Interview with a candidate. He calls himself "C++ expert" on his resume. I think: "oh, great, I love C++ too, we will have an interesting conversation!"

Me: let's start with an easy one, what is 'nullptr'?
Him: (...some undecipherable sequence of words that didn't make any sense...)

In my mind: mh, probably I didn't understand right. Let's try again with something simple and more generic

Me: can you tell me about memory management in C++?
Him: you create objects on the stack with the 'new' keyword and they get automatically released when no other object references them

In my mind: wtf is this guy talking about? Is he confusing C++ with Java? Does he really know C++? Let's make him write some code, just to be sure

Me: can you write a program that prints numbers from 1 to 10?

Ten minutes and twenty mistakes later...

Me: okay, so what is this <int> here in angle brackets? What is a template?
Him: no idea

Me: you wrote 'cout', why sometimes do I see 'std::cout' instead? What is 'std'?
Answer: no idea, never heard of 'std'

I think: on his resume he also said he is a Java expert. Let's see if he knows the difference between the two. He *must* have noticed that one is byte-compiled and the other one is compiled to native code! Otherwise, how does he run his code? He must answer this question correctly:

Me: what is the difference between Java and C++? One has a Virtual Machine, what about the other?
Him: Java has the Java Virtual Machine
Me: yes, and C++?
Him: I guess C++ has a virtual machine too. The C++ Virtual Machine

Me (exhausted): okay, I don't have any other questions, we will let you know

And this is the story of how I got scared of interviews

wk87 is a dangerous topic for me, i've been through a lot. I apologise for what I am about to inflict on this network over the coming week.

Most incompetent co-worker, candidate 1, "T".

T was an embedded C developer who talked openly about how he's been writing code since he was 14, knew all the C system libraries and functions like the back of his hand. For the most part, he did ... but not how to actually use them, as (based on his shocking ... well everything) he was inflicted by some sort of brain disorder not yet fully understood by medical science. Some highlights:

- Myself and the CTO spent 4 days teaching him what a circle buffer was and how to build one.
- His final circle buffer implementation had about 3 times as much code as he actually needed.
- When the code was running too slowly on the device, we didn't try find any performance improvements, or debug anything to see if there was anything taking too long. No not with T, T immediately blamed TCP for being inefficient.
- After he left we found a file called "TCP-Light" in his projects folder.
- He accused the CTO of having "violent tendencies" because he was playing with a marker tossing it up in the air and catching it.
- He once managed to leave his bank statements, jumper and TROUSERS in the bathroom and didn't realise until a building wide email went out.
- He once .... no hang on, seriously his fucking trousers, how?
- He accused us all of being fascists because we gave out to him for not driving with his glasses, despite the fact his license says he needs to (blind as a bat).

... why were his trousers off in the first place? and how do you forget ... or miss the pile of clothes and letters in a small bathroom.

Moving on, eventually he was fired, but the most depressing thing of all about T, is that he might not even be top of my list.

Tune in later for more practiceSafeHex's most incompetent co-worker!!!

Interviewer - so what's your email ID?

Candidate- sir, abc@xyz.com

Interviewer - and password?

Candidate- 12345678

Interviewer - you shared such a confidential information so easily for the job. How can we trust that you will not share any confidential information of the company for some better offers?

Candidate - Sir, I might have shared my password with you but I don't think you can still login to my email account. Let's look for the possibilities. My password can be

12345678

Or

Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneight

Or

1twothreefourfivesixseveneight

1twothreefourfivesixseven8….. so on

Or

2444666668888888 (one 2, three 4….)

13355557777778 (1, two 3, four 5……, 8)….. so on

Or

Combination of all of these…

By the way, did I mention use of capitals? 😂

Finally that candidate was offered with the position as
" HR Manager"

Was lead developer at a small startup, I was hiring and had a budget to add 3 new people to my team to develop a new product for the company.

Some context first and then the rant!

Candidate 1 - Amazing, a dev I worked with before who was under utilized at the previous company. Still a junior, but, she was a quick learner and eager to expand her knowledge, never an issue.

Candidate 2 - Kickass dev with back end skills and extras, he was always eager to work a bit more than what was expected. I use to send him home early to annoy him. haha!

Candidate 3 - Lets call him P.

In the interview he answers every question perfectly, he asks all the right questions and suggests some things I havent even thought of. CTO goes ahead and says we should skip the technical test and just hire the guy, his smart and knows what his talking about, I agree and we hire him. (We where a bit desperate at this stage as well.)

He comes in a week early to pick up his work laptop to get setup before he starts the next week, awesome! This guy is going to be an asset to the company, cant wait to have him join the team - The CTO at this stage is getting ready to leave the company and I will be taking over the division and need someone to take over lead position, he seems like the guys to do it.

The guys starts the next week, he comes in and the laptop we gave him is now a local server for testing and he will be working off his own laptop, no issue, we are small so needed a testing stack, but wasnt really needed since we had procedures in place for this already.

Here is where everything goes wrong!!! First day goes great... Next day he gets in early 6:30am (Nice! NO!), he absolutely smells, no stinks, of weed, not a light smell, the entire fucking office smells of weed! (I have no problem with weed, just dont make it my problem to deal with). I get called by boss and told to sort this out people are complaining! I drive to office and have a meeting with him, he says its all good he understands. (This was Friday).

Monday comes around - Get a call from Boss at 7:30am. Whole office smells like weed, please talk to P again, this cannot happen again. I drive to office again, and he again says it wont happen again, he has some issues with back pain and the weed helps.

Tuesday - Same fucking thing! And now he doesnt want to sign for the laptop("server") that was given to him, and has moved to code in the boardroom, WHERE OUR FUCKING CLIENTS WILL BE VIEWING A DEMO THAT DAY OF THE PRODUCT!! Now that whole room smells like weed, FML!

Wednesday - We send P a formal letter that he is under probation, P calls me to have a meeting. In the meeting he blames me for not understanding "new age" medicine, I ask for his doctors prescription and ask why he didnt tell me this in the interview so I could make arrangements, we dont care if you are stoned, just do good work and be considerate to your co-workers. P cant provide these and keeps ranting, I suggest he takes pain killers, he has none of it only "new age" medicine for him.

Thursday - I ask him to rather "work" from home till we can get this sorted, he comes in for code reviews for 2 weeks. I can clearly see he has no idea how the system works but is trying, I thought I will dive deeper and look at all of his code. Its a mess, nothing makes sense and 50% of it is hard coded (We are building a decentralized API for huge data sets so this makes no sense).

