I interviewed for 1.5 months (!!!) for AWS for a senior position, went through all the stages through the end. Then silence. I kept emailing the recruiters responsible for my interview, I kept getting out-of-office replies. Then I contacted some higher ups I found, told me they assigned my interview to other recruiters. No replies from them though. I have emailed them a bunch of times including the higher up. Then the news about Amazon layoffs got out; I presume they all got fired?
What a gigantic waste of time. Tons of stress for 2-3 months for nothing.
When they interviewed me the first time, the interviewer didn't show to work, so they asked another guy to interview me, he ended interviewing me in a language he didn't knew, to a position using another language entirely, the whole thing was a farce.
Some years later Amazon recruiters contacted me, asked me to go interview in person. Then during the interview in their offices, they literally forgot me for several hours in a random room of the building, the employees left at the end of shift, and left me alone in the floor with nobody in it, and I had no idea where the exit was.
I really need a job and been applying to lots of companies, but I won't apply to Amazon again.
Over a video call, the interviewer asked a coding question and immediately put on headphones and I am sure was listening to music. There was no dialogue and I had to use visual cues to get his attention.
I coded using C++ and pass by reference. He had never seen it in his life. He refused to believe modification on a reference would modify the value in the calling function!
I hoping he would be willing to discuss or run the code, this was a total let down.
Anyone you find in the real world under ~30 years old may not even be aware that you can pass a reference and modify it directly without having to make a method return a value.
It's super cool to have someone explain to you side effects yet you show them a method with a null return and run it for them showing that the value has changed and they are mesmerized.
This is false and ageist. I got a computer engineering degree at a non elite state school very recently and this was covered in the first c++ and c classes. For that matter c# has an “out” variable that mimics this functionality, and the intro Java class covered primitive types vs. reference types. While reference types in Java aren’t the exact same thing, they do allow a void function to modify the state of the caller by modifying a parameter passed to the function.
I doubt that you can make an absolute "this is false and ageist" statement in any context, but here on HN, I would have at least expected you to supply information on what location in the world and level of institutional schooling you have.
Here in north-west EU C and C++ haven't been a part of the core curriculum for over 25 years (unless you do embedded work), and code with side-effects in desktop-class systems has been frowned upon for nearly as long due to the need for more cookie-cutter engineers to fill positions and write code that might still be OOP but has to be almost as side-effect free as functional code.
Basic/core languages are still (last time I checked when doing guest lectures ~ 6mo ago) Java, C#, Python and the mixed bag that is web languages.
This is also influenced by the core program required to be an accredited institution and the large amount of consultancies people end up working at straight out of college/school/uni. This even still happens in infrastructure-centric programs where you do lean a bit about TCP/IP and OSI layers, but then essentially get dumped into Juniper/Cisco/vmware/microsoft school which almost always gets them vendor-locked and unaware of the actual concepts and abstractions they implement.
So no, not knowing the difference between passing references or values, or pointers and dereferencing them is not as strange as you seem to think it is. It is not a piece of knowledge or experience that is seen as valuable enough by the people that create the curriculum or the companies that employ the largest quantities of inexperienced workers in this part of the world.
The core project for my compilers course in Germany in 2016 was about writing a C compiler in C++. I didn't do my intro courses at that university, but the professor clearly assumed all the students were already familiar with the language.
A lot of people seem to underestimate the prevalence of C/C++. I've had people tell me that C/C++ is completely dead and the future is machine learning entirely written in Python, but the machine learning models they're using still usually have parts hand-tuned in C/C++, or even assembly.
I work at a fairly large Python shop and we have some real performance problems with Python.
Most real world software will use many core libraries implemented in C/C++ for doing the heavy lifting. Just the FFI and creating all those Python objects makes it slow.
Python is a great language for prototyping and/or usage as a glue code.
Personally, I am more inclined to use Go for anything quick and performant. If Carbon language becomes a reality, I would bet on that since it allows seamless interoperability with C++ (and there is a large existing eco system). Else, time to learn Rust.
There isn't even a compilers course here, unless you go for a science masters. This likely got shaped this way due to the lack of interest and a push from industry to deliver more 'ready to use' engineers.
I went to a small Wisconsin state school, grad with a BS in CS in 2009. We learned C, operating systems, and had a compiler class. Definitely not useful in my day job, but it was fundamental in my understanding of programming languages and computing. Can’t believe there would be a CS program out there that would skip this.
I do know there are programs out there that focus on different aspects though, and not surprised they would be geared to make people more job ready. We actually didn’t really learn about unit testing, and such, so it’s a balance.
I'm a PM and I ended up graduating with an econ BA instead of a CS degree, but I took a few intro CS classes at UCLA in...2011/2012.
Intro to Programming 1 and 2 were taught in C++. Can't remember which one taught pass by reference, but it was definitely in one of those two.
Third class I took was Intro to Systems or something like that. The whole class was C and x86 ASM. Lots of binary operations in that one, used K&R a fair amount in that class (also learned debugging assembly in GDB and some other "low-level"-ish stuff).
Just looked it up, can't say 100% it's still C++, but the syllabus looks about the same as I remember for both class. It gets to pointers by week 7, and then in the second class goes deeper:
And again, I didn't even get a CS degree. This was all lower-div CS work at a public university, and I'm not even a career engineer.
> So no, not knowing the difference between passing references or values, or pointers and dereferencing them is not as strange as you seem to think it is. It is not a piece of knowledge or experience that is seen as valuable enough by the people that create the curriculum or the companies that employ the largest quantities of inexperienced workers in this part of the world.
This attitude is why you're getting flak in this thread. Your claim that "We don't teach pass by reference these days" was too absolute, and not accurate for a ton of people. Then someone came back and told you that, and you told them that their claim was too absolute.
I'll also say that it's something that was absolutely valued around the orgs I worked in at Microsoft (Azure, DevDiv, Windows, very roughly bottom half of the stack teams). If not C/C++ pointers, than __absolutely__ passing by reference in C#.
Point being: __knowing__ about pointers, passing by ref vs. value, etc. is not as strange as __you__ seem to think it is.
I never stated my own position on this piece of knowledge, so no, __I__ did not have anything to do with your point.
C and C++ (and Assembly and compilers) are not part of the standard college software engineering curriculum here. Your opinion on that doesn't matter (just like mine doesn't matter) because it is a verifiable fact. And as such, it is also not strange to not see this bit of knowledge being prevalent. K&R isn't used much except if you are either taking the purely theoretical CS degree courses or if you tack them on to the normal required courses. Even the Gang of Four is only mentioned in passing when talking about patterns.
You __could__ argue if this is foundational knowledge, and if so, you __could__ argue that therefore the curriculum is in need of adjustment. But I didn't.
Regarding what this was all about (WrtCdEvrydy's comment), he might be talking out of the wrong hole, or he might be in a similar location as I am where this is how it works and that might be different from where you are.
My 2014 undergraduate degree from an engineering school on the east coast included two required tracks, one for data structures/algorithms taught in Java and a computer systemsey track that taught C, Linux, and some operating system essentials.
I think an operating systems course, or something approaching it, is a pretty standard piece of good CS curriculums in the US still from talking with other folks I've worked with. And I live/work very far from where I got my degree.
C# also has “ref” arguments. The difference is that out arguments are required to be assigned during the execution of the method while ref arguments don’t have to be set.
I don't think any of the languages you mentioned support true pass-by-reference. (maybe C# and Java, but it's not common) I've heard what you're describing as "pass-by-value-reference" Go, however, supports pass-by-reference which allows you to write a function like this:
func swap(x *int, y *int) {
var temp int
temp = *x /* save the value at address x */
*x = *y /* put y into x */
*y = temp /* put temp into y */
}
Sure, you can't have the same code for Python, for instance, even if it was using objects, but you can have the same effect using a hack by copying the __dict__ from one object to another. However, you are still passing the object to a function by reference because the function can mutate the object and the object that the callee passed will also be mutated the same way, i.e. mutable objects are passed by reference, and values are passed as values. Which is how python, javascript, Java and the rest work. Obviously, you don't get to change what the reference is pointing to in most of these languages, but you can change the value that is being pointed to.
Passing a reference is semantically different from passing by reference (the latter being a functionality of the language); doing the former (behind the scenes) doesn't imply that the language supports the latter (if one wants to be rigorous, not even C supports pass by reference).
