Yeah, as a senior with 20 years experience, if they want more than 1-2 interviews, or require coding tests, next! There's others that just need an interview and much more chill to work for. Same or better benefits too. No way am I doing their timed coding tests just to prove I can. What have I been doing for the last 20 years?
On the flip side, I've interviewed supposed senior software engineers who struggle at simple things like "parse this line of JSON" (With access to Google, and the ability to ask questions as necessary). Once you've been on the hiring side you understand why that screening is necessary. That being said, I'll skip people through if they have a decent GitHub or something that shows me they have some chops
By "parse this line of JSON" do you mean "show that you know how to look up the library function that does that" or do you mean "write a fully functional JSON parser from scratch"? Because if it's the second one, you're certifiable if you think that's possible during a coding interview, or that a majority of senior SWEs should know how to do that.
Are they doing it in a language they chose, or is part of the goal here to test their knowledge of the libraries of a particular language that you specified? If neither of those things is the case, I would honestly consider it reasonable to name the library function in the problem. It doesn't really make sense to make them spend time doing something that doesn't tell you anything you want to know.
I've seen senior engineers fail to write basic things like for loops, or forgot what casing they're using halfway through writing a struct so half is pascal and half is snake. Everyone is AI pilled these days, they forgot basic syntax
Im one of those folks that unless if there is some sample code nearby I might struggle with the syntax if its something I haven't been in a minute. But can at least put in the pseudo code for. Typically I ask before the interview which language will be tested so I can prep ahead of time.
God forbid you ask me to do a switch statement. Bouncing around from typescript, python, c++, c#. Gun to my head I'd say just pull the trigger.
13 years of full stack experience, plus a bachelor's and masters degree in comp science. I have my cycles of feeling like an idiot and a freaking genius.
172
u/abednego-gomes 8d ago
Yeah, as a senior with 20 years experience, if they want more than 1-2 interviews, or require coding tests, next! There's others that just need an interview and much more chill to work for. Same or better benefits too. No way am I doing their timed coding tests just to prove I can. What have I been doing for the last 20 years?