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godelskiHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

I moved from Physics and Engineering to CS and honestly, I found the interview process very odd

I moved from Physics and Engineering to CS and honestly, I found the interview process very odd. It is far more involved and time consuming of a process than the interviews in other fields. In other fields, it is expected that if you can "talk the talk" you can "walk the walk." Mostly because it is really hard to talk in the right way if you don't have actual experience. Tbh, I think this is true about expertise in any domain. I don't think it is too hard to talk to a programmer about how they'd solve a problem and see the differences between a novice and a veteran. A traditional engineering interview will have a phone screen and an in person interview. Both of which they'll ask you about a problem similar to one they are working on or recently solved. They'll also typically ask you to explain a recent project of yours. The point is to see how you think and how you overcome challenges, not what you memorize. Memorization comes with repetition, so it's less important. …

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lazystarHN

> the medical field selects hard for people who can memorize information, to the exclusion of people who can understand systems. sounds similar to the problem with tech coding interviews. ive refactored the backend orchestration software of a SaaS company's primary app and saved 24tb of RAM, while getting 300% faster spinup times for the key part of the customer app, but i bomb interviews because i panic and mix up O(n) for algorithms and forget to add obvious recursion base cases. i know i can practice that stuff and pass, its just frustrating to see folks that have zero concept of distributed systems getting hired because they succeed at this hazing ritual. but with that said, i suppose no industry or job will ever be free from "no true scottsman" gate-keeping from tenured professionals. hiring someone that potentially knows more than you puts your own job security at risk.

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kenjacksonHN

> I found the interview process very odd. It is far more involved and time consuming of a process than the interviews in other fields. What part is too time consuming? What you describe in the engineering interview sounds like a software engineer interview process as well.

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SO
SoftTalkerHN

I haven't interviewed for a tech job in over 10 years but I've never had a leetcode interview. Never been asked about algorithms, or put on the spot to answer how many manhole covers are there in New York City. I've been asked about my former projects, my roles, what I liked or didn't like about them, how do I approach a new project, what did I find most interesting, etc. I gather there are a lot of fakers in the software dev world. So maybe that's why more places try to make you prove you can actually write code. Reaching for a book to answer, makes sense to me. That's what you'd do on the job, and nobody would think less of you for it.

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HA
hansvmHN

> months to hire I've seen that at BigCo, but that's the exception. Every other place strongly prefers a start date of ASAP, with O(weeks) from initial contact as a next-best option. If you state that you aren't available for months you probably won't be hired. > concern is that firing is so difficult There are lots of concerns. Keep in mind, 95% of resumes are some sort of bot/scam, and 0.5% of the rest are actually at the skill level I'm looking for. There are lots of potential explanations, and I don't think it's that only 0.5% of developers are who I'm looking for (there are sampling biases, survivorship bias, and all sorts of things at play in that data), but from my position doing the screening and interviewing those are the stats I see. 1. Suppose you actually did hire everyone who passed a 1hr screen. You'd still have 20+ failed candidates before you found the right person. Even …

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