Getting a job in software development: A Reddit discussion round-up

http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/n5spv/getting_a_job_in_software_development_a_reddit/

by nassosdim • 15 years ago

159 45 15 years ago

dpritchett5• 15 years ago

Most of the questions and answers seem aimed at college seniors planning for Google-style Big O cross examination.

For experienced developers it's a bit simpler: build a portfolio, craft a cashflow-oriented elevator pitch, build a network, and plan ahead for a bit of buzzword compliance in your desired niche as needed.

throwaway122011• 15 years ago

when you say portfolio do you mean having a github account or a blog or a live website running? what kinds of projects should I have?

dpritchett5• 15 years ago

The goal is to regularly provide proof to both your professional network and to selected potential employers that you are highly competent and will be a decided advantage to their organization.

Some people don't know what github is and won't care, others really like live sites even if they're modest, and still others really just want to see resume bullet points about dollars saved / created. Eventually you can put all of that together, but naturally it'll help when your prospective hiring manager has the same ideals you're demonstrating with your portfolio.

Portfolios are secondary to name recognition and social proof. Let me reemphasize that sharing your goodwill, your skills, and your successes with your professional network is probably more valuable than anything else you can do - develop a local or national reputation as a top gun and work will come to you as long as you keep your connections warm.

tycho772• 15 years ago

This seems... really simple. Basic algorithms, data structures, and theory that I learned in second-year comp sci.

Knowledge on these subjects is easy to pick up, taking you a few days of study at the most. Knowing this stuff doesn't mean you can program for shit (see: academic coding horror). Best to build a portfolio as dpritchett said, with a few "lessons I learned from experience when working on this project" anecdotes ready to go.

That's just personal experience though, and I competed in the ICPC during my university career so I never worry about the problem solving questions.

mahyarm2• 15 years ago

Tech firms seem to love these kinds of questions all the time. Almost every interview I've had has had them.

rhizome6• 15 years ago

It's how they get around labor laws.

microarchitect4• 15 years ago

Knowledge on these subjects is easy to pick up, taking you a few days of study at the most.

I doubt you can pick up a solid understanding of just the first 15 or so chapters of CLRS in a few months, let alone days.

karamazov2• 15 years ago

Coming from a pure math background, I find CLRS to be very easy to read. YMMV based on prior experience, but it's not at all unreasonable to learn the basics in a week or two if you're studying it full-time.

tycho772• 15 years ago

You could learn it well enough to answer interview questions on it. I have my copy of CLRS here and none of the first 15 chapters are exceptionally dense.

akg• 15 years ago

If you want a job in software development - do software development. There is no substitute for coding. I interviewed with Google a little while ago and the first thing they asked me was "How many hours do you code a day?". That set the tone for the rest of the interview. CLRS has some very useful information and by all means, every developer should know it, but using that theory in practice is what makes the knowledge stick. You find out more idiosyncrasies and sticking points when you actually build something. If you don't know where to start, fork a project from github and contribute to it.

raganwald• 15 years ago

Amen. If you want a job playing basketball, you ought to watch a lot of video of great players. You ought to read a lot of books about training, techniques, and strategy. You ought to hang out with other basketball players and exchange tips. You ought to cross-train by lifting weights and running.

But all of that is secondary to playing a lot of basketball.

itmag3• 15 years ago

Comments here seem to be about the importance of demonstrating competence.

While this is of course important, I feel that it's equally important to make sure you actually want to work in an organization. This means fitting in, tolerating corp BS/insanity well, being expected to tone down the cowboy ethos, and appearing productive at all times. In other words, being the oft-mentioned "team player".

xer0• 15 years ago

Be a solution, not a problem.

rhizome6• 15 years ago

Different sports have different levels of cohesion in their teams. Rugby vs. American Football, for instance.

pilgrim689• 15 years ago

I love this comment:

" At the end of a whiteboarding interview whenever the interviewer asks "do you have any questions for me?" I'm always tempted to hand them the marker and say "Imagine you are given a binary tree with elements containing linked lists ..." "

Have any of you guys ever done this? How did it play out?

mahyarm2• 15 years ago

It depends if the interviewer has a sense of humor. Some people are so stuck up about that kind of thing although.

steve8918• 15 years ago

I recently interviewed a master's student for a job at our company. I asked him a very traditional question, and then was going to follow up on it with increasingly more difficult questions to see how deep his knowledge was. I wasn't out to "get" him at all, I hate interviewers that ask super-hard questions, I'm more interested in having a good conversation with the person to try to get a feel for what they really know, not just what they've memorized.

My question was easy: how would you iterate through a binary search tree.

He immediately asked me "should I do it recursively, or iteratively? Can I use a stack if I do it iteratively?" It was obvious he had studied for this question, and he banged out a solution in 2 mins. Iterating through a binary tree is a bit tricky if you've never done it before, and I wasn't even going to ask him this, but since he brought it up, I knew he knew the answer. The fact he could come to an answer immediately only indicated to me that he had memorized the answer and was essentially gaming the system.

So I asked him an even simpler question: Given a binary search tree, write code to find a particular value. If you can't find the value, then return me the next smallest value. For example, if the tree contains 1, 2, 3, and 5, and I ask for 4, then return 3.

He couldn't answer this, even though it's easier than the previous question. He had no clue how to solve it, and even worse, he couldn't recognize the simple bugs in the code, and the fact that he was dereferencing NULL pointers, etc. So I passed on him.

Personally, I think the best way to advertise for a job is to have a portfolio of code, as dpritchett says. I'm tired of testing people on whiteboards, and seeing if they can memorize solutions to every single program on glassdoor.com. I'd rather just have them point to a github repository, so that I can see their coding style, and see if they can produce quality code. Having an indepth conversation about their project, and quizzing them on their code, to me, is a more real-world determination of whether or not they're a good programmer.

Then, the onsite interview would be limited to determining if their personality is a good fit for the team, instead of trying to come up with 10 different variations on "iterate through a binary tree".

itmag3• 15 years ago

Out of curiosity, what is the solution?

I would imagine something like keeping a variable of the highest found value under 4 and if you don't find 4 then you use this variable.

kd5bjo• 15 years ago

Start at the root of the tree; at each node:

  - If the node value matches, return it
  - If the node value is too low:
    - If possible, step right and repeat
    - Otherwise, return this node value
  - If the node value is too high:
    - If possible, step left and repeat
    - Otherwise, return the value of this node's predecessor:
      - Walk up until you traverse a right link
      - Return the node's value
      - If you hit the root, the requested value is less than any value in the tree

3pt14159• 15 years ago

I wrote it out in python for you: http://pastebin.com/5hX9ZMvB

and the solution written out in words below, also in python (I like this one better)

http://pastebin.com/PapfMhfU

known• 15 years ago

interview != quiz

djb_hackernews• 15 years ago

Be careful, some of those reddit threads have terrible information/ advice in them voted to the top. For instance http://www.reddit.com/r/compsci/comments/g9ugs/just_bombed_a...

kondro• 15 years ago

I'm surprised to see information missing on source control, automated testing and automated deployment.

You'd be surprised how many blank stares you get back from candidates when you ask questions about the very fundamentals of writing maintainable code in a team.

Getting a job in software development: A Reddit discussion round-up

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