Do you think the programmer job interview process is a little cruel?

Do you really have to be "the best" to get a job these days? Like I am an ok developer, worked on projects, bug fixes all kinds of shit. I am not a data set master or a multi threading god or anything I would say I am ok but it seems like being ok isn't good enough anymore.

My field is compsci, not marketing. I have a bachelor degree, a good GPA, a university award, and a portfolio of projects. Only thing I'm missing is an internship and it's a little late for that.

>fresh out of college
Only technically. Been this way for years, but since I still haven't been able to get a first dev job...

Took me 2 years after graduating to get a full time job in software development. The key is nepotism, especially if you have no professional experience to show.

out of curiousity, what are your projects?

>portfolio of projects
This is the only thing that really matters and only if they're good which clearly isn't the case. Get to improve or keep on crying about le meanie market on the taiwanese fishing imageboard.

2 good boy points have been deposited into your grownup account.

Remember to take the S.W.E.A.T. pledge for an extra 100 points!

Being "just ok" now means that you are in the top 0.5%.

You will be fine.

>mfw studied liberal arts in college
>work in finance for 8 years
>in spare time in high school learned C, reverse engineering, etc
>learn Python in spare time post college
>get fired because of mental breakdown due to stress
>do major career change
>get hired as software developer
>have senior engineer title and three years work experience
>never formally studied CS, never contributed to any open sores projects
What are you doing wrong user?

How did you get the job? Did you know someone?

>more time passes now in person technical where a million different questions can be asked and you are asked to whiteboard in front of 3 people and try hard not to lock up in fear
Am I really the only person on earth who unironically enjoys whiteboard interviews?

No but it shouldn't be the end all be all.

It's funny for an industry that loves its autistic programming philosophy like scrum and agile they never developed an efficient system for interviewing.

Business opportunity anons to get you rich. Here it is.

>get a phone interview
>spazz
>a few weeks later
>get a call back, we want you to come in for a full interview
>spazz again and say thanks
>go to interview
>spazz harder
>make a fizzbuzz
>something about why manholes are circles and the reasoning being that its easier to move them when you can use them as wheels
>get the job offer
>t-thanks
I don't see what's so hard about it. Are you sure its not just because you're ugly?

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Do people really go on interviews and just get fizzbuzz and thats it? I train for complex threading and data set questions but are some interviews really like this?

Nope. I went to a fairly well regarded 3 month program that I won't say the name of. This program has relationships with employers and I got a job through it. Interviewing was demoralizing as fuck though. Near the end of it I was in a pretty bad state mentally.

>I went to a fairly well regarded 3 month program
>got job through that

This is a major thing to leave out

It would have been a lot harder for me if I hadn't done it. You have a fucking degree though and ostensibly a college career center and alumni network.

>You have a fucking degree though and ostensibly a college career center and alumni network.
You over estimate this.

None of my professors had real world experience or connections.
College job offers were Best Buy Geek Squad tier.
Almunis don't give a fuck I have no idea what you are talking about.

I've had a few, that was an intro job so really my technical skill had to be
>do you know what a computer is
and i moved up from there.

I haven't actually had any technical questions on complex threading or any of the more complex topics, usually its more general like
>Do you know what threading is? Can you explain the differences between threading and forking?
or
>Do you know about networks?
>(fuck you) what about networks?
>blah blah blah

but basically higher level conception questions so you know what you're talking about, but you don't need to actually write it down like you would a fizzbuzz

>I haven't actually had any technical questions on complex threading or any of the more complex topics, usually its more general like
These also were for intro or more experienced position?

>get interview
>decide to walk because it's not far away
>starts pouring down rain halfway to
>get to the office soaking wet
>"haha did you swim here?"
>"can you do this"
>"no"
>" have you ever done this"
>"no"
>"what would you do about this"
>"dunno"

1 week later they called and offered me the job. No idea what I did

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mid level.
I'd assume it gets harder at more complex jobs like if you were the lead engineer or expert or whatever. Generally they had other means to measure technical ability as well, but it wasn't like
>here's a white board
>write me a thread safe multiprocess program that will manipulate the kernel thread

But considering this thread is about people being retarded and not being able to land a simple job, I assumed most people here are intro/lower mid tier employees.

>never developed an efficient system for interviewing
FizzBuzz filters 99% of candidates. What could possibly be more efficient?

maybe they were just looking for honesty user. seems to be a dying trait

Can you go into a little more detail about your mid level interview? Can you do a breakdown of what they asked you? Like say 40% general technical questions, 30% white board and 30% technologies. Shit like that. Do you remember in general the type of question you were asked to whiteboard?

Do interviewers expect you to do a 1 line version of fizzbuzz of if you do a more standard large one in cased in a loop with 3 conditions thats ok too? I keep hearing about fizzbuzz and its so easy and I don't get it, are they using it because they want you to do the most efficient version of it possible or just to see if you can do it period.

