[busterarm]

If you dislike going through interviews, I'm not sure that freelance work or going into business for yourself (which is the normal model for this kind of thing) is really the right answer.

When you're freelancing you're essentially interviewing for your job every single minute you're in front of or have an active project with the client. Soft skills and doing work that has nothing to do with engineering is even more of a requirement.

[tluyben2]

Soft skills I don’t mind; grown up interviews I don’t mind. I have done freelancing for 30 years now and had 0 requests for balancing binary trees, time/space complexity of sorting algos; things that are often associated with interviews here on HN and things which I did, you know, in uni, for which, you know, I have a degree to prove I could do them and know what they are. They are generally 100% useless on modern jobs (I worked on specific embedded jobs I needed knowledge like it, but you can look that up as well). I just give my company’s (it is a 1-3 band gang depending on what the others are doing) portfolio and no one requests weird things like that.

Now soft skills are different and 2 of us are good at those and one of us is really bad; so we hire out based on the client, wishes and need for soft skills and a lot of communication overhead or not. And I agree that needs to be a match, however I cannot see how that requires 6-8 gruelling interviews spread over weeks instead of 15 minutes and a portfolio (which is how we get hired).

So yeah, I think OP would do better in a small collective of freelancers or even small consultancy company; I find it much easier to get into anywhere that way than the employee route.

[corrral]

> Soft skills I don’t mind; grown up interviews I don’t mind.

BINGO.

I'm good at the job and good at normal interviews. I more-or-less enjoy both, even. I like talking to clients, and I'm good at it. I can sell myself. And I can do the work.

Specifically software developer interviews practically make me hyperventilate and break out in hives. Fuck that. A pop quiz over a huge potential space, probably over something I will never in my life actually use on the job, to be solved live while people watch and judge me? Oh my god, no. No. Why the shit that's considered acceptable in a world where we're so touchy-feely that projects are supposed to have Codes of Conduct is beyond me. It's straight-up abuse.

[a_techwriter_00]

Hear hear. I left software engineering as a discipline because I hated the interview process.

[sandeep1998]

I am in similar position, are you a 'tech writer' now?

[andsoitis]

> balancing binary trees, time/space complexity of sorting algos .... I needed knowledge like it, but you can look that up as well)

In my experience, it is now about knowing how to do these things but when to reach for them when solving a problem.

[ttymck]

Agreed! And I never reach for them, because I work on web apps. If I was a database developer, the story might be different. But I don't feel the need to be interviewed on those topics over and over again. Subsequently, I don't know how to do those things.

[switchbak]

Having worked in this space for decades, I think most people I've met agree it's ludicrous, but there's strong pulls to keep it in place.

The most compelling argument I've heard is "we get so many applicants at $bigcompany that we need a fast and objective way to filter people out". And sure, that works, but think of the masses of great people you're turning off with that approach? Most great devs I know won't put up with that crap, including myself. Not a problem if you've optimized your company to build masses of code with early-career employees I suppose.

Knowing the tradeoffs we're making in data structures and having a broad understanding of different algorithms to throw at a problem is very handy. It's also almost completely unnecessary at the typical web shop (like you say). I use these things a bit in my work (not the typical web shop), but mostly indirectly via DBs and similar tools where I need to understand the tradeoffs. I'm certainly not implementing anything with red/black trees, making my custom bloom filters, etc. We have an ecosystem of tools for a reason, that would be silly to reinvent the wheel everywhere without a damn good reason.

[joshuahutt]

One thing I realized after doing some studying is that your approach is limited by the concepts and tools you're familiar with. As I learned more about data structures and algorithms and as I practiced using them and evaluating the complexity of my implementations, I felt a lot more clarity and confidence about solving problems and structuring my code efficiently.

[newaccount74]

Yes! I doubt companies grill you about binary trees because they expect you to actually implement any of the algorithms in your day to day work.

They want to know if you have studied the fundamentals, so you at least have a chance of understanding whatever you are going to be copy-pasting from Stack Overflow.

[scruple]

But I did study the fundamentals. It just happened to be almost 2 decades ago and I haven't used 95% of it since entering the industry. How could it possibly be relevant?

I've gone the route of avoiding typical interviews altogether by leaning into my network for opportunities.

There are plenty of places where I think I'd like to work, where I'd be very motivated, and where I'd make an impact to the organization, but I'll never bother because their interview style is bad.

> have a chance of understanding whatever you are going to be copy-pasting from Stack Overflow.

And, frankly, I avoid all of this because what you've said here is exactly the sort of place where I don't want to work.

