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Comment by MrBuddyCasino | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I follow.

Me, an interviewer: "so you know compilers, great start on monday"

Also me: "so you know compilers and have studied math on top, sorry son thats a no from me"

Tech interviews expect esoteric minutia to be on the top of your mind and easily recallable. You also must be able to talk about past projects in great detail as if you worked on them yesterday.

If you take more than a few months off interviews become insanely hard.

Frankly that's an insane expectation. I've done a ton of stuff and don't remember all the details of projects that I've worked on

That’s why interview prep is so important. You need to sit down and remember things you did in previous roles and how they apply in the role you’re applying for.

Your competition for the best jobs do this. If you don’t, that’s up to you, but you’re asking for a five or six figure annual commit to you, it’s reasonable that in an hour or two you can talk about what you have done in the past in enough detail an interviewer can see how that experience applies in the new role.

I've taken over a year off now than once and haven't found this to be true. Things generally change less than it feels like, and you can get caught up on any new coding practices pretty quickly.

I followed the inverse path: first academia in non-CS and then tech engineering. And though it hasn’t been that many years after academia, I wouldn’t be able to do it again after my gap. Granted, academics will probably don’t care about my experiences doing something else, but personally I have forgotten so many things that I’d have to start with master-level courses to refresh my memory. And then spend months to catch up with the advancements in the field I was working on.

But then again, I might be comparing oranges to apples here.

Interviewer: we got 3 great candidates to the final stage we need to pick one. This chap is strong but he will need 3 months to get up to speed after the hiatus. Let’s go with the others.

Depends alot on the supply and demand of compiler engineers though.

Could be interviewer: finally a competent compiler engineer! Handcuff him to that gold bar!

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