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Comment by drtr | Hacker News Reader

Prevalent. I'm applying for jobs. Hot market. Both I and my peers are finding it much harder than as fresh college grads. A lot of this is structural: Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. interviews ask very easy big-O style algorithmic questions and prioritize speed and accuracy.

A lot of us more experienced folk haven't done this in years. We can solve more complex, multifaceted questions, but those aren't asked. It's about speed with things from college. It's important we understand those, and we do, but that crisp sharpness is no longer there.

I will beat someone younger on hard problems which also involve threading, distributed systems, customer requirements, memory hierarchies, code simplicity, testability, business requirements, math, etc. but those aren't the interviews.

Even ML seem to be spot checks of trendy techniques rather than deeper questions about mathematical maturity.

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If you spent 4 weeks drilling basic CS problems do you think you will pass the interview? When I look into them I feel like I can pick it back up quickly.

On a tangent: which city are you looking in?

I am passing them now, after having gone through a few. I do still make stupid mistakes more than I would have in my youth. Four weeks drilling would definitely more than do it.

I think the bigger problem is none of the other skills I have seem to even matter for Google/Amazon/Facebook hiring. I would rather practice those skills and find niche openings which value people like me than do prep for a broken process. Plus I have family, consulting, etc, so I don't want to just drill. I'm not desperate. I could be wrong (no offers yet, but just started on sites so don't expect any yet) but I think I have better options elsewhere.

If I weren't actively looking, I wouldn't even consider those types of jobs, and this is the first time in my life actively looking. In other words, Google has no chance of poaching someone like me. I think the word for that is implicit bias or disparate impact.

Boston area.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply.

How do you and yours look for jobs? In other words, where would I need to advertise to have you find me and apply?

Here I posted an ad for a principal engineer, and it drew zero responses [1]. What could I do differently to get attention of (someone like) you and your friends?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16055897

When I read a post like yours, it reads like $100k salary, boring system, small company, small total addressable market, so even if wildly successful, not much upside. Boring tech too: Basically a classic database system.

My friends are mostly at Amazon, Google, or Facebook with incomes from $250k up to over $1 million. The others are at startups solving big hard problems with big dreams.

If there is no particular complexity, I'd outsource to India, Ukraine, Pakistan, or similar. If there is, I'd describe the hard problem.

The minimal qualifications aren't a draw either. I want to work with smart people. Microsoft stack reeks of low end employment.

Midwest, rural, Deep South, etc. beats Seattle too. Lower cost of living draws many developers of the sort you want. Problem is a minimal living salary broke $200k in Boston, SF, NY, etc. You don't want a low end job.

That’s a lot of prejudice for someone who just a day earlier complained about prejudice. :)))

Thanks for feedback!

I'd be curious if you interviewed at the company I work for (DraftKings) or not yet. If you have, I'd be interested in any feedback you had on our process, and if you haven't, I'd be interested in why you hadn't considered the company. Either way, it's worth getting in touch.

My personal email is in my profile.

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