Friday - In code review I confront him about this, he has excuses for everything, I start asking him harder questions about the project and to explain what we are building - he goes quiet and quits on the spot with a shitty apology.

From what I could make out he was really smart when it came to theory but interpreting the theory to actual practice wasnt possible for him, probably would have been easier if he wasnt high all the time.

I hate interview code tests, but learned a valuable lesson that day! Always test for some code knowledge as well even if you hate doing it, ask the right questions and be careful who you hire! You can only bullshit for so long in coding before someone figures out that you are a fraud.

So yet another follow up rant on the Linux job hunting! (yes hello this is @linuxxx).

Got send a list with questions (for candidate screening) and was literally mentally preparing to answer all the questions (I expected shit like Linux commands, kernel stuff etc etc).

Then I saw the questions. Mother of god.

1. Have you ever worked with a Linux distro and if yes, which one(s)?

😶. Uhm I expected some more difficult stuff.

2. Have you ever worked with a hosting interface like CPanel etc?

😶😶. Alright I should adjust my view on the difficulty level of these questions.

And so it went on and on. I think I make a pretty good chance 😆.

I'll hear more at Monday and if all is good then I will get an interview through Skype with their American office!

I had a prospective employer be late to every single interview we had scheduled. I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but they simply didn’t value my time.

I was in the process of moving and a recruiter called me to tell me a job I had been submitted for wanted to do a phone interview that day. Even though I was driving across the country in a box truck, I agreed to the interview. We arranged for the employer to call me at 2 PM. I figured it would give me a break from driving in the middle of the day anyway.

I pulled over at 1:45 and waited. At 2:15 I called the recruiter to verify the time. He said he would get in contact with the employer and call me back. At 2:45 I called the recruiter and told him I needed to get back on the road and we’d have to reschedule.

We rescheduled the call for a few days later at 1 pm. This time I got the phone number of the employer, so at 1:15 I called him. He apologized and said he lost track of time. Whatever, let’s just get this interview going.

He liked me on the phone, so he wanted to meet in person the next day. I was a bit irritated by the situation, but I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I showed up for my in person interview 15 minutes early and checked in with the receptionist. 30 minutes later I asked the receptionist when they were going to be with me as my interview was supposed to start 15 minutes ago. I was finally seen 5 minutes after that.

The interview was supposed to be a several hour affair where they were going to have me sign an NDA and show me some of the issues they were having to see if I could solve them. I had cleared my scheduled meetings for the afternoon so I could attend this lengthy interview.

After about 45 minutes of interviewing, the manager suddenly said that they needed to cut the interview short because he had just realized they needed to get something done that afternoon. He asked me if I would come back the next day to finish the interview.

I shook his hand and left, shaking my head the entire time. When I called my recruiter after I had calmed down, I let him know that I would under no terms be interested in a job with them. If they refused to acknowledge my time was worth something as a candidate, they would never respect it as an employee.

They still offered me the job and couldn’t fathom why I was upset about the situation. I’m very glad I didn’t take that job.

!(short rant) && (long story)

So these last 2 months of my life have been quite topsy turvy. Everything was pretty much unexpected and now I am on my way to Banglore, which is referred to as the Silicon Valley of India.

All this started in mid Feb when one day my ceo dropped a mail to all of us saying he wants to covey something important. A little background story about my company before I go on. We were a bunch of 6-7 tech guys working on a location based analytics product and had a decent client base. I had joined them in November 2017 and I was very hopeful that I would get to learn a lot owing to the good seniors from reputed universities and their experience. Coming back to the day, the ceo called us and dropped a bomb on us that the funding is depleted and we only have enough money to pay you salaries for this month. "We didn't anticipate that this day will come but currently we are in talks with some companies that are looking to acquire us. I am very much hopeful that we will figure something out by the end of this month(Feb). Until then, I can't stop you from applying to other companies but don't reveal that we are in this situation." So, keeping my fingers crossed I was waiting for the acquisition and wasn't looking for any other opportunities.

The company work was under hold and during this time one of my friends approached me with his idea. Since I had nothing else to do, I agreed to work with him. I was living in Mumbai, the city with one of the highest living standards in India, and I was paying exorbitant rent without any income. There was no news until mid March when the ceo called and dropped bomb#2 that an Indonesian company is looking to acquire us and he had scheduled an interview for the entire team. This isn't what I had signed up for. Indonesia wasn't a country I had even considered, let alone leave the country. Still I appeared for the interview and it went very well.

No news from the company or the ceo after that. One of my friends advised me to start applying to other companies and not rely on this acquisition. Now the problem was I couldn't reveal about the acquisition in my interview, so I used to give some bullshit about me not liking the work here. The company didn't buy it because how can someone judge a company in just 4 months. So obviously I didn't clear the interviews, also partially because I didn't meet their technical requirements.

March end, I moved to my hometown in Gujarat because obviously I had started to get broke in this expensive-ass city. The friend with whom I was working with also didn't have any issue since it was just tech and coding and I could do it remotely. Comes mid-April when the ceo called and said the acquisition is done and gave me some details about it. For confidentiality sake I can't reveal the details but I figured enough red flags for me to go with it.

*Eye of the tiger playing in the background*
Now started my quest of finding a decent job. The edge I had now was that I could reveal about the acquisition to the other company. I started applying left right and center to any company I could find. Amazon, saavn and some good-ass Indian companies. The thing that now came in my way was my experience. I am 23 year old(soon to be 24) with around 20 months of experience. Everyone wanted a 3-5 year experience guy/girl. Soon, my entire optimism was draining and I even considered going back to my first company.

During this time, I got a call from this company in Banglore who were looking for a candidate which best suited my profile. I went all guns blazing and appeared for the interview. I had 6 rounds of technical interview plus 1 logical reasoning. And since I was giving the interview remotely, I had one round on each alternate working day. Everyday was a challenge and I spent the nights in anxiousness and anticipation. Meanwhile I was appearing for other interviews too, since I wasn't too hopeful about my chances in this one.

Cut to April 27, I got an offer from this company and without negotiating they offered me the package I was hoping for.

After this entire ordeal, I realised one thing. Whatever happens, happens for good. Looking forward to this new city, new company, new people and new environment.

