1%
5%
94%

1) what i imagine most people do
2) what i think people probably do
3) what i do

I always try to write code that’s self explanatory. Not sure if it’s bad practice, but if I have a large function body that uses multiple for loops and if clauses, I try to condense those into small functions with descriptive names. Rather than making a messy for loop that searches a list for some substring, I’d rather make a function that says like “findSubstring()” and then just document that, even if I am unlikely to use it again. It makes for easier testing too.

“Self documenting” code generally is better at saying what it’s doing than why. Why is usually more important than what...

The reality is that any SaaS code base will eventually grow into a non-insignificant size. I think at that point, self-documenting code doesn't work anymore. It might for small code bases but thats about it imo.

This is actually one of the easiest bugs to find since it fails the same way every time. Stepping through a debugger, you can fix it within an hour most likely given familiarity of a decent sized codebase.

I did say “that’s why I love the debugger”

A working programmer creates and debugs these kinds of logic bugs every single day. No one writes bug free code.

Yeah I got dinged on my netflix 8-hour take home assignment for creating an async race condition where the code assumed the call made first would return first.

I'm like - yes that was a dumb mistake. But obviously I get the concept of async programming and I would have caught it immediately in testing. Apparently my POC to "demonstrate how I think" also needed to be completely bug-free.

You guys are doing it all wrong. If you were to write bug-free code in the first place, you wouldn't have to ever write tests!

We had a guy apply for a dev position. He said in the interview: "I do not program bugs." (maybe doesn't translate well, basically he claimed his code was 100% bug free).

Needless to say he wasn't hired.

Why was it (or should it have been) obvious to them?

I’m not trying to defend Netflix here, but more thinking about how they could (should?) have seen this as a bug and not a fundamental knowledge issue.

Because I demonstrated plenty of other async concepts in the 8-hour project. I just missed one when I broke up a page from one call to 3 calls - one for each panel. Synchronous calls turned to async, but because I was just hitting a dummy API they were basically coming back instantly.

The only reason I even found out about it was because I asked the boss guy what I did wrong and he sent me the notes from the programmer. They were never going to follow up or ask what I thought about it.

Standard play is to walk the programmer through it then see if they get all confused, or if they lightbulb goes on pretty quick and they go "oh yeah, duh that was a dumb one - just missed it". We discussed the whole thing in this thread at the time and mostly came to the conclusion that Netflix wasn't really serious about hiring me and the boss was probably just testing the waters.

Ok, thanks. I'd like to write a lot about this and why interviewing is hard, but can't figure out the way to word it properly. I'll try to come back to this.

Is this the standard play? It probably should be - at least for issues like this one or borderline assignments. But I actually don't think its the typical practice. Not that it makes a difference for you at this point.

Yeah, I remember not agreeing with the general consensus on that. But my takes are bad.

_dave and I discussed the suzzer Netflix thing once and both basically came to the conclusion that they must have made up their mind beforehand that they weren't gonna hire you.

Got an email for a 2nd interview.

If I want to do well I should probably brush up on Unity a little bit.

He said it’s going to be next month so I think I’ll have time to work theough some tutorials.

Next month? Like, March? I didn't weigh in on the first interview at all but these guys already put you through whiteboarding **** and they still don't know if they want to hire you, they want to do it again in a month? **** these people.

Well, he did give a reason. he said in the interview they just hired a marketing person who he wants fully up to speed before he hires anyone else, but it seems budget related.

My gut tells me if I go to this second interview they've already decided if they're going to hire me.

here's the email because I'm probably communicating it wrong:

Their games could be programmed by any one of you guys in a weekend or two, I imagine that the "team" consists of this lead guy and maybe 1 or 2 other grunts like myself.

While he cites a valid reason reading between the lines it definitely sounds budgetary.

Definitely keep looking for something better/ more stable in the meantime. I wouldn't bother learning unity. The familiarity you can get in a few weekends I don't think adds up to much and most places aren't going to expect it from an intern anyway

My teacher told me to give him my resume for a job opening that’s near me, I’m not going to stop pursuing other things

for someone who is not particularly outgoing or friendly i feel like i am crushing this whole networking thing

Best case is they're totally above board and interested - but still have other reasons that they won't/can't hire you. I'd definitely treat this as a low likelihood backup option while pursuing other options.

Worst case is a lot worse. They knew they were hiring this marketing person and working on this game when they last talked to you. They don't think they want to hire you but want to keep their options open and are totally fine stringing you along.

Why would they waste their own time like that?

this feels a lot like dating tbh.

This actually sounds about expected.

They are super busy and don't see an intern making an immediate impact, more being an immediate burden. If you keep in touch with them for the next weeks/months, eventually they will probably have free time enough to say "**** it let's hire the kid". I've seen (and participated) in this exact type of thing before.

If you send them an email in 3 weeks saying, " Hey I'm really interested so I spent some time with unity and got something cool made" then they might move on you. Or not. But definitely try everything you can to find something better because these dudes are either gonna randomly decide to hire you or string you on forever.

morally, companies should be upfront with candidates about how many people they hiring and how many they are interviewing so that the candidate can access the amount of time effort they want to put into it given an approximation of their opportunity.

"We are looking at a few people" vs "We are responding to every Indeed application with a take home test and interviewing 30 people next week for 1 position".