If you have tech interviews coming up, I think getting a bit of practice answering algorithms questions in front of a whiteboard should be useful? It's not really about being social, more thinking...
If you have tech interviews coming up, I think getting a bit of practice answering algorithms questions in front of a whiteboard should be useful? It's not really about being social, more thinking out loud about how to solve a problem when you don't start out knowing exactly how to do it.
Interviews are an artificial and stressful situation but it should be easier knowing you've practiced it. It's a different kind of test, but it's still basically just another test. You can study for it.
Perhaps you should start by applying to a few companies that aren't your top picks to get a feel for how the interview process works in your field? Now of course you run the risk of them offering...
I'm not sure if the kind of roles I'd have or the companies I'd apply to even expect me to have that knowledge.
Perhaps you should start by applying to a few companies that aren't your top picks to get a feel for how the interview process works in your field?
Now of course you run the risk of them offering you a job before you have a chance to apply at somewhere you'd prefer to work, but since you're so freshly out of college chances are the best of the best won't be picking up people with your level of experience.
Also, I've found in my own experience that the most well known places aren't always the best places to work at. Often times the culture is more important, especially since you appear to value your own personal time like I do.
To be honest, why would a company be interested in hiring you if that's how you feel? I mean, of course I get that to a certain extent, and everyone who has to work to earn a living would prefer...
Fuck the capitalist idea that my time outside of work should be spent increasing my own value so I can be more productive for someone else's gain
To be honest, why would a company be interested in hiring you if that's how you feel?
I mean, of course I get that to a certain extent, and everyone who has to work to earn a living would prefer not to sell their time to someone else. But if you feel very strongly about that, and simply don't care about your potential company's performance, then maybe you should continue your education and go for something more like research, or a niche where you can command a lot of leverage. If you feel like you're working really hard to have a casual conversation, then you probably will not thrive in an entry level job.
I don't think there's anything wrong with you or the way you are looking at things. I just think the choice is pretty clear that you're not interested in doing relatively simple work with a bachelor's degree. Getting more education affords you the luxury of being more standoffish at work, because you can do things that other people can't.
This is really twisting his words. I love the company I work for. I work really hard to make sure I do everything in my power to make sure we are on the right track to being successful. That...
But if you feel very strongly about that, and simply don't care about your potential company's performance
This is really twisting his words. I love the company I work for. I work really hard to make sure I do everything in my power to make sure we are on the right track to being successful. That doesn't mean I have to sell my entire life to them. In my opinion, it is a super fucked up mindset to have that if you're not living and breathing work that you don't care about the company. If you want to spend all your time doing work, that's your decision. But there is nothing wrong with working the hours your contracted and spending your off hours doing what you want. People in the tech industry really need to stop shaming people who have other interests and hobbies into feeling guilty that they have the audacity to work 8 hours and then shut off.
I can't come up with a very good reply to this. All I would say is the more you lean into the system, the better the system will treat you. I'm not talking about the labor force as a whole, I'm...
Exemplary
I can't come up with a very good reply to this. All I would say is the more you lean into the system, the better the system will treat you.
I'm not talking about the labor force as a whole, I'm talking about educated people with in-demand skills. People like that have the option of working extra hard and optimizing their careers for growth or not. I do recommend when you're starting out to put a little extra effort in though. If you reach a point where you have a good reputation at work, you're a mentor to newer people on your team, and people trust your judgement, then you can really get away with a lot in terms of having personal time free from work. In the services economy, there's not just a pile of 8 hours worth of work waiting for you in the morning. It's more nebulous. You can create $100k of value with one breakthrough idea and a few days of designing an implementation. Another thing that in-demand people are afforded is the ability to switch jobs whenever they want. So if you are with a bad employer, just switch.
I still think that if you have interest in a masters degree, and don't need the income right away, you should get the degree. It only gives you more leverage in the future. I still can't really tell if you are actually excited to get a job and are just complaining, or if you are considering getting a job because it seems like the right thing to do. If the latter, there's literally no reason not to just stay in school. The same jobs you don't really want will still be there, but you'll earn more money for them, and you'll get an extra couple years to "explore" and "learn" and whatever. Most people either really want to get a job or really need a job. If those don't apply, then there's no need to feel pressured.