The canonical example is a function that swaps the variables passed to a function:
a, b = 10, 20
swap_fn(&a, &b)
a == 20 # true
Since the above are primitive data types (ints), in order to make this work, the language needs to generically support passing the address (reference) of the variables. Java¹/Python² etc. are not able to do this; they copy the value of the variable and send it to the function, which will operate on the copy.
¹=at least, last time I've checked, which was long ago :)
²=funny to think that at least in Python, one can mess with the global register of the variables, and actually accomplish that
I understand it is semantically different, but the interviewer should not be surprised you can change a variable in a function without returning it, which is the context of this thread. It's syntactic sugar for pointers.
Python 3.10.8 (main, Oct 13 2022, 09:48:40) [Clang 14.0.0 (clang-1400.0.29.102)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> def f(d):
... d['foo'] = 'bar'
...
>>> a = {}
>>> f(a)
>>> a
{'foo': 'bar'}
That example actually holds with what the parent comment said. You aren't trying to modify d exactly, you're modifying d's contents.
Python 3.8.10 (default, Jun 22 2022, 20:18:18)
[GCC 9.4.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more
information.
>>> def f(d):
... d = {'foo': 'bar'}
...
>>> a = {}
>>> f(a)
>>> a
{}
does not modify the passed in dictionary, because the reference 'd' itself is passed by value. So the function doesn't change what d references for the caller. Java works the same way.
My understanding of what's going on with python is it passes by reference (hence what your code does), but if the data type is immutable any modification results in a new instance being created in the scope of the function, and the object passed in is not modified. Which mostly looks like pass-by-value behaviour.
I guess my understanding could be technically wrong in some way, but it seems to reflect what happens.
The issue is that Python passes references by value, so you cannot overwrite what the arguments of a function reference from the perspective of the caller. However, if you pass something like a dictionary or a class the function gets a copy of the reference and can use it to update the members of what was passed. Java operates on the same principle, although there may be some edge cases I'm not aware of where the two differ.
Perhaps I'm being simple minded, but the id of the passed object within the function is the same as the id of the object outside the function, no? My mental model is that an object's id in python is basically an address / pointer. So, how come it's the same inside the function as outside, if it's not pass by reference?
You're correct that the id is the same inside and outside the function, but when you modify the passed in argument the id changes because you're setting the value of the parameter, not what it's referencing. In C it'd be like changing the value of a pointer in a function instead of the value referenced by a pointer in a function.
Here's an example to include the id differences and the fact that a does not take on the value of d:
>>> def f(d):
... print(f"id: '{id(d)}'")
... d = {'foo': 'bar'}
... print(f"id: '{id(d)}'")
>>> a = {}
>>> a
{}
>>> id(a)
140362610196224
>>> f(a)
id: '140362610196224'
id: '140362610196160'
>>> a
{}
>>> id(a)
140362610196224
But, as I've posted elsewhere in this thread, this example will change the contents of 'd' since d itself is not being set, its contents are:
>>> def f(d):
... d['foo'] 'bar'}
...
>>> a = {}
>>> f(a)
>>> a
{'foo': 'bar'}
Until the second line of your function (in the first example), it's pass by reference, no? It stops behaving like pass-by-reference because you then reuse the name 'd' to create a new object, which has a different id and lives at a different address.
At least, this seems like a coherent mental model of what's happening, to me.
I'm not re-using the name 'd', I'm assigning to the already-existing parameter d. Which if d was indeed a reference would result in the variable passed to the function being changed.
I don't believe they're saying the feature doesn't exist or never gets used, but rather it's rarely something that's taught to junior developers, and rarely something you see highlighted as a best practice.
I've been developing for 25+ years in any language you can imagine, and know how to use pass by ref just fine, and know there are situations where it might be the best solution.
But I can't remember the last time I've used pass by ref. It's really just a coding style quirk for me, I find it "ugly" and it breaks my train of thought when reasoning through the flow of code. I certainly don't begrudge anyone who uses it though.
And OP's anecdote about the interview is certainly disheartening. You'd hope the interviewer would at least be open to the idea of learning something new. I've learned countless things from developers I've interviewed over the years, and I was incredibly happy about it each time.
Edit: In re-reading your comment and below replies it seems you may be misunderstanding what's being discussed. Yes, the things we pass into and out of functions tend to be object references by default. But when we say "pass by ref" (in some languages at least) we mean, essentially, modifying a value in a calling function without actually returning anything from the called function. That's a horrible way to explain it, but the MS documents for the "ref" keyword do a good job of showing examples:
It's like the other day there was a post where someone wrote an entire blog post about how they changed a tight loop with a function call in Golang to pass a pointer to a struct instead of by-value so they stopped allocating and copying on each call.
Like...duh?
I suppose that's why I find Golang less weird to work with than others in my cohort. I spent a semester in the depths of C and OpenGL so I'm intimately familiar with by-value vs by-ref.
Yes, I understand... But the result, practically speaking, is objects are passed by reference, just like I said. Methods/functions can modify their parameters.
It's been a while, but my understanding was that actual C++ references were immutable, and what you are describing can only happen as a result of passing a pointer by value.
Yeah, you cannot 'reassign' a reference. The compiler will yell at you if you try. You can definitely modify values of your referenced object though, that's fair game. When it comes to pointers you can do whatever the hell you want but be careful.
All those languages pass by value and it's kind of embarrassing that you mixed it up while criticizing someone else for not knowing it.
One necessary (but insufficient) test you can use to determine if your language has call by reference or call by value is whether you can implement a swap function. In the languages you list, a swap function is not possible to implement, whereas in C++ it is, which tells you that those languages do not implement pass by reference.
We are actually both wrong. If they passed objects by value you'd be modifying a copy. They technically "pass by object reference" as another poster mentioned.
ECMAScript's Language Specification also states in section 10.6 that it uses pass by value semantics, although it's much more formal about the specific approach it uses:
I can't link to the specific section but you can review the semantics of MakeArgGetter and MakeArgSetter which are specified to produce arguments bound to the *value* associated with the name, as opposed to a reference.
Python does not have a spec that I can reference, but given that its argument semantics follows those of Java, and once again the inability to write a swap function, it should not be too difficult to deduce that Python also passes by value.
This is indeed correct. Object references themselves in Java/Python are passed by value, which is why the following two code samples do not have the same effect:
Python 3.8.10 (default, Jun 22 2022, 20:18:18)
[GCC 9.4.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> def f(d):
... d['foo'] 'bar'}
...
>>> a = {}
>>> f(a)
>>> a
{'foo': 'bar'}
Python 3.8.10 (default, Jun 22 2022, 20:18:18)
[GCC 9.4.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> def f(d):
... d = {'foo': 'bar'}
...
>>> a = {}
>>> f(a)
>>> a
{}
I said they pass objects by reference, which is true. Technically, yes, Java is pass by value. However, objects are not passed by value. The value you are passing is a reference (pointer) to that object. If this were not the case, you would not be able to see modifications to method parameters reflected in the caller because you're modifying a copy. You are not modifying a copy.
I think you are deeply confused about this topic and should not be making judgements about other people. Instead of making an honest attempt to understand the difference between pass by value and pass by reference, you are trying to mince words to save face and even your attempt to mince words is incorrect.
While I likely can not convince you further that you are in error, especially since you're now trying to double down on this, for others reading this who have a genuine desire to understand this topic, please understand that Java, JavaScript and Python do not pass by reference, but instead pass by value and refrain from attempting to redefine technical terminology.
The references I cite are quite authoritative and unambiguous on this topic.
I'm definitely nitpicking here, but I'd say almost all languages use pass-by-value, and what you're talking about is copying a pointer. C++ actually has true pass by reference, nothing is copied in memory.
In addition to pass by value and by reference, there's also a pass by descriptor mechanism. It's not widely supported, but it's just another way to glue different conventions for defining arrays in various languages, where it's not just a raw pointer to alloc'd memory.
At one interview, as a joke at the end, the set of interviewers asked me if I could write code to reverse a string. I replied, "In place, or...?" which apparently confused some of them.
Coding in C++ could be a double edged sword whilst interviewing. It's hard for some interviewers to admit that they don't know C++ and they might end up surreptitiously misgrading your work. It's best to ask the interviewer's opinion on C++ before chosing it. IMO, the safest bets would be to stick to Java or Python (even Python's a fairly hairy language these days).
