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Comment by okdood64 | Hacker News Reader

SE is arguably much harder. Instead of just optimizing for coding, you need to be good at linux troubleshooting, low level kernel stuff and networking. There’s a reason most new hires come in as SWE, particularly new grads with not much real world experience.

That said, if you already possess this knowledge it could be easier as it takes a bit of the randomness out of getting a LeetCode question that you can’t figure out.

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I don't have time to memorize leetcode, and I'm just not good at it. Even considering it can just take time for everyone, I'm somehow unexpectedly bad despite my experience. I'm actually pretty good at actual software engineering work though (8 years). I'm also pretty good at OS level stuff across the board. I didn't know there non-leetcode paths without completely changing careers and abandoning my dev history.

I was just about to schedule my 1st-set whiteboard style interview with the recruiter, which always ends in a flaming disaster, but maybe I should consider their other routes.

I'm a full stack (backend main) software engineer but I'm usually exceptional at fixing server stuff and fully understanding logs to debug problems or find potential exploits through logs or when reading through code reviews. Everyone else I've ever worked with struggles at these things. I can just naturally comprehend other's code / architecture even across technologies.

If there's a career path I can show this in interviews instead of fumbling on even easy LeetCode problems or the other silly things I randomly get stuck on only in interviews, maybe I could actually shine for once.

It is not harder, it is different. They just ask more system topics, while focusing less on coding. There is, however, a catch. If you get hired as a SRE-SWE, you can easily switch to a regular SWE. If you get hired as a SRE-SE, you may have to reinterview to change your job ladder. SE is okay, but you clearly have more possibilities as a SWE.

Why is there such a distinction? What's the difference in the day to day of a SRE-SWE vs. an SRE-SE?

SRE-SWE and SRE-SE on the same team will have exactly the same expectation given the same level.

Depending on the project you work on, you might have a code-heavy project that requires you to work closely with the SWE team, or an operability-heavy project that doesn't have much coding.

Entirely the same job, same pay. We just want to be open to folks with DIFFERENT yet valuable experience.

You only have to take some of the coding ones though iirc

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