Hacker News Reader

Comment by ramesh31 | Hacker News Reader

>$100k is quite a bit below what I'm looking for at this point in my career.

It's a rough pill to swallow, but the rise of remote work is inevitably going to pull things down to a "national median" somewhere in this area. There will always be the coastal tech hubs where top tier folks can go to make real salaries. But for the most part we (in the US) are going to be lumped together and forced to accept something in the range of 2x the average income instead of 3-4x, similar to how things are in Europe. Particularly when you consider the amount of LatAm/Canadian nearshoring going on right now, and the absolute glut of junior/midlevel devs on the market.

View on HN

I heard this when my career started, and it wasn’t true then or now.

The skills just aren’t there. I run interviews and struggle to find anyone, anywhere, that can actually program. English proficiency is also hard to come by. This wouldn’t be an issue in most of Canada, but I’ve yet to see a Canadian remote applicant.

I'd wish Joel Spolsky didn't popularize the concept of "programmers can't program".

It have made hireing so convuluted since it boils down to tabs versus spaces.

I'd rather argue that the methodology to hire is flawed generally and dice rolls are probably better then most processes. Especially the riddle and leetcode ones.

Spolsky's fizzbuzz article is the standard reference, but the reason it got so popular is that it resonated with anyone who's ever tried hiring a developer.

It's not "tabs vs spaces"; there are just many people employed as software engineers who 1) cannot translate an English (or other human language) description into working code, and 2) have no idea how software actually works. They know enough about the mechanics of programming to copy and paste code from Stackoverflow/ChatGPT and use git, but if they encounter a novel problem they are totally lost. Hiring them is like hiring someone who only knows how to drive to be your car mechanic.

If you've been in the industry for 5+ years, think hard and I'm sure you can at least think of one example of a coworker you've had that fits this description.

Is there a Spolsky article or is it this Jeff Atwood article?: https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

If it is this one, encountering at least one example of a coworker over 5+ years is pretty far away from the numbers implied. “ 199 out of 200 applicants for every programming job can't write code at all.” I am very skeptical of this.

Whoops yes, got them mixed up. Same sentiment, though.

Keep in mind your coworkers are the ones who passed the interview. How much hiring have you done? 199/200 of applicants not being able to code is probably an underestimate these days; now that it's so easy to apply for jobs with one click on LinkedIn, Indeed, etc. any job you post will get flooded with resumes from people who are completely unqualified and have literally never held a programming job or have any computer-related education. Can't blame people for optimism, I suppose?

If we jump to the next level of the funnel, to people who have passed an initial resume screen and are doing a phone or in-person interview, I estimate at least 60% of those candidates are still unqualified to hold a position as an actual software developer solving actual technical problems with code, in my personal experience.

The only people who are incredulous aren’t running interviews, or maybe charitably they work someplace where people want to work.

I feel you but he was right - sadly

I give no leetcode problems. Most people I interview cannot get a class that they themselves are writing to compile or run.

Are you hiring? I'll take that bet, and I'm looking.

Risk aversion.

Define "actually program".

What are you evaluating them on? Leetcode?

Simple assignments that should be doable without using google or any external sources. Just fire up an IDE and solve a problem while someone watches. So many fail.

I'd fail 90% of tech interviews on the spot if I had to fire up your IDE, instead of firing up a white board and an expo2

And that’s why we don’t hire people that are like that. We need to hire people who are comfortable being uncomfortable, and can think on their own rather than just pull down answers from other places and massage them to fit whatever problem their solving.

What is the sign that one knows his job?

He comes dressed for it and with his own toolkit.

You seem to be testing for proficiency in slow NIH-tendencies basically, but since discomfort is a requirement, maybe that works for you and for them too.

If you can't fire up an IDE and write code, you probably should fail that interview

IIRC, Joel's thesis was could not program anything. I believe his example was fizzbuzz, and he stated an absurd number of people could not do that in an hour

The level of tests I've seen many places includes stuff like reversing a string, or if you want to be fancy, reversing words within a string. It takes shockingly little to filter out a lot of people, and I'd argue that often you want it to be at a really stupidly low level for a first pass, even when using tests they surely must have seen before.

