IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

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Tenks

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I'm not so far removed from my internship to be fully aware that some people can graduate with a 4 year degree and not be able to program themselves out of a brown paper bag. But I also have worked in the industry long enough to know that just because someone can't write the most efficient algorithm to add and remove nodes from a binary tree can still be extremely, extremely competent developers. Which is why I think it is extremely easy to get rid of the completely incompetent developers with just some very simple questions but it is almost impossible to determine if someone is just a good developer or a great developer. The latter half I'd almost argue is mostly internal drive than any actual intelligence or knowledge.
 
Khane

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wormie_sl said:
I dont work in the industry. I have mentioned that fact in this thread before. Frankly I find the day to day development boring as balls and any job that I would want to do in the industry requires having a PHD which I do not yet have. My exposure to software developers is limited to the meetups I attend a month and the sea of undergrad/grad students that surrounds me almost every day.

Because I give a lecture or two a semester in front of the CS club and am involved in one of the more esoteric research projects at the department, most students seem to think I know wtf I am talking about so they approach me with all kinds of shit. Being in the industry already, I am not sure if some of you guys realize how bad a lot of the people that are attempting to get into the development field really are, despite their pedigrees. I have seen undergrads with departmental honors and perfect GPAs who lose their shit at a mention of a pointer. I have seen grad students failing to traverse trees or not being able to build simple data structures (there are a lot of these guys). On top of this, some meetups I attend are flooded with bootcamp grads and self taught people who learned to build some simple CRUD or some silly scheduling app and think they are ready to run entire departments.

The people that lack skills are coming out of everywhere right now (and its going to get worse, colleges are now getting into the bootcamp business; see Rutgers coding bootcamp) and to not screen candidates well enough is silly. Yes some superstars get missed in the process, but a lot more terrible "programmers" that should not be allowed to touch a keyboard will get tossed out as well.

Also assuming that the hiring process will yield a department/group with above average performance ignores reality. Average is the best anyone will ever get. Worrying about outliers on one end, will just lead to hiring more outliers on the other. And since the distribution is skewed quiet a bit towards the end where all the shitty programmers are, its safer to make sure you avoid all such edge cases and just hire from the "meh" middle since "meh" will always be the end result.
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It's very apparent you missed my sarcasm.
 
wormie

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Khane_sl said:
It's very apparent you missed my sarcasm.
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I did not miss anything. It was not sarcasm. It was an attempt at a gotcha question. Its is why I had to write out a fucking book explaining how I know even a tiny bit about what I am trying to talk about.
 
Khane

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You're talking to people who have been hiring managers in the development field for multiple years as if you know more than us and are awakening us to issues with candidates.

What you don't realize is you are the "God Complex" developer we all hate and don't want to hire. Or at least you're doing a great job of making yourself sound that way.
 
wormie

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Khane_sl said:
You're talking to people who have been hiring managers in the development field for multiple years as if you know more than us and are awakening us to issues with candidates.

What you don't realize is you are the "God Complex" developer we all hate and don't want to hire. Or at least you're doing a great job of making yourself sound that way.
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I am not trying to enlighten you or anyone else. The discussion was on the merits of interviewing practices. Some people disagree with them, some agree. No need to be butt hurt because you think me having an opinion based on real experiences somehow insults your ego.

PS. I am always very careful to point out that I am not in the industry precisely to avoid reactions like yours. I have done it multiple times in this thread and will continue to do so as necessary.
 
Khane

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wormie_sl said:
I am not trying to enlighten you or anyone else. The discussion was on the merits of interviewing practices. Some people disagree with them, some agree. No need to be butt hurt because you think me having an opinion based on real experiences somehow insults your ego.

PS. I am always very careful to point out that I am not in the industry precisely to avoid reactions like yours. I have done it multiple times in this thread and will continue to do so as necessary.
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And I'm still going to give you shit that you think you have an educated opinion on the matter.
 
Cad

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Khane_sl said:
You're talking to people who have been hiring managers in the development field for multiple years as if you know more than us and are awakening us to issues with candidates.

What you don't realize is you are the "God Complex" developer we all hate and don't want to hire. Or at least you're doing a great job of making yourself sound that way.
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I do think there is huge inequality when it comes to output from developers though. The 80/20 or 90/10 rule is never more apparent, IMHO. If you could get a place where you only hire the type of guys that make up that 10/20%, it'd be crazy, and worth every penny.
 
Lendarios

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Tenks_sl said:
It was like four sentences
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Tenks_sl said:
I actually think Google published that they've tried many different hiring strategies and they all yield the same basic results. If you talk with someone and if they can really describe the project they were on, the challenges the project faced and the eventual solutions chances are they were pretty hands-on with doing it. If someone just says they worked on a project that utilized Flume hydrating a Hive data store to be queried by Impala and you ask them literally anything about any of those technologies they should be able to answer them to a satisfactory level that they know what is going on. If they fumble, contradict and just give you absolute BS chances are they either didn't actually work with these technologies or were carried on the project. But asking someone to do mostly worthless algorithm world problems that have very little relevance in their day-to-day doesn't mean they know how to actually develop enterprise level software. Perhaps it has just become second nature to me so I don't realize I'm solving semi-complex issues but most of my day-to-day is figuring out how to interact with an API or using the native Java API to do most of the heavy lifting for me. Some people may be lower level and have to actually deal with sort efficiency but that is for a more specialized role. Me? I just call Arrays.sort and call it a day.
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rrr_img_109478.jpg
 
T

Tenks

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I'm saving space by not using newlines. The backup and replication team of rerolled.org thanks me.
 
Khane

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Cad_sl said:
I do think there is huge inequality when it comes to output from developers though. The 80/20 or 90/10 rule is never more apparent, IMHO. If you could get a place where you only hire the type of guys that make up that 10/20%, it'd be crazy, and worth every penny.
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I agree that there is a huge inequality in output from developers, but I'm not sure how that ties in to what I was saying. I was just giving wormie shit since he's not even in the field but is talking like he's got keen insight and experience with hiring developers because he attends a meeting once a month.

That's really all it is. I'm busting his chops.
 
moontayle

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Help me here, because I want to know if I'm crazy...

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I feel like the check for null and existence is redundant but I'm not entirely sure what to think about a check for null and non-existence.
 
T

Tenks

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What Lend said. Also if you didn't do the pre-check on Null it could potentially throw NPE if you haven't guaranteed file1 is not null.
 
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