Taking IT classes in college. The school bought us all lynda and office365 accounts but we can't use them because the classroom's network has been severed from the Active Directory server that holds our credentials. Because "hackers." (The non-IT classrooms don't have this problem, but they also don't need lynda accounts. What gives?)

So, I got bored, and irritated, so I decided to see just how secure the classroom really was.

It wasn't.

So I created a text file with the following rant and put it on the desktop of the "locked" admin account. Cheers. :)

1. don't make a show of "beefing up security" because that only makes people curious.
I'm referring of course to isolating the network. This wouldn't be a problem except:

2. don't restrict the good guys. only the bad guys.
I can't access resources for THIS CLASS that I use in THIS CLASS. That's a hassle.
It also gives me legitimate motivation to try to break your security.

3. don't secure it if you don't care. that is ALSO a hassle.
I know you don't care because you left secure boot off, no BIOS password, and nothing
stopping someone from using a different OS with fewer restrictions, or USB tethering,
or some sort malware, probably, in addition to security practices that are
wildly inconsistent, which leads me to the final and largest grievance:

4. don't give admin priveledges to an account without a password.

seriously. why would you do this? I don't understand.
you at least bothered to secure the accounts that don't even matter,
albeit with weak and publicly known passwords (that are the same on all machines),
but then you went and left the LEAST secure account with the MOST priveledges?
I could understand if it were just a single-user machine. Auto login as admin.
Lots of people do that and have a reason for it. But... no. I just... why?

anyway, don't worry, all I did was install python so I could play with scripting
during class. if that bothers you, trust me, you have much bigger problems.

I mean you no malice. just trying to help.

For real. Don't kick me out of school for being helpful. That would be unproductive.
Plus, maybe I'd be a good candidate for your cybersec track. haven't decided yet.

-- a guy who isn't very good at this and didn't have to be
have a nice day <3

oh, and I fixed the clock. you're welcome.

Tl;dr: I do not care. Just read it or fuck off.

A friend of mine who is a paki classmate, as well, had applied for the same "Ausbildung" offer as me half a year ago.
The company is based in Germany, but is working in the US, France, UK, Turkey, China, [...], too.
After 2 interviews, they told us to contact us back within the next week. We have had our interviews on Sundays.
In the list of all candidates I was the second best. The top candidate was my classmate. The third best candidate was a guy who was involved in the last interview with both, me and my paki friend.
The candidates list was not shown to everyone else, but my paki friend.
They wanted to give him the job. [That is a big company who is creating a new dev team and expanding their IT building. Nonetheless they only accept only one candidate.]
My classmate had been given a letter that he had to sign within the same hour he was with the managers. He discussed it and said that he has other offers open and want to compare them first. They gave him a timespan of only 1 day afterwards to sign it.
He told me he is going to decline it and he did.
Normally, I should have been the person who gets the letter to sign to be accepted for the job, but no.
After letting me wait for almost 2 weeks, they sent me an mail (they usually sent ordinary letters to invite me to interviews lol) in which they said that I am unfortunately not taken for the job yada yada yada and that they wish me luck for my future.
Fuck yourselves. How about that?
I was the second best candidate. The best candidate did not want the job yet you fucking morons do this type of shit. You want the best for me?
I want the worse for you. Death to both of you managers who sucked all of my energy, patience and time.
I am really fucking pissed rn

Time for a REAL fucking rant.

io_uring manpages say you can set the CAP_SYS_NICE capability to allow SQPOLL to work. You can't, you still get an operation not permitted errno result.

Why? I checked, it says 5.10 mainline is required. Pretty sure I just manually downloaded and installed the Deb's myself. uname reports that I am at 5.10. So what gives?

Maintainer submitted a patch because they fucked up and made the *actual* capability check look for what's basically root permissions (CAP_SYS_ADMIN... c'mon...) and is now trying to rectify a glaring security shortcoming.

Patch hasn't been accepted or even addressed yet but they already updated the manpages with the estimated mainline kernel release as if it had made it into the release candidate. Manpages have made it into latest debs but the actual change has not.

Where the fuck is the Linus Torvalds that would ream the fuck out of shitty developers doing shitty things? The political correctness climate has discouraged such criticism now and the result... this. This fucking mess, where people are allowed to cut corners and get away with it because it would hurt their feelings when faced with pressure.

I'm not just guessing either. The maintainer has already said some of the "tone" of criticisms hurt his feelings. Yes, sorry, but when you claim 90% speedup over a typical epoll application using your new magical set of syscalls, and nobody can even get 1-2% speedup on a similar machine, people are going to be fucking skeptical. Then when you lower it to 60% because you originally omitted a bunch of SECURITY RELATED AND CORRECTNESS CHECKING CODE, we're going to call you the fuck out for fudging numbers.

Trying to maintain the equivalent of academic integrity within the computer science field is an exercise of insanity. You'd be fired and shunned from publishing in journals if you pulled that shit in ANY OTHER FUCKING FIELD, but because the CS scene is all about jerking each other off at every corner because the mean people keep saying mean things on Twitter and it hurts your feelings therefore we're all allowed to contribute subpar work and be protected from criticisms when others realize it's subpar.

These aren't mistakes anymore, it's clear you're just trying to farm clout at Facebook - maybe even FOR Facebook.

Fuck you. Do it right, the first time. Sick of shitty code being OK all of a sudden.

Update on my Facebook and Booking.com interviews. I had them back to back today.

Even before I start, I accept and admit that I am a hypocrite. I hate Amazon yet order stuff from there. I hate Microsoft yet use their products. I hate Facebook yet went ahead to interview with them.

I fucking hate myself for compromising my ethics, values, and integrity. I had promised myself that even if I work for any major shit company, I'd never go with Facebook. Here I am after many years. Not an excuse, but I am doing it because I see it as an entry point into the UK. That's all.

Community's hate towards me is justified and I'd accept the discrimination from this community because this place is my digital home and you all are my family. Infact first thing I told mom was, dR boys are gonna disown me when they get to know about this.

Anyway, coming to the update part.

I had applied leave at work from last Friday. 4 days of leave earned me 10 days off (including weekends and 2 days of Diwali company holiday).

Last Thursday I got to know that Facebook has scheduled their interview today (Friday). I spent insane amount of time preparing. Approximately 8 hours everyday including weekend. I added nearly 40+ hours preparing for it in last 7 days, because I had to get in. Failure isn't an option now.

