Zvez

well, no. First companies usually have separate interview for 'cultural fit'. Second, the thing with discriminations, they can be quite hidden. The 'leetcode style tasks' can be performed very differently. If I as interviewer don't like you, I can do a lot to make sure you don't pass it. Starting from making question harder to understand and end with plain 'strong not hire' for vague reasons even if you did well.

in my experience the team needs critical mass of decent developers. And by 'decent' I don't mean all-knowing experienced beasts. I mean adequate devs with ability to listen and to be wrong. If team has it, better devs naturally get listened more and everyone gets chance to improve from it. It doesn't mean that you just don't let juniors express their opinions (everyone should be able to talk), but the 'weight' of dev's opinion determines by his track of previous cases. And obviously every opinion comes with responsibility for the result. If you forced your approach you need to be able to deal with the results.

I did such thing at least twice (unintentionally). Usually there is a quite simple way to overcome this - cultivate review process and some some of tech meetings, where your '10x dev' can talk about their approach and others have chance to criticise it. If other devs don't care enough to challenge 10x and just roll with it, well then they have it coming.

I think you mix a lot of different problems into one.

>I can't bare the endless meetings, constant micromanagement

This _can_ be fixed. Even if by switching team or even jobs. With some experience you start to understand in what teams and under what management you work best. A lot of us hate micromanagement. And I can tell you there are a lot of teams without this problem. I would say that micromanagement is the least common problem from what you mentioned here. Simply because it usually leads to overall inefficiency. Also this one you can actually fix by talking with your manager. Maybe they just don't trust you or overprotect you. Nobody wants to do your job ;).

Endless meetings are harder to fix. If your level is high enough you can try to fight it. But usually it is easier to just switch the team and even your work area. Do something lower level, further from API. Even in the worst business-centered jobs there are places where they need to you solve technical problems. Simply because meetings won't solve those technical problems ;).

> I can't bare the devs that go out of their way to work weekends without being asked

this one is on you. It shouldn't affect you personally, unless they ping you on the weekend for 'quick lgtm'. I understand it can be annoying, especially when they advertise such work as something heroic. You either need to stop caring about that or try to explain to your manager that promoting such behaviour in the team demotivates others. Actually I once was one of those 'work during weekend' guys. I had my reasons. After complains from my friends in the team, I simply stopped announcing any such work, so unless anyone specifically wanted to check commit time, they were completely unaware if I actually did something on the weekend. It worked relatively well. So while I sometimes like to overtime, I'm sure it is unhealthy for the whole team to advertise/promote someone for doing so.

Your argument is quite usual in this sort of discussion and it mostly comes from dev managers or TLs who are almost gone to the 'other side'.

I (everyone?) agree that software development is not only programming/writing code. It also system design, documentation, finding solutions, troubleshooting, load testing and so on. And yes, it is also gathering and understanding requirements and collaborating with other teams. But if your average developer only has 20% of time for coding and everything else goes to meetings, you are doing something terribly wrong. Simply because the time of the developers is used inefficiently, unless you are doing something very simple (from technical point of view) and cut costs on other roles, so devs are doing everything. Usually it means that there is no proper Product/Project management and technical leadership. You can build a lot better and faster if your developers have time to focus on development itself without going to constant meetings to understand this sentence in requirements. Even during my 'worst' (from dev time perspective) years as a TL I spent ~40-50% of my time to management/communication work. It allowed team of 5 devs to be almost distraction free (less than 3 meetings per week per dev), because I worked as proxy for them.

In my experience adding good technical PM between devs and other managers can greatly increase devs efficiency and more importantly - their happiness

Just to add up to comments explaining why it won't work. I'm from Kazakhstan, but I'm more or less indistinguishable from Russian. Russians in Kazakhstan basically consume the same media Russia citizens do. So I can't even persuade my own relatives there that it is obvious we are bad guys right not. Not some random people, but my own mother believes TV more than me. Because it is easier to believe, it is almost impossible for us (anyone probably) that we became evil. And you can't change that by spam calls, you probably make it worse. People who can accept other opinions still have access to other sources, it is not (yet) N. Korea. We need more protests and (sadly) more sanctions, preferably against individuals. And truth, not anti-propaganda. More coverage of current situation in cities, and less 'russian ship go f* yourself'

Not really. Civilians are certainly affected by sanctions. But government itself, oligarches, people with power are affected much more. Also making population unhappy gradually is a good motivation to make some changes. But here it will affect general population in the first place. It will remove ability to get other side of the news. Cutting the internet is in a lot of cases what government actually wants (and does). Right now they shutting down sources of information (fb, yt, twitter). And here they suggest to shut it down completely. Russia government will probably thank them for this.