Reversing the order of the words, or the order of the characters within each word?

Why not both? Bonus points if you require the ability to reverse any given word in a sentence.

Every variant is fine. It's really the kind of thing you do for the most basic possible filter. The point isn't so much what they do, as whether they're able to produce any working code more advanced than Hello World.

But it's also then possible to make use of "one step up" by asking people for variations and seeing whether they can talk about tradeoffs (still at a very basic level, but still).

E.g. in a higher level language, if asked to reverse the order of the words you often get variations of split on space, reverse the resulting array, join. In which case you have an opening to ask them if they can do it lower level, in minimal space.

In which case, the "typical" solution becomes to reverse the string in place, then iterate and find the start of each word, and reverse that in place. Both reverse operations need at most two pointers and a temporary, and can be done with the same function if you take in a start and end pointer.

If you have that helper to reverse a given character range in place, reversing the order of the characters within each word without reversing the word order is just the same thing without reversing the whole string first.

At least half the candidates I interview cannot figure out how to basically split a string. They all have years of SWE experience on their resumes.

What was your question? Is it “please split a string by whitespace”, and do you accept s.split() as a correct answer?

One google interviewers ask me a question that starts with “implement google search” and ends with my implementing splitting a paragraph. Of course I failed the interview, but I have to think he has failed me way before we get to write any code.

I'd rather not post too many details about the particular question, but it's only slightly more complex than String#split. It has multiple valid solutions, from regex matching to for/while/do&while loops to String#substring. If you have even a basic understanding of your language of choice's standard library, at least one solution is obvious and implementable within minutes.

I'd say about half of the candidates that interview are unfamiliar with the String#substring equivalent of their language. This is for a senior position, and everyone has multiple years of experience on their resume. It's... interesting.

My point is: are you sure the candidates failed because of their programming ability (unable to use substring), or was they confused due to the question itself? It is very easy to get to the situation in a interview where the candidate is just straight up unsure on what the question is about. The candidate might fumble not because of not understanding #substring, but rather whether you would accept it as an answer.

Many people would say those candidates should be failed anyway due to X, Y, Z reasons. But I want to highlight that in those cases, the interviewers should realize they are assessing something else, and not programming skill.

Simple test. I’d say half struggle to declare a variable. Maybe 1/4 can get a class to compile. 1/6 can get code to run. 1/20 can get code to run and maybe start to solve the problem.

I am very curious if it is actually simple or not. I've had some "easy" interview questions that are pure CS trivia. But this and your other comments make it sound practical... can you just post it?

Given a 10x10 array filled with numbers. For a given (x,y) starting point, search the 3x3 grid starting with that point as its upper left corner and indicate if it contains a particular number. Ignore error conditions such as running off the edge of the array.

I estimate that 80% of candidates could not accomplish this in an hour. 50% of them could not even get out of the gate.

this?

    array data = (array(int))random_string(100)/10;
    int x = random(10); int y = random(10);
    int seek = random(255);

    int findgrid(array data, int x, int y, int seek){ 
        for(int i=0;i<=2;i++){ 
            for(int j=0;j<=2;j++){ 
                write("%d:%d\n", data[x+i][y+j], data[x+i][y+j]==seek);  
                if(data[x+i][y+j]==seek){ return true; }
            }
        }
    }

took me 15 minutes, and only because i am tired and took a break in between. i can't imagine anyone calling themselves programmer not being able to do that.

80%? hard to believe it's that bad.

couldn't help myself, I think 3-5 min

    grid = [
      [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0],
      [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0],
      [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0],
      [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0],
      [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0],
      [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0],
      [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0],
      [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0],
      [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0],
      [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0]
    ]

    foo = function(x,y,num){
      if (grid[x][y] == num) return true;
      if (grid[x+1] && grid[x+1][y] == num) return true;
      if (grid[x+2] && grid[x+2][y] == num) return true;
      if (grid[y+1]){
        if (grid[x][y + 1] == num) return true;
        if (grid[x+1] && grid[x+1][y+1] == num) return true;
        if (grid[x+2] && grid[x+2][y+1] == num) return true;
      }
      if (grid[y+2]){
        if (grid[x][y+2] == num) return true;
        if (grid[x+1] && grid[x+1][y+2] == num) return true;
        if (grid[x+2] && grid[x+2][y+2] == num) return true;
      }
      return false;
    }

    alert(foo(1,2,3));
    alert(foo(1,2,30));

humm worked first try, probably something wrong with it..