I sacrifice my family time, preparing for the interview.

I sacrifice Diwali break, sitting in front of the screen and studying.

I sacrifice my only vacation of 2021, doing mock interviews as late as 11.30 PM.

I sacrifice my free time and enjoyment, stressing over what could happen.

I was prepared like perfect for screening stage.

Interview 1: this guy comes and ask 'what is the best compliment you have got as a PM?' and 'Why do you want to quit the current company?'

He wasn't supposed to ask those as per Facebook's policy and interview stage.

Then he gave me a shit problem to solve and rejected my approach and wanted it his was. I tried to follow him and made sure I was able to convince with the reasoning but he kept pushing me back. He kept putting me down. Did not listen to me or what I had to convey or what was expected as an answer. He had certain output in his mind and wanted me to come up with it as an answer.

For the uninitiated: Facebook gives ton of preparation material and tells upfront the kind of questions they'll ask they just focus on few things. Moreover, in Product interviews, there isn't right or wrong answer.

Anyway, this guy started making funny expressions which put my morale down and I stood my ground with losing my cool. I managed to get all my answers right and the key points the look into a candidate. It went decent. Yet the interviewers attitude was something I did not like.

Interview 2: the lady was really kind and warm. Very accommodating and easy person to deal with. It went amazingly well.

I have two observations I want to share with you all.

1. I hate what Facebook does. Lizardberg is awful human being. But I absolutely liked HOW they are doing things, at least from an interview stand point. They even had mock sessions by their PMs and upfront told how to prepare and how to answer.

2. While it seems to be a 5 star experience, I found them to function mechanically. No small talk, no human connection (ironic to their mission), no conversational flow of the interview (again something that they kept saying a zillion times in all their material). They came, formally introduced themselves, and had a checklist kind of attitude, and left.

I now await for the feedback.

In the next hour, I had Booking.com first round.

Amazing people. Warm friendly experience. Treated me as a human. Heard me. Made me feel part of the conversation rather than someone just being judged.

It went 1000x better than Facebook.

I await the feedback from them as well.

I don't know what's gonna happen but one thing for sure, the kind of expectations Facebook set for their interviews, was nowhere close to the reality. It was awful.

180° was for Booking.com

Guess the saying stands true, expectations always lead to disappointment.

Finally I feel de-stressed and my Diwali vacation starts AFTER Diwali ended. Or rather just a regular weekend.

2021 has been terribly awful year for me. Hope this shitty year ends soon.

Alright lads here is the thing, have not been posting anything other than replies to things cuz I have been busy being miserable at school and dealing with work stuff.

Our manager left us back in February. Because she was leaving I decided that I wanted to try a different path and went on to become a programmer analyst for my institution, if anything I knew that it was going to be pretty boring work, but it came with nice monetary compensation and a foot in the door for other data science related jobs in the future. Thing is, the department head asked me to stay in the web technologies department because we had a lack of people there and hiring is hard as shit, we do not do remote jobs since our work usually requires a level of discretion and security. Thus I have been working in the web tech department since she left albeit with a different title since I aced the interview for the analyst position and the team there were more than happy to have me. I have done very few things for them, some reports here and there and mostly working directly with the DBA in some projects. One migration project would have costed my institution a total of 58k and we managed to save the cost by building the migration software ourselves.....honestly it was a fucking cake walk, if you had any doubts about the shaddyness of enterprise level applications regarding selling overpriced shit with different levels of complexity, keep them, enterprise is shaddy af indeed. But I digress.

I wrote the specification for the manager position along the previous manager, we had decided that the next candidate needed to be strong with development knowledge as well as other things as to properly understand and manage a software team, we made the academic requirement(fuck you, yes we did ask for academic requirements) to be either in the Computer Science/software engineering area or at least on the Business Administration side. We were willing to consider BA holders in exchange for having knowledge of the development process of different products and a complete understanding of what developers go through. NOT ONE SINGLE motherfucker was able to satisfy this, some of them were idiots that I knew from before that had ABSOLUTELY no business even considering applying to the position, the courage it took for some of these assholes to apply would have hurt their mothers, their God if they had one, and their country, they were just that fucking bad in their jobs as well as being overall shit people.

Then we had 1 candidate actually fall through the cracks enough to get an interview. My dude here was lying out of his ass through the interview process. According to him he had "lots of Laravel experience and experience managing Laravel projects" and mentioned repeatedly how it would be a technology that we should consider for our products. I was to interview him alongside the vice president of our institution due to the head of my department and the rest of the managers for I.T being on vacation leave all at the same bloody time.

Backstory before the interview:
Whilst I was going over the interview questions with the vice president literally offered me the job instead. I replied with honesty, reflecting how I did not originally wanted him but feeling that our institution was ready to settle on any candidate due to the lack of potentials. He was happy to do it since apparently both him and the HOD were expecting me to step up sooner or later. I was floored.

Regardless, out of kindness he wanted to go through the interview.
So, going back to the interview. As soon as the person in question referenced the framework I started to ask him about it, just simple questions, the first was "what are your thoughts on the Eloquent ORM? I am not too fond of it and want to know what you as a full time laravel dev think of it"
his reply: "I am sorry I am not too familiar with it, I don't know what that is" <--- I appreciated his honesty in this but thought it funny that someone would say that he was a Laravel developer whilst not knowing what an ORM was since you can't really get away from using it on the initial stages of learning about Laravel, maybe if one wanted to go through the hurdle of switching to something like doctrine...but even then, it was....odd.

So I met with the hod when he came back, he was stoked at the prospect of having me become the manager and I happily accepted the position. It will be hell, but I don't even need to hit the ground running since I have been the face of the department since ages. My team were ecstatic about it since we are all close friends and they have been following my directions without complaints(but the ocational eat a dick puto) for some time, we work well together and we are happy to finally have someone to stop the constant barrage that comes from people taking advantage of a missing manager.

Its gonna get good, its gonna get fun, and i am getting to see how shit goes.

I have seen in a lot of forums (here, Imgur, reddit, LinkedIn etc) that there are a lot of developers without a job.

And most of them live in USA. I have not seen a person who is struggling to find a job in EU or some other place.

Why is this the case? In USA where the demand for developers is very high.

