My startup failed, then I found out I was unemployable

Re:My startup failed, then I found out I was unemployable by PragmaticPulp on Tuesday April 13, 2021 @11:32AM (#26793664)

Unpopular opinion, but the skills learned in these exercises really can translate to improvements in real world projects. We can get very far with most modern programming projects through brute force alone or by using standard library containers and algorithms, but past a certain scale it really does pay off to have an intuitive understanding of how data structures and algorithms work from first-hand implementation experience.

Of course, if a company is just building the stereotypical basic CRUD app to serve a maximum of 10K users total and maybe 10 per minute at peak, this probably doesn’t matter much.

However, companies that pay top dollar expect candidates with top knowledge, and that’s fair IMO.

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Re:My startup failed, then I found out I was unemployable by the_local_host on Tuesday April 13, 2021 @11:48AM (#26793984)

I'll second this opinion. I drilled on Leetcode medium problems to address some deficiencies in a recent job search (whilst in my late 40s age-wise). It made a huge difference in the interview outcomes, and I've found that I'm actually using this stuff designing solutions in my new job.

Having a bunch of basic, generally useful algorithms in recent memory does save a lot of time on the "general solution" side when you're working in a new milieu. (That saved time then gets consumed trying to find, configure, and tune anything in an unfamiliar cloud environment, but that's another kettle of fish).

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Re:My startup failed, then I found out I was unemployable by falcolas on Tuesday April 13, 2021 @11:47AM (#26793970)

> pay top dollar expect candidates with top knowledge

Knowing how to solve the ten or twenty most common CS interview questions is not an indicator of possessing "top knowledge". It's an indicator that someone studied the cheat sheet to big tech interviews, and that's all.

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Re:My startup failed, then I found out I was unemployable by PragmaticPulp on Tuesday April 13, 2021 @09:18PM (#26801867)

Fortunately, FAANG interviews are more than just a couple of CS interview questions.

The coding problems are part of the interview, but they're not the entirety of the interview. You can't pass a FAANG interview by cramming CS questions, unless you're maybe applying for a new grad position where previous work experience isn't factored in very much.

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