Wow. I thought I had it bad when I had to apply to >200 places before landing a job. 500 is truly sickening!

Interesting article, although I'm not sure I agree with the idea that it puts engineers out of work. Someone has to build/maintain the services and less wasted duplicated effort doesn't necessarily mean less people working. It can just as easily mean the same number of people working and accomplishing a lot more.

I like how they list Intuit Quickbooks Online as a replacement for an accountant.

It's probably only necessary if you have a weird/non-existent background on your resume, are weak at coding, and/or have bad people skills. I have no CS degree and spent the last 4 years working at a restaurant, with poker prior to that. My coding skills were a lot weaker when I started the application process, getting stronger as the process went on, largely through the application process itself (coding challenges, getting comfortable with tech screens and getting asked similar questions, etc.). My initial screening rate was probably a lot lower than average because of the non-traditional resume.

500 isn't that crazy if you think about it. 10 per weekday is an extremely reasonable and solid number to shoot for if you don't have another job, so that's just a little over 2 months.

Many, many people couldn't handle that many rejections. Yes I am sure that all the coding challenges along the road did strengthen your coding skills. Really it indicates that even when employers are tentative/picky that perseverance is the most important factor.

200-500 seems completely sick to me. I thought most people got hired after 3-5 interviews.

applied at <> interviewed with

Yeah, that's true. Still mind boggling to me. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't handle 300 "You sound like a good fit but sorry!" replies and then just not hearing anything back from the other 200 too well.

I recently got invited to interview at Google but I'm still on the fence because I simply hate the interview process and my fundamentals are a little weak. When was the last time I implemented my own hash map? Oh right, never.

Just do it. It's good experience and worst case you're exactly where you are now.

Yeah, I suppose. My real problem with it is it will take a few weeks of studying to even have a chance of passing the first interview and I'm not sure I would even take the job if I got through all of the interviews due to having to relocate.

It's not impossible but it's a long shot.

Don't bother imo.

I see. I'd say just take it without studying - but you probably know better if you think your chances of success are basically 0.

I know about a half dozen people that work for Google - and they're all extremely happy there (I've tried to poach most of them on multiple occasions). Although I realize relocating is often about more than just the job.

I think codecademy's ruby track has you do a hash map, but I could be way off base, as I'm not entirely sure what that is.

Hmm, probably not 0% but close. If you asked me to white board a hash map implementation in Python I'd bomb it and apparently those sort of questions are given.

Do any of your friends work at the NYC office? I'm sure I would be happy if that's the thing I want to do but I'm not sure if that's the thing I want to do. It just seems pointless to work at a place for the next 20 years at a near set salary.

I guess I just like having the freedom to start my own projects and fail because eventually one of them will be "holy ****, this is really happening" successful.

I haven't taken it. It would be building out the data structure yourself, not just using the one supplied natively by the language.

Basically they are really hung up on having their developers have strong fundamentals (things you'd typically learn in a CS course at university) more so than experience working with real world systems.

Maybe I'm getting bitter but I don't see my 9-5 as a way to do the above, I'm doing it in my own time. I seriously doubt I will find "fulfillment" at dev jobs in that way - I'll continue to show up to get paid and work on stuff I don't care about in the least.

Yeah, most of them are based in NYC.

Edit: I don't think I'd look at it as a 20 year commitment either. Working at Google for a couple of years would still be a pretty big plus on your resume - probably helpful even if you go back to doing your own thing.

That makes sense. The big guys like Google and Facebook are basically working at such scale that it's practically theoretical anyway.

I always figured you'd need a masters or doctorate to get into one of those companies, but maybe that isn't the case.

Google reached out to me and I declined because I started a new job. I told them maybe in a year or so depending on how things are going. The recruiter stated he'd keep in touch and that it takes about 3 months to get through the interview process. That is a long time. I understand your trepidation. Maybe just string them along, bone up on their interview question areas and then give it a go.

Btw when I was interviewed for my current position the company had me do several C++ class designs. I'm currently doing assembly language development implementing C callable functions that provide hardware/software interfaces. This is so typical of companies. I am not complaining about my assignment just the interview process really. I get why I have been given the assignment but the interview questions really had nothing to with what I have been assigned.

500 is a lot of resumes to send out, but I'm more impressed that you managed to save enough money for a bootcamp and fade SF prices with restaurant work savings. Good work.

I was contacted by Amazon a few times. I asked how they found me and they said they scraped my HN profile. The recruiter removed me from their database when I sent them my resume.

Considering how bad their basic stuff is, I'd be astounded if they asked you to implement hashes using probabilistic updates, did so by minimizing collisions, and then reviewed alternatives and discussed the trade offs.

By this definition, shoelace has probably implemented a ton of hash tables without realizing it (actually he did in the EdX 600 course).

I think shoelace works alone. Don't you ever work on your own projects? Kind of sad to see you are this jaded so young in your career.

Would the studying make you smarter/better in the long run either way? Probably. But are there more productive things you could be doing for the few weeks? If it's "watch Netflix vs. Google application process" probably pick the latter. Unless it's Bojack Horseman.

Yea they have you use them but definitely not create your own.

I'm not sure that this is exactly true. One thing that I've heard is that they want you to study all these rare algorithms and data structures so that you are unable to devote time to any other company's application process at the same time. Another, perhaps written by somebody here, is that in general with whiteboarding data structures and algorithms the point is "is she smart enough and dedicated enough to have learned and studied this nonsense, regardless of its applicability to the actual job?"

One guy in my cohort at the boot camp rejected a Google offer and so did one in the cohort after.

The boot camp I went to charges 18% of your first year's salary once you get a job. For the other stuff I had some help and I have some debt, so it's not quite as impressive as it seems. But thanks!

Are you in NYC too? I've been going to meet ups recently. Would be funny if we met already.

He didn't even ask me about school. He found me on GitHub. That was the point of entry for our communications.

Yep. I'm doing less contracting work lately and more Kickstarter/videos/books (programming related) but I still do contracting work when I can get it.

Also, yep good old EDX. That course was the last time I gave any effort towards university'ish fundamentals.

I paraphrased what he told me on the phone. It's mainly to ensure you have a solid understanding of things and can reason about performance implications (big O, etc.). I guess they found on average people who can breeze through that stuff have a higher chance of being able to adapt to new technologies and figure things out.

Yeah, looking back, I can see how that EdX class could turn someone off to doing university type learning.

For the most part, learning how to identify features of a fast and slow algorithm is pretty basic. I'd assume that Google would be concerned about passing off three nested for loops as a "good" answer and not being able to figure out something that runs faster and takes less space (I think bin packing is n^3, but I'm a little fuzzy on that one)

If it matters, CLRS dedicates ~30 pages to hash maps. It is a pretty easy section of the book.

I use to live in NYC and still work for a company there, but I now live in Canada.

My coworkers participate in a bunch of meet ups but my trips down rarely coincide.

Was wondering what kind of city has 500 companies for a software dev to apply to. SF makes sense.