| > There's a growing rift in software between employers saying "there's a talent shortage" and a rapidly growing population of devs who feel like they're locked out due to the technical interview process.
Many of the engineers not being hired are recent bootcamp grads but there are also tons of CS majors that can't seem to "crack" the interview process. I'm extremely skeptical of bootcamps, especially after learning that some of the TA's at these are hired to help with teaching as little as two months into the program as students[0]. I'm afraid that a lot of these bootcamps train the students on "practical and applied skills" that makes them one trick ponies. ie, they know how to do one thing and one thing only and if the project's stack change it's unclear if they will be able to adapt. > This has been a great way to shift interviews away from algorithms and more towards finding people can add immense value to technical teams even without having on-the-job programming experience. I'll play devil's advocate here and say that algorithms are a pretty good proxy for on-hire performance. I can, as an interviewer, expect most grads from serious CS programs to have had an algorithm class. Being able to demonstrate that they are capable of learning algorithms and applying them gives me confidence that they will be able to learn new stuff fast when joining the team. It's a sink or swim situation where I believe that it's very hard to teach CS fundamentals on the job but relatively easy to teach new tools and new frameworks. So I would rather hire someone with strong fundamentals [0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p... |
One of the biggest problems CS grads face is that they can’t break out of the cycle of not having experience and can’t get a job and can’t get a job so they can’t get experience. After the first job it gets easier.
You can practice for algorithm type interviews and get a job. It also doesn’t matter where you went to school. It’s the great equalizer if you can teach yourself.
If I were trying to get my first job today instead of in the mid 90s, I would have been spending time “grinding LeetCode”.