Quote:
Originally Posted by candybar
Are you judging him on his overall productivity? Here math, algorithm, whiteboard coding skills and general intelligence would play a much bigger role than productivity based on, say, domain knowledge, work ethic or high levels of engagement.
That could definitely be the case, I don't know if maybe he crushes the whiteboards. Productivity is part of my take on him, but also seeing his code and the quality of his designs - good stuff, but not great or standing out from the crowd. There are 2-3 guys I work with who I think are legit rockstars any company would be lucky to have (one is a long-time contractor who I think used to work at Google as well as other large companies), and this guy was not at their level.
Quote:
Originally Posted by candybar
Yeah this does sound like a mistake but the bigger mistake isn't turning down one referral (which has a low probability of leading to an offer) but really not bothering to try in the past or in the future. I have turned down these referrals and recruiters for years and it's also been a big career mistake.
What do you think the proper play is in that area? I joined LinkedIn recently (I know, LOL, huge career leak to only be doing that now) and get like 1-2 contacts out of the blue each week, but from hearing my coworkers talk about it, I get the sense that it's like being an attractive woman on a dating site and just because random people are contacting you doesn't mean it's worth your time. I guess, how do you decide what contacts
are worth your attention?
In any case, I had randomly heard of TripleByte awhile ago (forget where, maybe Hacker Newsletter? a few posts about it here but long enough ago that I don't think they stuck with me) and took their test last week, it was very difficult but they said at the end I did well (no idea if I believe them, they don't tell you the right answers and a decent number were domain-specific stuff in areas I had no experience where my answer was just "I don't know", and they
are in the business of making you want to stick with their program), and I just booked a technical interview in a couple weeks. It sounds like it plays to my strengths - their interview guide says I'll write a game-like program (sounds easy enough) and then do a debugging section where they'll give you a program with some bugs and ask you to fix it (which I think is one of my strongest areas). No whiteboarding, which I'm probably worse at.
They work with a lot of startups but also some larger companies (Apple probably the most attractive?), so maybe if I blow them away that can help get the ball rolling on some things.