[__s]

Hi, I'm a programmer for Microsoft. I didn't have to answer silly algorithm questions for them to hire me. I'm nowhere close to VP/Distinguished Engineer level

(that said, my path to being hired did involve writing a sudoku solver, but that wasn't in an interview for a position at Microsoft)

[FeistySkink]

Perhaps you could share your story to show that not all is dire like HN would make it seem.

[__s]

Every story is unique. I was responding to a comment that was making sweeping claims

My story likely isn't replicable, but everyone has to find their way

I interviewed for Citus a couple weeks before they announced being acquired. I found out about the acquisition on Hacker News before having received an offer. They were able to get me in without going through the hiring process again

Initially I'd be moving to San Francisco but I wasn't eligible for any visas as I don't have a post secondary education. Staying in Canada's worked out

Some examples of things working out here: I was asked to implement some parsing, & well that's not so hard when you've written a Lua parser a year beforehand: https://github.com/serprex/luwa/blob/master/rt/astgen.lua (an astute reader will notice I don't handle precedence here, which is pretty important for arithmetic parsing. That's because I opted to implement shunting yard during codegen phase)

What value does this story give a reader? I only think it'd serve to continue an argument about how not everyone is so lucky, which isn't the original argument of "unless you're VP/Distinguished Engineer, not even Guido van Rossum gets to skip whiteboarding"