I once shadowed an interview once, where this happened. I felt bad for the candidate, because I wasn't allowed to speak whilst shadowing the interview, and neither did I have to submit feedback; and the candidate clearly was coding well. Although, I did reach out to the recruiter about this. And I don't know what happened after that.
Oh yeah, I didn't mention everything, I had analogous experience. At the second interview video call the interviewer didn't show up, because the recruiter forgot to tell him about it. At the fifth video call with a different interviewer, he was an hour late because of the daylight savings change, again the recruiters' fault.
I'll add to the Amazon interview complaints (early 2021 so remote). The recruiter prepped me ahead of time that I would have only 4 interviewers, and the next day they would be sending me an approval or some feedback. Having done interviews before I knew this was nonsense, and sure enough 2 or 3 days after my five calls, he called back genuinely surprised that there was no feedback. The interview itself was genuinely interesting but complicated by this team not having hired a frontend eng before.
From being on various recruiting positions, I believe it's usually just incompetence or laziness.
Hiring tends to happen when there's not enough people. Only the people who can do the job are qualified to assess whether someone can do the job. So you have people who are already at double the workload having to take time to design and handle interviews and such.
And by the time you get everyone to sign off on hiring this guy at the extravagant tech salary, economic downturn forces you to fire a bunch of people. In a recession, the least useful people are probably HR.
Sounds familiar! Not to mention the interview itself being a never ending stream of “tell me about a time when…”
Eventually you’ll get a “No” along with a message that, per policy, they don’t provide feedback. And then you’ll get several emails insisting you send your feedback, because they really want to “improve the process”. *facepalm*
Unfortunately, despite assurances to the contrary, I was generally unimpressed with the quality of the people doing the interviewing. One of them was in his kitchen, while family members moved about behind him. Another didn’t share video, because reasons, making every silence while they made their notes that much more awkward. And another would spend 2+ minutes typing in silence until finally asking the next question, ruining any opportunity for flow or conversation.
Judging by Amazon’s recent growth (prior to the recent layoffs), I’m not sure anyone has had time for any engineering. They’ve all been stuck doing interview “loops”.
Last time I interviewed for Amazon, I couldn’t understand one of the interviewers spoken English. Combination of bad audio (their side, I have a good headset) and accent. I kept asking him to repeat himself and eventually gave up, and tried to guess at what he asked.
I usually defend Amazon (used to work there and enjoyed it) but the last interview cycle was really unimpressive.
Is that a bad thing? A lot of real world problems don't have simple computational complexity. I'd learn more about someone from how they considered heuristic tradeoffs and assumptions that could produce a "good enough" solution to a tough problem than seeing if they could reproduce Dijkstra's algorithm from memory.
You can offer. Nothing about it being NP should prevent your implementing an exact solution, though. It'll be slow as balls on (at least) some inputs, and you should surface that, but maybe they only need something that works for N<5 or something.
That's different than it being undecidable, in which case you have to insist on providing something other than an exact algorithm that handles every input.
For the short story. A few years ago I was sitting a CS exam that was 3 hours of coding and then a defense where you explained what you have done on the board.
You had to compute a graph from a set of points (i think it was knn, not sure) and do stuff on it. At some point of the defense, this happened
Me: I skipped this question.
Examinator: why?
Me: If I compute it using the graph structure, it reduces to max-clique, which is np-complete. I looked for a solution using the point dara but didn't find it
Examinator: can you write an algorithm for max-clique on the board?
Me: here. This is exponential time
Examinator: it's worst case exponential time. But in this case it would have worked, you just had to try it
Me: urgh
Now I've learned my lesson: np-complete doesn't mean impossible
I will never again interview for Amazon unless I am about to be evicted and they are the only one left in town. Interviewed for a senior dev role, went through all the rounds, took days off of work to be available, and after the final round they just ghosted me.
I had to follow up to find out they had chosen someone else.
The amount of time I put into those interviews was absurd, reading up on all their principles, coming up with stories from my career where I met their principles etc. To then get ghosted at the end was a real slap in the face.
It seems to be a mixed bag. Don't know folks there who are developers specifically but I know people who say they really like it (admittedly fairly senior) and I know people who couldn't wait to get out after a rather short period.
Wow lot of complains here. I've had a good experience interviewing with Amazon few months ago. Recuiter was supper supportive and following up constantly. The interview rounds were also relatively nice. The only thing was to prep for all those behavioral questions. Been working there for a few weeks and so far better than what I expected.
It’s useful to call back because if you did well but they picked someone else recruiters can often send you to some other interview with a different team. This common because a team will often say we want person X, but Y is also acceptable if X declines.
I came here to say this. You didn't fail. Its just not a good fit. maybe they are incompetent, and saving you heartache in the long run. Maybe they weren't able to extract your relevant experience. maybe you didn't share effectively. Just keep moving and good luck!
THIS! It's a company that's not keeping on top of things! Overworked managers, HR doesn't have a queue, whatever, but it is unlikely employees magically escape these issues.
I tried to refer a friend to AWS and this happened to them as well. Twice.
Here's the thing though: you know all those horror stories you've heard about big tech companies and how they operate? Most of them are true, so if you actually care about the field then AWS is not the place for you. Especially if you're senior. Junior devs: you'll want to start here to build your rep and get a taste for awful at least.
EDIT: I should add that the ghosting of my friend was confirmed to be due to lay-off of the recruiters, so that's most likely the reason for the majority of the ghosting complaints here.
Highly unlikely you will get a severance pay as most company will only offer barely minimum required by law, which is is not much and definitely not worth the hassle. Also probation period makes things even worse for new starters as it can easily abused to dismiss a new employee for no good reason.
since amazon has a policy to layoff the bottom 6% every year (numbers may be off), any good manager will be constantly looking for someone to hire into the bottom 6% role so they can keep their good people. Since they are not actually looking for someone who can do a good job they don't care if they treat you well.
1/ Managers particularly for SDE roles don’t usually have >10-12 people. In reality the URA (Unregretted Attrition) goal is mostly managed at the L8+ level where organization sizes are usually hundreds. Far more likely you have some underperformers in an overall organization of 300, even if an individual team is all awesome.
2/ Interviews at Amazon involve a Bar Raiser who almost certainly won’t work in the Hiring Managers span of control, and the debrief attempts to answer “Is this a bar raising hire?”, meaning is this applicant better than 50% of people in the role/level.
I can really only speak for AWS and Engineering roles, but I never saw any “Hire to Fire” behavior at Amazon, and most every Bar Raiser that I saw took the role seriously and was not a “rubber stamper”.
This is my experience, too. I've mostly stopped responding to comments where people talk about how bad Amazon is. I've never experienced the horror stories despite being here longer than the average tenure and working in three separate orgs.
Balls may have been dropped by some people, but I always have recruiters pinging me relentlessly the day after I've done an interview so they can get back to the candidate within 5 business days.
I keep hearing this trope but this is very naive. A manager simply cannot keep hiring into bottom 6% role. All candidates are subject to the same type of interviews. Every interviewer has to give a "hire" decision for the new candidate. Then there is a bar-raiser interview in Amazon where the interviewer belongs to an unrelated team. They need to give a "hire" decision too. Unless all of this happens, a manager cannot simply hire a new candidate. There is no way a manager can simply hire into the bottom 6% role to keep their good people.
I saw this happen personally. I was in the interview loop along with the hiring manager, HM was not inclined but the bar raiser and other people on the loop, myself included, were inclined but as a downlevel (L7 -> L6). Candidate is hired, I start mentoring him, he gets dev-listed (aka Focus) within two months, is pushed out by month six. I can only assume the HM had an axe to grind against this candidate, and saw a H2F opportunity.
“I can only assume” is I think the key to this comment, however let’s explore some hypotheticals.
You are a Director; you have a 350 person organization; you’re leading a rapidly growing business (let’s say >40% YoY growth in revenue, not uncommon in parts of AWS); during the OP1 you secured incremental investment of 20% meaning you’ll grow to 420, which is +70 hires to make.
You’re goaled against a 6% URA meaning 21 people exit voluntarily after being entered to Focus, during Pivot, or involuntarily at the unsuccessful end of a Pivot.