WAT? Do you have any proofs with real appliance to NATO from Russia? I don't remember that, apart from some usual russian rhetorics how they ask USA (for some reason) to allow them into the NATO and for some reason USA (not nato) didn't answer them.

But ok, lets imaging you are right. So you are saying that, it is NATO fault that Russian invades Ukraine simply because they didn't take Russia into NATO? Right?

(disclaimer, I'm russian but not Russia citizen, but I 'experienced the culture' for 30 years) This is wrong. There is not so much special russian 'mentality' left in Russia, not in the big cities. People there have more-or-less the same 'european values'. The problem now is that we used to think of ourselves as 'good guys'. We destroyed nazis and even though we did a lot of not so good stuff, in minds of russians it always viewed as 'missteps' or 'lesser evil'. Thats why propaganda now is so efficient. General population of Russia can't even imagine the possibility that we invade other country. Because it is impossible, we remember way too well how we were invaded by Germany. And it is easy to use. Basically government tells people that we actually prevent Ukraine to invade DNR/LNR. Yes, it sounds stupid, but it works. Personally I can't even convince my parents that right now we are the bad guys. It is beyond their world view. My point here is that russians are not some special people or special culture that allow us to invade other countries. We just struggle to move to more 'people-based' governments.

do you happen to have any links to such documents, preferably originals? Because it sounds suspicious that US agreed on some conditions for whole NATO. Especially by the time when USSR basically lost any leverage and couldn't dictate any conditions to anyone.

I worked in Russia and used to think this way too. But once we managed to hire person how couldn't code. At all. He was intelligent during the interview, talked his way through system design section. But during the probation period he basically couldn't do anything, even simple stuff. After that I started to block any candidate, who couldn't provide code solution for at least simple problem.

> I am on HN after all, which tells you I care more about software development as a skill than some of my coworkers

well, if you measure skills by amount of time people spend on HN, I think you miss something.

Yeah, you don't have to work more. But imaging what would be if you wanted to work more. Not because you have to or forced to. But because you find your work so interesting that you want to put more hours where just to do it. Thats what at least some of commentors are trying to tell you. I were in positions where I could simply don't do anything the whole week and nobody would care (I was TL of the great team). But I didn't want to. Even when I actually avoid doing tasks my manager wants from me, I always find some cool stuff to do, to improve code I already have or investigate something or just bring shiny new tehcnology thing.

I'm shocked how many support or at least 'it is ok' comments here, so I won't go to tell my opinion about OP or if this is acceptable in general. Instead just my personal answer. Yeah, I lie about how much time I put to work, when I for some reason decided to put some of my personal time to solve some problem, or improve something, or simply experimenting. I'm not proud of it, but it happens.

Anyway, I never was in a team where such behaviour OP described was acceptable. Maybe it is cultural thing (I'm not from the western country), or just social (you try to be closer to people with the same values). Yes, you probably won't get fired immediately. But it is all clear and visible if person work so little. Visible to teamlead and other team members. You won't get promotion or bonus. And eventually your direct manager will try to remove you from the team. Even i firing is not so simple, there are usually ways to rotate him to different team. And if person gets the same 'recognition' in the next team, his case usually goes to HR and they would find they to 'let him leave'. I still agree that it is ok to work just as much as you are required for your pay. But if developer simply wants to work as little as possible, he eventually is asked to go work somewhere else. Because it is simply more enjoyable to work with developers who give a shit.

By this logic children can't have any surgical procedures, because u need to consent for that. That's why children have legal representatives.

yeah, for some reason it is a trend to call some basic coding interview problems as something from 'competitive programming'. While in reality it is just on of the metrics of interview - make sure you can code. While some companies sometimes go too far with complexity of problems, even they rarely make decision purely on how fast you can solve the problem.

> People memorize leetcode and think they're gods of CS how fast you go from 'all levels below gold' to this while probably such people do exist (never actually met someone who tried to memorize concrete solutions), they have nothing to do with competitive programming. Because you won't go far with bunch of memorized (and not understood) solutions of previous competitions. Even learning basic algorithm's implementations won't get you too high in competitions. Because you actually have to understand different approaches to actually be able to solve new problems.