Your original post mentioned choosing in your last year of school what to do. I personally think you’re overestimating the expectation of the capitalist labor apparatus. Most white collar workers...
Your original post mentioned choosing in your last year of school what to do.
I personally think you’re overestimating the expectation of the capitalist labor apparatus. Most white collar workers fond their jobs quite boring, and don’t require many hours of work. But if you want to avoid putting in longer hours at an entry level job, another way to get ahead is to get a higher degree.
I’m referencing your original comment as a way to circumvent joining capitalism.
From my 20 years+ experience, I would say the more you "lean into the system", the more it leans into you, until you are nothing but a husk of a person, lacking anything by corporate mantras about...
All I would say is the more you lean into the system, the better the system will treat you.
From my 20 years+ experience, I would say the more you "lean into the system", the more it leans into you, until you are nothing but a husk of a person, lacking anything by corporate mantras about "I need to give one more hour today, so we can meet next Q's profit targets"...
The moment you say that, you realize you have no soul left. And, likely, you also start realizing all of the things in life you've missed on, that you should have been there for.
One of the biggest things I look for in someone that I'm potentially going to hire is that they treat themselves like a human being and that they respect that work and life are separate. I also...
Fuck the capitalist idea that my time outside of work should be spent increasing my own value so I can be more productive for someone else's gain
To be honest, why would a company be interested in hiring you if that's how you feel?
One of the biggest things I look for in someone that I'm potentially going to hire is that they treat themselves like a human being and that they respect that work and life are separate.
I also don't want a mindless slave... and for that matter I don't want someone who thinks the only value of another person is in how "productive" they are at work, either.
If you're truly in a place where you have the opportunity to hire other people and this is your outlook, I would suggest that you take a look at the bigger picture of whatever you do. Chances are there are people in your organization who do very little "work" but are extremely important to things actually happening.
For example, there was someone at my last job who, on paper, was an analyst. I think he produced maybe one dashboard in the nearly four years I knew him. However, he was an incredibly talented people person. He was cordial on the phone, he knew practically everyone in the organization and everything about their families, their interests, their hobbies, etc. If you wanted to sell a product or change a mind, this guy was absolutely irreplaceable.
If all the person who hired him was looking for was someone who was a good analyst, or who had the right skills, or was working on gaining new skills outside of work, this person would never have been hired. But he was, and he was an invaluable asset.
There's a lot that comes with running a business and a company and restricting your thinking to "what's my product" and "how do I increase output" and "how do I reduce cost" is how you run a mediocre to poor company that nobody really wants to work for.
Look Im not trying to be an asshole here. An employee either produces more value than their salary or less. Someone who treat their labor as a transaction to support the rest of their life is more...
Look Im not trying to be an asshole here.
An employee either produces more value than their salary or less. Someone who treat their labor as a transaction to support the rest of their life is more likely to produce excess value than someone who treats their job as a pillar of their life. Clearly your friend thinks of their job as an important part of their life.
The person I originally responded to was decrying the institution of work and selling their labor, but also mentioned that they are considering furthering their education. My main point is that there’s no reason to go to work if they don’t want or have to. I never said anything about time spent working being proportional to value.
i worked for the same big enterprise company out of college for 7 years. I've been ready to switch to try something new and exciting and have been job searching for the last 3 years. I've been...
i worked for the same big enterprise company out of college for 7 years. I've been ready to switch to try something new and exciting and have been job searching for the last 3 years. I've been having to take PTO to study stuff I haven't used since college, live coding and whiteboarding which I'm terrible at. In addition to that, I'm kind of a jack of all trades master of none at my job and I solve whatever issue comes my way, so it's been a game of whack-a-mole when it comes to studying for interviews. One week I'd be studying for a Ruby position, next python, then java, then it would be on sysadmin stuff for devops roles. It seems like every position I interview for is looking for someone who has a T shaped skill set. Over the past two years every interview ends up saying they like me but prefer another candidate that has more years in experience for the specific stack that they are using, or a fresh grad who is cheaper. My current job moving me to a more managerial role and doing proposals doesn't help with my coding skills decaying either.