If I spoke from experiences, I’d say the (vast) majority of your URA will likely come from the tenure group with < 18 months at Amazon, in effect, hiring decisions which didn’t work out and where, in debrief, everyone thought the person had potential to be a bar raising hire but in reality they were bottom quartile. In the debrief your clear options were “Hire at L7”, “Hire at L6”, “No Hire”, plus maybe some flavor of good fit for Amazon but not really for this specific role.
Let’s take the extreme of this and say all URA comes from just the +70 growth, 21 people would be a 30% failure rate.
In a less extreme and more likely scenario: it’s more like some fast failures occur from the +70, others are slightly slower and show up after 12-18 months (that would be the prior years growth). Tenured people with e.g. >4 years sometimes start to struggle for whatever reason.
That’s not all that unexpected, in my opinion! Even with a structured well-used interviewing mechanism you’re getting perhaps 6 hours of signal and during this time the applicants are naturally very focused on “putting the best foot forward”. After a hire decision you work with someone for 6 months or more and ask “Is this what I expected?”, and “If I could make the decision again based on the signal I now possess, would I still be strongly convicted and proceed to hire this person?”. When the answers to these questions are “No”, that’s often what commences the performance management processes.
Now, this explanation works for growth businesses, it’s less apparent how 6% URA makes sense in a flat growth organization, since you’d be finding those cuts from a mostly tenured and presumably mostly proven set of people.
This is seemed pretty standard practice now, small companies, big companies, recruiters, FAANG. Actually Amazon for me was the best - I deliberately followed up a week later and they actively apologized and provided some feedback.
Could it be a deliberate test for being persistent? "Candidate does not jump through hoops to follow up, if they are not sufficiently interested we aren't either"
Then on the other hand, nobody ever got promoted for being nice to rejects. If their processes select for ambition (and they sure do), nothing that does not promise promotion will ever get done and that should qualify as explanation three times over.
Well they didn't change their mind. :) I think providing feedback is work which also requires coordination from more than one people, so is easy to avoid.
I went through four interviews with (insert popular encrypted messaging solution) a while ago and got a verbal offer, then proceeded to be ghosted entirely, no more replies, from multiple people. Still don't know what happened.
How is this acceptable? So much wasted time, and not just for me. I basically interviewed the entire team I was supposed to be working with.
Here (Israel) it's illegal, you can reject a candidate for pretty much any (non discriminatory) reason but you have to tell them about it pretty promptly.
It's weird there are US states where it's not a requirement.
One practical problem is that there are a fair amount of people who are simply unstable, and if told why they were rejected (in very neutral to positive framing) they will actively challenge it and even go pseudo-stalker mode over it.
Dealing with just a handful of these guys is enough to do away with providing any sort of feedback. Like many things, a few bad apples ruin nice things for everybody.
Exact same thing happened to me with Amazon. Spent a considerable amount of time interviewing with them for a manager position, then they simply ghosted with zero recruiter response for weeks on end. Finally they told me they ended up closing the position.
Very similar experience. Checking on my application using the link they provide would still show "under consideration", but I knew after 2-3 weeks I wasn't going to get a call back. Someone finally got back to me after I emailed/called a few people I had dealt with along the way and they confirmed it.
Don't know and I am desperate enough to not care about salary at this point: I apply for jobs everywhere and the only times I have had a reply the last 6 months (except for AWS), I was offered positions with relocating to other countries.
An interview with one of the largest, most important tech companies in the world. Everything about landing a job there makes you more valuable. You have the prestige of having worked at AWS, who are known for hiring only top talent. And you’ll have worked at a scale unrivaled outside of a handful of other large tech companies. I’ve heard nothing but terrible things about working at AWS, but if you can tolerate it for a while, I’m sure you’ll have gained a lot of valuable experience. The trouble, it seems, is getting out before AWS makes you completely miserable. /(Based on people I know who have worked there, and comments I’ve read around the internet. None of this is first-hand experience.)/
I am still curious about the other question, though.
Interviewed with about 28 companies for almost 3 months, without a single offer! I was starting to get really worried about money and burned out from interviewing. In the past I've never interviewed with more than 2 or 3 before getting an offer
I now this is incredibly privileged. I'm not humble-bragging, just observing the change in the market.
As things usually turn out, during the last week of the 3-month search I received 3 different offers all at once.
For reference and if it matters: I've got 14 years of experience.
I had the exact same experience about 5 months ago. > 40 applications, ~30 responses from recruiter, did at least 1 phone screen at 20 of them and around 10 full interviews (4-6 modules each). It was brutal and I don't recommend it.
Almost 20 years of experience at great large & small companies in the SF Bay Area. I like to think that I'm relatively intelligent and competent, but man, some of the interviews were torture. Even interviews for what are mostly CRUD web app development positions were doing l33tcode interviews (literally, I googled them afterwards) of moderate CS algorithms.
After 2 months of interviews I did get 3 offers at the same time. I've interviewed around here since ~2005 and I have to say it's still a crap shoot of if you'll get a good interview process. Some companies were great and had well rounded modules, focused on leadership, communication, design and just a little bit of programming. Others threw multiple l33tcode puzzles at you and had no idea what they really needed. Very frustrating.
I know this limits job opportunities, but a few years ago I started pre-screening the interview process. I ask specifically if the interview will be the whiteboard-type. If the answer is yes, I politely refuse the interview and tell them that I don't participate in whiteboard interviews. This is all done tactfully of course, but I refuse at this point in my career to be part of the tech hazing rituals. I have many other things I enjoy doing, rather than spending 6 months on Leetcode to ultimately make someone feel good about their previously worked out binary tree algorithm.
This has eliminated 90% of the stress involved in job searching, and I'm confident that I can get an offer at basically every interview I get into.
I'm not going to get a position at Amazon or a SF company, but after seeing what friends have gone through I have no interest anyway. I also make coastal money living in the Midwest, which was achieved by the exact method I outlined above.
Now if I was in a desperate situation I would probably be forced to go through with these whiteboard interviews, which would suck - you do what you have to do though. However, I wish more engineers would refuse whiteboard interviews. If more job seekers did this I feel like we could change the industry, but the whiteboard philosophy is so widespread that it's an uphill battle.
I'd say it's unprofessional to out & out leave the interview. Maybe for practical purposes it doesn't make a difference (though it can be a small world sometimes and you never know when something might come back to haunt you) but there's a certain amount of social norm & politeness involved, even if your own sentiment is "well they aren't respecting my time so why should I care?"
Also it can come down to just a bad recruiting/HR process and the place itself is perfectly fine to work for, and maybe that doesn't come through in the initial screening nonsense but you figure it out from the final round. Or you just end up not having a choice if the market is tight and you would end up wanting to take the job for the paycheck even if it's only 6-12 months while you find something better.
I guess depends on the context, I walked away from interviews where people were non-professional, rude or just plain wasting my time due to poor job description and completely different expectations. On the bright side, you save them time too.
Also I would say poor HR practices are correlated to the quality of the workplace but that's just a hunch that I follow. Not science backed.
Thanks for sharing. If I may ask, when was the last time you looked for a job? I'm saying this because maybe you're having trouble due to ageism that you didn't encounter before.
Very wide range depending on the company. Startups and the like $200K/yr+ and equity. The equivalent at Google is $500K - ?.
As an aside, Staff Engineers have to ride this strange line of being tech leads, managers, architects, and ICs. In my experience, one part or all parts will suffer. Will Larson's book[1] dances well around the ambiguity, but basically when you take a Staff Engineer job, it'll be unclear what you're signing up for.
I just did a job search with ~15 years experience for a Staff+ position in Feb of this year, got interviews at most places I applied, multiple offers. From speaking to friends, the situation today is completely different. Multiple places I applied or had offers have locked down hiring and/or done layoff rounds. Those who are still hiring can be a lot more picky - either lower comp, higher skill bar, targeting underrepresented groups, etc.
I'm in my late 50s. When I hear about the salaries that much younger folks are pulling down in the FAANG companies I'm generally pretty shocked - I've never made anything close to that and don't have any expectations to. My expenses are way lower than most of the younger folks in tech because my house is paid off (will be in about a month), we drive 20 year old cars and we're quite frugal. For most of the past decade I've worked in startups where the pay hasn't been great but the work has been very interesting (in some cases, fun, even) so I'm willing to make that tradeoff. To summarize: I'd be willing to work for $90K/year if it was working on something I found interesting in an early stage startup (You get more control the earlier you get in). Are my compensation expectations high?
