Comment by Tade0

Comment by Tade0 17 hours ago

2 replies

> The quality of junior engineers I've interviewed has been abysmal. Maybe because we don't have the name nor the high end salary, or maybe our recruiting firms and HR suck in general. My hire/no-hire ratio is literally 50:1.

I'm sorry but to me this part reads like a humorous phrase that's popular in some circles in my region which goes:

"Maybe <list of negative things, usually correct characterizations of the speaker>, but at least <something even worse>"

The companies I worked for used automated coding quizzes like Codility to weed out the worst applicants, but I suspect you're already doing that.

How is them knowing when binary search is useful relevant to what they'll be doing at work should they get hired?

aynyc 17 hours ago

> How is them knowing when binary search is useful relevant to what they'll be doing at work should they get hired?

Because of our work is changing, faster than ever, not day to day but over time. You need a foundation to handle that change. My 2X years experience showed me that the people who has strong foundation handle the transition well. If I'm going to hire and invest and mentor, I want that person to be successful.

antonvs 13 hours ago

> How is them knowing when binary search is useful relevant to what they'll be doing at work should they get hired?

Because it goes directly to their understanding rather than whatever rote memorization they’ve done. Anything that involves rote memorization can be done, better, by LLMs. What’s in short supply are people with good critical thinking skills and the ability to deal effectively with new problems.