I've spent so much time studying these interview specific skills that lately I've kinda just given up and raised the bar on jobs that I'm willing to apply / interview for (has to be work that's interesting to me and doesn't have a long annoying interview process) and am ready to just stay at this job for the foreseeable future or change careers when I get burned out from using the same outdated big enterprise stack. Programming was so much more fun when you can work on what you like. Getting paid for it is just a bonus.
Agh, this is me 100%. I've been searching for about 6 months now, have made it past recruiters a handful of times, but most jobs I seem to be applying for (because of the market) are hunting for...
In addition to that, I'm kind of a jack of all trades master of none at my job and I solve whatever issue comes my way, so it's been a game of whack-a-mole when it comes to studying for interviews.
Agh, this is me 100%. I've been searching for about 6 months now, have made it past recruiters a handful of times, but most jobs I seem to be applying for (because of the market) are hunting for specialists, not generalists. My last job was working on a non-technical team, and my job role amounted to "okay, well, we only have headcount for one engineer, so build all of our tools and do all of the technical things that we need". And, this is for a FAANG company, no less. I was hired to be a generalist and excelled at it, but now I can't find new grassy pastures to land in when everyone is hunting for hyper-focused specialists with years of experience in technologies that became vogue 5 minutes ago.
My last decline basically told me my programming skills are great—and called out that I did well in the coding interview—but said that I don't have enough experience that they need in React. It's frustrating.
what I've found out over the years, is all the best jobs are found via networking and aren't posted online usually. My personal guess is that most people on the internet that just tells you to...
what I've found out over the years, is all the best jobs are found via networking and aren't posted online usually. My personal guess is that most people on the internet that just tells you to keep applying and studying and doing hacker rank has probably failed to mention how they came across the job, it's most likely via someone they know referring them. I've been to some local meetup events and conferences, most that recruit there are the same ol' ad companies and SaaS companies and recruiters who are resume farming.
As someone who has a first round technical interview in about 10 hours for a 2020 Summer internship (yes, already), this post resonated with me. It's a frustrating grind to try to memorize data...
As someone who has a first round technical interview in about 10 hours for a 2020 Summer internship (yes, already), this post resonated with me. It's a frustrating grind to try to memorize data structures and random in-depth knowledge about the language of your choice. These are all things that I could Google in about 10 seconds, but I'm expected to know this trivia off the top of my head because that's supposedly a good demonstration of my problem solving skills and culture fit. Not to mention having to practice programming problem solving questions for hours despite not really using those skills anywhere else other than interviews. However, this system is currently in place because it does weed out the people who are nowhere close to being qualified. But, it leaves a lot of stragglers behind who feel gypped because they can't perform well under the immense pressure of the interview process.
Anyways, I'm not sure if I really said anything in this comment that the article didn't, just wanted to vent a little because I'm frustrated with these interview processes and the idea that I can ruin my internship chances at any given company just because I didn't study the exact question they are going to ask.
I do think there is some merit in testing your interviewees, and knowing that they can program well is valuable information, but I feel like companies value their interview test above almost anything else. You could have a multitude of projects and jobs under your belt, but if you can't think of the fastest way to traverse a binary search tree, you're gone.
It's hard to generalize and harder to know why you were accepted/rejected (since they don't tell you) but if it helps at all, when I did interviews I wasn't testing for obscure algorithm...
It's hard to generalize and harder to know why you were accepted/rejected (since they don't tell you) but if it helps at all, when I did interviews I wasn't testing for obscure algorithm knowledge. The idea was to pick a problem that's fairly easy (so most people will get it, at least with some help) and give hints if needed, but that people haven't encountered before so it requires actually thinking.
If it seems obscure it's because people aren't good at coming up with questions sometimes.
Due to anxiety problems, I really suck at technical interviews. Nonetheless, I have mixed feelings about them. One argument that people make against them is that, "Oh, I'll never need to implement...
Due to anxiety problems, I really suck at technical interviews. Nonetheless, I have mixed feelings about them.
One argument that people make against them is that, "Oh, I'll never need to implement $ALGORITHM, I'll just use a library." That might be fine if you're interviewing for an organization that builds applications. OTOH, if you're interviewing for an organization that builds platforms, they generally want people who are capable of writing the libraries themselves, since libraries will be a significant part of their (if not the entire) product.
