It's also how I say that there isn't really a useful problem that decentralisation solves. After all, most git users use git in a centralised way.

Finding work there was a dream, and while there weren't many roles available, they were usually great quality roles. Finding candidates was also great, and all of them were solid candidates that met the basic bar of "can you write some basic code in a language of your choosing".

To be honest, it felt like SO went downhill when Jeff Atwood left.

Mind boggling that they shut it down.

Obviously, I'm one person out of many, but a quick Google search indicates that I'm probably not the only one that felt stupid updating today.

I distinctly remember reading something that said 60% was the minimum threshold required to ensure that the virus spread as a greatly reduced rate.

Before lockdown, I had already been looking for jobs. Since then, I've been rejected pre-interview by a handful of companies, and have bombed out of a handful of interviews at the final stage.

I was also made redundant a few weeks ago, so I'm nearing the point where I need to find myself a new job.

Despite that, it's been weirdly nice to sit at home, on my own, and simply learn again. Obviously, I'm freaking out about being out of work soon, but I'm hopeful that the stars will align and at least one company will offer me something.

I'm glad I did, because literally every job I've applied for has had some kind of Codility or HackerRank style test - even bog-standard developer jobs have asked DSA-style questions. Yesterday, I was asked a Dynamic Programming question for a full-stack developer role at a bank.

It seems like these kind of interviews are becoming the norm, so I'll probably spend the rest of my furlough time working through DSA courses, grinding LeetCode, and doing daily Codility tests for different companies.

I'm not sure where you're based, but I've heard of Usher's Syndrome after hearing a talk from someone named Molly Watt, who also has Usher's Syndrome. It might be worth dropping her a line, as in her line of work she might be able to either give some advice, or point you towards someone in your situation that can help.

https://www.mollywatt.com/

I've recently been furloughed, and I think that redundancies aren't too far away. There aren't many companies hiring in my area at the moment, and if I'm going to move it's going to be for a big company, so I'm dusting off the CV and am applying to some Big N companies.

A recruiter recently reached out to me, and I've got an interview with one Big N company coming up soon, so am using my new-found free time to study and, at the very least, be a bit more employable at the end of this pandemic.

I started leetcoding just for enjoyment and not for landing a FAANG job, when i had no interviews coming up. I started enjoying it a little bit and now i do it for "fun" and don't have an anatagonist realationship to it.

Like someone said, once you overcome something you have keep overcoming it, so you can never be successful if your strategy is overcoming.

It can be really hard to motivate yourself to jump through hoops.

But now, with the entire world economy screwed up, I don’t think now is the right time to make that kind of move. I’ll stick with being just a regular old Enterprise Developer/Architect/Team Lead/Single Responsible Individual depending on how the wind blows focusing on healthcare.

Architects are usually just managers who are ex-engineers and have been out of the front lines for so long that they aren't technical enough to get back into coding. This is fine, but the idea that "architecture" is some kind of talent is absurd. Anyone can study a blog article about the latest architecture buzzword and understand the concepts front to back. Not to mention that the more physical nature of architecture makes it less flexible than code itself so "architectural" patterns are, as a result, significantly less abstract and complex than coding patterns/algorithms.

The true difference in ability is measured by who can actually Build an architecture, and usually its developers who build it, while architects (mostly) just talk about it.

This is the reason that software engineers need adult supervision. The fact that you think that modern infrastructure is physical and static displays a lack of experience. There is nothing static about modern cloud infrastructure.

I just had to deploy an API to ECS/Fargate (Docker). We had to determine the best combination of memory/cpu of the Fargate runtime environment and what hardware we wanted to give the ElasticSearch environment. I basically wrote a CloudFormation template (infrastructure as code) that defined the environment and then wrote a Node script that ran the CF template and passed in parameters to vary the hardware environment (cpu/memory). After the environment was created, the script then ran a series of Artillery load tests, recorded the results of the load tests, gathered metrics from CloudWatch and estimated the monthly cost compared to the performance.

We reported that to management to let them decide how much they were willing to spend for the throughout they needed.