The one thing I never understood about in tech, people talk about so much about TC but never about take-home pay (after taxes, housing cost, lifestyle cost etc).
I have friends who work very boring jobs in the gov't or non-profits (who make 90K but have a 10% 403b matching or pension; a 750K house; and a 1 million liquid investment account of CAGR of 20%), drive beater cars but through shrewd investments and frugality are multi-millionaires. I also have friends who flex in fancy cars, fancy luxury downtown condos and fancy jobs (who make 200K+ but never contribute to 401K, no house b/c lives in HCoL and only a ~150K in savings b/c travels, eat out etc.) but spend it all and when I talk to them in confidence, am shocked they have a fraction of what I think they are worth net-worth in the bank.
I used to think these stories were some kind of Suzy Orman/Dave Ramsey made-up morality tales or exceptional one-off stories - but older I get, I realize they are not. It's just most people start off the same - and it's only after years, people's money habits dramatically compound over the years that these differences become exponentially large and comical.
You're talking about monthly savings, not take-home pay, which is usually defined as cash compensation after taxes, retirement, and deductions (i.e. how much you "take home" from each paycheck). Take home - expenses = savings.
And yes, savings and savings rate is the biggest determinant in eventual net worth. I know bond traders and FAANG engineers that make $200K+/year and live paycheck to paycheck because their expenses eat up all of that and then some. One guy literally blew it all on hookers & blow and then died of a fentanyl OD. I also know people that saved about 1/3 of their take-home on a grad student or Whole Foods salary and are now living a reasonable life as a homeowning family despite never breaking $100K/year in income.
The skew for pay in the dev industry is weird. When I graduated with my BS (2008) I was happy enough to find a junior position in game dev on the west coast at 40k. Mind you that was during a lovely market crash, but after 4 years in game dev my pay didn't increase very much (but my profit sharing did /eyeroll). Fast forward to the present, I work non-FAANG at a 210k salary and am only required to do dev work with no management silliness and no required overtime. My company hires juniors straight out of college at around 100k... this blows my mind.
Yeah, that's exactly my point. The post above mine was implying that older workers demand higher pay. But I think it's the younger workers that demand higher pay.
I have in the past 10 years worked at about 3 startups where I was making way less than $150K, and the most recent one where I was making right about $150K. In a couple of those cases I was willing to accept low pay because the work/field was a lot of fun and/or it seemed like a socially important project if it succeeded (alternate energy in one case) and I knew that their funding was very tight.
Compensation in the SF Bay Area is another level but so is cost of housing in the SF Bay Area. So it's kind of a wash. Although if you're willing to rent and live frugally in the Bay Area you can save a lot.
One of the paths to financial success in the Bay Area is dual income households - the high pay for those families make it financially a no brainer to live in the area.
The compensation though makes take home pay far better than anywhere else even omitting that if you’re at a well compensating place (i.e. FAANG), even for just single individuals.
While it's certainly very real, it's conflated with a lot of things: compensation expectations, specialization, potentially not up on current trends, maybe set in ways, etc.
I think a big one is there just being fewer old programmers so you don't see them as much so you think there's ageism. But the market has grown a ton over the past 10-20 years.
None of my friends in their 40s have trouble getting jobs. This includes software jobs that tend to skew young, such as game dev and startups.
I wouldn't doubt it exists, but anecdotally it doesn't seem to be such a huge problem that you can't continue coding until a standard retirement age.
Maybe naive but I don't really see 40s as ageism territory in general. That said, a lot of people adapt. Go into management. More externally facing roles. Different types of companies.
In my 20s I was told 30 is the end of the line. In my 30s I was told its the 40s. Now the bar is higher.
Maybe I'm part of a large enough cohort of programmers that we continually push ageism out, and due to that it will be 'solved' as we hit our 60s and 70s.
The key is probably that you can't be doing at 40 what you're doing at 20. Whether that means better technical skills, better management skills, better communication skills, just better able to navigate a company and the industry...
It probably does mean that, if someone just wants to code, they probably have a higher bar than people interested in doing a more diverse set of things.
> In the past I've never interviewed with more than 2 or 3 before getting an offer. I know this is incredibly privileged.
I'm not sure why you are saying this. You're in a rough spot and you're human. You don't have to qualify your struggle, even a universal one or one you do slightly better than others. The truth is that it shouldn't take interviewing with 28 companies to find a single offer. Interviewing at a handful before an offer sounds like it should be the (historical) norm, not a privilege. I know plenty of boomers who brag about how easy it is to get a job, with many talking about how they got hired as a walk-in to a technical engineering jobs. So don't put yourself down, we don't need a race to the bottom. We empathize with you because you're human.
I've been in this situation enough times that I don't ever really feel ok until I have a year's worth of savings to cover the time it takes to find a new job. Of the 10 or so years I've been a developer, I've only maybe spent 5-7 working as one
Yikes, 28 companies is something else. I had a somewhat similar experience in the last downturn in 2010 - first of all I couldn't even get an interview for like 3 months, then in the last 3 months of my garden leave I interviewed at about 8 places before getting a visa/offer. This was despite having a solid CV. It was something else, and incredibly distressing. You have my sympathies - I'm pretty sure tech interviewing over the years has traumatized me.
not to diminish your success, but I've found similar results in the past. I think there's something about scarcity. As soon as one company knows another company wants you, all the sudden the 1st wants you now too. and if two other companies want you well, then you absolutely have to have that candidate. it's kinda messed up.
Well I don't know what exactly is wrong with me but I typically have to interview for months with several companies before I even land one offer. I have more years of experience than you (for perspective).
I'm glad things are finally coming through. Best of luck. I had a similar experience looking for a job a few months ago. I got lucky with timing and joining a company that's optimizing for longer-term cash flow.
What are your skills and what kind of roles have you been applying to?
Your experience has been quite different from mine. Laid off 3 weeks ago, 4 offers at slightly below what I was previously making. I'm a fullstack engineer.
Thanks for sharing, last year or early this year, job hunting is very easy, one month I got about 2 or 3 offers, but not it seems hard, and my current company planned to lay off people as well.
Hang in there, we're probably going to be hiring starting in January. Right now things are kind of on ice because of the holidays.
Even if we wanted to get started today (and it's tough with our own department's senior people taking time off), it's hard to move the HR people and get the budgets approved, it's hard to get the GM sign off on a hire if we want them (though that's kind of a formality, frankly), etc.
In January the world starts turning again and those things get easier.
Hard as it is, try to hang in there, it will get better in a month or so.
Yup! Knowing this, I'd intended to put off seeking for a new gig, but once recruiters know you're on the market in any capacity, they start beating down the door - I assume to stay busy, meet their quotas/goals, and to build up a list of potentials for when hiring actually picks back up.
After going through 2-3 rounds of interviews with 3 different companies since mid-Nov, all of which signaled "we love you and will be moving quickly with you" during the interview process, only to have them finally follow up with "some of our internal needs have changed with the end of year approaching, but we'll be in touch", I figured for my sanity and so that I could enjoy a little bit of my funemployment, that I'd just be upfront with them and set some boundaries.
Now, I've basically just been communicating "I appreciate your interest, but this is a bad time of year for bringing on new hires when considering year's end, so let's plan on touching base in January". We will see if this works out in my benefit or not - but it quickly became clear that we were all just wasting each others time going through multiple rounds of calls and exercises during the end of Nov and Dec.
During the turn of the year, do you think its better to wait until January to apply? I imagine people coming back from the office and just purging the last 30 days of resumes :(
If you need a job _now_, by all means, keep going. Just know that the system isn't as friendly right now, so it's not your fault when things are hard.
If you've got the runway to take a month, ask yourself: would you benefit more from building the inertia of keeping down the job application path, or from taking a breather and starting fresh in the new year? Both are valid.
Laid off from Twitter three weeks ago, lots of interest and cool companies out there. I binged interviews and have three offers to consider. Senior eng with 20 years experience
For that kind of seniority/experience, what fraction of companies asked LeetCodey stuff? Was it easy or medium/hard problems? How much time did you have to spend preparing/practicing?
Not the OP, but with similar experience levels and I’ve never done a LeetCode interview, and even regular interviews are pretty light. I mostly contract though, and they generally offer me full time after a little while if I want it.
