blog/fwiw

[utterances-bot]

For whatever it's worth: my advice on job hunting in tech - Josh Collinsworth blog

A collection of things I've learned over my decade in the industry, on how and where to look for jobs, applying, interviewing, and all those fun things. For whatever it's worth.

https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/fwiw

[sweenejp]

Josh, great post. One that I’ve bookmarked and will definitely come back to.

Re: live coding interviews:

Worse: this style of interview filters out people who would’ve been excellent at the job, but who simply can’t perform well in front of others, under pressure, and/or quickly. (Which, again, are all things the actual job pretty much never calls for.)

This is spot on. I’m always surprised at how many people defend the live coding interview. More than anything, these types of interviews are just about luck. Especially for junior/ entry level devs trying to break into the industry. When I was first applying to dev roles, if encountered a live coding challenge in which the problem was similar to something I just practiced on Leetcode, then I’d tend to do well in the interview. If it was something I never practiced before, I’d sit there stunned. Which of course is not what people do normally when they encounter a problem they’ve not seem before. It’s just that, like you say, you never have 3 people peering over your shoulder while you try to figure it out.

So much of being a successful developer is figuring out how to solve new problems. But the live coding challenge is the worst way to discern whether or not someone will be good at that. This is why I much prefer take home challenges. I understand people have strong negative feelings about take home challenges for job interviews but at least they are more like what the role actually is.

[sebestindragos]

Very nice and lenghty advice Josh. I’ve been involved in this area ever since I started building https://first2apply.com/ at the start of this year and can confirm what you said stands true.

Unfortunately, given how bad the job market is, people would still struggle to find a job and there are a lot of misconceptions flying around. Really wish more people would read your article and not go the desperation route