bgro

I remember endless multiple choice tests where the correct answer was "All of the above" but it was located below "None of the above"

Or the first answer would be "All of the above," but as item[0], it has nothing above to select.

Or "None of the above," which is always correct by default if it's the first item in the list.

I was never allowed to argue these were correct when it applied to me, though.

"Yeah tech interviews are bad... If you don't know how to do em! Everyone's an idiot except me, because I always do them right!"

and

"Well if you can't reverse a binary tree by taking "a day" to study [by having memorized every question rather than thinking through and actually solving a problem] then I guess you're not a real engineer. If you make a syntax error, you're not a real engineer. Nobody would make that problem on a test. You're just making up excuses."

Maybe some of you do an OK job and reading between the lines and seeing if someone is a good developer (something I have literally never seen or heard of in practice), but it sounds like you're just interviewing people who are naturally good at test taking / memorizing academic questions and then auto-failing everybody else and just not talking about it here. I guess those fall into the assumed category "fake leaches who do nothing for a living" / "other" category you summarized in 1 word, even if they have a decade of experience.

"Oh, no that's not true. The interview process is bad, but _I_ know what I'M doing so I'M not the problem. It's everybody else that's wrong."

People keep complaining about harassment at work. I guess the solution is to revoke the ability to file complaints.

The results of elections will now be hidden, because knowing one person got more votes than another might hurt the losing party's feelings.

Is there any way to be fully be anonymous online? No. The best you could do is Tor on a privacy focused operating system on a disposable computer on public wifi, but there are still loose ways to track that activity.

Or just cameras and transaction logs for buying wifi time or a coffee at that place. If you opt to not buy coffee, employees might remember you as the freeloader. If you pay in cash, you might be that only person who uses cash.

Obscurity is the best we can do right now. A virtual setup like docker using a typical setup with a VPN is the current most reasonable solution we have.

However, things like your grammar and sentence structure or even going to your profile instead of the home page before starting to browse are always going to be weak points unless you write a bunch of random "AI" to counteract that.

But then you're just the weird user doing a lot of random "AI"-like things.

I believe you can get specific information about user's operating system (either through legitimate, direct checks or by exploiting features and using process of elimination such as X version of Chrome is only available on Mac) and of course hardware IDs.

Your IP is obviously out there as an obvious profile that can build a general picture of you in a very similar way to phone numbers. If you use a VPN, the IPs bought by that can also be profiled to narrow you down. If you’ve seen a denial message telling you to not use a VPN, this can be what’s happening.

There are also just official exploit-tier-like features constantly being added. For example, Chrome is adding the ability to see if you're idling on a page.

I've noticed some major internet sites compiling this type of information for use in, for example, permabans. Trolls have otherwise been able to use a VPN or just create a new account. This is a large driver of finding new tracking methods outside of just personalized ads.

I think a lot of this is in its relatively infant stages. I suspect it'll be 5 to 10 years before people become aware and some newsworthy incident of major abuse occurs.

This was also when there was not really any possible home VOIP or landlines, and cell phone minutes were very expensive.

The only real solution was to buy prepaid xbox cards.

Mods in smaller communities frequently greet everyone. If you pop in to check something then leave, you might as well @everyone that they're not good enough for you so you're out.

That said, Threads seem like they could have some functionality in some technical discords.

Upper management doesn't go around looking at what individual people are doing. They just see Team X as a whole keeps having problems, so Team X is literally sitting around and doing nothing.

There's no need to talk to people and communicate. Just fire them. There's no other possible reason they're having problems other than lazy engineers not doing anything.

All this information is already natively available in the help menus, and new people should probably generally stick to things like egit if they're completely lost and need a beginning grasp imo.

In the 1 or 2 cases where they just want to see you do it in X language, it always turns out so wildly inefficient. I don't understand what you're supposed to do.

"Don't use that 1 line textbook optimal solution. Use a for loop instead." Uhh.. Ok. I guess they want to see more lines of code? More code = more better engineer.

"Why are you using a double for loop? Why didn't you just use the built in method to solve this?"

Sometimes the "built in method" is literally the original solution you were presented, but slower. What are you supposed to do? If you can't use the optimal solution, why are they giving feedback on suboptimal code in a follow up answer?

It's like they're asking you to demolish a building, but you can't use TNT or heavy construction equipment. So you pick up a sledgehammer and talk about the weak points in the structure and how you have to have a plan and strategically knock down support beams to demonstrate your knowledge in this theoretical situation. But they just scream at you-- why would you use a sledgehammer instead of a wrecking ball?

"Wrecking ball isn't heavy equipment! It's built into.... A machine. Totally different."

Or why aren't you using a rocket launcher? I guess you're inexperienced. "Rocket launcher is totally different from TNT, of course! You didn't even think to use that! I guess you're not a real engineer, huh?"

I mean if someone limits you from using TNT when that's clearly the solution, using a rocket launcher should clearly not be in the spirit of the challenge they presented.

I am awful at tech interviews. I mess up leetcode and puzzle questions even aimed for new hires. I get stuck on the wording in the question where the interviewer takes it personally if I don't understand. Sometimes I get my languages mixed up in google docs with no syntax assistance and for example could declare a new java String as a var string javascript style because I got distracted while talking to the interviewer.

