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A few little stupid things I have to complain about because I'm trying to find a job. PHP is not on my resume. I don't know PHP. I've never used PHP. I know my way around HTML and CSS sure but my JavaScript is weak and I don't know PHP. I tell calls that. Aaaaaand then proceed to be given a web programming test that asked for PHP. I was just like "welp!" handed it in blank and said "I never indicated that I knew PHP." The job it asked for considered PHP a "nice to have" rather than "this is mandatory." I got to a last round of an interview with a CEO. The first question he asked me was "so what do you program in your spare time?" I said "games, mostly." He responded with "we're done, I'm not hiring you."
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Mar 20, 2016 14:13
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Hammerite posted:What exactly is wrong with saying that, if it's true? Put another way what would a "better answer" look like, and why would it be better? Would it be better to say "I don't program at all in my spare time; it's something I only do if I'm being paid"? Yeah the guy that interviewed me before that was the CTO and I told him the same thing, just more in depth. I was like "yeah I like games, they bring together all of my interests. I can apply anything I learn to games programming." I mean, really...programming, math, art, logic, artificial intelligence...it's all there! I've also been a big fan of computer games so why wouldn't I make them in my free time? My time is my time so I'm going to focus heavily on the things that interest me. return0 posted:Programming games can be significantly more challenging than yet another run of the mill web/mobile application. It's a good answer, and it sounds like it helped dodge a bullet of working for a poo poo shop? This is the other side of it; I have a bit over a half dozen functional games I've programmed. Some of them were pretty simple but they function. Programming even simple games is freaking hard. Thanks to games programming I can talk the talk when it comes to discrete math, data structures, software engineer, OOP concepts, etc. I've learned a ton and they teach me more. But yeah...it seemed like "you do not have a burning, religious desire to dedicate your life to what we do. Go away." I mean the CTO was pretty impressed when I described a few of the things I did so Mr. CEO doing that was pretty blindsiding.
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Mar 20, 2016 19:11
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Pixelboy posted:You probably dodged something awful. Have a beer, and move on. Don't worry about it. I need a job because I'm too broke to afford beer.  It'd have been better than the no job I have right now.
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Mar 22, 2016 13:58
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smackfu posted:What's the deal with testing on recursion anyway? Like is it just something that people faking programming skill don't get? It's certainly not something I use much in actual programming. Failing to understand recursion is probably the biggest red flag that indicates somebody doesn't understand programming, logic, or mathematics at the level you need to write good code. You don't need to be a recursion wizard but somebody that can't write something to calculate Fibonacci numbers probably can't hack it.
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Apr 16, 2016 18:22
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Programming interviews are just insane. I thought for sure I had nailed a fantastic job at one point but got a rejection letter and not a single clue as to why. The job I did get I didn't hear from the place for like two months before being told "hey dude, they're interested!" All they asked me to do in the technical interview was to write a FizzBuzz and do Fibonacci numbers and I started doing it iteratively and was like "you can do this recursively too but recursion I avoid." He only had to prod me a little on the recursion part; then I couldn't say why recursion was kind of bad because I didn't remember. It's the only place that didn't ask for a specific language. Probably 6 weeks later they offered me a job. It's a web dev position even though I told the guy that my web dev skills are currently kind of lovely. Then I negotiated for more than 25% over of their initial offer. Though the thing that baffled me the most was interviews I had where I ended up being asked to write code in very short terms in languages that I made absolutely no indication that I knew. It wasn't on my resume. I never mentioned the languages. I even said "my web dev skills aren't great." Then the interview was like "hey do this thing in PHP in half an hour, go!" with no indicator that I'd be writing PHP. I don't know PHP. At all. Other places would indicate that they were looking for people at every level (often with remote work being OK), didn't care what languages you knew, liked strong math skills, and were more interested in fundamental strengths than specifics. I was a CS major with a math minor with some extra logic thrown in along the way and they wouldn't even call me back. Though I like games and AI the most I just like to code in general and will work on pretty much anything for a paycheck. Technology fascinates me and I mentioned that in interviews when concerns were expressed; they'd say "why don't you go for games programming?" Well that's because the games industry often treats its people badly and non-games stuff pays better. I can fart around with games in my own time as a hobby. Many places went "lol nope, don't want you" anyway. I do not understand the programmer interview process at all. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Jun 17, 2016 |
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Jun 17, 2016 02:42
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Confusion posted:When I interviewed for my current job as C# developer the only technical question they asked me was 'do you know any C# ?', and my answer was 'No, I've never written a line of C#, but I have 5 years of professional experience in C++ and a masters degree in computer science, I'm sure it'll be fine'. They we're all 'o sure, don't sweat it', and then we spend a couple of hours talking about their product, development processes, my role in development teams, and my professional attitude. If you can write C++ you can write C#; if you have provable experience with C++ moving to C# is pretty easy. Going the other way is...a different story. I've heard of people who had provable senior-level experience failing FizzBuzz. How is a mystery to me but apparently (from what I've heard, anyway) it doesn't matter what level you're interviewing at; half of people being interviewed can't write FizzBuzz.