Even then, it is useful to understand the essentials: in seven years at my current company I have needed to implement breadth-first search on three different occasions. It was much quicker to just write the BFS than to massage my data into a format that could be passed into a generic implementation.
OTOH, there is a ridiculous amount of cargo-culting or downright bad interviewing techniques. Finding a loop in the linked list? Terrible question. I had a (thankfully former) colleague who used to ask somebody to come up with reservoir sampling to solve their problem -- way too obscure to be useful signal for a technical interview.
I'd like to reserve special contempt for interviews for mobile development. Lots of those questions obsess over things like solving a problem without using recursion. Not that that is a useless question, but IMHO it is less relevant for today's mobile devices than other details (after all, even the Android framework itself uses recursion to measure, layout, and draw its View hierarchy). How about focusing on things like how to design for power efficiency?
Tech interviews should use as few questions as possible to determine that if you're hired, how much training you'd need before becoming productive. For a typical data science role this shouldn't...
Tech interviews should use as few questions as possible to determine that if you're hired, how much training you'd need before becoming productive. For a typical data science role this shouldn't be more than 20 questions.
Often what I find is people whom are not subject matter experts are brought in to interview a candidate to "see if they're a nice person". If someone wants money from you, they'll know how to be nice for 45 minutes. It's much more important to see if they'll be a distraction to the business or if they'll produce anything of value in their first 3-6 months.
If you have tech interviews coming up, I think getting a bit of practice answering algorithms questions in front of a whiteboard should be useful? It's not really about being social, more thinking out loud about how to solve a problem when you don't start out knowing exactly how to do it.
Interviews are an artificial and stressful situation but it should be easier knowing you've practiced it. It's a different kind of test, but it's still basically just another test. You can study for it.
Yeah, it seems too early to be practicing for anything in particular if you don't know what you're applying for.
Perhaps you should start by applying to a few companies that aren't your top picks to get a feel for how the interview process works in your field?
Now of course you run the risk of them offering you a job before you have a chance to apply at somewhere you'd prefer to work, but since you're so freshly out of college chances are the best of the best won't be picking up people with your level of experience.
Also, I've found in my own experience that the most well known places aren't always the best places to work at. Often times the culture is more important, especially since you appear to value your own personal time like I do.
To be honest, why would a company be interested in hiring you if that's how you feel?
I mean, of course I get that to a certain extent, and everyone who has to work to earn a living would prefer not to sell their time to someone else. But if you feel very strongly about that, and simply don't care about your potential company's performance, then maybe you should continue your education and go for something more like research, or a niche where you can command a lot of leverage. If you feel like you're working really hard to have a casual conversation, then you probably will not thrive in an entry level job.
I don't think there's anything wrong with you or the way you are looking at things. I just think the choice is pretty clear that you're not interested in doing relatively simple work with a bachelor's degree. Getting more education affords you the luxury of being more standoffish at work, because you can do things that other people can't.
This is really twisting his words. I love the company I work for. I work really hard to make sure I do everything in my power to make sure we are on the right track to being successful. That doesn't mean I have to sell my entire life to them. In my opinion, it is a super fucked up mindset to have that if you're not living and breathing work that you don't care about the company. If you want to spend all your time doing work, that's your decision. But there is nothing wrong with working the hours your contracted and spending your off hours doing what you want. People in the tech industry really need to stop shaming people who have other interests and hobbies into feeling guilty that they have the audacity to work 8 hours and then shut off.
I can't come up with a very good reply to this. All I would say is the more you lean into the system, the better the system will treat you.
I'm not talking about the labor force as a whole, I'm talking about educated people with in-demand skills. People like that have the option of working extra hard and optimizing their careers for growth or not. I do recommend when you're starting out to put a little extra effort in though. If you reach a point where you have a good reputation at work, you're a mentor to newer people on your team, and people trust your judgement, then you can really get away with a lot in terms of having personal time free from work. In the services economy, there's not just a pile of 8 hours worth of work waiting for you in the morning. It's more nebulous. You can create $100k of value with one breakthrough idea and a few days of designing an implementation. Another thing that in-demand people are afforded is the ability to switch jobs whenever they want. So if you are with a bad employer, just switch.
