Comment by throwaway_a0f1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway_a0f1 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I genuinely don't understand what this industry is looking for in an interview process.

Some background, about 2 years ago I started teaching myself to program full time. About a year ago, I felt confident that I knew enough to get a job, taught myself all of this leetcode stuff, and started applying.

People told me that if I could crush leetcode, I'd have no problem getting a job. What they didn't say was how impossible it was to get an interview when transitioning fields.

I was also told that people would look at my GitHub code, but considering recruiters spend about 15 seconds on a resume screen, this is more of a meme than reality.

In the last year in Bay Area, I've managed a total of 2 on-sites with well over a hundred applications, all of them quite targeted. Maybe 8 companies total have engaged with me, and I have not missed a single one of these types of questions at any point in the process, yet it hasn't been enough.

It seems that there are so few entry level jobs that that market is extremely saturated. I'm not sure how this industry expects to address it's serious man power shortage if no one wants to hire juniors.

> What they didn't say was how impossible it was to get an interview when transitioning fields.

It's tough to get a foot in the door. I managed a transition largely thanks to preferential hiring for veterans, but even there I had a CS degree and some prior tech experience before going into the military.

The other problem is that "junior" really means "fresh out of college." Transitional resumes look weird and they get thrown out in favor of people doing the normal thing.

> I was also told that people would look at my GitHub code

Recruiters, probably not, but if I'm doing an in-person interview with you, I've definitely read your github page.

Tip: I'm looking for a. high quality code, and b. a delivered product.

What's high quality? Find code written by the best people (e.g. your standard library, a major framework) and aim to make your code look that good.

What's a delivered product? It has thorough, well-written documentation, and I can install it with a single command. If you set up a demo on a website, that's obviously better.

I have not missed a single one of these types of questions at any point in the process

The most likely problem is simply that you are getting questions wrong, but you don't realize it. Companies don't often give candidates whiteboard questions, have the candidates nail those whiteboard questions, and then drop the applicants.

I mean that's a fair take, and one I've tried really hard to examine, but I feel as though the questions have a very obvious answer and you either get it or don't. And to reply to that, no one actually gives feedback so you'll never actually know.

Looking at your profile, you seem well suited to be able to evaluate this, so let me give an example from an interview I just had.

Here's a problem and solution from the last interview I had: https://pastebin.com/LyVYqLv4

Python: uses underscores. Java, Javascript: camelcase. .NET: Capitalize. And so forth, those are the conventions that professionals use, so stick to them for an interview.

`biggestSize = 99999999 #MaxInt` This is returned if the caller passes you 0 for slicesToFind, so you're returning a nonsense value in that case. Either raise an exception (preferred as it catches errors fast) or return None.

`def area(size)` You're using pi r^2, so size is a radius, but it seems you call it with a diameter. This is why choosing distinct names is very important.

`newSize = (originalSize / newSlicesInCake)` Again, using "size" all over the place is confusing. I'd write something like `new_slice_area = (original_cake_area / new_slice_count)`.

Thanks for feedback about convention and variable naming- you're totally correct I should work on both.

As far as 0 input, they actually told me it would always be valid so edge cases were not accounted for.

I personally think you had a strong answer despite the criticisms mentioned.

But, yeah. Casing convention was surprisingly important in one of my interviews. They wanted to know that I was able to adapt to a new language as the job was for a language I didn't have on my resume. It's weird, but I understand where they're coming from. Seeing improper styling in a code review is an immediate red flag and an interview problem is ultimately a code review.

Looks good to me. You are right, it's hard to say what's going wrong when nobody gives feedback. Often if you do well on 4 problems and then tank the 5th, that can be enough to miss out. I think if you can regularly solve this difficulty of problem you should be able to get a job though.

Would you mind emailing me whatever resume-ish stuff you have at my hn username at gmail? Maybe I can give more specific help.

Done, really appreciated

FWIW, if you want feedback on working code, Stack Overflow has a sister site Code Review[0] where people will critique your code and give lots of useful feedback. It's a pretty welcoming community so long as you're looking for a code review and not debugging help.

[0] https://codereview.stackexchange.com/

Ca anybody explain to me the problem definition? (not the solution)

Apparently this is a common question.

Here's some discussion on it https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/348510/Googl...

Nah, man, this is absolutely wrong.

Companies are all over the place all the time. And I have seen this from both sides of the isle.

For example, at one company I was at, we said we were hiring for a full stack position, and we had a candidate come in that did well on all the questions, but then afterwords, we decided that we actually wanted a dedicated front end engineer. So no job for them!

It was no fault of the candidate. We just didn't know what we're were doing and screwed up by interviewing someone who was better suited for a different position.

Stuff like this happens all the time. Even if you blow the interview out of the water, there is still only like a 50/50 chance that you'll get the job, due to no fault of your own.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com