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Jun 18, 2016 02:01
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ultrafilter posted:If none of the senior level developers you're interviewing are familiar with a topic, then you have to examine the possibility that it's just not that important in practice. I think it heavily depends on what you're working on and what the job is. In some cases you need to squeeze every bit of performance out of the hardware you can so you end up doing things like bit packing and pointer manipulation; or dealing with lower-level code than Java or C# or whatever. Same thing goes for just raw machine code; if you're programming low-level, embedded software that involves actual assembly language than you absolutely, positively, totally must be able to do bits and bytes. I'm going to go ahead and guess that a mobile app developer could probably ignore it mostly but should at least have a passing familiarity with it. Where I went to school it was covered but wasn't considered heavily important; we took an assembly language class and an operating systems one so we would understand how computers worked but were really not expected to be wizards in the stuff. Then again I think that poo poo's cool as hell and did a ton of math and logic beyond what was expected.
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Jun 19, 2016 16:13
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Space Whale posted:I got another doozie. I had two interviews that told me to record responses to recorded videos. I didn't get either job but later decided to work for neither company ever. Both of them sent me tasks with literally zero indication of what I'd need to know but were unrelated to what I had on my resume. It felt like a wholly automated, impersonal system that was terrible, terrible, terrible. It screamed incompetence from start to finish. One was an AI sort of thing that gave me 30 minutes to write a pretty hard thing in jquery. It was also entry level and I had jquery nowhere on my resume. The lady recording the videos that told me what to talk about very obviously just plain didn't want to be doing it and didn't care.
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Jun 30, 2016 00:40
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leper khan posted:If you want to cheat, yes, it is that easy. That people do is hilarious, because very few people care about your grades in college (as opposed to high school/SAT/ACT). Eh, if you do very, very well in college people give a poo poo. I graduated summa cum laude and people actually notice that. Granted I also assume that will become irrelevant in a few years when I say "I have multiple years experience writing software, give me a comedically large bag of money and I will write code for you." Even so that's irrelevant if it turns out you can't do the job and let's be honest, people are going to notice really drat fast, probably before you even get a job offer, if you don't. Then if you do get the job and turn out to be a hideous liar you're going to be canned for lacking the skills to do the job. I guess in some sectors of the world you can get by without all of the knowledge but in programming? God drat no. Computer science is tough stuff. Then again most people go to college to get a piece of paper they believe will entitle them to a good job. Given how much programmers get paid a poo poo load of people look at the dollar signs and decide "I will be a programmer!" without realizing why programmers get paid well. It just isn't something that you can cheat your way into. I actually saw a few people that cheated their way through some early classes in college only to be hopelessly, irrevocably lost in higher level stuff.
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Jul 15, 2016 21:58
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Most new graduate job postings I saw wanted at least a 3.0/4.0 GPA. Key word being "most." Granted the other side of it has to do with why people go to college; most go to college seeking a piece of paper they believe will entitle them to a particular kind of job and a good paycheck. Cheating is seen as a means to that end. It doesn't matter because if you can get that paper you're good! Now a ton of colleges are selling that paper and just want to get enrollment as high as possible; who gives a poo poo if your students cheat their way through? They're paying! Now it's harder to tell the difference between somebody who got a 3.8 or higher because they busted their hump and were genuinely interested and the guy that cheated off that student. Meanwhile the guy with the 3.95 might be an insufferable prick that nobody likes that can't work on a team.
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Jul 18, 2016 02:27
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Xarn posted:Oh god, I think I hate this more than when a company publicly advertises they are looking for ninjas and rockstars. The funniest things I saw were companies asking for those words or equally ridiculous ones while offering absolute beans for pay. I really want to know what goes through somebody's head when they demand top talent but offer like $45k. Programmers aren't cheap, especially if you want the best ones. That or places with like 30 openings, none of which were entry level and none of which paid more than $39k. I'm like well, good luck with that.
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Jul 18, 2016 18:40
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The_Franz posted:"Top Tier University" seems to be a popular buzzphrase too which seems especially ridiculous when they pair it with positions that demand a decade of experience. Apparently the school I went to, when somebody went out and tested grads from various schools, tested in the top 10% when it came to programming skills. I was surprised on one hand but on the other hand it's a small department where you end up taking 6 classes with a guy that is absolutely god damned loving brilliant. It's seriously mind-rending how much this guy knows. See, it's a no name state school that when I mentioned it people went "wait, where is that?" I think it has like five CS professors and one of them is more IS than anything. But it wasn't, you know, CMU or MIT or something so a lot of places just went "lol, nah." Internships are another big one. "Did you intern at Google or Facebook? No? Go away." It really baffles me because we constantly hear about how big the shortage of programmers is but you have places that won't even consider hiring you unless your resume has a name your grandpa would recognize somewhere on it.
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Jul 18, 2016 22:42
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The thing of it is, though, how much actual programming relies on people knowing bizarre trivia like that?
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Aug 24, 2016 01:24
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Plorkyeran posted:Yeah, things which sound like useless C++ trivia turn out to be relevant far more often than you'd hope. I'll admit that's a fair point but I haven't written C++ since college. C# and Java have spoiled me. 
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Aug 24, 2016 05:10
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MrMoo posted:I was asked but then followed up with this more trivia type questions, it was really a bit tenuous. They still want to interview me which suggests there are not a lot of C++ people really looking for jobs. There just aren't enough programmers in existence in general.
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Aug 25, 2016 01:53
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