I still think that if you have interest in a masters degree, and don't need the income right away, you should get the degree. It only gives you more leverage in the future. I still can't really tell if you are actually excited to get a job and are just complaining, or if you are considering getting a job because it seems like the right thing to do. If the latter, there's literally no reason not to just stay in school. The same jobs you don't really want will still be there, but you'll earn more money for them, and you'll get an extra couple years to "explore" and "learn" and whatever. Most people either really want to get a job or really need a job. If those don't apply, then there's no need to feel pressured.
Your original post mentioned choosing in your last year of school what to do.
I personally think you’re overestimating the expectation of the capitalist labor apparatus. Most white collar workers fond their jobs quite boring, and don’t require many hours of work. But if you want to avoid putting in longer hours at an entry level job, another way to get ahead is to get a higher degree.
I’m referencing your original comment as a way to circumvent joining capitalism.
From my 20 years+ experience, I would say the more you "lean into the system", the more it leans into you, until you are nothing but a husk of a person, lacking anything by corporate mantras about "I need to give one more hour today, so we can meet next Q's profit targets"...
The moment you say that, you realize you have no soul left. And, likely, you also start realizing all of the things in life you've missed on, that you should have been there for.
One of the biggest things I look for in someone that I'm potentially going to hire is that they treat themselves like a human being and that they respect that work and life are separate.
I also don't want a mindless slave... and for that matter I don't want someone who thinks the only value of another person is in how "productive" they are at work, either.
If you're truly in a place where you have the opportunity to hire other people and this is your outlook, I would suggest that you take a look at the bigger picture of whatever you do. Chances are there are people in your organization who do very little "work" but are extremely important to things actually happening.
For example, there was someone at my last job who, on paper, was an analyst. I think he produced maybe one dashboard in the nearly four years I knew him. However, he was an incredibly talented people person. He was cordial on the phone, he knew practically everyone in the organization and everything about their families, their interests, their hobbies, etc. If you wanted to sell a product or change a mind, this guy was absolutely irreplaceable.
If all the person who hired him was looking for was someone who was a good analyst, or who had the right skills, or was working on gaining new skills outside of work, this person would never have been hired. But he was, and he was an invaluable asset.
There's a lot that comes with running a business and a company and restricting your thinking to "what's my product" and "how do I increase output" and "how do I reduce cost" is how you run a mediocre to poor company that nobody really wants to work for.
Look Im not trying to be an asshole here.
An employee either produces more value than their salary or less. Someone who treat their labor as a transaction to support the rest of their life is more likely to produce excess value than someone who treats their job as a pillar of their life. Clearly your friend thinks of their job as an important part of their life.
The person I originally responded to was decrying the institution of work and selling their labor, but also mentioned that they are considering furthering their education. My main point is that there’s no reason to go to work if they don’t want or have to. I never said anything about time spent working being proportional to value.
i worked for the same big enterprise company out of college for 7 years. I've been ready to switch to try something new and exciting and have been job searching for the last 3 years. I've been having to take PTO to study stuff I haven't used since college, live coding and whiteboarding which I'm terrible at. In addition to that, I'm kind of a jack of all trades master of none at my job and I solve whatever issue comes my way, so it's been a game of whack-a-mole when it comes to studying for interviews. One week I'd be studying for a Ruby position, next python, then java, then it would be on sysadmin stuff for devops roles. It seems like every position I interview for is looking for someone who has a T shaped skill set. Over the past two years every interview ends up saying they like me but prefer another candidate that has more years in experience for the specific stack that they are using, or a fresh grad who is cheaper. My current job moving me to a more managerial role and doing proposals doesn't help with my coding skills decaying either.
I've spent so much time studying these interview specific skills that lately I've kinda just given up and raised the bar on jobs that I'm willing to apply / interview for (has to be work that's interesting to me and doesn't have a long annoying interview process) and am ready to just stay at this job for the foreseeable future or change careers when I get burned out from using the same outdated big enterprise stack. Programming was so much more fun when you can work on what you like. Getting paid for it is just a bonus.
