Comment by gavanwoolery | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gavanwoolery | Hacker News Reader

As someone who is going through many technical interviews right now, and failing all of them, I love this article. (It was actually brought to my attention last week.)

My technical ability is readily apparent to those who have viewed my work, and by virtue of those who have praised it. I don't claim to be the best programmer in the world, just a competent one. I've also been programming for over 20 years, that might have something to do with it.

However, I suck at interviews, in any way shape or form (personality tests, technical tests, you name it). Yet I've aced every job ever given to me, and people love to work with me (even in spite of my salty attitude).

To think that you can determine what it is like to work with me over the span of a year within the span of an hour is completely and utterly ridiculous.

As it turns out, the little sub-problems they give are the most trivial part of programming. The hard part, the part it takes many years to get any good at, is coherently organizing, documenting, and ensuring the stability of a larger system, particularly concurrently with other programmers. Or designing an algorithm that you can't just Google. Or making a really tough decision about what features to cut or what direction to pivot. Or organizing a vision of what will add the most value for the customer. Or...etc

Being an introvert with a monotone voice, general lack of expression, and deadpan sarcastic humor does wonders for personality tests. Most people's default reaction to me (in interviews or otherwise) is that I am a total dick. Which I am, but the kind you don't mind hanging around.

I don't do well with programming that has a one hour deadline. But give me a day and I can produce the typical output a programmer would within a day.

If I spent all my time practicing for interviews, I'd probably be better at them (with stuff like Top Coder or Interview Cake or whatever). And I think giving these things a whirl is well worth it (not for the sake of winning in interviews). But it is not my life goal to be good at interviews. It is my goal to work in areas I am interested, and continue learning things that are directly relevant to my real-world tasks (sorry, writing a red-black tree on a white board within an hour never happens to me in the real world).

But it is not my life goal to be good at interviews. It is my goal to work in areas I am interested, and continue learning things that are directly relevant to my real-world tasks

You have to look at the programming career as requiring two skills: the first is programming, and the second is finding a job. That might suck, but it's the nature of a career where you change jobs every three years or so.

Oh, I agree with you, you are totally right. I am mostly speaking from a hypothetical "I wish the world did not operate this way" type of tone. :)

Sadly true. What sucks is having to choose between working on a fun side project or practicing algorithm or coding interviews (LeetCode, Hacker Rank). I honestly really dislike doing the latter, but I know I have to.

Yes, I find it ironical that I was way better at coding tests 15 years ago straight out of University. Nowadays I think longer and write less code. It works better.

One great example is Haseeb, who spent two years of all his life programming. He now commands a $250k salary (which, I say more power to him for exploiting our current interview system).

I don't doubt that Haseeb is an excellent programmer. But not everyone has two years to devote to mastering the interview system like him, and there are plenty of skills you won't get just by doing competitive programming.

http://haseebq.com/farewell-app-academy-hello-airbnb-part-i/

Wow. I used to know Haseeb during his poker days 8-10 years ago, when he was still playing for dimes/quarters and we were all still using MSN. Can't believe I'm hearing his name again in this context, I had no idea he got into software.

He's probably a bad example to make your point with. Haseeb had some moral failings, but he is truly on another level in terms of intellect/drive/vision, and the interviewers at Airbnb probably didn't have a hard time recognizing that.

I can't stress enough how smart that guy is. He leaves an impression.

Small world indeed. :) If it came across otherwise, I have nothing but positive things to say about Haseeb. Still, as with any coder I might praise, any human has gaps in their skillset - and I imagine Haseeb has a few; there is only so much you can learn in 2 years.

I say this based on my personal reflection, so I could be wrong. The coder I was 10 years ago was laughably bad compared to the coder I am now, and I spent pretty much every one of those years doing 80+ hours of programming per week.

That said, if I had to hire someone fresh out of college, or someone like Haseeb, the choice would easily be Haseeb. :)

That was a very fascinating read, and completely illusion-shattering regarding the skill tech companies have in giving offers to good candidates. Social proof provided 90% of his increase in market value. I am not doubting that he is a very skilled developer, but this was certainly not the key reason why he got such a good offer :)

It's ALWAYS about who you know. Always.

That's not what I got from the story -- he mentions how he got warm referrals (the "who you know") to employers that went tepid quickly after the interview ... but then the same ones suddenly wanted him once he claimed (truthfully, though without proof) that he had standing, big offers from other employers.

"In the end, I didn’t get a single offer through a raw application. Every single offer came through a referral of some kind. (This I did not expect, and strongly influences the advice I’d give to a job-seeker.)"