[tluyben2]

But a degree(s) and portfolio shows that already (it is what they are for; when I show my EE degree, they don’t ask me to solder together a computer from this here 74LSxx series box; no, they just hire me; why is software hiring so nasty?); if you are a junior, your degree will show what fresh knowledge you have and the question is if you are a talented dev or not. If you are a senior it shows that you understand the fundamentals (your degree) and you can execute (your portfolio) (and actually that shows you know the fundamentals too).

So what’s the 6 week interview for? To recognise talent? Sure I can see that in a junior a bit (but I doubt you find out more in the all those interviews than a 15 minute chat, at least that’s my experience; you will actually need to hire and try them on a project in the team to know their feel for it all) but in a senior that’s the portfolio again.

To me it feels that we are starting in a position where the interviewer assumes I lied about everything I sent in and this all is to prove myself (again and again). I am not in kindergarten; I have decades of experience in huge project; good luck finding a stooge who likes abusive relations.

[DoingIsLearning]

From the description, it would probably be a better fit to work as a contractor via an agency. You get the hit of the agency comission but at least most of the talking will be through some Project manager assigned to the client.

[carlmr]

That hit in commission can be very efficient, since you save a lot of time you can bill at a high rate.

[giobox]

I have literally never seen this, in my experience the agency is usually not much more than a body shop - every agency I've worked with charges a significant hourly rate which is not reflective of what the agency employee will receive. It is almost always significantly more than a few percentage points.

[bragr]

We hire out to various agencies, and I'm not sure any of them disclose to us what their cut is, but from talking to the people, it sounds like most only take a low single digit percentage on the hourly rate (1~5%). e.g. engineers on $150/h contracts saying their paystub says $140-145/h. YMMV

[hallway_monitor]

My feeling is in line with the sibling, The feeling I've gotten from working with contractors is that it's common for agencies to take about 40%. Seems pretty brutal for everyone except the agency.

[SoftTalker]

Important to know if the "contractors" were employees of the agency, or subcontractors.

Early in my career I worked for a consulting firm as an employee, and I never found out exactly what I was billed at but I'm guessing it was around double what I was paid. We worked on site at our client's office, and people there called us "contractors," but we were employees of the consuting firm. We had benefits, training, overtime pay, etc. and we got paid our salary between jobs when we were not on a client project.

If I were an indepenedent contractor using an agency to find work, I'd expect them to take a much lower cut, as they have much lower overhead and risk.

[0xEFF]

The risk is greater with independent contractors subcontracting through an agency. The agency has less control for the same reputation risk with respect to the subcontractor.

[ptero]

What region is this, if I may ask. I have (as a full time engineer; large engineering org; Boston area) worked alongside a few folks on contract and my impression was that almost all of the contract folks were scalped. A few exceptions were engineers initially from the organization who switched to the contract for more flexibility. Just a single data point, would love for it to be refuted.

[dhsnjqj]

Those are agencies.

You can find recruiters that will clip a small fee and dump you through a contractor management platform. It's all automated. You're effectively a freelancer, still need to sell yourself a bit to get hired but the recruiter vets leads on both ends to streamline things.

Contracts are short and sweet so it's not like interviews are multiround or anything, 15 minute coffee with the client to check if you're aligned on stack / interest and off you go.

[akhmatova]

Interviewing != "soft skills", and it wasn't soft skills as such (in the legitimate sense of the term) that the poster was objecting to.

But rather that set of weird, contrived rituals (which pretend to measure soft and other skills, but basically don't really measure anything other than the candidate's ability to game up answers to questions they looked up on the internet) -- not to mention the frequently appalling lack of decency, common courtesy (and common sense) has come to stand to in for the interview process these days.

[charlieyu1]

I work for myself and I feel this is quite different. Freelancing, the client finding you already has some interest, and you don’t really compete with others. A freelancing interview is more about sorting out the details, making sure both sides want to go through etc, rather than trying to impress the client.

[rg111]

> When you're freelancing you're essentially interviewing for your job every single minute you're in front of or have an active project with the client.

There is one significant difference. In this perpetual interview, you have access to the internet and can find factual answers from there.

The problem solving part is what makes someone a good engineer/scientist. Not knowing particular algorithms, or knowing formulas (in case of DL jobs).

Interviews focus on the wrong things.

I am okay with the perpetual interview as long as I don't have to rote memorize a bunch of stuff like some poor middle-schoolers in 1970s communist country.

I threw away many recruiters who even mentioned technical interviews. I am doing more than okay financially and career-wise, btw.

This might change in the future just as a step to do something I want to do. I will hate all the interview, HR initiation, onboarding, etc. forever.

[firstplacelast]

Maybe it’s because I have better soft skills, but I’ve had a much easier time getting freelancing gigs than full-time employment. I’ve only had a handful of freelancing gigs and only on the side, but no one has ever made me do a code test or acted like I needed to “prove” my lack of mental deficiency.

In interviews for full-time employment, this has rarely been the case.