https://jsfiddle.net/ycx159kg/

13 min later...

    round2 = function(x,y,num){
      return grid.slice(x,x+3).map(g=>g.slice(y,y+3)).flat().includes(num);
    }

And that reminded me that some people were nervous about doing the nested loop solution so asked if they could "brute force" it and we would accept that. Interview stress is a thing after all.

I'm intrigued by the slice/map solution. It would have been perfectly acceptable if you could explain what the functions did. In fact, it would have led to very probing conversations: my usual interview partner and me had a deep interest in elegant solutions.

   grid.slice(x,x+3)

Turns the 10x10 array into a 3x10 discarding the rows before and after the target rows.

If the second value in slice is larger than the length it slices to the end. It could be a 2x10 or 1x10 but lets pretend it is 3.

   .map(g=>g.slice(y,y+3))

Does the same with each row making it into a 3x3 (or 2x3 or 1x1 etc)

   .flat()

Turns the 3x3 into a flat array of up to 9 values.

   .includes(num)

tests if the flat sliced array include num.

In your example the first dimension returns a pointer to a row, then the next is the offset into that row so your lookup needs to be grid[y][x]

Also you seem to be bounds checking for 0s, but to do that in the first dimension you need null pointers to pad your row selection and a second set of 0s at the end of your rows.

It's interesting that both you and the person you replied to used arrays of arrays which is the very first mistake everyone makes in graphics programming when trying to make a 2D array or and image.

A much better way is to have a single contiguous array and use buf[y*width + x] to lookup into the one dimension buffer.

It's only much better if you care about cache misses, right? I think for a 10x10 array we can safely ignore performance concerns.

It's only much better if you care about cache misses, right?

No, not at all. There are cache misses and simplicity, but think about when an 1k image is on the heap. You have to allocate a buffer of pointers for each row then you have do a thousand individual heap allocations to get all your rows.

Now think about an image with rgba channels. Technically this is a 3d image with one short dimension. Are you going to allocate a buffer of a thousand pointers, then off of each one allocate a buffer of a thousand more pointers so that you can ultimately do another 1 million heap allocations, all 16 bytes for each rgba pixel?

There is no upside and all downsides, which is why it is never ultimately done this way, though it is an almost universal mistake when people do multi-dimensional arrays for the first time.

Yeah, I hear you, my point was just that we know the constraints up front and it doesn't matter in this case. Sometimes it's convenient to not have to pass around the length and do one or more multiplies with every index.

> In your example the first dimension returns a pointer to a row, then the next is the offset into that row so your lookup needs to be grid[y][x]

Correct, it should be [y][x] indeed. I would have spotted that had I bothered to.

> Also you seem to be bounds checking for 0s, but to do that in the first dimension you need null pointers to pad your row selection and a second set of 0s at the end of your rows.

Not sure which is the first dimension but for an array of 10 if(arr[100]) returns false. Anything behind the && is ignored.

Looking at this again the really funny part is that it doesn't work if num = 0 since if(arr[100]) returns false if there is a zero at position 100.

> It's interesting that both you and the person you replied to used arrays of arrays which is the very first mistake everyone makes...

I copy that part from their solution but probably would have myself. I've been found out not being a graphics programmer. The experiment was a success.

Of course I've made all these mistakes to test if anyone was paying attention. (I always say that)

Not sure which is the first dimension but for an array of 10 if(arr[100]) returns false

This is taking the first pointer and offsetting it by the length of 100 pointers. There are only 10 pointers in the array so it is going into other data.

If your pointers are 64 bit and your numbers are 32 bit, even if that is referencing the memory mapped data of the sub arrays it is going twice as far as the end of the array and returning 0 purely by chance of some other memory you're dealing with by accident.