I have 5-10 years working as a software engineer / architect. I am frequently put on critical projects, including running 10's of thousands of critical government servers. When tech leads quit, I fill in the gap. In an actual business setting, I'm great at picking up new languages. I frequently code review the work from our top engineers and always find spots for big optimization or critical flaws, such as security issues. I'm not nitpicking for little changes-- These are real considerations.

I've done front end work, back end work, created template code for other engineers, worked with the senior sql developers, senior security staff, the original legacy coders, and the senior devops on scripts. I get put on projects where I'm the only one, and been on teams of up to 20 people. I also monitored splunk and had every error sorted out: New errors I could identify the exact code spot and the original PR in minutes to fix problems. I did this on the side to monitor my work and was asked to speak to the entire engineer team on multiple occasions to get others up to speed.

I'm naturally "good" at a lot of things. I hate any degree of bragging like this. I'm so tired of seeing engineers brag about themselves-- It sounds like they're dismissing everybody else's skills. But this comment is just to just show I'm not someone who comes in and can't figure out an easy story and who refuses to try to ask for help or learn on their own and they just give up work as soon as possible. I legitimately try and put a lot of effort in to my work, and I figure it out. But none of this matters in the current process.

I go to a tech interrogation and when I ask for clarification on the question, I get an under the breath "jesus christ, I need to explain this to you?" If I don't ask to clarify, I get "Oh, well he didn't ask for more details. I guess he's rushing without thinking! He's bad at communication. Gottem! Next." I can't take a minute to read the question because the interrogator is screaming that I'm not constantly talking. If there's a literal 10 second gap in talking, I get a "Hello? Are you still there? Hello? What are you doing?" You have to memorize the leetcode questions that are always asked so you're able to talk over them. That doesn't demonstrate any skills.

When I get to actual coding, I've automatically failed an otherwise perfect whiteboarding session because I had a lowercase letter instead of an uppercase one. "Ha, gottem! He doesn't know the difference between an object and a variable!"

I'm not the best at writing code from scratch but I'm decent in a business practice. I'm exceptional at improving code from any skill level, and adopt that quality in my own code naturally. This has 0 value during an interview though. The only thing that matters during interviews is how many of the classic pattern questions you've memorized. All the amazing work I've done is invalidated because I can't instantly write a perfect meme code question.

I come on the internet to articles like this for help or to see anyone else who got stuck in my position, and there's always someone like you here. "Wrong. You're not a real engineer because you can't even answer an easy level leetcode question without stumbling on something. I guess you're not a real engineer. You're just a worthless fake person." I've worked with people like you before. I know because I heard this at my last job from dismissive coworkers either bashing interviewees or other people's code they didn't understand (or understand context around, such as a critical hotfix) in PRs.

You people submit untested code on Friday at 5 before going camping for the week and I have to come in and hotfix your sloppy work. I can pick up what you wrote, see how awful your coding practice is, but understand what you were thinking and fix it. However, just because you memorized the leetcode questions or can think of simple solutions to puzzle questions naturally, I guess you're automatically better than me and I'm basically a skilless idiot.

I try to have a conversation about fixing this or how I might be an unusual edge case and the interviewers are all on my side. I get to the interview and everything I said is dropped. I get a puzzle question in a google docs sheet that tests none of my skills. I understand you need to test if people can code, but all these dismissive gatekeeping methods are slamming me and letting people who just happen to either memorize the questions or they live and breath programming and can weasel through it. Those people, I've noticed, are frequently poorly trained in coding and refuse to change their ways.

My previous guess was the original version had spaghetti code (ex: lots of hard coding edge cases), and they tried to move it to a more standardized / maintainable code block that hasn't been fully brought up to speed.

The guess was based on a interview video I saw discussing the various prototypes for the original iphone keyboard.

Everyone wants to rush to fix these perceived problems without realizing how some sort of fully automated AI guessing ability about which file to rm -rf is not a good idea, and is not what anybody actually wants.

Dear end user. This is your first and final warning. You have surpassed your monthly amount of fridge openings.

It was constant a battle of "the critical basic feature you need in this micro version is broken" and other critical functions being hidden in random places.

I applied to their engineering team citing my experience and ability to help with a lot of these things, but never even heard a response.

Current alternative software suites I've seen are beyond terrible or generally non-existent / missing major features. I'm sure there's some "pretty SaaS solutions" out there from a startup that charges exorbitant prices, but I don't believe their back end or security are going to be any better.

The management / executive team would always hear about major crisis hotfixes, then immediately see my name on the high visibility pull request. Thus, they think I personally must have been the cause of the problem. Somehow I was on every team and responsible for every feature, every hotfix, and the poor work every team developed that irritated clients. (Funny how I was never responsible for the positive things, though.)

Then there'd be companywide meeting / email to cover what happened with a screenshot with my name by a hotfix with comments like "Let's not have to do things like this going forward." "Some of us have to actually work for a living, and heh I don't know about you guys but _I_ don't appreciate having to panic review things like THIS!"