling that I'll have no idea whether I'd be tasked to work on a monolith Rails app for extended periods of time.
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Jun 22, 2018 01:00
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Hopefully everything will be replaced by Rust in a decade
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Jun 22, 2018 01:08
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Good Will Hrunting posted:That's all fair but my dilemma isn't a love of Scala, it's the feeling that I'll have no idea whether I'd be tasked to work on a monolith Rails app for extended periods of time. As someone who has been tasked to work on large monolithic Rails apps for the last 8 years, I would recommend against it unless you're really into paying off tech debt and renovating gnarly code. I agree it's worth you being sure with them since your vibe is more systems stuff.
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Jun 22, 2018 01:08
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Jose Valasquez posted:The only JVM language I'd put money on being relevant in 10 years is Java But it's Java, so they'll probably support Scala for years after it hits a life-support phase, giving companies the chance to delay completely loving themselves over for several years before they realize they should have been migrating away.
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Jun 22, 2018 01:47
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I'd honestly rather write straight up Java than Scala any day unless you're focusing in on some data science stuff. If it's because they're trying to scratch the FP itch, doing Kotlin + Arrow can get you there, with the bonus of avoiding the abomination that is sbt.
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Jun 22, 2018 02:05
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Sbt is garbage. I do data science stuff now with Scala/Spark and we use Gradle. Once again though, less about language and more about what I'm doing with it, and RoR seems like it's insanely niche in what it does which is not much.
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Jun 22, 2018 02:12
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| # ? May 18, 2024 00:40 |
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CPColin posted:May I pop in to say gently caress Groovy and gently caress Grails? You may, but I would thank Groovy for being the basis of Gradle's DST, which is my preferred build/dependency manager when dealing with Java. But gently caress it otherwise.
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Jun 22, 2018 02:38
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