A better way would be to keep things simple and bounds check that x is less than width and y is less than height while using the single buffer method.

The point here isn't to be too harsh with criticism, it's just that it's easy to see something as more trivial than it really is.

Thats fun too.

    function foo(x,y,num){
      for(i=y; i<y+3 && i<10; i++){
        for(w=x; w<x+3 && w<10; w++){
          if(grid[i*10+w] == num) return true
        }
      }
      return false;
    }

https://jsfiddle.net/gaby_de_wilde/ycx159kg/1/

the very first mistake everyone makes in graphics programming when trying to make a 2D array or and image

but that is an additional condition that was not in the original task. there was no mention of image programming.

since we are discussing interview examples here, leaving out such a detail and then calling people out on an error caused only by missing that would be considered deeply unfair towards the candidate.

my point is, that our choice in the solution is not interesting at all because it was part of the task. you are proposing a slightly different task, which is of course interesting too.

you are proposing a slightly different task

I'm not proposing a different task, I'm pointing out that you both thought it was trivial and both ended up doing arrays of arrays then having something that wouldn't work because of the complexities of that. You're right that someone could solve the problem with arrays of arrays, but no one did.

I think the problem is mostly trivial too, but before doing graphics programming and solving almost identical problems multiple times, I would have made most of the same mistakes.

80% is about what I remember. Haven't given that test since 2015 when I left that job. But yes, your solution would have been acceptable: it didn't even need to compile, or be bug free, just show a clear logical path to the solution.

The point is that the vast majority of candidates, including some with Master's degrees in CS, could not write even a pseudocode solution to this problem. It got so bad that I started doing a verbal fizzbuzz test during the phone screen so we didn't waste so much time.

are you hiring? ;-)

Sorry, that test was two jobs ago.

I wouldn't get too ahead of yourself since this looks like C++ but won't work unless you make a special array class that returns pointers to the start of lines from the operator[] function. Even then you would need to switch the x and the y so that the y comes first.

You might say it's pseudo code but one of the original comments was talking about the low numbers of people who could actually get something to compile and solve a problem.

it's neither c++ nor is it pseudo code. but this language has been designed to closely follow C syntax, so the confusion is not surprising. in fact originally the language did have C in its name. i am going to leave the actual answer at what language this is open to allow more people to keep guessing ;-)

you are right about x and y. i was really tired :o

but it runs (at least as long as there is no overflow). here is a sample output:

    > findgrid(data, y, x, seek); // there, fixed the x/y problem ;-)
    160:0
    165:0
    65:0
    174:0
    23:0
    253:0
    229:0
    130:1
    (1) Result: 1

oh, and since we are talking about interview experiences. at one job during the interview i was allowed to provide coding solutions in this language, even though the job was about python.

Out of curiosity, here's a bit of C# to do it. This randomly populates a 10x10 grid then looks for a random target in a randomly located 3x3 sub-grid.

As per the question I've ignored error conditions, but using the simple expedient in this case of positioning the 3x3's top left within the first 8x8 not the full 10x10.

Example output is underneath.

    // Make and fill the grid.
    var r = new Random();
    var grid = new int[10, 10];
    for (var y = 0; y < 10; y++)
        for (var x = 0; x < 10; x++)
            grid[x, y] = r.Next(10);
    
    // Draw the grid for reference.
    Console.WriteLine();
    Console.WriteLine("    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9");
    Console.WriteLine();
    for (var y = 0; y < 10; y++)
    {
        Console.Write($"{y}   ");
        for (var x = 0; x < 10; x++)
            Console.Write(grid[x, y] + " ");
        Console.WriteLine();
    }
    Console.WriteLine();
    
    // Random starting point and target.
    var tlx = r.Next(8);
    var tly = r.Next(8);
    var target = r.Next(10);
    
    // Extract the 3x3 sub-grid and "[ ]" any matches.
    Console.WriteLine($"Looking for {target} in 3x3 grid at {tlx},{tly}");
    Console.WriteLine();
    for (var dy = 0; dy < 3; dy++)
    {
        for (var dx = 0; dx < 3; dx++)
        {
            var ax = tlx + dx;
            var ay = tly + dy;
            var v = grid[ax, ay];
            if (v == target) Console.Write($"[{v}]");
            else Console.Write($" {v} ");
        }
        Console.WriteLine();
    }
    Console.WriteLine();

