I quite forgot this gem.

It's amusing. And the world of hiring people is BONKERS INSANE.

BUT....

I also don't think that's a paradox or anything.

Write a great tool(s)... doesn't mean you should work at the place using it.

And what does this have to do with devrant (tag)?

@N00bPancakes agreed, however not knowing how to perform an operation on a structure you don't work with frequently also doesn't mean you wont be able to learn it in about 20 minutes if It's needed and perform a lot of other things properly, especially if you already worked on an advanced, commonly used product in the past

@Fast-Nop It is still a rant, just not mine.

@Hazarth Yes, 100x this. I completely agree. Yes.

@xxzer0 So it has nothing to do with devrant.com itself, which is what the tag is for.

@Fast-Nop no u

But their software was written by people who could invert a binary tree on Whiteboard.

@theabbie But binary trees don't grow on whiteboards anyway, so that's pointless.

@Hazarth on the other hand if you get called to an interview at google you probably should prepare for such questions. I know I did when I was offered a chance to interview with AWS.

They even recommended reading up on sort algorithms and data structures.

And despite not having any university or similar education or ever had to work with such structures I made it past the questions.

And it might not even be that he failed to do it but how he failed.

Did he try? Did he question the question?

At least when I interview people I care a lot more for their attitude and how they approach a problem than if the solve the problem.

We can always teach people to code, but we cannot teach them to think ;)

@Voxera IIRC, he probably reacted arrogantly and forgot Google interviews *does* include algorithmic questions like that (assuming we're talking about the guy who was a topic of tweets when he went public about that).
If it's that guy then, he was likely past the point where an SWE role was suitable for him compared to a more managerial one.

I could be on about a totally different author of a popular package (whose name completely escaped my memory).

@Voxera This is precisely why when I interview candidates, I prefer to do a mock code review session or a fake defect debugging session of some sample code riddled with obvious and not-so-obvious problems they're asked to investigate and fix or review.

For one thing, people are not always in their clearest mindset in interviews due to stress or nervousness, and we should acknowledge that with empathy. Asking them to thoughtfully review code "someone else" wrote takes some of the pressure off to "perform" like a whiteboarding or live coding session might.

Plus, I get to see how their problem-solving skills, how they debug, or ask how they would improve the code to get a sense of whether they consider best practices, level of effort, and understanding of the subject matter, etc.

Wrong bloody tag.

Whiteboarding is bloody stupid, especially when they ask you to demonstrate a complex implementation — something you can look up — instead of architecture that you can’t.

@Root Even for algos themselves, it doesn't make sense. E.g. with sorting ones, I can't code anything other than Bubblesort from the top of my head because I can look up shit if need be.

But I can say why I wouldn't use Bubblesort, and whether I'd choose e.g. Quicksort, Shellsort, Heapsort, or even sorting networks depending on what the requirements are.

Some of the devs do not even help and understand this at all.

Yeah they have some retarded hiring process even for senior people but to be honest, you can't go there and still complain. Everybody knows FAANG have retarded and long hiring process with mostly whiteboard shit. How is he even surprised?

@Root Why do you guys want to see me crying? I know the tag is wrong, next time I'll pay more attention.

*sniff*

I wrote devrant because it is actually a dev rant.. But I forgot the tag is meta.

*sniff* *sniff*

I never did dis before.

Now I gotta reconsider my life choices

@xxzer0 Because now you won’t forget 🙂

@xxzer0 The underlying reason why "devrant" is meta is that every rant is already a dev rant, given that there's nobody here from finance, HR, PM, or legals.

Can someone pls tell me what does inverting a binary tree means. Google gives me something too obvious and easy. Also pls explain whats the catch in the problem !?