I read a post on LinkedIn: "40 INTERVIEWS and no one HIRED! Yet another friend telling me she can not find good talent. My thinking - If you interviewed 40 people and did not hire someone, then it's time to look in the mirror. The problem is recruiters and hiring managers are looking for the 'PERFECT" candidate. NEWSFLASH! There is no 'perfect' candidate. If you have someone with the right attitude and skill set, and they fit in with the team, why not HIRE them? There are so many qualified individuals still job searching. Yet I see the same jobs re-posted, over and over again, being left vacant for months. Who took a chance on you? Maybe it's time you a took chance on someone."

I don't think it is the "competition" because I see everywhere. I have seen entry-level or JR. open positions that are not filled for months.

It took me 1 month, sending nearly 20 applications every day to find a job in USA.
And the second one I got lucky. I applied in Europe and after some month I got transferred in offices in USA.

I do not know how true this is, but seriously, what's wrong with companies in USA that require the PERFECT candidate. Or is it something else?

I want honest opinions. Do you think the following is a good or not so good interview question. Why or why not? Defend your argument.

Define a function where the input is a list of integers. It should find and return all the unique sets of three within the list that sum to x.

For example, given the list [1, 3, 2, 5, 6, 8, 10, 13, 15] and with x = 16, the function would return [(10,5,1), (13,2,1)]

If the candidate presents the trivial solution with time complexity of o(n^3), ask if can be done in o(n^2) or better.

I envision a website where you can review individual HR personel on the basis of;

1. Knows technical aspects enough for hiring
2. Respects the candidate
3. Respecting the messaging time limits, ghosting vs
4. Skill to bring best verdion of the candidate etc

What else would be the criteria?

This is real rant, not one of these funny stories!

So, I spent 4 years to get a Computer Science degree, and did two specializations, 3.5 years more in Uni. I have 6 years of experience working in IT, from support to programming. I also speak 3 languages.

I'm from a South America country, and now I'm living in EU.

I'm 30 now and earning a little more than a MacDonald's cashier earns in the US. I have to live in a shared apartment like a fucking Uni student. I have nothing, no car, no house, no girlfriend. WTF!

IT is a fucking lie! Profession of the future my ass!

In Uni they said that finding a good job was easy, that companies would literally grab us by the neck to work for them. LIE!
I did found a low paying job though, where at least I could learn a lot more.
People were really satisfied with my work and I even received a proposal of one of our clients to work for them, but the offer wasn't good enough.

I tried entering some big companies as a Trainee, but it was so ridiculous, they said they were looking for an IT person, but they asked things related to economy and other stuff that had nothing to do with IT. I always failed in the group work/interview, it was so ridiculous, I remember one candidate saying her dream was to work for the company since she was a child, SERIOUSLY!

When the opportunity came, I moved to EU and now I'm working as a dev. But as I said, I'm not satisfied with it! In the US the yearly average software engineer salary is about 100K, I earn less than 1/4 of it. And don't come saying that US pays more because of the cost of life, here the cost of life is the same or even more expensive, a super small apartment/loft is at least 180K, a simple new car 18K and a Big Mac costs 4€.

In the US, the average salary of someone that just graduated from uni is 60K to 70K! LOL

In EU, it's super hard for someone to earn 100K, that's why many companies are creating offices here, good workforce, 2 to 3 times smaller salary!

IT also sucks because it's too volatile, there's new stuff all the time. Someone always has to come with a new language, new framework, new library, etc etc. And you have to keep learning new stuff all the time.
Also job openings always ask for experienced people, like you must have at least two years of experience with VUE.js, or something.

Do you remember the last time you went to a doctor for a checkup, did they use a new tool, or did something different during the checkup? Probably not, the medic don't have to learn new stuff all the time, he is still using a stethoscope, he is still placing a wooden stick in your mouth to check your throat...
But in IT, almost no one nowadays is going to create code using CoffeeScript, they instead will use TypeScript.

I read an article saying that an IT professional must study 20 hours a week to keep up with new trends. So I must work 40 hours and study another 20? LOL
It's not that I don't like learning new stuff, but this sucks, I want to maybe learn something different or have a hobby.

Today I regret going to uni, I feel it was a waste of time and money. They taught things like calculus and physics that I never had to use professionally, and even programming stuff like linked lists I never had to use.

If instead I had studied dentistry or studied to be a ophthalmologist I think I would be earning more, would be working more independently and wouldn't need to keep up learning new things so much.

Also to work in IT you don't need a diploma, I read an article by a dude that learned programming by his own, did some software for his portfolio and got a job at Google.
When I read these kinds of story I regret even more going to uni, It really feels I wasted my time.

For these reasons I can't recommend going to uni to study IT, if you want to go to uni go study something else!
If you want to study programming do it on your own, there's everything you must know online for free, create a portfolio, and look for a job or even try working for yourself!

Living the life I have now, there's just no incentive to keep going.
Should I keep learning new stuff so maybe I can get a better job that will still pay low, or quit and try creating something on my own?
Or even ditch IT all together and go back to uni? LOL NO!

Recruiter answered me

Rejected

They decided to choose another candidate because... [the reason will be announced at the end of this rant]

...

I was working on my project

I am learning new tech

And shitting 10 times a day from these jobs and recruiters, the usual me

HE the recruiter contacted me a few days ago

HE offered me nodejs position

I AM the one who was HONEST and told him i dont work in nodejs i work in java

HE then continued the conversation

HE offered me a java spring boot backend position

I AM the one who read the requirements

🔥🔥🔥
REQUIREMENTS: 3+ years of experience
🔥🔥🔥

I AM the one who told him i have 5+ years of java spring boot and 8+ years of java experience.

HE said great I'll contact the clients and let them know

TWO WEEKS LATER OF SILENCE

"unfortunately they chose some other candidate because they need someone with 10+ years of experience for this role"

---

Are you fuc

Fucking

Ki

Wasting my Fucking time?

You decide to slam into my peace and offer me a job position with ALL THE REQUIREMENTS I FULFILL, JUST TO RANDOMLY REJECT ME FOR AN INVALID FUCKING REASON?

If i said i had 10 years of experience

They would reject me because i dont have 15+

If i had 15+ years of experience i would get rejected for not having 30+

If i had 30+ years of experience fucking your whole family and bombing them to dust like in palestine till their bones die and worms eat your fucking down syndrome brains, they would say i need 160+ year of experience

Fyck you

Truly.
From the bottom

Of my fucking balls and cum

From my fucking dick

From my fucking shit and asshole

From my vomit

I wish you death.