Did you go to a decent school? Regardless, do the following:
1a- determine if your school has an alumni directory and if so get access. Mine for example provides a directory indexed by city and also provided info about where the person works eg industry, employer, etc
1b- if no, and even if yes, try mining LinkedIn for the same info. You might need to temporarily sign up for a premium account but it will be worth it
2- mine these data sources for people doing what you want to do professionally. Doesn't matter how old they are. Put into a spreadsheet
3- research in depth what their company does, what sort of technologies they work with, etc
4- email a few people asking if they can get coffee (if in person) or do a Skype session if they aren't in your city. If you do coffee make sure you buy theirs and get there before they do. Do not use a copypasta template email for reaching out to people. Also, your alumni directory will probably give a real email address. If you use LinkedIn you'll need to message through their platform.
5- your goal in these convos is the following (a) come off as earnest and sincere, not as a duplicitous fuck, (b) ask how they got their start and how they ended up where they are and what their day consists of, (c) convey that what they do is of interest to you and that you know a lot about it and are passionate about it (you did do your research, right?, (d) ask if their hiring and convey that you think you'd be good at it and try to get them to want to help you, and (e) ask if they know any people at other companies or in different departments doing similarly interesting work that you should chat with.

Most people do not do the above. If you do the above you'll have a leg up. Good luck.

Do you have any resources for prepping for mid level interviews?

I get all of my positions from ingratiating all the PhD researchers I meet at the national lab I worked at, whenever they have an opening they'll contact me because they like me and know I do good work.

I would like to know too. I have researched mid level interviews and from what I see they say thing like know about important concepts in your language, data sets etc and it all sounds like shit you should be asking in a entry level job. Like some sites said know what inheritance means and the different data sets and pros and cons and I really doubt shit like this makes up mid level questions

>Hello! We are an orchestra! We are hiring a new violinist. Welcome to the first step in our interview.

>Here are are three pictures: A piano, a drum set, and a violin. Please point at the violin.

See, if you cannot point at the violin, there is no point continuing the interview. Same thing goes for FizzBuzz. You just want to filter the non-programmers.

They just want to see if you're an imposter or if you actually have basic programming knowledge (write a working program from scratch, know how loops work, know about conditional statements, know about modulus operator).

Also it's easy as fuck and everyone should be able to do it even in stressful situations (job interviews). Also maybe attention to detail when they say "start with index 1" and "up to and including 100" or whatever.

My mid levels have all been relatively simple because I got there through connections to my other jobs and just moved from one to another pretty fluidly.
I'd probably just say
>80% technical general
>10% white board
>10% other
other being something like a simple test they email you or linked to you which covered subjects they cared about like simple syntax or principles.
but all mine were pretty much face to face
>do you know X, talk about it a bit
>what have you done with X, explain it a bit and the hardships you had with it
and I suppose they judged if I was bullshitting based on that.

I'm probably not the best example though. I don't really know how other places do interviews when they don't already know you.

I've never got a fizz buzz question on the interview, but if it's for a junior job, they certainly don't expect you to write anything efficient or clever. Just a basic one to see if you understand programming. You'd be surprised how many terrible "programmers" are out there and that's why this became a popular question in the first place.

I had a similar thing for my junior dev job in one of the questions, more complex though than fizz buzz. Can't remember the exact question but it said to write an efficient algorithm for whatever the question was and I thought I was so fucked because I was blanking out and couldn't think of anything clever. So I wrote the most basic fucking thing and it turned out fine, I got the job.

You're a retard, just because in your 3rd world maritime-monkey state people are retards that can't fizzbuzz doesn't mean first world countries don't have actual cutthroat competition for jobs. Fuck off and stop ruining every thread you attention whore.

Got my first job through networking while at uni. Now on my 4th and I literally never had to do an interview.
Is this an American thing or a 'never had a job' thing? Everyone I know just got their further job offers through socializing or competence.

Not fizzbuzz but algorithums that are slightly harder. My last interview question was something like "write a method that displays a string in a square, IE the same number of chars in each row and column."

not to bad

What was the input? Was there input?

Its harder when you want to find places to work that aren't in your local area and you'd never meet the people there.

Plus a lot of places here are now trying to get away from connections and force everyone to go through technical interviews. I've been blocked a lot of times from getting a job because they force you to go through a round a bout process so they can eliminate favoritism.

Which is a relatively good thing, but ruins the whole connection thing.

No you weren't supposed to actually compile the code

@65825073
>Hahahahaha How The Fuck Are Interviews Real Hahahaha Just Walk In The Job Like Nigga Crony Circlejerk Haha

>@

Makes sense, except I refuse to believe that meritocratic hiring is actually happening. Far more likely all the time wasting, sifting through CVs and interviewing hundreds of people for a single position is just happening so the bloated HR departments can feel good about themselves.

It's an incel thing. You wouldn't understand.

The interview I've been through so far have been pretty fair, at most they ask me how I would tackle a problem sometimes without even asking for a pseudo-code, more like a mock-meeting discussing a project.

*interviews

>write a method that displays a string in a square
This is what I want and what I excel at. I am so terrified of white board interviews. My last job asked me the roughest technical shit ever and the actual job was make simple bug fixes for our application over and over and over.

I was in a group interview where we had to implement fizzbuzz once, I thought it was just a meme up until then. How far we have fallen if that filters out 99.5% of applicants.

or maybe hr is bigoted towards people with certain mental illnesses.

