[MrLeap]

I'd love to serve some bay area companies, but I'd really prefer to not live there. None of the companies I've spoken to so far have any interest in remote help.

One west coast company has interviewed me. The company recruiter sent me like 14 "how to prep for tech screens" links and recommended I check them out days before the actual tech screen. I'm on a job right now so I don't have time to be doing that sort of thing so I didn't prep. It made me expect I was going to have to implement a BSP decompiler with a hand tied behind my back.

The guy who called me allotted 50 minutes to solve 1 problem "two if I finished the first early" on collabedit. I finished both in 6 minutes. I'm a good, experienced developer but I'm no genius. Their tech screen was so ludicrously easy it made me wonder what the current standard is for developers.

After I finished the guy said "huh I normally don't have to end these early. Great I guess." I pressed him a little and he went on to say his questions had done a great job invalidating candidates. Most people couldn't do it.

It's pretty beguiling since my midwest salary demands would be peanuts compared to my west coast equivalent. There'd have to be >60% remote-related productivity penalty for it not to be a no brainer to hire people like me.

The last few years has taught me that job seekers and dev seekers both have a hard time connecting.

[adviceadam]

Were these fizz-buzz level questions or were they more difficult?

[MrLeap]

A little tougher than fizz-buzz. I'd hope that people who take 6 minutes on fizz-buzz aren't calling themselves good and experienced. Am I taking crazy pills?

Here's basically what they asked me to do:

#1) Write a function that accepts one parameter. An array of numbers. Convert those numbers to pseudo-binary strings. Instead of "0" use "Y" and instead of "1" use "X"

#2) Do the reverse, Write a function that accepts an array of pseudo binary and convert it to an array of numbers.

[adviceadam]

Six minutes for them to explain the questions, you to make sure you have the question right, and then answer and explain your reasoning doesn't sound too crazy does it? Even for easy questions.

Anyways, thanks for answering!

[MrLeap]

When you include that stuff, you're right! I'm just talking about the thinking -> writing step. 6 minutes is a really long time for something like fizzbuzz. That's 360 seconds. The second hand has to go around the clock 6 times. If your script is 6 lines of code that's a MINUTE per line. FizzBuzz's lines are so self similar that's real weird for me to imagine.

My 6 minutes didn't include them explaining the question or them going over my answer. I didn't really explain my work. I did talk a little while I wrote, but after I finished he just went through my code line by line himself.

[adviceadam]

That's fair enough, I probably should have thought that it was just the time for answering the question, not the entire time, based on the context. Cheers!

[cr0sh]

I'd much prefer that to fizzbuzz. Last time I had to do fizzbuzz, I finished it so quickly that I used the remainder of my time (so as not to look like I copypasta'd the answer - which I didn't) optimizing it to be as fast as I could make it, then added tests and result logging, etc.

They were kinda shocked at what I did with it, because no one else had went that far with such a simple thing. Honestly, I thought it was stupid and boring, considering I've been a dev for so long - its a bit insulting.

At least the kind of test you got was a bit more interesting...

[fictioncircle]

> Their tech screen was so ludicrously easy it made me wonder what the current standard is for developers.

Just fyi, its probably because many developers don't touch binary.

I work with numbers all day but they are currency transactions and accounting data. I haven't cared about transforming something to/from binary in 10+ years and couldn't do it without googling.

However, the number of devs (and accountants) who can't figure out a 4-4-5 calendar reliably is quite impressive.

[MrLeap]

I haven't messed with binary since college. (Well, some bitmask stuff happens every half decade I guess.)

If you remember binary is just base2 I bet you could do it. Since you do accounting stuff, could you split a number into each base 10 component? 462 = (400,60,2). A bit of thinking leads me to 10^i, a for loop and some conditional subtraction / modulo. Binary is just 2^i.

[fictioncircle]

My point was, it wasn't from memory and because any mistakes I make are very painful and tedious to repair my first instinct is to Google things to double check everything before taking action.

So, no, I'm going to refuse a screen that prevents me from solving it the way I'd solve other problems I don't do regularly.

[MrLeap]

Fair enough!

[Balgair]

wat

Wait, WAT?!

I am flabbergasted that this could possibly take a 'serious' computer-y person with ANY knowledge of just about ANY programming language an hour to do. I mean, 6 minutes is very good, it would take me longer to type it all out and run through the bugs in my code.

But an hour!? What are the other applicants doing in that time for Christ's sake? Playing hop-scotch?

Jeeze, maybe the big 4 really aren't kidding when they say that they can't find anyone good...

[MrLeap]

We're all at different skill levels. If you begrudge people for being below you, it alienates them and prevents you from being able to uplift and teach. We've all gotta eat, right?

The point I was trying to make wasn't to trash the other candidates. My mistake if it came off that way.

My point was: If the pool of qualified candidates is so small they have unfilled positions, why's it so hard for me to get remote work out there?

(As a side note: I'm happy to trash the charlatans who lie about their education, cheat on exams and hire freelancers to interview for them. :/)

[Balgair]

No, I'm sorry, you are wrong. If you are a 'serious' programmer and you cannot do that task in under an hour, you better find your terrible teachers and give them a good talking to. Maybe try to steal their wallets or purses to get some of what they stole from you back. Graduating from any Univ./College (that is not Univ. of Phoenix style scum) should make that particular challenge not just able to be done in under an hour, but it should make you laugh at how easy it is. Yes, easy. Binary is learned in the first month (or less) of any 'good' department's curriculum and should be considered to be the same as PEMDAS is to Algebra in terms of foundational knowledge. I cannot imagine how any teacher not just nakedly after your Pell grant money could ever skip it. What next, will people complain that knowing the difference between and 'int' and 'str' is too difficult to recall? Are pointers too tough? If your comp-sci program did not teach you what binary is, you better go get another degree, because your current one was just theft. Yes, Google, StackOverflow, all that jazz. I get it and do it myself too. But good lord, not being able to code that in under an hour should be embarrassing. For Christ's sake, it's in the 5th episode of flipping CrashCourse for crying out loud, literally kid's videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GSjbWt0c9M&index=5&list=PL8...)