I wish karma to kill all of their family members (the clients who rejected me) slowly one by one. Final destination accidents type of deaths. Truly i hope you and wish you the worst.

[Here the intro continues]

I will repeat again:
- REQUIREMENTS: 3+ years

I have:
- 8+ years

They rejected me because:
- I don't have 10+ years

I told all of this to recruiter now. Politely but because im losing my patience i was very very passive aggressive with my response. In the context of

1. I TRULY dont give a fuck for your rejection (which is the truth)

2. Your clients are low IQ dumb as fucking retards because they choose people based on the YEARS OF EXPERIENCE

3. Explained him: IF YOU ARE SO FUCKING STUPID TO UNDERSTAND THIS COMMON SENSE, I'LL EXPLAIN IT TO YOU: CHOOSING DEVS SOLELY BASED ON THE YEARS OF EXPERIENCE MEANS YOU ARE FUCKING STUPUD. There are devs with 2 years of experience who are WAY smarter better efficient and more knowledgeable than some devs with 5-7 OR MORE years of experience. Thats because some people progress better faster or more efficiently in 2 years while others need 5 years. Etc. You're fucking stupid as shit for this sole decision

4. Indirectly let him know that i am not pissed off for rejection. I am pissed off for my time being FUCKING WASTED.

5. Also pointed him out: your job description says its looking for a dev with 3+ years of experience i told you i have 8+ and you reject me because I don't have 10+. Are you Fucking stupid? Fuck you. Truly fuck off. Get the fuck off my dick and eat the shits i shit straight out of my asshole. I'll shit in your fucking mouth you fucking bitch. Your wife also probably fucks some other guys while you're at work and she doesnt respect you or love you. In the matter of fact give me your fucking wife/gf and I'll Fucking fuck her to death

To the clients once again: Truly i hope Hamas fires a missile at israel but misses and hits your fucking home and your whole fucking family blows up to atoms and particles. Completely erased from existence.

Applying Occam's razor and I might be wrong..

Hiring a candidate and job hunt, both are fucking exhaustive process.

We, as a human race, have aimed for Moon and Mars but are unable to solve the problem at hand which can save millions of hours each year reflecting in immediate cost savings.

Here's my (idealistic) solution:

A product to connect job seekers and recruiters eliminating all the shitty complexities.

LinkedIn solved it, but then hired some PMs who started chasing metrics and bloated the fuck out of the product.

Here are some features of the product I am envisioning:

1. Job seeker signs up and builds their entire profile.

2. Ability to add/remove different sections (limited choices like certifications, projects, etc.), no custom shit allowed because each will have their own shit.

3. By default accept GDPR, Gender Identity, US equality laws, Vetran, yada yada..

4. No resume needed. Profile serves as resume. Eliminate the need to build a resume in word or resume builders.

5. Easy updates and no external resume, saves the job seeker time and gives a standard structure to recruiters to scan through eliminating cognitive load.

6. Recruiters can post their jobs and have similar sections (limited categories again).

7. Add GDPR, Vetran, etc. check boxes need basis.

8. No social shit. Recruiters can see profiles of job seekers and job seekers can see jobs. Period.

9. Employee working in Google? Awesome. Will not show Google recruiters thier profile and employee such job posts.

10. No need to apply or hunt heads. System will automatch and recommend because we are fucking in AI generation and how hard it is to match keywords!!

11. Saves job seekers and recruiters a fuck ton of time hunting the best fit.

12. This system gets you the best job that fits your profile.

Yes, there are flaws in this idea.

Yes, not all use cases are covered.

Yes, shit can be improved and this is hypothetical.

But hey! Surely doable with high impact than going on Moon or Mars right now.

Start-up world has lost its way.

End of my rant about 35 day recruitment process for anyone interested to hear the ending.

Just got rejected by a company (name Swenson He) for a remote Android Engineer SWE role after wasting 35 days for the recruitment process.

First intro interview went good, then I did an assignment that had 72 hours deadline (asked for couple days longer to do this task, did it in around 40 hours, it was purely an assignment not free work, I could have done it in a day but I choose to overeenginer it so I could use the project as a portfolio piece, no regrets there and I learned some new things). After that It took them 2 weeks just to organize the technical interview.

2 days after the technical interview I received an offer from a second company with 1 week to decide. I immediately informed the Swenson He about it and politely asked whether they could speed up their decision process.

Now I know that I could just sign with the second company and if the big Swenson He would decide to bless me with and offer I could jump ship. But out of principle I never did that for 7 years of my career. If Im in a situation with multiple offers I always inform all parties (it's kinda a test for them so I could see which one is more serious and wants me to work for them more). Swenson He didnt pass the test.

6 days of silence. I pinged the techlead I interviewed with on LinkedIn about my situation, he assured me that he'l ask his hiring team to get back to me with feedback that day.

2 days of silence. I had to decide to sign or not to sign with a second company. I pinged the techlead again regarding their decision and 10min after received a rejection letter. There was no feedback.

I guess they got pissed off or something. Idk what were they thinking, maybe something along the lines of "Candidate trying to force our 35day recruitment process to go faster? Pinging us so much? Has another offer? What an asshole! ".

Didnt even receive any feedback in the end. Pinged their techlead regarding that but no response. Anyways fuck them. I felt during entire process that they are disrespecting me, I just wanted do see how it ends. Techlead was cool and knowledgeable but recruitment team was incompetent and couldn't even stay in touch properly during entire process. Had I didn't force their hand I bet they would have just ghosted me like they did with others according to their Glassdoor reviews.

Glad I continued to interview for other places, tomorrow Im signing an offer. Fuck Swenson He.

P.S. From my experience as a remote B2B contractor if a company is serious the entire process shouldn't take longer than max 2 weeks. Anything outside of that is pure incompetence. Even more serious companies can organize the required 2-3 meetings in a week if they have to and if they are interested. Hiring process shouldnt take longer than MAX 3 weeks unless you are applying for some fancy slow picky corporate company or a FAANG, which is out of topic for this post.

Just sharing a quick interview tip which helps alot.

Recruiter: Do you know this XYZ technology?

Candidate 1 : I don't know this technology, but if you GIVE ME A CHANCE, I will,
TRY AND LEARN.

Candidate 2 : I don't know this technology, but I am confident enough that I will be surely be able to learn and implement at a very quick pace.

