What Silicon Valley gets about engineers that traditional companies do not

Re:What Silicon Valley gets about engineers that traditional... by jedberg on Sunday January 10, 2021 @06:47PM (#25721785)

If I was interviewing you and you told me "my current company has very bad development practices" and then gave me a list of all the things you think they are doing wrong and all the ways it could improve, I'd probably be really impressed. Then I'd ask you why you don't change those things, and I would hope you'd tell me a story about how you tried to change it but got blocked, or maybe small changes you are making to make things better.

This would tell me that you're really engaged, up to date on the latest methods, and motivated to make things around you better.

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Re:What Silicon Valley gets about engineers that traditional... by titanomachy on Sunday January 10, 2021 @09:04PM (#25723352)

Good advice. Also: don't blame the people around you for why you couldn't fix something. Even if it's because your manager was a short-sighted idiot, or the senior engineer on your team was jealously guarding his territory, you don't have to say that in the interview. See if you can reframe it in a more blame-neutral way.

For example, if you couldn't remove a bad pattern because it was too deeply entrenched for you to handle it yourself, and you couldn't get anyone more senior interested: that's expected for a junior developer and probably wouldn't be held against you.

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Re:What Silicon Valley gets about engineers that traditional... by Osiris on Sunday January 10, 2021 @08:53PM (#25723252)

I've actually asked this question in an interview before to a candidate. "Is there anything about the process you work in now that you would change, and how would you do it differently?"

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