How can I filter out software engineering jobs where I'll be asked to write algorithms in the interview?

Question

I rarely act as a "programmer" in my daily job. I lead a team of engineers and consider myself an engineer. I build features, fix bugs, work on APIs, DBs, etc., but I rarely ever have to write algorithms... and when I do... I just google the best way to do something and this has worked for me for the last decade.

I've wasted a lot of time being interviewed by people who want me to solve LeetCode style questions and I just don't care to get into them. I'm a lead engineer with a good resume and pay, and I want to maintain this kind of position throughout my career.

How do I tell companies that I'm not interested in fiddling with algorithms in order to interview with them?

Answer 1

First of all you might have your terminology wrong. How I see the words used "programmer" more often describe position where simple code is written according to existing specifications and APIs, where "Software engineer" is a job that involves complex algorithms, design patterns, architecture and system design. You might want to look for programming jobs instead of software engineering jobs.

I'm a Lead Engineer with a good resume and pay, and want to maintain this kind of position throughout my career.

I think this is the exception and most companies expect a lead software engineer to be able to solve simple variations of a graph problem or list search. If you want to be a lead engineer, I think you should get used to the idea of learning algorithms. Not that you are expected to write complex algorithms every day, but if you are not able to see the difference between a O(N^2) solution and a O(N) solution, you will not be able to recognize a problem when you stumble about it, e.g. when as a lead engineer you are reviewing the code of more junior developers.

So if you interview for a "lead software engineer" position chances are high that you are wasting your time. Have you considered looking for more managerial roles, like infrastructure manager or engineering manager?

Answer 2

Concert pianists can still play scales. Algorithms aren't some weird thing that only academicians use. They are minimal, encapsulated design patterns that are used quite a bit in most every domain. Yes, no customer is going to come to you and say, "Please implement a binary search in your next software release," but they will say, "This page is way too slow" and a binary search will happen to be the best way to fix it.

If you get a "this is too slow" problem and you can't connect the dots to know you need a binary search, and be able to communicate concisely that's what you need, it will just get passed on to someone else in the company who can. As one of the people who tends to get assigned the "this other team can't do algorithms" bugs, I can tell you how annoying it is to work with people who don't think that's part of their job.

Answer 3

How do I tell companies that I'm not interested in fiddling with algorithms in order to interview with them?

By responding to an invitation to such tests with a "no thank you". You can try to propose alternate process to go with the "no" but that's a hail mary.

If you are good, eventually you will find a company that agrees with your world view. If not, you may have to compromise and do the algorithm writing tests or face unemployment.

Answer 4

Just decline them if presented

Whether companies use this or not would be difficult to consistently determine from the application. At my current organization, no algorithmic questions were asked of me. We are currently asking algorithmic questions of interviewees because the engineer running the interviews has changed.

At other companies I have interviewed for, they have a LeetCode style interview thing to be done unless you are referred. I jumped right to the final round as a referral.

At yet another government organization I interviewed with, they have LeetCode as one of several options you can use as proof of competency. There was no mention of it as part of the hiring process and it seemed unusual for the government to do it at all.

You can't really predict.

If you really want to avoid that stuff, cultivate relationships with the recruiters that inevitably wash up on your LinkedIn. I've found that they can tell you a heck of a lot about how things will go.

Answer 5

Get an executive recruiter and focus on management jobs. Tell the recruiter what you're looking for.

Executive search consulting firms are typically used for senior-level executive positions and board directors. Assignments are generally for positions where the best candidate is harder to find and harder to persuade to make a move, and where the potential impact of success or failure is greatest. Contingent recruiters are most often used for mid-level positions or positions where there are a large number of qualified candidates. Three Things Candidates Should Know About Executive Recruiters, Forbes

Don’t assume that a retained executive search consultant will market you to multiple employers to get you the best offer... No candidate that has been presented client company should be referred to a different client until the original client has closed out the candidate. Since contingency recruiters are not retained, they do market candidates to multiple employers at the same time. They do it to maximize the chances of a placement and getting paid. However, they only market so-called MPCs — Most Placeable Candidates — and focus on lower level roles. How to Get to Know a Retained Executive Recruiter

It's not easy to get an Executive Recruiter but it may be something you wish to shoot for eventually.

Answer 6

Pivot your career to management.

Reading the question I had the impression that you do not have much interest in software engineering (which algorithms are a significant part of) but job title, salary and resume are important to you. Fortunately for you, software industry is full of management jobs that benefit from engineering background but do not involve actual programming such as product manager, line manager, product owner, scrum master etc. Because of the management status, these are often paid better than engineering roles, and you are not competing against people who have actual interest in their profession beyond what is mandatory. Another benefit is that in companies that do not have serious R&D, engineering careers are very limited and management offers more options.

Answer 7

You can check http://they.whiteboarded.me/ which has the list of companies with whiteboarding interviews.

Answer 8

When you find a company you'd like to interview with, you can go to Glassdoor and search for the company. From the company page, you can see user submitted reviews, salaries, and interview questions. Here is an example of Google interview questions.

If there have been a lot of user submitted interview questions for the company, then you can get a good idea of what kind of questions will be asked, including the types of coding problems that need to be solved. Obviously if it's a smaller company with few user submissions, then this may not help you.