Example output:

        0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
    
    0   1 2 5 4 1 8 0 2 8 5 
    1   4 2 2 5 8 4 4 0 4 8 
    2   7 1 8 2 5 6 3 6 3 6 
    3   8 7 3 2 4 6 5 9 6 2 
    4   6 3 4 2 9 7 4 7 6 1 
    5   1 4 2 3 8 3 2 4 3 3 
    6   0 6 6 5 1 4 7 3 4 9 
    7   2 0 6 9 9 9 3 9 1 7 
    8   1 6 5 8 3 8 9 8 3 4 
    9   0 8 7 9 5 4 0 7 0 3 
    
    Looking for 5 in 3x3 grid at 2,6
    
     6 [5] 1 
     6  9  9 
    [5] 8  3

As others have said elsewhere this could use a one-dimensional array but as we know upfront what the constraints are I've gone for the clarity of the two-dimensional. This is said to be the very first mistake everyone makes in graphics programming - but nothing in the question says it is for use in graphics, so being an interview question I went for clarity.

Similarly there's the possible use of a ternary, less memory allocation, and tighter code, but again in this situation I'd go for readability.

There may also be edge cases not covered; this was a 10 minute hack (as it looked fun) and isn't exhaustively tested.

I think there are plenty of smart, experienced developers rooted in smaller cities, making CRUD apps for companies you never heard of, making barely over 100K. The local market rate is stagnant. These Devs can only make much more if they can find a remote position from a high COL based company willing to take a chance on them.

Thats what I did. I literally tripled my salary and landed a better work environment. Time difference is great too, now half of my schedule almost always has no meetings!

This is what I did as well. I’m located in Bakersfield in the California central valley, and the local market is abysmal compared to what you would find from a one-hour drive south to Santa Clarita, or up to SFV.

Remote may bring down wages for workers located in HCOL, but it’s been great for me as I don’t have the ability to relocate.

> I run interviews and struggle to find anyone, anywhere, that can actually program

And yet... I run in to many who still get hired. I've got some colleagues working at shops where people struggling with the concept of a front-end UI that calls a paginated API endpoint. Get page 1, then get page 2 when you need it, etc. They keep filing 'bugs' and someone just bumps up the 'max per page' from 50->80->100->120, etc. The team lead stopped allowing those PRs to go through, and others complained loudly enough that the PR blocking is overridden. Because... "pagination is hard". But these people are still employed. The thought is the team lead is being 'unreasonable' by 'demanding' pagination.

I regularly hear horror stories like this, and wonder "how do people like this get hired?" and also "why can so many of my skilled colleagues not get hired?" The gatekeeping and inability to evaluate skills, and perhaps a reticence to hire above your own skill level... all of these seem to be creating more stressors on an already bad job market.

That they get hired just underlines the parent commenter’s point: good dev is a scarce resource

But also: "why can so many of my skilled colleagues not get hired?"

It is not just about the absolute scarcity of resource, it is about the ratio between bad and good. Needle in a haystack problem.

>good dev is a scarce resource

Indeed it is and always will be. But the issue is that companies don't need good devs. They need "make the thing work" devs. And if they can make the thing work for long enough to generate revenue, it's all that matters. Driving customer value down while at the same time depressing wages, and telling both parties to just deal with it. It's become the standard operating model for all large companies now.

I have the simplest programming interview you can imagine in the language and IDE of the candidates choice.

Almost no one passes.

I'm looking for work. I have a strong programming background and can't find anyone, anywhere, that can actually interview me.

Would you like to give me a programming interview?

Not the poster, but I'd be interested in seeing the sort of test the poster mentioned which only a few pass.

Prediction: Pretty much everybody here would pass.

Don't spoil it!!!

That’s not how it works.

