It’s because HR has no idea about the jobs they’re interviewing for, and while they want to avoid slackers or incompetent people, they only seem to look for say a 10x while passing up a 5x or 2x (they’re just as important).
Hr needs to quit asking technical questions, let technical people handle that.
That and I don’t get the sense software is really that big of a thing in Taiwan vs the US or EU. I feel like you’d actually do better if you’re doing software for automation and numerical control than just developing programs and apps.
It was the Lead Development manager and a senior developer who interviewed me. Both programmers by trade, no HR.
The problem is there are programmers (who can actually achieve results) and then there are programmers, who spend 85% of their time on the internet trying to establish what is the latest trend to do something, which takes 20-30x longer (without exaggeration) and adds an obscene amount of complexity too.
Look at the previous post about my application. That piece of shit should be something that can be whipped up in less than an hour, but the expectation is that it should have more of the technical bullshit than it already does, because crucially when I wrote it, it doesn’t have an automated test harness to validate every part of this featureless application.
Does it make me a better developer because I have spent hours adding technologies to that application without adding any additional features? No it fucking does not. But time and time again, that is what the industry expects.
I’m just thinking Taiwan is a poor place for software developers. Not a whole lot of aaa games made here, nor any major app development (seems it’s all really crap outdated looking).
I think if you were programming manufacturing machines, whatever code they use for chip designs, then I think Taiwan is a better place for that.
Otherwise they’re all just looking at the latest trends.
But you’re not interviewing for a position writing toy applications with three input fields. In large real life codebases with a bunch of legacy cruft and multiple people working on them and pushing updates to easily-irritated users, all that testing and stuff does matter, as does your ability to make good decisions about the architecture.
I agree that asking you to define polymorphism isn’t the best interview strategy, but only because giving you a realistic task to solve is a better way to find out whether you understand it or not.
Good decisions about the architecture is very rarely done these days. Look at the microservices, Kubernetes absolute disaster. Unless you are literally Amazon or dealing with billions of service requests, rewriting legacy applications to fit “good architecture” kills companies because it fucks off the customers/users because what they want is features, meanwhile the developers are fannying about for years trying to get their distributed messaging system to work.
Mostly everytime I do a interview with Taiwanese they are trying really hard to make me failed. Is not fun and is not a good way to interview. Is the strategy to make a low ball offer afterwards. My wife says this is not only in tech. Leads and Managers like to feel important.
But then you aren’t keeping up with the latest trends or developments in the tech industry and therefore are less employable, according to what I’ve been told!
Already had the dreaded “how can we integrate AI into our systems” discussion. Give me a problem that the solution is only AI and we’ll integrate it, otherwise sod off with your buzzwords thanks.
The polymorphism question reads like an example of the weird techbro masturbation that goes on in some of these interviews. I mean the result of questions like this is you either know it or you don’t, it’s binary and not a reliable signal for anything, other than if you get it right the interviewer thinks this mutual tugfest can continue. Knowledge questions don’t assess skill is what I’m trying to say.
Yeah that was the vibe that I got, competitive academicism. I get very turned off by it, I think I lost respect at that point and then probably appeared impatient, because in truth I knew I had wasted a journey.
I rewrote this gaped fuckhole in Python and going to make equivalents in Ruby and PHP and then I’m hurling this shit into the sea.
“Senior” developer deleted one of our production databases at work, I’m just embarrassed, they even tried to laugh about it. Meanwhile my use of an unnecessary explicit cast which was flagged by the linter was more offensive in their eyes, so my delivery was delayed a week, which is how long it took them to review it.
But let’s look on the bright side! Cos we can blue sky free think our way to success! Right?
You don’t need to work for a corporate monolith especially if you work in IT.
I have a few friends who transitioned into the IT industry and they do different things (none of them were core computer science heads they went into it because they did transition courses to learn the basics). One is working for a small software developer for years , leads a small team , clocks in and out 9 to 5 (when he does go to the office) and seems very happy with it. Another got into start ups. Another works on SAP support but not any heavy development. I have another acquaintance in Taiwan who just manages small companies website and app development, doing well and no boss to report to, gets a retainer from all these companies every month. He even trained his wife to do the support as well.
I feel like it’s more a trade-off. You probably get a bit more money and a more obvious career path, but you get less freedom, less equity, less vacation time …
I tried the corporate thing briefly and hated it. To each their own.
That is absolutely correct.
But it’s not like you can’t get paid pretty well doing other stuff as I mentioned above. The guy I know who is maintaining multiples companies websites and apps is making loads of money for relatively little work, they pay him a retainer to keep everything up and running every month once it’s setup.
My other buddy working directly under the software company boss , he is given a lot of respect and autonomy and he thrives on it. He doesn’t need mega bucks to be happy, I reckon he still pulls in 80k or 100k Euro a year. He could make more in the big techs but they would be stressing him a lot more.
England has loads of small software companies and service providers , lots of choices I’m sure.
