
Ask HN: I can’t pass tech screens, Should I change careers? - algaeontoast
I have a CS degree and about 2 years of experience but even with practice have failed 10 tech screens, even one interview with a take-home I supposedly “did well on”.<p>I’m starting to think I should just do something else other than software dev for my career.  I used to like this stuff, but now algo questions just make me feel dumb and stressed out.<p>I felt like I was at least average in college and had solid internships, finding I sort of hate this stuff post college - feeling lost?<p>Any advice is appreciated.
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sosilkj
This is an important question I think, and it's too bad that it's not getting
more traction here.

If you are doubting your capability ... don't. You are capable of this,
period. You know the drill: study Sedgewick/whomever, do LC problems, make
sure you understand graphs and DP, etc., etc. The interview process these days
is bullshit, it just is. Build those interview muscles.

Also, make sure you properly are managing the usual life stuff: diet,
exercise, sleep, meditation, etc. Don't discount those factors.

Now, that said, if you are questioning whether spending the next 6 months of
your life studying algorithms -- or, for that matter, the next 30 years of
your life doing the software engineering hustle -- is the best way to spend
your time/life/energy, that's a very important question, and I can relate.
Time spent doing one thing is time you won't spend doing something else. You
have one life to live and you have to get real with yourself how you want to
live it. If you eventually pivot, OK, but pivot thoughtfully, and for the
right reasons. But I don't think you should make the mistake of thinking lack
of capability is a factor here.

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jppope
I may be reading through the lines, but given how pressed private industry is
for devs you're probably doing poorly on the non-technical part of the
interview and they're leveraging the tech screen as an easy out for a decision
that they already wanted to make.

How much time do you spend preparing for non-technical phone screens &
behavioral interviews?

~~~
algaeontoast
Not all too much - I think I’m pretty personable but what kinds of things
should I maybe watch for or try to prepare for?

~~~
byoung2
Former director of engineering here...

When I interview a candidate what I'm looking for is creative thinking,
ability to solve problems. I like to hear about programming challenges you
have faced, and how you solved them, or creative ways you've found to make
processes more efficient. I'll ask you to describe some complex system you
built in simple terms. I'll ask about ways you've found to save the company
money, or use fewer resources.

Even if your interviewers don't ask you these, you can work them into your
answers and really set yourself apart from other candidates who only know algo
and nothing else. An easy way to word these if you're no Shakespeare is to use
the SAR (situation, action, result) format. For example:

Interviewer: Tell me about a major project you led [that saved the company
money|made operations more efficient]

You: At my last company, we had a series of 100 web crawlers running on EC2 at
a cost of $5000 per month. I realized that they sat idle 80% of the time since
requests were unpredictable. I changed the architecture to make use of AWS
Lambda instead, and reduced overall compute costs by 40%, while reducing a
potential security risk.

~~~
jppope
well said. good advice

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andymoe
Keep at it and try to distinguish what kind of culture the company has in the
first call with the recruiter. Don’t even bother with a tech screen until you
know that.

These are good places to start:

[https://www.keyvalues.com/](https://www.keyvalues.com/)

[https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-
whiteboards](https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards)

~~~
dvtrn
_Don’t even bother with a tech screen until you know that._

I’m actually a bit relieved to read this, a few weeks back a third-party
recruiter submitted me to a pretty well paying Senior DevOps role at a massive
fintech company. Their overview and write up of the role was pretty minimal,
so I agreed to be submitted hoping to learn more.

The very first interaction from them was a no-reply@ email from HackerRank. I
didn’t even know who the internal recruiter was, not even a “Hi my name is
blah you, we got your resume from agency” email from a warm blooded human
being. Straight to coding test.

If it weren’t for an email address in the HackerRank invitation to contact
their recruiting team if the test failed to load or some other issue taking
said test, I would have had no means of contacting them.

I sent a polite email thanking them for considering me, and that I’d be happy
to help them assess my skills but only after learning more about the company,
the team I’d be hired into and having at least a nice to meet you
conversation.

They declined, I removed myself from consideration.