Also not OP, and also similar experience. Most of my interviews are an hour or two of conversation, sometimes with a "I've been told I have to ask.. " techy question but never involves any actual code/whiteboard. Several times the interviewer has said something to the effect of "I won't insult you by asking you to do a tech test, it's clear to me that you understand the work" or similar. One occassion (some years ago now) I've replied to a request to complete a tech test with a "Would you rather look at my open source code/contributions?" which they did and I didn't need to perform the test.
Not quite as experienced as you (I’m in the 10-15 year bracket).
I never ask LeetCode questions because it’s far easier on both sides to ask experience-based questions like “what do you like/dislike about <technology on your resume>?”
If I get superficial answers that tells me something. If i get well thought-out answers from people who have clearly spent time in the trenches that tells me something too.
I've been doing this for 30+ years, and I've found the same. It's not just whether the candidate can answer correctly, but how they answer.
Back when I was doing C/C++ interviews, I'd ask questions like:
What's the difference between single and double quotes? A meh candidate answers something about you need single quotes for just a single character. A good candidate answers about how the data type for a double-quoted constant is a char.
If I want to pass a variable into a function, and have its value changed by the function, what do I do?* A lousy candidate says "put an ampersand in front of it". A meh candidate says to pass a pointer to the variable. The best candidate will talk about the difference between call-by-value versus call-by-reference.
People really do reveal a lot about themselves not just in what they say, but the way they say it.
> If I want to pass a variable into a function, and have its value changed by the function, what do I do? A lousy candidate says "put an ampersand in front of it". A meh candidate says to pass a pointer to the variable. The best candidate will talk about the difference between call-by-value versus call-by-reference.
I agree it's good for a candidate to demonstrate a solid understanding of evaluation strategies, but the way you phrased the question, the 'meh' answer seems about right. You asked what do I do? which invites a narrow answer specific to the language.
In fact, I had an instructor in college that would have marked you down if a quiz/test asked this question and you wrote an entire paragraph describing call-by-value versus call-by-reference.
On the final, he said "Each of these questions is answerable in 1-3 sentences. If you're writing 1-3 paragraphs, you're wasting my time and I will subtract points even if your answer is correct."
We need your professor to coach interview candidates. On the "interviewer" side of the table, I can't tell you the number of times I've asked a question that should produce a quick, simple answer, and instead got a 5-10 minute stream-of-consciousness word salad out of the candidate. Or a huge run-on sentence this-and-that-and-this-and-also-that-oh-and-this... without coming up for air. It's so common, I must assume that these kinds of replies are being taught to candidates as some sort of best practice.
I suspect many interviewers reward using a question as an opportunity to
showcase knowledge though, even if it means rewarding that kind of expansive
verbosity. I suspect the this and also that you allude to is the candidate
not wanting to be called out for failing to mention a corner case or
tradeoff.
Of course, conversations are rarely
legalistically constrained to answering only the precise letter of a question
asked; it's a matter of degree.
Forgive a painful mixing of metaphors: if the Workplace StackExchange is
anything to go by, one interviewer's flying colours are often another
interviewer's red flags.
I'll add that, as an interviewer (whether of candidates or doing qualitative research), a pattern of very clipped responses to questions about experiences of various sorts soon makes me feel that I, as an interviewer, have suddenly become responsible for filling airtime. It should be a conversation even if that can involve sometimes going off on tangents.
> if the Workplace StackExchange is anything to go by, one interviewer's flying colours are often another interviewer's red flags.
This is absolutely true.
In /r/RecruitingHell, I recently saw a job seeker saying a hiring manager dropped them after they tried to connect on LinkedIn during the interview loop. Meanwhile, another HM in another loop praised them for it.
I think it's more likely a nervous candidate who may not be comfortable or experienced in conversation, as many introverted tech type people seem to be. I don't think it's being taught; it's more likely the result of the candidate not having had interview coaching at all.
Yeah, nerves plus the big question-mark of not knowing what the interviewer's actually looking for. One interviewer's perfect answer will be another's "red flag" (see this very thread, where directly and correctly answering the asked question apparently got you put in the "meh" bucket).
> On the "interviewer" side of the table, I can't tell you the number of times I've asked a question that should produce a quick, simple answer, and instead got a 5-10 minute stream-of-consciousness word salad out of the candidate.
Yup.
There's a fine line between giving a thorough answer and just vomiting up everything you know that's slightly relevant to the original question.
I do AppSec. If I'm interviewing a candidate, and I ask them what Cross-site Scripting is, then if at some point during their answer they bring up SQL Injection, that's a red flag.
This is what I've been told. The idea being that the questions are more like prompts, and you should go ahead and elaborate to show your knowledge? Of course sometimes a questions really is just a question.
Both great questions, where the answer will give you a level of knowledge, rather than a yes/no.
(personally, I would be a meh candidate until you probed further - but I've not touched C for.. hmm, I'm old)
I often get questions where I need to determine if they're looking the textbook answer, or a real-life answer. Usually I will go with "well generally, the answer is $Textbook. However, ..."
I just realized that my above model answer gets broken by the formatter. the first question should get answered with char-star, that is, pointer to char.
Well, at the time I was doing that, it was actually for a C and not C++ job, so &references weren't even a thing. But my point wasn't that using the ampersand is wrong - just that if that's how you describe what you're doing, you probably don't have a very strong foundation in how the language really works.
Completely off topic, but I wanted to see if your bio could be parsed for an email with chatGPT - since I thought yours was the most interesting I've seen in some time. Turns out cgpt is quite clever:
What's the email address: To email, send to the domain [redacted], using the mailbox "[redacted]".
In general, email addresses consist of a username followed by the at symbol (@) and the domain name, such as [redacted]@[redacted]. However, without being able to verify the existence of the domain [redacted], I cannot say for certain what the email address would be.
Exactly this!
I haven't been interviewed for a long time now, but since the beginning of my career, when I have interviewed people I ask deeper questions. Even with tech tests, I use them as a jumping board for diving deeper into language design, tradeoffs and experiences.
Even a trivial, reverse-a-string kind of questions can take you deep into candidate's knowledge.
Contracting interviews are nothing like FAANG though, I literally had one that was a 30m chat with a couple of softball questions. Compared to FAANG they are all a walk in the park and barely need any prep.
I give contractors a coding question related to the job. Unlike LeetCode, it isn’t really challenging (not even fizzbuz), just a test that they can learn a few APIs (that are given descriptions) and write down code. You’d be surprised how many candidates freak out at that point. Unfortunately, it’s often needed for the role.
Not everyone can do this, but if you can manage to first do contract work, IMHO it's win-win for both parties. From the company's point of view: senior engineers are very expensive -- having a contract period lowers risk. From the employee's point of view: you get a good idea of what the company is doing / what your exact role would be before you commit.
In theory, it's at will employment yada yada. But in practice, it makes a difference.
How do you find contract opportunities? Is it the same as regular job searching? Do you use a firm? Do you apply to full time job posts but say you prefer contract to hire once you have an interview?
the canonical way is reaching out to anyone in your work history that you had any sort of positive working relationship with. i just went through this exercise and saw a tip in a similar thread to ask something like this in the email, “do you know anyone who is looking for contractors?” this way you don’t create a potentially awkward situation for them where they have to say they can’t hire you. and, in my case, this led to referrals that ultimately ended up in signed contracts.
big agree on contracting interviews being light. i’ve had about a dozen in the last year and only 2 asked technical questions. the rest were more curious about time lines and cost.
I went out of my way to not do leetcode so I only had one because Glassdoor was wrong. I would ask the recruiter during the initial call where I also talked about salary so as yo not waste everyone's time. I cancelled a few interviews that I later found out were leet code, not because I don't want to do them but more I think the people you end up working with are better at testing than coding, from my experience.
You can make SF/Seattle/coastal money without participating in leetcode interviews. There is a fascination on this website with these cities, but you can make just as much from just about anywhere without going through this popular hazing process. It will limit the amount of opportunities offered, but there will still be opportunities regardless.
