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Comment by onlyrealcuzzo | Hacker News Reader

Google, Amazon, & Microsoft are nearly always hiring talented C++ engineers.

So you're not limited to finance. Quite the opposite.

I'd be surprised if the majority of C++ jobs had anything to do with finance.

Yeah but then you go in to interview at these places and someone who only programs javascript or python will ask you to answer a contrived whiteboard question by hand that involves manually writing out verbose C++-isms like "std::unordered_map<uint64_t, std::string_view> hashmap;".

I went through a day of interviews at Facebook once where not even a single person interviewing me worked in C++. A lot of the interview cycle consisted of me answering basic syntax and STL questions or clarifying my handwriting which made it extremely difficult to finish the problem in the allotted time.

Google interviewers sign up for particular languages and are expected to have proficiency in the language. As an interviewer, I also allow a lot of abbreviations (so long as we agree during the interview what they are) and I expand them in the digital writeup. That makes large generic types in Java/C++ a lot easier to interview with.

"Can I use AL for ArrayList?" "Go for it"

I interviewed at Facebook using C++ and didn't have any issues. I guess maybe you were just unlucky. There are thousands of interviews so it happens that some are bad and you might get them.

And if you think C++ is too verbose I guess you've never interviewed in Java?

Personally when I interview people I don't care about specific syntax details. I do have at least a passing familiarity with 99% of common languages though, I think only once (out of ~500 interviews) did someone use something I had never seen before.

Too bad Google, Amazon, & Microsoft just shrank their workforces in response to the no-longer-zero interest rate.

Only finance and game dev was a little bit of hyperbole. I do see other jobs for like aerospace or GIS, at least looking at job postings on LinkedIn. Though I most assuredly do not have the requisite skills outside of just C++ to work in those fields.

I think big tech has the same issue where they don’t want to cultivate talent. I doubt Google or Microsoft would consider me at this stage in my career because I lack a college degree.

I will say that I do get recruitment emails from Amazon, though I’m sure those are just shotgun blasted to anyone with a pulse and a LinkedIn.

> I doubt Google or Microsoft would consider me at this stage in my career because I lack a college degree.

Don't know for sure about Microsoft - but if you can get a referral at Google, they will definitely consider you. A college degree definitely helps you get to the interview stage, but doesn't do much more than that. A solid referral pretty much guarantees you an interview.

You can also work on rockets! SpaceX flight software is all C++.

I wonder what percentage of devs would still want to take a job for Elon Musk on normal competitive terms, though. I would demand getting the severance pay up front for example.

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