Candidate 2 was hired. And why? Just check the formation of the response from both the candidates.

Remove the phrases like "give me a chance" and "will try" from your vocab in an interview, always form your responses in a positive and confident manner.

Both the above responses are quite the same, but just due to their different formation, candidate 2 succeeded!

Ok so i got trolled by a company sort of, they gave me hope and destroyed it. I have two rounds of interviews and passed them both, they phone screened me before the interviews and i told them that i have 1 year of experience. Now after passing 2 rounds they mailed me and told me that their clients are looking for 3 years experienced candidate!!! I mean wtf!!! I mailed them and also called them and gave them a scolding, they should have told me that they require someone of higher experience before going forward with my interviews!!! :'( , THIS IS NOT FAIR, also guys can i post my story on linkedin mentioning the company's name? Can they sue me for this?

When i hire devs at my company i will treat them exactly the same way i was treated.

At first I'll hire by normal procedures top level engineers so my company can live. And then I'll continue hiring even after all positions are closed. I'll fuck with all the engineers and anyone who wants to work for me by exactly the same way i was getting fucked with by 20+ companies -- I'll drag them around with 3+ interviews over the course of 4+ weeks and even if they fulfill all the requirements and knowledge and skills i require, I'll STILL reject them and degrade their self esteem. Fuck you. I'll fuck you up and degrade you and make you feel worthless -- exactly the same as i was treated.

I'll give them a vague rejection letter, that doesn't explain why they got rejected. Or just make up some bullshit reason for rejection that isn't even true. I'll also wait 2+ weeks additionally until i respond with rejection letter, just to fuck with people even more -- exactly the same way as i was treated.

If they put they have 7+ years of experience, I'll reject them because of not having 8+ years of experience -- exactly the same way as i was treated.

If they answer all technical questions correctly, I'll reject them and tell them I chose another candidate because they fit better -- exactly the same way as i was treated.

If they pass through 4 interviews after 1 month of interviews, I'll give them a positive feedback. And then ghost them with no response -- exactly the same way as i was treated.

On technical interviews I'll ask them some ridiculous questions no one knows and are not related to their job position, and then reject them for not knowing those answers -- exactly the same way as i was treated.

On HR interviews I'll milk the information from them of projects and clients they worked with, and then contact those clients to steal them from him so i can earn money and reject him instead with a vague reason -- exactly the same way as i was treated.

I'll give the developer a whole ass project to develop over the course of 10+ days, and then reject them for a vague reason, and use their source code to sell to my client while developer worked for 0$/hour and i got paid thousands -- exactly the same way as i was treated.

I now LIVE to build a company not because i want to earn money, not because i want to have a company, not because i like engineering (although all of those are true and i want to achieve), but now a NEW top priority goal and REASON i want to have a company -- is so i can be able to abuse innocent people mentally and psychologically. Degrade people. DESTROY their self esteem. I LIVE FOR THIS NOW. I AM FUCKING TIRED OF GETTING TREATED LIKE THIS UNDESERVINGLY AND NOT HAVING THE OPTION TO FIGHT BACK. I WILL NOW FIGHT BACK BY DOING THE SAME THING TO OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE STRUGGLING AND DESPERATELY LOOKING FOR A JOB. I WANT TO CAUSE HARM AND VIOLENCE PSYCHOLOGICALLY.

EXACTLY. THE SAME. WAY. AS. I. WAS. TREATED.

guide to make successful software house company for future me:

1.find shortest domain name with code / star / best / it / super / ai / - whatever banger word you find
2. parse companies work board / linkedin jobs
3. parse people profiles
4. setup email server and create fake linkedin profiles that match jobs and candidates so company looks big
5. fake c-level management so company looks big
6. spam likes and create posts generated by ai from multiple profiles
7. spam invitations to people that match job descriptions and to people working within companies posting jobs
8. offer fake candidates that match job description
9. find real but less promising candidates and offer them the job
10. tell that fake candidate is no longer available but you have someone better

success

Hate it when recruiters send a template asking about how skillful are you in <insert language here> on a scale of 1-10.

A recruiter sends me a questionnaire, which had almost 10-12 questions. I spent almost 30-40mins, explaining in detail about my past experiences and answering all of them. The next day I got a reject without even a phone call. :/

Why do recruiters even do this without even as much as giving a call to a candidate, and assessing them with a test?

"Dear TitanLannister : You are in the final year. A lot of shit is happening around u. its now time to make a career and take tough decisions. What would you do?"

CHOICE 1: COMPETITIVE
>>>>background : "a lot of super companies like wallmart, fb, amazon, ms, google,.. etc simply takes a straight coding test for fresher placement. They ask tough bad ass level questions, but with right guidance, a hell ton of dedicated hours of coding, and making it to the top of various coding tests could make you a potential candidate"
>>>>+ve points :
- "You got the teachers and professionals with great experience to guide you"
- "a dream job come true.you can go there and join teams that interests you"
- "it was your first exposure to computer world. maybe you would like doing it again, after 4 years"
>>>> -ve points:
- "You have always been an average 70 percentile guy. The task requires 2000-3000 hours of coding an year. it will be hard and you always grow bored out of this pretty quickly"
- "Even If you did that , you stand a lesser chance because your maths is shitty.There are millions running in this race with brains faster than your IDE"
- "your college will riot with you because they expect 75% attendance"
- "You are virtually out of college placements, in which , even though shitty companies come and offer even shittier 4LPA packages($6000 per annum), would take a tough logical/aptitude based test for which you won't be able to prepare"

CHOICE 2: PROFESSIONAL WORK
>>>>background: "you always wanted to create something , and therefore you started taking android based courses. you have been doing android for over 2 years and today you know a lot of things in android. you might be good in other professional lines like web dev, data analytics, ml,ai, etc too if you give time to that"
>>>>+ve points :
- "you will love doing this, you always did"
- "With the support of a good team, you will always be able to complete tasks and build new things quickly"
- "Start ups might offer you the placement, they always need students with some good exposure"
>>>>-ve points :
- "Every established company which provides interesting dev work takes their first round as coding, and do not considers your extra curricular dev work. So you are placing your all hopes in 1 good start up with super offerings that would somehow be amazed by your average profile and offer you a position"
- "start ups are well, startups and may not offer a job security as strong as est. companies"
- "You are probably not as awesome dev as you think you are. for 2 years, you have only learned the concepts , and not launched more than 1 shitty app and a few open source work"

