There was a job I applied to that wanted the exact thing I had done at my last job. Same tech tech. Same early startup. Same kind of project. They rejected me without even a phone screen for “someone more in line with their needs”.
They might be using monitoring services to reveal your recent salary, and rejecting you based on what they imagine you’ll accept relative to another person
A friend of mine is convinced they all feed into sketchy private data broker systems, and reject candidates based on personal and political stuff. Algorithm determines you’re kind of a lefty? Reject.
We have like no rights here in the US with regards to labor, so they can basically do what they want so long as they cover half of their ass.
Yeah I’m probably suffering a little because I don’t have any real social media, and my GitHub is all private contributions for work. I should probably do some free work to show off there but I resent that
I worry whether I should create a Facebook account just in case I need it for this reason… but then I remember that I’m not that desperate! (Though I will not judge anyone else who is.)
Had the almost exact same thing happen. They wanted me especially because of the knowledge from my previous company. 3 interviews. Then, riight before they were gonna give me a coding challenge, I got the “uhm akschually naww” email.
There’s something especially soulcrushing about that. Makes you prefer the ghosting or the “we went with the better candidate” bullshit
Most coding challenges are stupid. You’ll have a job that’s just working on a basic ass API in front of the database, and they’ll be like “can you solve the traveling salesman problem?”. You don’t need to know if I can pull fancy algorithms out of my ass. You need to know if I can cover the basics and take feedback.
Though the last code challenge I had was “can you remove duplicates from this list of integers?”. I was like, "can I just convert it to a set?’ and they were like “…ok”. Didn’t get the role, but the pay was bad, it was in office, the company is surprisingly politically conservative, and they’re rewriting their codebase “to support AI development”. So maybe that sas for the best.
No joke, when we do interviews we have candidates give code review feedback. One of the pieces of code is a poorly written but functional “find the unique numbers” function. We have had ONE candidate say, “Just throw them in a set.” And in our separate chat where we discuss candidates, we were like, “Finally someone gave the right answer.”
(Not that there’s a wrong answer when code reviewing like this, but I was waiting for someone to come to that solution.)
Our interview process has the candidate implement a couple (extremely simplistic) API routes, with the specific approach left up to the candidate. It’s more about having something they can talk through and evolve than it is about us looking for any specific approach.
Basically it exists as a way for us to have a starting point for talking about scalability topics, asking the candidate how they would evolve their implementation as we scale up the system. Does a pretty good job of giving us an idea of how they think through system design problems.
I applied for a job that asked for a very specialized, specific skill set, that at the time, literally only maybe 3 people in the world could have had (new endangered species stuff) I got rejected with an auto reply. One of those listings they have to do even though they had a candidate. I should have pressed the issue because looking back, I think they would have been required to interview anyone qualified.
There was a job I applied to that wanted the exact thing I had done at my last job. Same tech tech. Same early startup. Same kind of project. They rejected me without even a phone screen for “someone more in line with their needs”.
There’s no incentive for them to do a better job.
They might be using monitoring services to reveal your recent salary, and rejecting you based on what they imagine you’ll accept relative to another person
A friend of mine is convinced they all feed into sketchy private data broker systems, and reject candidates based on personal and political stuff. Algorithm determines you’re kind of a lefty? Reject.
We have like no rights here in the US with regards to labor, so they can basically do what they want so long as they cover half of their ass.
Damn that’s a conspiracy theory I’ll believe.
Also, I know for a fact they look you up on social media. I wonder if I keep getting rejected because I’m not active on any of that Facebook crap.
Yeah I’m probably suffering a little because I don’t have any real social media, and my GitHub is all private contributions for work. I should probably do some free work to show off there but I resent that
I did free work on GitHub once. I made a porn mod for a video game and released the code on github under an alt account.
Sometimes I seriously think about whether I should tell employers:
“Have you contributed to any open source projects?”
“A little bit of Piefed stuff, but mostly gooning.”
I worry whether I should create a Facebook account just in case I need it for this reason… but then I remember that I’m not that desperate! (Though I will not judge anyone else who is.)
Had the almost exact same thing happen. They wanted me especially because of the knowledge from my previous company. 3 interviews. Then, riight before they were gonna give me a coding challenge, I got the “uhm akschually naww” email.
There’s something especially soulcrushing about that. Makes you prefer the ghosting or the “we went with the better candidate” bullshit
Honestly even coding challenges now… Do they even make sense anymore? You can teach people if they don’t have the right stack, but if they are a dick…
I think the main thing for doing a coding challenge is to talk through your thought process and work style.
Most coding challenges are stupid. You’ll have a job that’s just working on a basic ass API in front of the database, and they’ll be like “can you solve the traveling salesman problem?”. You don’t need to know if I can pull fancy algorithms out of my ass. You need to know if I can cover the basics and take feedback.
Though the last code challenge I had was “can you remove duplicates from this list of integers?”. I was like, "can I just convert it to a set?’ and they were like “…ok”. Didn’t get the role, but the pay was bad, it was in office, the company is surprisingly politically conservative, and they’re rewriting their codebase “to support AI development”. So maybe that sas for the best.
No joke, when we do interviews we have candidates give code review feedback. One of the pieces of code is a poorly written but functional “find the unique numbers” function. We have had ONE candidate say, “Just throw them in a set.” And in our separate chat where we discuss candidates, we were like, “Finally someone gave the right answer.”
(Not that there’s a wrong answer when code reviewing like this, but I was waiting for someone to come to that solution.)
Lol “can i just convert it to a set”.
I imagine someone felt really smart for finding that question and you just ruined their day.
Our interview process has the candidate implement a couple (extremely simplistic) API routes, with the specific approach left up to the candidate. It’s more about having something they can talk through and evolve than it is about us looking for any specific approach.
Basically it exists as a way for us to have a starting point for talking about scalability topics, asking the candidate how they would evolve their implementation as we scale up the system. Does a pretty good job of giving us an idea of how they think through system design problems.
honestly no clue, in my journey I’ve not once been asked to actually do a coding challenge yet.
I’ve done a few coding challenges so far and hated all of them
I applied for a job that asked for a very specialized, specific skill set, that at the time, literally only maybe 3 people in the world could have had (new endangered species stuff) I got rejected with an auto reply. One of those listings they have to do even though they had a candidate. I should have pressed the issue because looking back, I think they would have been required to interview anyone qualified.