Agh, this is me 100%. I've been searching for about 6 months now, have made it past recruiters a handful of times, but most jobs I seem to be applying for (because of the market) are hunting for specialists, not generalists. My last job was working on a non-technical team, and my job role amounted to "okay, well, we only have headcount for one engineer, so build all of our tools and do all of the technical things that we need". And, this is for a FAANG company, no less. I was hired to be a generalist and excelled at it, but now I can't find new grassy pastures to land in when everyone is hunting for hyper-focused specialists with years of experience in technologies that became vogue 5 minutes ago.
My last decline basically told me my programming skills are great—and called out that I did well in the coding interview—but said that I don't have enough experience that they need in React. It's frustrating.
what I've found out over the years, is all the best jobs are found via networking and aren't posted online usually. My personal guess is that most people on the internet that just tells you to keep applying and studying and doing hacker rank has probably failed to mention how they came across the job, it's most likely via someone they know referring them. I've been to some local meetup events and conferences, most that recruit there are the same ol' ad companies and SaaS companies and recruiters who are resume farming.
As someone who has a first round technical interview in about 10 hours for a 2020 Summer internship (yes, already), this post resonated with me. It's a frustrating grind to try to memorize data structures and random in-depth knowledge about the language of your choice. These are all things that I could Google in about 10 seconds, but I'm expected to know this trivia off the top of my head because that's supposedly a good demonstration of my problem solving skills and culture fit. Not to mention having to practice programming problem solving questions for hours despite not really using those skills anywhere else other than interviews. However, this system is currently in place because it does weed out the people who are nowhere close to being qualified. But, it leaves a lot of stragglers behind who feel gypped because they can't perform well under the immense pressure of the interview process.
Anyways, I'm not sure if I really said anything in this comment that the article didn't, just wanted to vent a little because I'm frustrated with these interview processes and the idea that I can ruin my internship chances at any given company just because I didn't study the exact question they are going to ask.
I do think there is some merit in testing your interviewees, and knowing that they can program well is valuable information, but I feel like companies value their interview test above almost anything else. You could have a multitude of projects and jobs under your belt, but if you can't think of the fastest way to traverse a binary search tree, you're gone.
It's hard to generalize and harder to know why you were accepted/rejected (since they don't tell you) but if it helps at all, when I did interviews I wasn't testing for obscure algorithm knowledge. The idea was to pick a problem that's fairly easy (so most people will get it, at least with some help) and give hints if needed, but that people haven't encountered before so it requires actually thinking.
If it seems obscure it's because people aren't good at coming up with questions sometimes.
Due to anxiety problems, I really suck at technical interviews. Nonetheless, I have mixed feelings about them.
One argument that people make against them is that, "Oh, I'll never need to implement
$ALGORITHM, I'll just use a library." That might be fine if you're interviewing for an organization that builds applications. OTOH, if you're interviewing for an organization that builds platforms, they generally want people who are capable of writing the libraries themselves, since libraries will be a significant part of their (if not the entire) product.Even then, it is useful to understand the essentials: in seven years at my current company I have needed to implement breadth-first search on three different occasions. It was much quicker to just write the BFS than to massage my data into a format that could be passed into a generic implementation.
OTOH, there is a ridiculous amount of cargo-culting or downright bad interviewing techniques. Finding a loop in the linked list? Terrible question. I had a (thankfully former) colleague who used to ask somebody to come up with reservoir sampling to solve their problem -- way too obscure to be useful signal for a technical interview.
I'd like to reserve special contempt for interviews for mobile development. Lots of those questions obsess over things like solving a problem without using recursion. Not that that is a useless question, but IMHO it is less relevant for today's mobile devices than other details (after all, even the Android framework itself uses recursion to measure, layout, and draw its
Viewhierarchy). How about focusing on things like how to design for power efficiency?Tech interviews should use as few questions as possible to determine that if you're hired, how much training you'd need before becoming productive. For a typical data science role this shouldn't be more than 20 questions.
Often what I find is people whom are not subject matter experts are brought in to interview a candidate to "see if they're a nice person". If someone wants money from you, they'll know how to be nice for 45 minutes. It's much more important to see if they'll be a distraction to the business or if they'll produce anything of value in their first 3-6 months.