I’ve created entire environments with databases, Redis Caches, ECS clusters (think AWS version of EKS), etc as a proof of concept by using CloudFormation deploying code to it, showing management as a demo, and then tearing it all down just by clicking delete until we can come back to it after the contract is signed and then spin it back up with one command.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

* Forcing users to learn a specialized language vs reusing knowledge of a general purpose language

* Inevitable Turing-completeness creep and increasing complexity in specialized languages

* Complexity and difficulty of reasoning about general purpose code (and analyzability)

So GP does have a point. He/she is just not making it very well, I think.

It's obvious that the logical consequence of using Turing complete languages for devops introduce a lot of complexity into infrastructure and can introduce configuration that executes continuously as well. Bugs that only existed in the application layer now creep into infrastructure. Infinite recursion can now be spinning up infinite instances.

That being said the devops thing was a side detail and that's besides the point. The point is that the role 'software architect' is useless.

Personally, I prefer my configuration to be written in a plain-old language (e.g. Python) instead of a specialized config language (be it YAML or JSON based or whatever). I can test that code, I can reason about it, I can review it for bad stuff like infinite loops (not perfectly, but still), I know how it behaves when diffed and merged, etc.

Regarding software architects: I've seen a few companies where architects are hands-off demigods who prescribe complete architectures without ever having to contend with the results of their decisions. Those companies are, in my experience, few, and tend not to do well.

In a lot of other companies, the role of an architect is very similar to what Herr Scarface describes - individuals with a lot of experience who can make broad decisions based on both experience and data, and leave it to lower ranking engineers to work out the exact details. They do the hard/open-ended stuff and come to conclusions about the broad strokes (e.g. "yeah Redis will work well for this problem, but since you have denormalized data you might need a background process to restore consistency"). This is often called "scoping" and it is the main responsibility and impact of higher-ranking engineers (whether they're called "architects" or not, I personally dislike the term).

It seems like these people are capable but most actually are not. The reason is because they spent too much time in this role so they lose the skills of actually being a software engineer and gain the skills of bullshitting about architecture. So when you "interview" or talk to these people it really sounds like they know they're shit when they don't. The reason is, it's basically their job to talk about technology so they become really good at it, and if an interview doesn't involve a technical coding part, then they'll ace those interviews with flying colors.

If you get down to the nitty gritty and literally ask these guys to perform some very easy coding problem or actually implement a product you will tend to see a very high amount of incompetence.

I work at a startup where we accidentally hired one of these architects. The guy bullshitted his way to the top but we're having a hard time giving him a ticket where he works on the actual product. He's politically maneuvering his way around to only work on proof of concepts and holding irrelevant meetings to talk about architecture. Even roped the CTO in to support his case, which completely pissed off the entire team. Startups need people who can get the job done, not someone who can create a little bullshit bubble so that he can keep his bullshit salary.

This is very similar to someone who's been a CTO for many years. If you don't program, if you don't actually build architecture, you lose your technical skills but you gain bullshitting and management skills. This isn't actually completely bad as a companies need leadership and managers and sans the bullshitting part, leadership is a great skill.

It is completely wrong to assume that "Architecture" is some sort of skillset and that an "Architect" is more technically capable (due to the hire rank) than a typical engineer. Give them the title they deserve, and that is: Ex-engineer/manager.

>Obvious? No, and even less straightforward. Personally I think it's a good thing both kinds of tools exist, because each dev/team/project has different needs and different sensibilities.

It's obvious to me the difference between configuration files and turing complete programs or even python. You can extrapolate the benefits of using python or a configuration file. Have you hit an infinite loop error using python to instantiate instances? Maybe once or maybe zero times, but you can still use your brain to extrapolate that this is a potential problem even when you've hit this problem Zero times.