Answer 9

I mostly agree with Helena's answer and would assume most decent companies expect some level of algorithm experience from people that want to fill a lead software engineering role. However, there can be a few exceptions where the project mainly requires to deal with the nitty gritty details of component and dependency management, the role leaning into the managerial direction, the business being directed towards very light weight applications without any algorithmic complexity or the company not being 'decent' in the sense that they got their terminology as wrong as your current one^^. From your description at least, you seem more like a team lead that also develops with a focus on designing APIs and algorithmically straight forward software (nothing bad about that, picking the right tech is also an interesting part of the job, just not all of what I would expect from a lead software engineer). So to me you seem to be a team managing developer. Perhaps you are also particularly good about picking frameworks or designing APIs, then you might focus on that.

A few things I would look out for in job descriptions to land a fitting job and increase the chance to not be confronted with (too much) algorithmic questions would be these:

• a focus on libraries, frameworks and technology buzzwords
• a mention of team leading (personal management) responsibilities
• a focus on API design
• a focus on lightweight web applications
• a focus on technology/infrastructure architecture
• a startup, self-learner culture*

So in principle for jobs that lean either 'upwards' towards design of the outer shell of applications and how they work together without looking at the algorithmic complexity or for jobs that lean 'side-wards' e.g. into the business domain or into team or infrastructure management. Sometimes there can be roles mostly for designing APIs or "front-runners" that discuss with people who know the business domain how a software should work on the business and API level, the details then will be designed by software engineers.

* Why a startup/self-learner culture? Because - clichè, yes, but I've often enough seen it - those often don't properly know what they do (technically), they often hire who they can get and who can implement stuff fast without much concern for algorithmic performance. Sometimes they fail after a while, sometimes they succeed and then may need to clean up the mess once they exponentially grow and their small scale algorithmically naive solutions don't scale any more, but they can still provide a good job for years. Sometimes that isn't an issue at all because their target market doesn't need algorithmic performance just someone who writes some program with a nice UI for that niche area no one took care of yet.

Answer 10

Only apply to senior, principal or lead roles and in your resume state that is what you are looking for and as often is truthful, express your experience in the resume and cover letter and e-mail correspondences as such.

At least in my neck of the woods, Junior to "No Prefix" get these questions. Seniors and above, not.

Answer 11

How do I tell companies that I'm not interested in fiddling with algorithms in order to interview with them?

An alternative is to have your own open source software portfolio on platforms such as github or gitlab (or on your rented VPS). Contribute to existing open source projects (like GCC or FLTK or RefPerSys or Frama-C or zsh or thousands of others). Once you are as famous as Linus Torvalds or Guido Von Rossum or Xavier Leroy, you'll be well paid, and you will have job opportunities. Notice that most developers of GCC or of the Linux kernel are paid for their work (see LWN about this, and perhaps write there...). Once you have designed and implemented a programming language which have a few users (this is really hard as Simon Peyton-Jones explain) you could have interesting job opportunities.

Another alternative is have at least a public blog where you explain some architectural views of software you have developed (or technically leaded). Be sure to get prior permission for that.

A third possibility is to have a high score on platforms such as StackOverflow. Be above the top 1% there.

A fourth alternative is to have written and published some technical book on your topic of excellence (or at least public draft reports, such as this one).

A fifth alternative is to make a PhD and/or publish academic papers -with peer review- in e.g. ACM conferences. Related is to get paid (part time) to give some teaching about software development and programming and manage and mentor interns.

Another alternative is to give voluntarily (and unpaid) talks about programming and software development (like this one I gave in French). It might even be videos on youtube about programming and software development (once they have been viewed thousands of times, e.g. this one).

Be aware of Peter's principle. Read The Mythical Man-Month or better yet, write a better book.

Feel free to contact me by email to [email protected] (home, near Paris in France) or [email protected] (work, at CEA, LIST)

Answer 12

I've almost always gone via a recruiter and a recruiter will know what the interviews are like. First, they'll know from experience, second they'll ask the hiring manager, and third they'll debrief any other interviewees they've sent in. (I've had recruiters literally try to give me the test questions that they heard from candidates they've sent in previously.)

So just tell the recruiter not to bother putting you forward for such interviews, if you really don't want to do them.

Answer 13

An alternative could be to have a very polished CV/resumè. One that shows how good you are.

If possible, also give them enough code for them to have an idea of how you write code, fix bugs, work on APIs or with databases (E.g.: a personal Github repository, unrelated to the current company).

And if presented with a LeetCode-style question, just face it as part of correcting a bug you found and needs to be fixed. This may show them that you do know the basics.

Please note: using Google to freshen on some things you forgot isn't bad! (Unless your code is 100% StackOverflow copy-paste-glue.)
An example: I had an interview where I forgot how to connect to a database in PHP (my heart was racing and I slept poorly that day).
I just freshened up on a few examples and wrote my own thing, without copy-paste.
The goal was to write a database + PHP script to store and fetch the information needed for a restaurant, based on a written descriptive text.

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But, if you are really uninterested in solving those "fake" problems, then you can try to negotiate an alternative method for them to evaluate your skills, and see how it goes.

Just keep in mind that this may give a less-than-optimal view of your coding skills to the person interviewing you (I certainly would have my doubts about your coding skills).