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bolido_sentimental  1yr ago (text post)   4134 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 25, 2022

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As somebody who interviewed a few people for SWE positions, some thoughts:

  • Any code you wrote that you think looks nice and you can explain what it is doing. Especially if it does something cool, even if it's not related to the immediate are of employment - if you can do one cool thing, good chance you can do more cool things.

  • Any topics you are interested in or worked on which can be in relation to what you current employer is doing.

  • Any tools/frameworks/concepts you have working familiarity with. Don't exaggerate too much though - if you write "I am an expert in C", you'd get an expert-level C questions, and unless you can answer them, you'd look bad. If you write "I have working knowledge of C", you have less chance of overpromising. Don't list trivial things like "I can make HTML page" - it's not exciting for decades now, and just annoys people.

  • Project Euler probably won't do much on CV, but you can mention it in the interview if an opportunity arises, and if you have some cool example that can demonstrate how you solved some interesting problem in a way that shows how good you are.

Basically on the interview I try to find out:

  • Is the candidate smart and capable of doing the tasks we'd need done

  • Does the candidate has the relevant experience and if yes, which one - so we can figure out into which project they could contribute

  • Are they going to be good to work with - decent communication skills, personality etc.

IMO don't lean on academic awards and unrelated publications too much - this can only create the impression you're an ivory castle dweller and earn you the dreaded "overqualified" mark. I mean, you don't have to hide it, but don't bring it as something that you consider to be a major factor, because for most SWE internship positions it won't be. Grades, especially old ones, are of very little importance IMO.

Grades, especially old ones, are of very little importance IMO.

I'll go further and claim that grades are completely and utterly irrelevant if you have literally anything at all to show for your skills (and if you don't, you're pretty screwed). I have no idea why so many American students are obsessed with them, given that nobody in the industry cares.

Right. I mean, if you are literally a fresh graduate with zero other things to show (which by itself is a bad thing, I'd expect to have at least some practical things to show) and perfect grades, it may be mildly interesting, in a way of "ok, I guess it's better than nothing", but in general nobody in the industry has the slightest interest in the grades.

I mean, my employer will occasionally list a GPA requirement/preference for senior-level openings, but i assume thats either HR's doing, or the hiring manager not really thinking things through.

HR may look at it, and if the company is big enough, it could happen that CVs with low GPAs or no GPAs would be screened out at this stage. In a smaller company, that's not likely to happen as people who actually make hiring decisions would be aware of what HR uses to screen and tell them not to do that.

Also, for a senior SWE position you should have enough experience that puts your grades years if not decades back. I can't imagine any hiring manager seriously worrying about grades made many years ago for something that is likely bear no connection with whatever work needs to be done now. At least not any manager who knows what they're doing :) Almost certainly it's something that HR inserted.

GPA requirement/preference for senior-level openings

HR is of course bad everywhere, but they sound especially bad at your employer. I interview a lot of people. We don't ask for GPA. The only job that actually verified my degrees was the very first one I got right after school.

  1. Grad school.

  2. Specific courses have massive waiting lists, and people with better grades are given priority.

  3. That one employer who will ask for transcripts. (I remember applying for a job that asked for high school transcripts as well, it was clear they were trying to extract every proxy for IQ they could get out of me.)

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