On a side note, you can also extrapolate that JSON and YAML can be turing complete. It depends on how something interprets it. For example:

   {"fib": {
      "PARAMS": {"y": "float"},
      "BASECASE": [["X", "==", 0 ], [1]]
      "RECURSE": [{"EXECUTE_FUNCTION": {
                      "FUNCTION": "fib",
                      "PARAMS": [["y", "-", 1 ]]
         }}, "+", {"EXECUTE_FUNCTION": {
                      "FUNCTION": "fib",
                      "PARAMS": [["y", "-", 2 ]]
         }}}, 
    "main": {"EXECUTE_FUNCTION": {
                      "FUNCTION": "fib",
                      "PARAMS": [["y", "-", 1 ]]
         }}
   }
 

>Personally, I prefer my configuration to be written in a plain-old language (e.g. Python) instead of a specialized config language (be it YAML or JSON based or whatever). I can test that code, I can reason about it, I can review it for bad stuff like infinite loops (not perfectly, but still), I know how it behaves when diffed and merged, etc.

Yeah, I'm kind of in agreement with you here as a personal preference.

You're implying that my comments are stupid and arrogant. Prove it if you can, let's get to the bottom of whether or not "architects" is a worthless specialty or not. I think you know I'm right and the only thing you have left are personal comments on my intelligence.

We all thought we were the smartest people in the room at one point, you’ll grow out of it too one day.

Again with the insults.

Why bother? Because you can learn and I can learn. I don't come here to trade insults. I come here to lay down the actual reality of what I see unimpeded by social norms. Yeah I'm sure I touched nerve here, but it's nothing personal, the internet allows me to talk about truths that are uncomfortable and forces me to face those truths as well.

I've been proven wrong tons of times on HN, so I'm hoping that if you disagree, you can prove me wrong and I can learn something and I'll return the favor in turn if you're the one that's actually wrong.

I find that this isn't the case with most people, they don't want to face reality. The fact that you turn to personal insults and have this whole "why bother" attitude seems to me as a cover. You don't bother because you got absolutely Nothing to offer.

As software engineers, we tend to be told especially when we are young that we are all “smart people” (tm). We start to internalize it (believe our own bullshit). But the longer your career is, you realize that the world is full of “smart people” and that your coworkers also came up thinking they were the smartest people in the room.

You don't even know how old I am, you don't even know what level of intelligence I consider myself to be. Yet you make a bunch of baseless comments hinting at my personal character. That is the extent of what you're trying to convey, an insult through and through yet subtle on many levels. Politics, the only essential skill needed to become an architect.

When did I say you can learn everything you need to know by reading some blog posts or Wikipedia? I never said this. I only said that you can do this for 'architecture' and that's why the job role 'software architect' is complete bullshit.

Now let's get back on topic. You disagree with me. You think architects know something about 'architecture' that is beyond Wikipedia and blog posts. Prove it. You think they have some ability that sets them apart from normal engineers. Tell me what that is and why there exists articles like this:

http://www.realfreemarket.org/blog/2012/09/13/never-trust-a-...

I don't want to see another irrelevant comment because that just tells me that you got absolutely nothing left. Prove the worth of a software architect.

A good architect makes it seem like their job is easy, but there’s nothing easy about taking a vague idea and leading a huge cross-team effort to solve it.

Good thing we're on the internet where we can talk about the actual reality and lay everything out as it is without worrying about the social and political bureaucracy that infests corporate culture.

That being said, isn't what you described the role of the tech lead or manager? The best tech lead ultimately derives technical architecture by aggregating the expertise of the team and puts that plan into motion exactly as you said.

The term "architect" usually implies greater knowledge of "architecture" where the "architect" uses this "greater knowledge" to lay down a high level plan of the infrastructure. Additionally your initial post implied that this is what you think, because this is what you study for interviews.

Like I said, usually the architecture role is actually ends up in practice becoming an ex-engineer manager. That's the only actual role they can fit while maintaining the respect of the engineers and without being completely useless. This is basically what you described about yourself.

Thousands of people study about how to reverse a binary tree on a whiteboard and other needless leetCode to “work at a FAANG” even though they don’t do that everyday.

What you study for an interview is unfortunately often only vaguely correlated with what you do on a job.

Agreed 100%. Interviewing is hard. I would argue though that interviewing for "architecture" causes another issue. To give an analogy... it's like studying english for a programming job because english is used all the time on the job.

Architecture is just too easy and too obvious and if you just happen to not know a specific architecture or way of speeding something up, all you have to do is read about it on the internet like looking up vocabulary on a dictionary.