The method took a string as input. The code wasn't supposed to be compiled it was a procterU test so I had some black dude spying on me through my webcam

are you a tranny and/or minority that would be accepted as part of a diversity program?

>The code wasn't supposed to be compiled it was a procterU test

Wait what? Explain I don't follow

I guarantee the ones who easy its easy or whatever aren't telling the whole truth and get hook ups through connections

Just came across this thread and this is how I was told to conduct interviews for entry level poitions. Admittedly my field doesn't have anything to do with coding, but I just ask them about how they'd go about solving a problem or what they'd do when confronted with various scenarios.
Whatver they don't readily know about the technical stuff, they can always look up/ ask about while learning their job.

R A R E
A R
R A
E R A R

Did you need to identify any unusual flags also?

They just give you a text editor and 4 algorithms and tell you to solve them. Language diddn't matter and apparently you could have even written it in pseudocode.

It was on a timer I just wrote brute force solutions in java but I think I got each question close to correct.

The test also consited of a part where they gave you a teach you a fake programming language and you have to answer questions about what the output would be based on different inputs, which was honestly kind of tough cause I had just spent 2 hours writing code while being spied on through my webcam by a procter. Couldnt even get up from my computer.

probably they liked your face/appearance
people would rather work with person they like talking to who doesnt really have technical skills (those can be learned onjob) than work with a person who knows his shit but isnt liked by people

Your gettiiing it wrong

toSquare("Rare") =
R A
R E

toSquare("CodingIsFun")
C o d
i n g
i s f
u n

Got my current job because I was out of clean, plain black shirts and wore one with a small, very low-key Warhammer 40K reference on it.

oops
C o d
i n g
i s f
u n

oops
C o d
i n g
i s f
u n

just find the square root of the length of s and add "/n" every time you print that many chars.

which gets me thinking, can you interate over a string using chars in java like
for(char c : string){
//code
}

What was actually the question for this? Take a string and form a square? What are the dimensions or can they be anything? String can be anything or is it set? Can the dimensions be whatever as long as columns are equal and rows are equal or columns and rows need to be equal?

are you retarded?

No the user said take a string and make a square without any more information. I imagine there are constraints otherwise this would be an incredibly trivial question

This is why you people cant get hired

Says the guy without a job

It is an incredibly trivial question. The guy was asking whether or not a company would actually ask you to code FizzBuzz.
I said no they will probably ask you a slightly harder algorithm, but still one that someone who has experience writing code should be able to solve easily.

This is just to filter out the people who have no idea what they are doing.

It can be a little convoluted, but being successful at the end of a very intensive hiring process is probably one of the best feelings in the world.

if you get a referral you can typically start working within a month.

Can you now? I thought you needed to at least call toCharArray().

if you say so buddy

>>mfw studied liberal arts in college
>>work in finance for 8 years
how? i tried to break into finance with a mechanical engineering phd and i can't.

Yeah your right.
But I like I said they said you could right the answer in pseudo-code if you wanted and the code was never actually compiled so I dont think forgetting that method call would hurt that much.

>phd in a field you don't want to work in
ya fucked up

Most important post in the thread, I take all the time to type it out on my phone, and you morons all ignore it

Sounds nice, how do I fit it around my full time job?

I can't speak for everyone but if some random kid for my college messaged me I would block him. To think that works is insane. Maybe if you went to an Ivy League school this could work. Just keep job searching and building up your skills.

Meh. I've got a law doctorate and I work as a security consultant. Pays about double what my mates from uni are making now 4 years later - and I've earned more in the last 4 months than it the last 2 years together. But that's here in Europe and people are still shitting themselves over the DPO.

Job hunting is hard in general buddy

It all depends on how the person reaches out. Personally I would respond well to it. It speaks to initiative and most people don't do it. It's happened to me hardly ever.

most people aren't that helpful. my own phd adviser told me that he'd "help me get a job" this involved asking one of his one of his former students whether they have an opening. the former student invited me to lunch and claimed the other two guys present didn't want to hire me. after that my adviser just say the equivalent of "you're on your own, good luck."

My dude, it presupposes that you went to an elite university of course. Shit ones don't tend to foster a community mentality among their alumni.

Whats pajeet?

We stopped whiteboarding candidates when we realized that 3 out of the 4 major universities in our area had active whiteboard study groups. We had people walking in the door that could whiteboard all day but would lock up if you put them in front of an IDE.

Manholes are circles so the manhole covers can't fall into the hole you retard.

>but would lock up if you put them in front of an IDE.
How/ An IDE does all the work

You build your career through your network and reputation, not by interviews.

That's why you have to make damn sure that you already have your very first job lined up before you graduate.

honestly I never had this.

I was always just questioned about previous experience and what was on my shithub.

We are discussing mid level jobs not entry level shit gigs

This.

Whenever you leave a job you should have people dying to hire you at other companies. You just need to be a bit social. Go to local conferences and other events in your area. You do not even need to be a good developer.

ya ok kid. keep projecting

I looked for meetups by me. Most of them are shit like girls can code or other social justice type shit.