Ask HN: If you could ask an IC from another company anything what would you ask?

15 points by topaztee 2 years ago | 26 comments

alot of the products and features we use everyday are built by faceless software engineers who arent in the limelight. I thought it might be interesting to start a blog where each week I ask an software engineers/ics(individual contributors) from a different company a few questions to learn how they do things differently.

questions I'm thinking could be interesting: - Whens the last time you used an algorithm (eg b-tree) and for what? - What did you set on fire and what happened next? - whats a new interesting tool or site youve been using lately? - What feature did you build youre proud of and why?

How does that sound? What other questions would be interesting to hear? and is anyone interested in joining to be an interviewee

fatnoah 2 years ago |

- Whens the last time you used an algorithm (eg b-tree) and for what?

I'd be curious to hear how many people like me would answer "for a coding interview" for this question.

I haven't coded such an "algorithm" since 2002 or so. The closest I've come is calling some framework library's binary sort method.

fidotron 2 years ago | |

There's a meta-question which is "if you did should you have been doing what you were doing?"

The times in recent years where I have used such things have tended to be technically successful and commercially worthless, while the things that paid off had a tendency to be churning through piles of tedious and stupid.

fatnoah 2 years ago | | |

There's a meta-question which is "if you did should you have been doing what you were doing?"

Also a great question. As a manager, my first question would be to ask why a library wasn't used for algorithm X.

In grad school, I wrote a complete implementation of Rijndael encryption for a crypto class, but I would never expect (or want) anyone to try to build that themselves for production software.

giantg2 2 years ago | | |

"while the things that paid off had a tendency to be churning through piles of tedious and stupid."

People tend to hire others to do the stupid and tedious stuff. Hence most jobs are stupid or tedious. I know mine is.

dtnewman 2 years ago | |

I haven’t coded a b-tree since school. However, I do use my knowledge of b-trees on occasion when deciding on an indexing strategy in my database schema, for example. Same is true for a hash map… I basically never implement them but my basic understanding of them lets me write much more efficient code, on occasion.

dakiol 2 years ago | |

Same. I’ve been in the industry for over a decade and the only time I had to implement an algorithm/ds like b-trees or quicksort has been at the university.

Usually, what companies want is people that can handle db failovers, deploy k8s services, know how to talk to business, and write good enough code. It’s sad, but it is what it is.

fatnoah 2 years ago | | |

Agree. It's frustrating that my demonstrated experience scaling a system 100x while achieving > 99.995% uptime is somehow less meaningful than my ability to code random problems outside of an IDE for 45 minutes.

octopoc 2 years ago |

- What are some ways in which your company is not using the latest new hotness, but ways in which your company is doing good enough?

What I'm getting at with this one is we see a lot of talk about whatever the latest tech fad is, but I'd be interested in knowing areas where the old way of doing things is working well enough to not change.

topaztee 2 years ago | |

i love that

hiAndrewQuinn 2 years ago |

What boring technologies/practices do you use in-house?

I'm a boring tech evangelist. I like foundational, long-lasting knowledge, the more foundational the better, even if it's harder to acquire initially, to the extent that my degree is in EE instead of CS for much the same reason an aspiring writer might major in Classics instead of English. Tell me about your dull uses of C, of Debian, of Bash, of PHP, of PostgreSQL. And then tell me about your slightly shameful uses of Perl, Jenkins, etc. We focus so often on what is new and shiny and promises the world - but we already have a world to appreciate, and it's right under our feet.

corytheboyd 2 years ago |

Not gonna lie I just want to know about all the skeletons in the closet, not so much the tech stuff. I know it’s… dirty, but it’s so interesting hearing about this from other companies, and honestly pretty helpful to have other situations to compare to your own.

austin-cheney 2 years ago |

* What was the last original functionality you wrote that soles a real problem and does so without a framework?

* How did you provide test automation coverage for that original code you wrote?

Those two questions are enough to peer deeply into any software team. I wish this weren’t true, because these questions are incredibly shallow, but that’s g to he state of software employment.

nine_zeros 2 years ago |

How do you see your team environment? Is it competitive or collaborative?

The idea is to find out if management is spending time stack ranking/comparing individuals or are they spending their time on the mission and enabling engineers to succeed in that mission.

hirvi74 2 years ago | |

> How do you see your team environment?

Dysfunctional, disorganized, toxic, and downright incompetent.

topaztee 2 years ago |

setup a form for anyone interested in an interview https://tally.so/r/3NAPbp or to subscribe to the blog: https://powerplaybook.substack.com/

tmaly 2 years ago |

At your current role, what is your biggest challenge? What have you tried to solve it?

culopatin 2 years ago |

All I want to know is what was essential to get where they are, and what was noise.

lesserknowndan 2 years ago |

What is an IC?

Integrated Circuit…

Internet Commentator…

…

alxmng 2 years ago | |

"Individual Contributor" is corporate speak for non-managers (someone who does not manage others).

topaztee 2 years ago | |

fixed *individual contributers/software engineers

hirvi74 2 years ago |

"Do you feel fulfilled?"

muzani 2 years ago | |

This is interesting. I find that at the top and bottom levels, the answer seems to be no. My theory is there's a bell curve where the middle is most fulfilling but I'd love for someone to do this research.

harryquach 2 years ago | |

No, the work is pretty meaningless but it does pay the bills and allow me to save a decent amount. For me personally, if my position was not remote, I would be much more depressed.

giantg2 2 years ago | |

Nope. My job is garbage like the rest of my life

hirvi74 2 years ago | | |

That is why I asked my question. I wanted to see if others are going through something similar or if there is truly a light at the end of this tunnel.

Part of me wants to try harder to find something better, but every attempt I make is crushed by my never ending lack of motivation/willpower. Another part of me wants to just get out of programming completely since the reasons I became a programmer are dead or were perhaps a fantasy all along.