> A guy who is generally good at CS or math can't show up and do wel

this is also not true. While you won't get like first places without practice, you still will be able to solve basic problems (if your cs degree has any substance behind it). And during interview it certainly shows. Nobody will give you hard problems which you can solve only by having some very specific knowledge of this particular problem. If you don't know some algorithm by hard but still can work out some approach using you background knowledge, you will pass almost any interview.

but what if you don't want to be identified? Because to claim panel you most probably have to provide some evidence it is you. on the other hand, what if you don't know/don't care about some google panel about you. But other people get harmed by it? If someone really lost their job just because his photo was attached. Who should be blamed and how this person should fix this if there is no tools to remove panel? So I don't see this as overreaction. If you make something that can do mistakes that can cost someone their job or harm significantly, you should provide some ways it can be fixed fast. And not via months of talking with a wall.

I suppose quite a lot of developers from Google read HN. Do you have any internal blog or some other social media to post this? Or google is so big you can't do anything even from inside? Because I worked in similarly big (although not so big) company and you can fix a lot just by posting such things internally. Because at the end of the day most people do care of such things.

You really need to go to couple of job interviews and generally look around for things you want to do. It doesn't mean you should instantly switch your job, but you obviously lack perspective. You need to understand how easy of IT to find new job. Moreover nowdays more and more companies offer remote positions. Pay might be smaller, but you can move further from center and find cheaper place to live. You basically trap yourself with thoughts like 'I won't find better paid job' and 'my partner will never follow me'. There are quite a lot of options between 'live in London' and 'live in the middle of nowhere'.

even in medium-sized companies cto often participates in hiring process for high-level engineers. Basically the rule is if you are hiring person you are gonna interact often, you want to evaluate him yourself

>that remote workers will get fewer promotions, lower ratings, etc

I don't believe it works like that. U get fewer promotion not because you are remote worker. The problem is that you can become less valuable resource, who can effectively make less overall impact on the product. Hence lower rating. So for employer is not trade-off between pay/remoteness, rather between better employee or remoteness. Basically nobody cares if you are remote or not if you can do your job efficiently. And be transparent and manageable.

The decision-making process much (and by high margin) more effective in-person. Email is too slow, chat is too frustrating (too many back-and-forth messages just to make sure everyone on the same understanding level). The simple questions (how to do smth, where to find smth and so on) are better and less disturbing - via chat. You can always answer later, when you have time. And good co-workers know how to distinguish one from another and use right way to discuss it.

tldr if you need social interaction you need to go out and do social interactions

Anyway for me the only thing that sort of works is group sport sessions. I swim and go to group trainings twice a week. It doesn't get me any real friends, but I get people to talk to, we have chat and everything. This is the only time I don't feel lonely atm. Going out to some advernture-like activities will be even better - camping, biking, trail walking. But you need to find group of people to go out with. It is easier to do if you work in some big company - there probably already some groups like this. I did positive experience with coworkers, but sadly it didn't last.

Not sure if useful for anybody, but here is my story. I have no real cs-background, I just liked computers in high school and participated in some local programming contests. I started working on my 4th year of uni. It was java enterprise. So yeah, a lot of crud. But even then we managed to build abstract stuff to make crud building easier and fun.

After around 6 years of crud I decided to try something different, and went to yandex (it is like google, but in Russia). First time it was just the same crud (lot of rest api), but after some time I managed to land on some infra projects - kafka, streams, microservices. And it became much much more fun. You really build stuff from the scratch, you design it, test it under high load. Anyway my tips:

1. Don't go for buzz word, find job where you can actually choose technologies. Soon you will understand how to see through the hype. And cost of choosing wrong tech.

2. Stop trying to learn what 'everyone think is cool'. Learning compilers won't make you better developer, esp if you are not into it. And Dragon book is not the best intro to compilers anyway. If you want to learn something fun, find what it is fun for you in the first place.

3. If you want to become better developer, try to improve things you do at your day job. Not something like 'we should use k8s or we die'. More like 'we will have to make a lot of these crud in near future, lets spend some time to build framework that makes building and support them 2x faster and cheaper'. Look at small and achievable improvements first.

4. Invest time to understand how things work. And build your own opinion about technological decisions.

I hope it would not. I'd rather spend my time becoming better and still have ability to choose good place, then learn how to act 'right' just to keep my job.

"The relationships exist only in the database" Entity Person contains collection of entity ContactInfo. In DB we have tables PERSON, CONTACT_INFO and foreign key from CONTACT_INFO to PERSON. What the difference in relations in code (between entities) and in DB between tables? In this example.

If you have entity with 10 fields and 5 nested collections (which may also have more nested objects) and you need load full object for edit (and save it after), it will be more than '2-3 line'