Base is higher than I was making at Twitter, but instead of RSU/ESPP it's now options which can go either way, so it's a gamble. For me, I prefer startups, but the golden handcuffs are hard to takeoff once you've had them on for a while.
just chiming in for others that i've had a job specifically waive a coding test because they saw me livecode in front of 2000 people and my fave amazon interview story was a guy that walked in with his laptop open to my blog saying "this is just a formality i've read your work" lol
TLDR why leetcode in private when you can work in public*
(*yes yes, not everyone can work in public, but i bet a fair amount of you can but havent given it a real shot)
Last time I had a coding test during a job interview, I was left alone for an hour with a laptop that was screen-shared with a number of interviewers that was unknown to me. It felt a little like live coding in public but without any audible feedback. That might stress some people out I’d guess, but it felt chill to me. I did my usual thing, even used StackOverflow for some quick syntax & library tips, and finished the program (a Tetris-like game with an AI player, in Python). Got the job. It was pretty fun TBH, even with a lot of experience, I’d prefer the live-coding interview over talking through database schemas or whatever.
It was a whole game from scratch in the programming language of my choice. They only specified the rules. It was keyboard and console only, btw, no graphics or controllers or sound. I took the whole hour and was mostly done when I ran out of time. I forgot to write the score keeping before the interviewer came back. The AI player was “extra credit” and I finished that, so it helped excuse my scoring oversight.
It wasn’t that much or that bad, really. The setup was pretty simple, and quite doable for junior devs IMO (though full disclosure I had just left a position as a lead game programmer, so for me specifically it would have looked a little bad if I didn’t smash this particular interview question). It also helped that the problem was open-ended with extra credit features. I learned later when giving the interview myself that most people never finished the basic game, the majority never tried to write an AI player, and the interviewers were quite forgiving with their ranking & scoring - it was adaptive to the candidates. The coding part of the interview was just trying to be a bit fun and not just be pure dumb LeetCode problems. IMO it worked, I totally enjoyed the interview. The rest of the 4 hour interview included some whiteboard questions (on DB schemas, which I flubbed pretty hard) and also a lot of just talking about experiences and goals.
Yea that would do it for me haha. My bread and butter is embedded C! Technically it's C++ but we try to ease off the ridiculous C++isms because this stuff needs to be readable to the person that was waken up with a phone call at 3am and needs to explain some random behavior lol.
I've never done anything spectacularly fancy with CLI terminals. I could rig up a UI with c++ and qt, or python and tkinter.. but it's been a while. Longer ago, I used to do objc but that was forever ago!
Oh you could do what I’m talking about in C, no problem. By console and keyboard only, what I mean is that this is a game done in the shell with a REPL using printf() and scanf(), it was not graphical or anything. The programming problems weren’t about game programming, it was just design a little data structure to hold the board state, implement valid move checking, detect win/lose states. Really simple stuff, I guarantee it wouldn’t be hard for you.
Re: ridiculous C++isms and embedded C, I’ve been in the same spot for my entire career. After learning C++ in college, I joined a CG film company that had banned C++ (dumb story) so I learned how to write object oriented C. Working in console games after that, we weren’t allowed to use any built-in memory management or exceptions or a current compiler, so very restricted C++. (And the worst bug I ever fixed was when someone tried to get clever with their C++ copy constructor.) These days I use CUDA, which is also technically C++ but basically C.
So your suggestion is to just become a content developer and start marketing yourself online? Getting your work in front of others and getting the amount of reach that you have is also a lot of luck. Not everyone can get the same amount of reach as you have - I've seen hundreds of developers shouting out into the void without any recognition.
> Getting your work in front of others and getting the amount of reach that you have is also a lot of luck
I think this is dismissive of their talent, relative to other people who might try doing the same.
To be fair, swyx was also being dismissive of their talent "Just work publicly and you don't have to prove your coding skills!", which of course assumes your talent will be evident to anyone glancing at your public work. In my opinion, making incredibly complex work look effortless, and therefore easy to follow, requires exceptional talent.
> I think this is dismissive of their talent, relative to other people who might try doing the same.
I believe those who are popular content creators are also better at marketing and sales. Getting their work recognized means that their marketing talent is good and not necessarily their programming skill relative to other people who are doing the same.
When looking from that perspective - are you optimizing for hiring people with good programming skills or those with good marketing skill?
You don't need to become a Twitch streamer or anything, I expect the main developer of a significant open source library would have a similar advantage in adjacent industries.
You can take a traditional career path, or you can carve out a niche somewhere.
Not OP, 15 years of commercial experience, been writing code since 95. Only two companies did something similar to LeetCode, never prepared — last time I seriously took part in programming competitions was in high school in 2004 — still easily solved everything they asked for. One of the problems was actually famous n queens — which I remembered as a problem, but didn't remember the solution for. Solved it in 40 minutes (with an uncommon solution, as interviewer later told me) anyway.
Most of interesting questions had to do with system design and debugging, soft skills (also system design and debugging, but of systems made out of people instead of code) and code reviews — with me reviewing their production code. Sometimes I got pretty stupid interview questions like remembering REST spec (there isn't one) by heart, but those were companies I wouldn't want to work for anyway.
I had the leet code once, interviewing for Meta. I didn't prepare because I thought that it was pointless, but I was curious about what it would be like to do it. So, I went through with it and to my shock and awe I managed to do it. The feedback was that I didn't ace it but I did more than well enough for the interviewer.
I didn't get the job though. The last step was a really strange and uncomfortable 1-1 chat with a "very senior employee". This did not go well.
> The last step was a really strange and uncomfortable 1-1 chat with a "very senior employee"
I had one of these once. The chief product officer came into the room, stared at me for awhile, then asked "tell me something you've thought really hard about...". It was a classic case of a narcissist exec. Glad I didn't get the job, as they are struggggggggggglin' right now.
Sorry for slightly off topic response but is there a site (twitter account?) you can recommend for (unsubstantiated) gossip about what's happening inside twitter?
While I'm obviously guilty of wanting to know details about the 'car crash' I'm also curious on a professional level about the challenges and changes that are happening to the engineering teams in this extreme situation.
This might be another post once I'm done but in total I was in contact with 51 companies. Most contacted me, and a bunch I reached out to. I'm tracking everything in Notion but I think about 10-15% didn't get back to me, most moved onto a first round and then what happened after that varies. I stopped the process on about eight of them after I had four companies I was interested in. I'm now at three offers and the forth backed out because someone else accepted the offer while they were putting mine together. Pretty good run though.
I’m mid senior level in Product Management but come from a big well known tech company, and I work remote from a non-tech “city”. 5 years PM experience, 6 years as a Software dev. Launched 3 products from concept. One has over 20 million MAU, one created 9 figures of revenue for my previous company, and one I have no idea because I got laid off lol
According to my LinkedIn I’ve applied to over 200 roles in the last few weeks and heard back from about 5. Of those interviews, I’ve been rejected from all of them, even smaller shops.
Hearing from recruiters has been much more fruitful, making it to middle and final rounds at surprisingly good companies, but in both final round instances, the role either got defunded due to a hiring freeze or other issues.
In one instance, the recruiter I was working with at a Big N tech company got laid off in the middle of interviews, at which point the company ghosted me, presumably with my application falling through the cracks.
My severance package is much smaller than most, since my company is framing the thousands of layoffs as “performance based” which allowed them to skip the mandatory notice period, and avoid paying out our very generous severance packages. It turns out benefits don’t matter if a company is afraid of a recession.
If anything this whole experience has wiped out my idealistic views of working in tech. I’m a cog in a machine that can be gaslit and disposed of when convenient for people levels above me who have no empathy for my existence
Can any other PMs speak to how their job hunt is going? Hoping it’s not just me
> My severance package is much smaller than most, since my company is framing the thousands of layoffs as “performance based” which allowed them to skip the mandatory notice period, and avoid paying out our very generous severance packages.
Consider talking to a lawyer, and comparing notes with other people in the same boat. Doing this is almost certainly illegal in the US. (In addition to owing you severance, they may also be open to slander/libel charges. I am not a lawyer.)
Job searching since Q4 of 2021. Same thing with PM roles. Have lots of direct operational experience with a particular industry, have full stack dev exp, have PM exp, have big tech names, have 15+ YOE, so naively thought I can apply for companies in the space and get some professional courtesy for at least call backs of feedback.
Nope. Learned real quick that end of the year nothing gets done and it's just a waste of time. Big tech company recruiters, big bank company recruiters, startup recruiters, etc would shuffle amongst their many things, deal with sicknesses, deal with internal communications and mandates, and you're just another ticket in the queue for someone to gladhand. Sent out 500 resumes, even hired VAs to do it for me, and would get 20 call backs, 5 interview requests, 2 round two/full day, 0 offers.