Wondered off and on if that was the right call, eventually got over it...but
that practice just didn’t sit well with me at the time.

~~~
mhdhn
of course it was right

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hackermailman
Apply to a university and do research programming. You get paid less but
nobody will want to do your job, they want to chase startup money. You will
have a degree and easily get in because you aren't talking to a recruiter,
you're talking to a PhD who prob went to the same school you did. It's the
most satisfying work too, writing algorithms for a cancer lab or whatever
they're doing at your university. Anyway that's my advice, I too couldn't get
any jobs in the beginning

~~~
non-entity
Wont that be incredibly expensive? Or do you not have to be in a degree
program to do research programming?

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auslegung
If you enjoy coding and are at least ok for your experience level, the problem
isn't you, it's the interviewing process. I'm sorry you've had so many poor
experiences, but stick with it, especially since you enjoy building things.

There's an enormous github repo <[https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-
whiteboards>](https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards>) dedicated
to highlighting companies that don't do "whiteboarding", which means "the
kinds of CS trivia questions that are associated with bad interview
practices."

I didn't read through this reddit post but it might also have some good
resources:
<[https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/532yjp/w...](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/532yjp/what_companies_will_hire_you_if_youre_not_great/>).

I don't have a CS degree, I did some self-teaching off-and-on for about 5
years, did a bootcamp 3 years ago, and have had a decent career since then. I
say that to say this: you're probably better than me at this stuff, so to
repeat, the problem isn't you, it's the interview process.

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gnusty_gnurc
I find my brain shuts down during interviews. There's also a bunch of
misdirection, multiple times I've been told "we're not going to do any
whiteboarding" only to be handed a whiteboard marker.

Don't be discouraged, stick with it and make sure you push back against this
screwed up culture when you gain experience and have the opportunity to make
hiring decisions.

~~~
omar_a1
I've had this happen too. Also, lots of vagueness about what the technical
interview entails, whether in terms of tech stack, format (Q&A? Coding
exercises? Discussion-based?), or domain of questions (Pure algorithms?
Specific applications to role? Both?).

And even when they are specific, it's not very accurate since there's a game
of telephone from the person administering the test and the recuriter.

I study hard, I learn new languages and skills, only to get a completely
different test. If I'm studying for the LSAT and am handed the MCAT, it's not
a realistic indication of performance.

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eanthy
I have experienced exactly the same and have faced a lot of recruitment
nonsense over the years. In my opinion it's all a numbers game, some
interviews I absolutely smash both the tech and hr part, others I fail
miserably even on easy questions because of various circumstances.

Some companies (for example Apple) won't even give you any hr interview they
just call and say "let's go through some tech questions" and some guy starts
asking you everything you've learnt in uni over 30mins. Others ask you to do a
project at home and present it to them. Most commonly they send you a
hackerrank which even if you smash there is always the chance you won't hear
from them.

Last bit brings me to my next point, recruiters don't see you as anything more
than a resource and will change their mind at any point during the process.
Recently I had a call with a company's HR they were super impressed and wanted
to invite me in for face-to-face and said they will inform me their
availability asap... well that was 3 weeks ago and haven't heard back.

My advice is don't get discouraged or believe anything a recruiter tells you.
Once I asked for a very reasonable salary for my experience and the recruiter
got pissed off telling me even seniors don't make this in their company. Well
guess what the next recruiter that called I got offered position for this
exact money I asked for with no questions asked.

Just keep applying and slowly improve your problem solving skills and
eventually you will land the right position. Most Interviews are extremely
unrealistic anyway and even if you fail it doesn't mean anything about your
skills, just means they found someone who would work for them for less
money... Keep trying and best of luck!

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CameronBarre
Maybe you should try to find an opportunity that isn't dependent on what
you're bumping up against repeatedly.

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omar_a1
I'm in the same boat. I know I would do the job well, but I'm not a good test-
taker. And even when I manage to perform really well on the tech screen, I
still get rejected.

Stay strong, OP.

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dyeje
Interviewing just sucks sometimes. You got this, keep practicing and
interviewing, you'll land something eventually.

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sharma_pradeep
Show me what you have built

