Hacker News Reader

Comment by elroyjetson | Hacker News Reader

I left after over 25 years. I love programming and love working with Linux, but the jobs always came down to "help us steal peoples personal information so we can slam them with spam for products the neither want or need." It was unfulfilling. I went back to school and got an MA in history. I teach humanities though I still teach a couple of programming classes. I miss it a little. I would go back in a heartbeat for the right position, but I am through getting mauled in tech interviews which turned into combat trivial pursuit. I love technology and I still create applications mostly for myself or to help automate my school. I get new ideas from HN.

View on HN

> I am through getting mauled in tech interviews which turned into combat trivial pursuit. I love technology and I still create applications mostly for myself or to help automate my school.

This. Something has definitely changed in the last ~10 to 20 years since the end of the dotcom era of interviewing in the tech industry. Before it was as simple as reading the AUTHORS file in an open-source project like Linux to vouch for a programmer applying to somewhere like Red Hat or Mozilla. But now we are expecting them to write a proof of quicksort's worst-case runtime complexity or to explain the Diffie-Helman public key exchange mathematically on a whiteboard to "see how you think" and "prove programmer ability" which is unnecessarily academic and they either don't use it directly or search on Google for it anyway.

That's just the onsite interviews, pre-interviews are riddled with Leetcode, Hackerrank and Codility tests which can be cheated or the solution can be found on Google. What a shame that these flawed tests still exist.

Interviewing is going to drive me from the industry. I'm skilled - I've consistently provided high value at my jobs - but I'm not formally trained (don't have a CS degree) and I don't have the time anymore to sit around grinding leetcode just so I can land my next gig.

That or waste a day or two of your weekend on some trivial app to be nitpicked on some nonsense not in the spec.

I had a go at our manager recently after letting two people do our tech test then say they were too inexperienced. We could have worked that out before wasting their time.

the #1 reason i think about leaving is due to the interviews as well (also not formally trained). im about 6 years in and its just getting worse and worse. the thought of spending my free time studying for interviews is so miserable. on top of that, i realized recently i have a lot of childhood trauma and interviews are very triggering due to the often combative, critical nature.

it's kinda depressing in a way, because coding was at first, something that pulled me out of the slump i was in due to a shitty upbringing. i really like writing code, but the industry sure does know how to suck all the fun out of it.

> tech interviews which turned into combat trivial pursuit

Excellent phrase. Thank you.

wow, I plan to study history at some point. Is it possible to study part time, do you think?

Depends on the program, but certainly. Don't expect finding a job with it will be easy and even if you do, don't expect the pay to be great.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com