Seems like solid advice, as always.

I get hung up here because, like any job position to fill, there is always someone else coming in to interview an hour later. What validation does determination, willingness to learn and grow, and a dirty joke offer if I don't have the goods?

I guess there is also the aspect that "senior" may not have the definition I would expect it to have. I'm thinking super-human knowledge, but you seem to be suggesting that softer skills can be used to woo employers into believing that I am worth a long-term investment. Even so, with the years needed to gain respect from coworkers (which is vital for this sort of position, IMO), I'm tacitly promising 5+ years at the company, which should be reasonably met with skepticism at the interview stage.

I have a tough time with titles. At a previous job, I was the "marketing director," although that didn't mean much since I was the only person in the marketing department. The same goes with my current job, which includes the word "manager" or "lead." I don't consider myself a good manager, lead, director, or whatever.

I'm waxing and should be trying to catch up on sleep, but I found this bit funny:

"WHAAAT.... UNIT TEST !!!! I'm a senior programmer... I don`t need to test my code any-more"

Heard that before.... Thus he lets the "Juniors" fix his bugs and test it.

"We are going to hire an architect... no, not Mr X, we want someone that is much more senior, someone that is no longer coding"

later in the interview :

- so what programming languages are you familiar with ?

- ahem... I've used COBOL and FORTRAN but now mostly it`s Ms Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

- Excellent... when can you start ?


Not worried too much. I fully expect to bomb my first few attempts, though I won't do this without giving it my all and preparing beforehand.

"What is the difference between a black-red tree and a b-tree?"
"What are good strategies for preventing collision in a hash table?"
"Does SAT imply NP-Complete?"

Oh, fudge, reading too many blogs.

Yes, this does worry me. I'm confused by the reactions that I get.

One time, I applied to a PHP job. I was arranged to have an interview and the guy on the phone said. "So, you don't have experience working with PHP, right?"

Well... I've built websites.

"Have you ever even seen PHP?"

Of course I have, and surprisingly, I didn't go blind. Go figure.

The other extreme is that I am responded with a thanks for applying to a position that I know I didn't apply to, let's set up a time to talk. I either have a link to the position in the email or I have to search for the position named in the email. The requirements are:

7+ years experience working on a high-scalability, reliable, concurrent network systems.
Experience using Perl, Ruby, and Bash for Linux cluster automation.
Hand-writing optimized, MapReduce jobs on Hadoop -> MongoDB.
3+ years experience with a new-fangled language like Haskell, Clojure, Scala, etc.

A bit over-the-top, but not too far off, tbh. From one time, I can figure that there was a mistake and they meant to write someone else, but after a few times, something is weird.

This is an interesting perspective. Would I also want to ask what is non-negotiable knowledge as well, or am I digging a hole?

I can. I've had to do it myself. Unfortunately, the business comes first and overrides any emotional investment I have in people. I always try to find another position for them to work in first, but my work experience is at places that I can shift their job to something different.

This also means that I don't fire people because I don't like them. Two pieces of the same pie.

Has anyone been invited to https://keybase.io?

Looks like a really cool idea.

Looks cool, but not clear if you can create a new private key if it gets compromised?

I think it's on you to revoke your gpg pair if you're compromised. I'm not an encryption expert but I think using subkeys helps you to make a main key change as painless as possible if you need to revoke it.

I was under the impression the site just acts as a service to prove to the world that you're you, and others can look you up by public key and find all your "signed" services that you belong to (by verifying yourself -- such making a tweet with your key once, or a gist, etc.).

Example, here's some dude's profile: https://keybase.io/max

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7235634

I typically just search for tptacek comments on security related products:

"Then the only difference between hushmail and your model is exactly what the FBI will get a subpoena to have you type into your server to subvert your users. The models are equivalently insecure.
Incidentally, you can't simply audit the "front-end Javascript"; you have to evaluate everything that influences the Javascript runtime (the DOM, stylesheets, cached resources, &c) every time the page loads. Browsers aren't designed to make content-controlled code "auditable"; it simply isn't a capability of the environment."

You don't have to give them your private key. JS doesn't even come into play unless you give em your private key.

You can use their CLI (also an attack vector, but optional) or just run the commands directly in your shell without the assistance of any questionable third parties. You just copy/paste the commands they give you.

Maybe those features didn't exist 200+ days ago? They do now.

I guess I would expect this question to come up at some point right?

Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print “Fizz” instead of the number and for the multiples of five print “Buzz”. For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print “FizzBuzz”.

I have no idea. I haven't looked into it. Just remembered seeing the discussion and thought you'd be interested.

EDIT: fwiw i don't think tptacek's comments were assuming you gave them your private key. but honestly i'm not interested enough to research it myself.

So you're thinking if they ask that fizz buzz question, what they really want is a function thats works for arbitrary ranges and multiples and fizzes and buzzes, and they want to test your knowledge of generators?

perhaps they like over-engineering and bloated code? :P

Yeah, your right. I should have used objects instead.

a rose by any other name smells the same

Good reminder.

Unfortunately you need to do this instead:

Assumed I have a little SQL and AHK background but still a beginner... I want to delve into a new programming language and master it, what I should choose?
I googled a lot but I didn't find the answer

C#






























<3 c# but I don't think it really matters. Perhaps a better angle is think of something you want to build, and then pick a language that allows you to build it.

Ty, what about Python?
I just found this statement:


You can do pretty much any thing you want with Python;


here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...mits-of-python

hey, there is software out there for stars which converts your stack size to big blinds. Does anyone know how they get access to the "number" to change it?

^starshelper

Interesting.

I am working under the assumption that in those cases, the person should not have been hired to begin with.
My second assumption is that by being as honest as I am in interviews, I can avoid being hired into the wrong position.

Am I way off?

Shouldn't that be clear by the end of the interview?

I never had to ask that. I think it could be turned against you in the line of "ah, so he wants to skip learning about / performing on negotiable knowledge?"
Can't see a positive spin on that question. So, I'd try to test it out in a different way.

python || ruby >>> c#, c++, java, etc

sorry gull, it's true.

yeh i know the software :P was wondering how they get access to the $$ stack and able to manipulate it given it isnt images or anything which you can easily change through folders

Stars need to be opened in order to get starshelper working, so... I think the latter is doing a code injection, so not that easy

That is the goal and I agree with you about honesty. However, the hiring process is far from perfect (project management is also far from perfect) so people can find themselves in situations where their productivity level is unsatisfactory even after being honest about their capabilities. Management changes, poor project management, unrealistic expectations, companies in desperate need (which I am observing more and more every week) that ended up in a bad hire etc. all play into it.