By Q1/Q2 of 2022 switched strategies, got into studying for certifications (Sec+, PMP, etc.), and still the same. Responses picked up because start of the year and there's more action. Have more interview requests, and finally learning how much emphasis people put into STAR or CFAS frameworks, Leetcode, full day virtual onsites, and all of it was still kind of bullshit. Went with lots of crypto startups this time around since many were looking to staff up for the year, every single one of those crypto startups had lots of audacity and arrogance and ran by kids. Looking back, out of a list of 100 resumes I sent out only 10 companies are still around after this summer.
I ended up working at a supermarket around this time.
Q3 of 2022, switched gears one more time, now going for contract roles, backfill roles, tried to go through the list of YC companies. Learned now the new batch of YC companies are run by kids and equivalent of grad students, lots of ghosting, dropped communications, unrealistic expectations. Finally found success with contracting. Figured out how to update my LinkedIn, resumes, github, personal website to be more modernized and up to date.
Q4 of 2022, learned to work with connecting to TVC agencies and agency recruiters, now getting steady contracts at Big N companies because I kept following up with recruiters that held tight to my resumes.
That said, is it you? A bit of yes, a bit of no.
Product Managers are a heavily impacted role so comp wise you have many applicants. Job searching is a skill to be learned and flexed, rebuilding your digital presence is important to be part of the mix, and mostly it's also building up a network of relationships with recruiters and referrals to get your name in front of someone at the right place and at the right time.
Right now it's end of the year, nothing gets done. Jan, Feb, and Mar will be better. There will be tons of disappointments. It's after the thousandth resume submission, and after hiring a virtual assistant to submit for me, that the pain goes away and you just see routine. It's after smiling at the same bullshit over and over again being pitched how a company is viable that you realize it's all the same, you just need something to get going then figure it out from there.
But you've done this before, you'll get to do it again.
Didn't get laid off but resigned around a month ago after a long stretch of non-stop work since I was basically a kid (worked through college, university, and straight after O_o). Basically for a little break and to focus on doing some real intense OSS. Been a wild, challenging, and rewarding 1.5 months so far. Applied to a couple places that were working on some interesting things, some even related to my own OSS, reached out by AWS but I wasn't willing to relocate to Sweden so I broke that off. I did my first "leetcode interview" a few weeks back and did quite well I think for someone who A) has only done around 5 leetcode problems for fun ~5 years ago, B) comes from a Physics, not CS background, C) is a quick learner and solver, not rote-learning BFS and DFS kind of guy.
7 YOE in web dev, full-stack.
Leaving this here if anyone has any remote work for me :)
EDIT: For anyone accessing my site, I apologize in advance for slowness or crashes, it's hosted in my residence on a puny server sitting behind me :( I've been meaning to cloud it for a while now but I kind of like the DIY of it all.
Similar to you, I left my job about a year ago after working non-stop for 25 years (worked through college, software development, architect, director, eventually C-level, all at the same small company). My break was to focus on spending time with my children. It has been very rewarding. Initially, I thought I would take 6 months off and then get back into an IC role, but after a year, I am in no rush. I have played the interview game with a few companies in the last few months, but so far have not found an inspiring place yet. There still seem to be plenty of opportunities with small companies out there.
When I left a year ago, I thought that it was likely that the industry would start to slow down within those 6 months. I have been watching everything happen with mild curiosity. I am fortunate that my wife has a healthy career, so looking for any work has been low-stress.
Thank you for sharing. You are certainly at a different point in your life and career (I am but only a humble developer), however it was very nice to read your story about spending more time with your children.
I share that feeling of observing the industry. I think that some of the recent sentiments are a bit overblown about the tech industry. Some seem to think that it's all going to blow up because a few thousand FAANG rest-n-vesters got let go. (side-note: I know that not all who got made redundant were of that type, just adding flare!)
Hi and thank you. The more I think about it, the more I find it kind of nuts that I worked non-stop for ~10 years of my formative life all the while completing a Physics degree without taking a little break apart from annual leave here and there.
I used to work at a hardware store. As in literal bolts and nuts type of tech, not software related:) Recently lost my job. Originally from Kazakhstan. Thinking of going back if I can't find anything else.
No credentials to speak of other than the fact that I could probably think my way out of an undergrad level abstract algebra or real analysis problem if cornered. Maybe topology, too. Native speaker of both Kazakh and Russian. Speak rudimentary Turkish, but could easily pick it up to a decent level if necessary. Currently studying CLRS to finally learn how to design algos. Also, trying to pick up Mandarin. Maybe I'll be able to immigrate to China in the coming years. Shenzhen or Hong Kong area.
I'll just leave this here in case anyone has a remote work for me :)
And what is it that you want to do remotely? Sell nuts and bolts? It’s unlikely someone would read your post and think “oh yeah, you’d be great for our company working remotely”. You didn’t outline a single capability other than selling nuts and bolts.
I don't have any work for you, but it would have helped if you had described your software engineering / computer science skills in more details. I'm not familiar with CLRS.
The other users correctly disambiguated CLRS. I am not experienced with software other than the rudimentary syntax of Python and Scheme. Read a CS book years ago based on the latter. Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone had any kind of job for me. Maybe something like data entry. Would have to learn coding in earnest after I pick up algo design techniques from CLRS.
>Would have to learn coding in earnest after I pick up algo design techniques from CLRS.
You're almost certainly better off learning to code first and then learning about algorithms once you've got a decent coding level. In a typical entry level coding job you can easily go a whole year without implementing any algorithm more complex than a binary search (if that).
Agreed. I would even say this is the order of importance for being effective in a real job:
1. Domain knowledge (understanding the problems you are trying to solve, for who and why they need solving)
2. Full stack awareness (understand computer hardware, networking, OS, HTTP protocols, UI etc. AND whatever the core components of your domain are. This is crucial for being able to reason about and debug a running system.)
3. Technical communication in written and verbal form.
4. Programming fundamentals.
Honestly I feel much more than "fundamentals" is a waste of time for new entrants. If you haven't been paying attention, GPT-3 has taken away the need for programming acumen for most creators. Prior to that Google+Stack Overflow got a whole lot of us through gaps in programming language expertise. Leetcode is literally just a proxy for formal education/privilege and has no direct application in daily work with the exception of a narrow few areas.
If you are truly a nuts and bolts person, let that be your domain. You could write a better inventory, search, and/or checkout system (wow bolts are easily stolen aren't they?!). You could also take the abstract mechanical intuition and focus on robotics.
One shouldn't aspire to work at a "tech company" - most of those that you might think of are actually ad companies. Following the analogy of 100 year old media, Googlers are out selling classified and yellow page ads in Search/Display, Netflix is a magazine publishing house, Amazon is the Sears-Roebucks catalog (Mail order homes!), Meta, the newspaper of newspapers. If you like sales, marketing, and influence it would make sense to work at such a place. I cannot tell you how many people are surprised by this, but it is vastly larger than it ought to be.
If you want to call yourself a developer/programmer/engineer/hacker then show up to build something that will run for a long time and not injure people during its operation. Build something better. If that isn't your ethos or ethic, there are better ways to make money.
> GPT-3 has taken away the need for programming acumen for most creators.
I strongly disagree. GPT-3 is impressive technology, but it isn't even in the same universe as a team of sharp experienced developers. It is a valuable tool for them to use in some contexts, but it won't be replacing them anytime soon (at least not at a company I would work for).
The parent comment might be refering to github copilot or chatGPT, both are fairly decent at removing a lot of google-fu for typical fullstack problems and helping newer programmers get up to speed or closer to a viable solution quickly.
> No credentials to speak of other than the fact that I could probably think my way out of an undergrad level abstract algebra or real analysis problem if cornered.
That seems like a rather bold claim to make. I don't think anyone could really do that without having studied those subjects deeply. Did you study mathematics at a University and just didn't complete a degree or are you completely self-taught ?
It's about 80% the same as any other store (keep things stocked, tell customers where they are, operate a cash register kind of stuff), 5% copying keys, 15% answering questions that are either really simple ("what do I use to hang a painting") or underspecified ("I need a replacement nut for something"; the trick is to ask them to bring the bolt or another of the same nut if they can).
What a gigantic waste of time. Tons of stress for 2-3 months for nothing.