CHOICE 3: NON CODING
>>>>background: "companies coming in college placements have 1-2 rounds of aptitude,logical reasoning , analysis based questions and other non tech tests. There are also online tests available like elitmus,AMCAT, etc which, when cleared with good marks help receive placements from decent established companies like TCS, infosys, accenture,etc"
>>>>+ve points :
- "you will eventually get placed from college, or online tests"
- "there will be a job security, as most of these companies bonds the person for 2-3 years"
>>>> -ve points:
- "You really don't like this. These companies are low profile consultant/services based companies which would put you in any area: from testing to sales, and job offers are again $5000-6000 per annum at max"
- "Since it includes college, the other factors like your average cgpa and 1 backlog will play an opposing role"
- "Again, you are a 70 percentile avg guy. who knows you might not able to crack even these simple tests"

Ugh... I am fucking confused. Please be me, and help.The things that i wrote about myself are true, but the things that i assumed about super companies, start ups or low profile companies might not be correct, these points comes from my limited knowledge ,terrified and confused brain, after all.
:(

Life of an tech lead.
Hire a candidate with little to no experience in relevant technology - > train said resource - > resource becomes productive - > plan enhancements as work load can be shared. - > resource switches projects or firm - > goto step 1 and overtime to complete enhancements. FML

Should I be optimistic about my profession and growth as an android developer, or should i start gaining experience in other domains?

I am currently a Junior Android Developer in a small company which is a subsidiary of a bigger company (TATA) . I currently hold a working experience of 3+ years but in last 5 years , I have mainly explored Android App development the most. I did courses in it, then internships, then switched jobs to reach a decent salary package (more than INR 10 lakh per annum).

Recently I have been pretty worried regarding my career choices and i can't seem to be optimistic about my role as a mobile engineer. I joined my current company 4 months ago, but my switch this time gave me a hike of -10% (you read that right, it was a negative increment since previous company was asking me to relocate and i had no choice but to take this offer)

This switch made me worried not just because of the salary decrement but as a worthy candidate too. I know my tech stack well , but this time, I had very less options. I feel that the demand of a mobile engineer seems to be very less and I am not sure if its only me or for everyone in the same space as I am.

So , are jobs of Native Android Development really dying? My goal is to reach at premium salaries of INR 80-90 lakhs or 1-2 crores per annum, so can I reach there while just being a good android engineer? I am not sure what to run for. Please help

Some paths that i came to conclusion are for me, based on my limited knowledge are :

CONTINUE ON YOUR PATH : Stay in 1 place , grow as an engineer, get your salary/ role increase slowly and you will probably be able to reach that amount in 5-6 years

SWITCH YOUR PATH TO OTHER TECH SKILL : Do web frontend/backend courses in your free time, then grab a job of 4-6 LPA , start as a basic web dev, grow into senior dev and then reach that amount in 5-6 years (coz frontend/backend devs are the real deal?)

SWITCH YOUR PATH TO HIGHER STUDIES : do courses to crack foreign exam papers, then take out all your savings and got to foreign to pursue some masters in management, then do a job there and get settled / come back to India and grab a better paying job as a manager, then grow/switch into lead managerial roles and earn the goal amount in 5-6 years (coz foreign studies are the real deal/ foreign countries give fair wages to skill?)

GET INTO BUSINESS : start a business of something , grow it, reach that amount in 5-6 years (coz doing business is the real deal and only way to get lots of money in black/white)

Which do you think is the most accurate/realistic?

Hi So I need some solid advice from you all wonderful people.
I think i am now ready to look into job side of this world, but have lots of doubts , read my story.
I have been learning android for last 2 years. Most of the time i have been trying to understand how stuff works in android , but i have also gained a few other skills ( python programming, kotlin/flutter basics data analysis basics, testing, some graphic designing, aweful web dev ,etc). But i really want to work with Android. I don't have any specific Salary figure in mind, but i guess my knowledge is better or atleast par with most of the good android developers.

So i want to know how is this fresher/placement thingy work?
1.) GETTING KNOWN? : How can i make some good android based company aware that I am available for hiring? Should i start emailing every android related company that i know of? Should i start listing my profile on recruitment sites like linkedin or internshala? This year it is being said that companies will come for placements. From the status of my college, they are going to give me way to less $ , nd i know am not going to like any of them, but i guess i have to sit for them too.

2.INTERVIEW OR DIRECT PLACEMENTS? A little pre-context: i am currently starting my 4th year in clg. Afaik , 4th year isnt that strict and their can be leniency in terms of attendance. But my college is a place full of political cun*s in the name of directors and HODs and I don't know if they are again going to enforce the old 75% mandatory criteria. Plus if the company is from a different state/country , then my attendance would definitely not suffice.
So mainly i am unsure if somehow a company hires me, i would be able to start immediately. I heard that there are interviews for job recruitment after which the candidate is binded with an agreement to do some months training followed by permanent working after college completion.
This type of agreement is very much suitable for me, since from what my friend tells me, trainings can be lenient and understanding regarding exam preparations nd stuff.

So what do company usually chooses? Binding a fresher on immediate working basis or do they consider graduate completion?

Also, i suck at competitive coding. Do i need to polish myself on that or some company is willing to give me chance on the basis of my other skills 🙈(okay, no kidding , that's a serious question. I need to either work on getting better in competitive or build more apps based on that)

3.) ANDROID OR EVERYTHING? From what i have heard, working as a professional fresher is more like being an allrounder than being a domain specialist. But as i already stated, i really dig android and that's no small framework. I may di other stuff too, but won't interest me nd my output might be less efficient than expected.
So freshers can really be asked to do any stuff? Or can i still be in the area i like being into?

4.) COMPANY OR START-UP? Yeah, this is a general debate starter. Ignoring the business side of the conversation ( job safety vs more salary, experience, etc) the thing that's most important for me is the presence of a team. I want someone to assign me a task, whose vision i could follow, from whom i could learn, and some other people who are supportive and doing the same amount / similar work that am doing . This is so much import8 for me that i can easily ignore other factors for a better team. I once took a call from a startup ceo who hired me, a 2 month old android beginner at that time, as the "lead android developer"
But if am being on a team where i am supposed to do any random stuff that is assigned, then obviously this whole point of "visionary, helpful leader, guiding team, "etc goes moot