Engineers are not really commodities. The right engineer can really push your business forward and become a powerful asset. The wrong one can set you back years while your competitors surpass you. As long as there’s companies out there who want the best, the best will command higher salaries.

If you manage to hire a great engineer for a cheap price, inevitably they will have no loyalty and leave your company for a higher offer. Thus losing you money in the long term and harming your business. A remote worker can do this easily.

If you want cheap, the unethical thing to do is hire local talent that doesn’t enjoy remote work and can’t move easily. You entrap them into the job and pay them less.

Good points. To go further, the analogy I give is it is like hiring Stephen king vs a mediocre writer. The latter can get some interesting articles written, but the former will spawn book series, spinoffs, movies.

Which is to say, I think there is a non linear effect to product quality provided by engineers who build the exact right thing and build it well. (For exact right thing, to illustrate, there are 1000s of requirements in a software system, perhaps more. Meanwhile there might be 100s of JIRA items. Meaning, there is a magnitude order gap between specified requirements and the rest. All requirements need to be coded up whether you know about them or not. The pro engineer will bridge this gap, the mediocre engineer will NPE instead)

NPE?

NullPointerException, ie crash; I assume, but I’m a business guy

NullPointerException?

Indeed, null pointer exception, or a segfault in C. In essence an unhandled state error, sometimes largely from inexperience.

I think you misunderstand what I'm saying.

There are _plenty_ of jobs in the range I'm looking for. This site doesn't allow me to find them. That's all.

So don't use it. If you already know there are lots of jobs in the range you're looking for, why do you care about this site?

Because I would still like another way to look for them. Is this a serious question?

It seems strange to see someone set expectations up front with what their site is for, then have someone complain that it's not for something different.

The site is built around having a lower limit on compensation. All I'm asking is for that limit to be adjustable. That's not something different, it's the same thing, but more flexible/usable/better.

Did you look at the site? There are a lot of filters and not that many jobs. You can just look through them.

The filters are too low for my needs.

That doesn't make any sense. There aren't that many jobs, you can just look through them. Do you think there are listing that the site has but doesn't show anyone? Do you think it's filtering from some other larger database? Why not just go to that source instead?

there are filters for salary ranges. but what you are looking for is all ranges from a certain starting point, or more general: a custom range. i think that's a reasonable suggestion.

Your post is the definition of toxic positivity. The OP needs feedback on how to make the site better. Tell them how to do it isn't entitled, it's the literal point of the post.

The OP needs feedback on how to make the site better.

Do they?

Also there aren't that many jobs to sort through, they could just look through all of them.

> Great suggestion. I'm adding it on my top priorities.

This is from the OP / site author.

Seems they appreciated the feedback.

Generic specialty lawyers can make $350/hour, so can generic specialty SWEs. Don’t sell yourself (or others) short.

Remote has nothing to do with it.

>> "Generic specialty"

Which is it?

Generic as in non-rockstar/famous. You can be a generic specialist, like a generic patent litigator, or a generic firmware/embedded engineer, without being some conference-speaker hotshot.

There are lots of working and extremely skilled specialists that don’t bother to blog and do talks and self-promote that don’t have widespread name recognition that can and do still bill $200-500/hr.

Standard a better word maybe

Yes they can, though not on 40 hr/ week and 50 week/year basis. And I know some software contractors who also do roughly same. But usually I see software folks have expectation of ~2000 hour of paid work per year

No it wont and anyone who hires at that rate will get what they pay for.

What does "national median" matter in terms of REMOTE jobs? In theory there should be one global market then, where only (hard and soft, of course) skills matter. But I know we're yet not quite there.

In theory, yes. Like you’re saying we’re still not quite there yet.

In practice there are constraints that limit job markets geographically, e.g. time zone differences or legal obstacles to hire foreigners.

No such thing as a global market. Time zones, English proficiency, and cultural compatibility will always be real issues affecting real teams trying to build software.

Don't forget tax domains. Most remote companies in the US want to hire only in the US, not just anywhere in the world, due to needing to set up taxes in every single country their employee might be hired from.

And all the non-tax-related employment law that can also differ.

I'd argue Elance was(?) such a place and it was really bad with the worst clients imaginable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com