I would also argue that google isn't exactly just testing algorithmic skills in an interview. The spiritual goal of the interview is that the question they give you is novel and one you haven't seen before. The overall purpose of novel questions is to measure your raw intelligence.

The question isn't whether or not you know how to reverse a binary tree but whether or not from a state of not knowing how to do it, can you creatively come up with a way to do it in an hour? Raw IQ.

Of course the practice doesn't always match up with the ideal and often times interviewees can get lucky.

I'm not saying that this is the best way to interview. I'm saying that judging an interview based off of architecture is even worse. It's even easier and there's a lot of room for bullshit in a conversational interview as opposed to a technical question.

The funny thing is that a single fairly large personal project will develop your engineering skills 42 times that of the hundred something leetcode problems you solved for your FAANG interviews.

One teaches deep long term critical thinking. The other short term critical thinking. You won't see any small short sighted systems out in the real world.

Don't hate the player; hate the game. gl

I for one am extremely grateful, although I think it would be even more fair if it was more like the SAT. Traditional interviews depend too much on status signaling and social connections.

There's tons of opportunities in a game engine for exercising and honing your performance chops and your algorithm chops. It also gave me an opportunity to learn a new language and programming model - the GL shader language. Building it onto a game helps to keep it real.

Best of luck.

You can get away with making a working, performant (basic) engine with some neat functionality nowadays without delving too deep into algorithms or using any advanced data structures.

It is a good exercise in “real coding” though.

I had never heard of it until I read the thread under your comment so I apologize if this is obvious to people in the know. From the comments it sounds like more of the former and less of the latter.

I had a good experience with Project Euler back in the day (account long since lost). There was absolutely no focus on immediate employability but there were improvements in my "human capital".

I think they are ok if you like that kind of stuff and like to find solutions to those kind of problems. And if you have time.

Most people who hate them are grinding leetcode kind of stuff in limited time, taking away from sleep, time with family, time for rest.

If something starts feeling like a chore, maybe you are doing it the wrong way or at the wrong time.

Also, from being employable point of view, I think there are more valuable skills. I.e. if you want to work as a web developer, know a framework by heart, master a web programming language, know SQL, know HTML, CSS and JS, know some useful patterns, know about testing, SOLID, DDD, TDD, know how to use tools like GIT, JIRA, Jenkins, Docker, know REST/SOAP/gRPC, know async and parallel programming. Those were the kind of technical questions I was asked about 3 months ago when I went through 20+ job interviews. From all those only one asked a leetcode kind of question. It wasn't hard and it didn't seem like it was a make it or break it kind of question. Many years ago, when I applied for game development jobs, I was asked about Unity, C#, GPU shaders and a bit of algebra and geometry, no question was leetcode like.

Good Luck!

Most of the times when I end up seeing the solution ot makes sense, but uses data structures in ways I wouldn't think. Part of the reason for that I think is because my daily work for one operates on much different types of data (business entities vs arbitrary collections of integers) and also because the logic in the applications I work on is not very algorithm heavy.

Another reason is because of high level abstractions I've been spoiled by. I could probably hack many of the problems together with LINQ but that's not gonna hold up very well.

I think the biggest problems many are going to face aren't related to the illness itself, but the effects of self-isolation and the outcomes, such as:

* Dealing with your loved ones getting sick or dying - online services to talk to others that are suffering or going through tough times would be good.

* Boredom - putting that "empty time" to good use by building your skills.

* Loneliness - providing a platform to utilise existing or new social networks to make people feel that they aren't alone.

* Volunteering - one of the biggest hit areas is going to be in elderly care, and to be honest it wouldn't be unsurprising to see care homes shut down and relatives being left to look after their relatives. Anything that can help people in these situations would be welcomed, whether it's supplies, stuff for people to do, etc.

* Aiding remote workers. For many, remote working is an alien concept, so if you've got experience in working from home in an optimal way create an in-depth guide to help others.

* Small gym relief funds - many gyms or martial arts schools have shut down, and many practitioners rely on teaching as their sole form of income. Building a relief fund for those small businesses would help tremendously, on the basis that it can be "paid forward" in the future through private lessons, online instructionals, etc.