Hacker News Reader

Comment by annoyingnoob | Hacker News Reader

This is why I stopped writing code. After I bombed a bunch of interviews I threw up my hands in disgust, it wasn't me it was the process.

One thing that stands out to me about the process is that everyone gets the same interview, doesn't matter if you are fresh out of school or have a lifetime of experience. Experience counts for nothing in these interviews. Can you design twitter in 40 minutes, thinking through every possible failure mode and issue along the way, or not? Apparently, I can't or not well enough. I think these companies really want folks with great public speaking and whiteboard skills - I'm kind of an introvert and that is a challenge for me where the day-to-day work is not.

View on HN

"This is why I stopped writing code."

would be interesting to hear about what career you transitioned to, if you're willing to share.

I have a background in IT. I basically moved back to IT. I still write some code but its not the majority of my work. The code I write now relates to automation and integration and not so much building a product from the ground up. I have to build for reliability but I don't need to build for Internet scale.

Edit: I should say that the interviewing experience that put my over the edge was actually not a whiteboard but a take home exercise. What I didn't know and didn't appreciate was that it was designed with an adversarial review. There was a long list of requirements and I thought I met them all. The response was kind of rude and was a big turn off. After a second pass I was told that I was missing some fundamental things, which were never requested or discussed. The whole thing seemed designed to exclude rather than assess.

So you gave up on everything because of 1 experience ?

No that was the last in a long line of uncomfortable interviews. It wasn't worth the effort to me to become a walking algorithm encyclopedia, most of which I'm never going to use. Why would I continue with a process that appears designed to exclude me?

Honestly, its their loss. I've done great work and continue to do so. For better or worse, may name is on patents from more than one job and from different industries. My work experience and history of accomplishments says something about the kind of candidate I am. Hounding me at the whiteboard or calling my take-home work crap seems unnecessary - if that is what the job is like then I don't want it.

And I didn't 'give up everything'. I make the same money in IT without the hamster wheel feel of always 'sprinting'. Marathon runners do not sprint the entire race.

What is "IT" ? Do you mean sys admin ? Is that why you don't want to learn algorithms ?

Here is the problem, many people have patents, many people have words. You should be able to solve a simple BFS, DFS or DP problem. These algorithms ARE used in good jobs. Seems like most people here write CRUD apps.

Also, lots of FAANG engineers have lots of patents as well. That doesn't mean anything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com