Comment by vlod | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vlod | Hacker News Reader

Had one today (at a large company) and the interviewer looked/sounded disgusted when I said I had a React app connected to a lone node server connected to the database. (MVP prototype).

They didn't understand why anyone would design a system like that and asked if I had the choice again, would I build it the same way. Their correct answer was micro-services up the wazoo.

I tried to explain that startups don't have budget or desire for massive infrastructure or are generally only interested in building a prototype to validate product market fit. Wasting money on ivory tower systems was a waste.

At no time did they ask if the system supported the workload or even how many users we had. Nope straight to build massively complex infra.

I've forgotten that a lot of s/w engineers who work in the real world/large companies, don't have any idea some of the pg mantras we all chant.

Major red flag. Pass. :/

Also getting completely sick and tired doing hackerrank/leetcode in interviews.

To pass tech interview, I have to do some stupid super-hard hackerrank algorithm test for front-end react positions. wtf?

When he told me to do this and I got annoyed and asked him if they every found the need to design an algo which expired cache, with greater than 10 items, when it's a full moon but not if the number 42 was in a md5 of one of the items.

I asked, isn't this like every other job which is mostly pull from the db, group and minimally process it, push it onto the front page and then spend 80% of the time faffying with vertical-aligning annoying css.

He laughed, but still got me to do the hackerrank algo.

Real motivating to do my own thing. :/

I feel this industry has attracted a lot of run-of-the-mill folks whose primary motivation is to get a high paying job at any cost. They're willing to memorize 500+ LeetCode problems in the hope that in one out of 100 interviews their stars will align and they'll be asked questions which they've seen before. More often than not, such folks tend to be crappy engineers and crappier interviewers. Supply is outstripping demand by quite a lot even though the supply is low quality.

It is 100% a buyers market this year.

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