" Haseeb Qureshi says: 04/23/2016 at 9:53 am

I’ll be writing more about this in my subsequent blog post. But if you have no connections at all in SV, then I might say that if you’re set on SV as a place to work (sounds like you’re on the fence?) I’d recommend mass applying, and also moving here to start interacting with folks and getting to know people. Building a network is so, so valuable for getting a foot in the door."

Unless this guy is some type of programming prodigy, who in only two years of self learning, somehow blew away all top companies, only to be turned down, then what happened was that he has friends in high places that helped sway their decision.

To be completely honest, the entire article smells like a marketing campaign for TripleByte and AppAcademy. Google wanting to put him on the C++ team, after two years coding in Rails? Get the hell out of here.

Ah, right, I forgot about that part. Even so, the point remains that it isn't only about who you know, because he had those connections and leads still went stale, until he gamed the system.

But I would agree that it reveals how confused and manipulation-prone the hiring process is; if they're hiring someone for critical, technical C++ work after only two years experience on mostly-Rails, they really don't know what they want. Ditto for upping their offers so significantly based on things that shouldn't matter that much.

I'm likewise skeptical about how Airbnb would tolerate him revealing sensitive details of a negotiation like that in ways that reflect very badly on them and weakens their bargaining position on future hires. Sure, you don't want to fire an employee just for disclosing his compensation (major legal issues there), but his post went way beyond that.

Seriously, something is suspicious here. These companies aren't stupid.

Did Voxel Quest (http://www.voxelquest.com/) not work out financially? :( If I had my company I'd hire you in a heartbeat. Might be stupidly obvious, but pinging your network might help – I can't be the only one who would want such a talented programmer on their team. Good luck in your search!

Please read my most recent two blog entries on http://www.voxelquest.com where I talk about the current state of things. :)

I have pinged my network, and am very grateful for all the job offers that have come of it. However, at least half those offers have come with technical interviews that basically ignore my work experience, or in one case the recruiter could not even determine why my experience was relevant (even though it was). Some offers involved getting paid to continue working on Voxel Quest. However, one such offer was in a remote country where the US dollar is much stronger, and I could not have operated under the salary they were offering (at least, not without moving to their country, which is very far away).

At this point I am trying to figure out the "best" path, and that involves many factors, one of which is trying to ease up on the stress I have put my family through. By insistence I have put up Patreon although I am not yet touching the money until I know what my future job is and what that means for VQ (and as mentioned I'm also refunding all the money put into VQ).

It speaks for broken hiring when even skillers like you can't get a job.

I always thought I just wasn't as good as I think when I didn't get a job, but I know your work and it is amazing, so hiring companies just don't know what they doing anymore

Thanks! It honestly does help, because in my current state I find myself heavily second-guessing my own value. That said, I have found the humility to be enlightening :)

Hiring right now is a shitshow of old wives' tales, cargo-culted practices from big name tech companies, shady recruiters, mismatched incentives, interviewers who have no experience or training in interviewing, gimmicky apps trying to somehow gamify technical interviewing and endless whining back and forth on HN and Medium.

I'm sure a lot of developers who are currently employed are put off applying elsewhere because the whole process has become so demanding and unpleasant and disrespectful.

One company I applied to for example asked to do a take-home test, maybe 2 hours. I did the test, only to be told it was the first stage of a long and gruelling process involving a further 8 hour take-home project (unpaid, of course) followed my several rounds of technical and non-technical interviews. I immediately withdrew my application. When would I have the time to do 8 hours - it was timed for some bizarre reason, so it had to be done in a single block of time - on a project? Maybe for my own projects, sure, but that's my spare time.

Interviewers and recruiters are, after all, being paid to sit there, while interviewees are - unless they're unemployed - taking precious time off to travel, maybe stay overnight in a hotel, sit through hours of gruelling interviews and tests, all for a job that may or may not offer anything much better than what they've already got. And yet the penny hasn't yet dropped that maybe your shitty process is the reason you haven't found anyone yet?

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I'm convinced that it wasn't this bad 5 or 10 years ago - maybe if you were interviewing at Google or Microsoft, but not if you were applying for a bog standard dev role at a startup or SME.

Nailed it. :) Recruiting is now based on some unproven theories that companies utilize as if they were the 10 commandments. Written by some nontechnical MBAs.

We should unite together and form an organization that blacklists companies with incompetent hiring practices. :)

oh do our own hiring company lol ;)

What could be the root cause of this change ? An oversupply of good candidates?

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