In my experience that's true mostly of large companies that have very standardized interview process. All the startups I worked at so far had some kind of coding question but it was not very leetcode-y and more conversational; Trying to get your thoughts about how you'd solve the problem and assess whether you had the right intuitions about software challenges. I'd encourage you to exercise your network and see if you can find a small to mid-size company that does something interesting to you. You'll likely have a much higher success rate!

I think it's partially true and I definitely fall under the category that hates to sink hours into searching for the best YYY where YYY is a random $30 item. But I don't necessarily want less choice, I just want something/someone I can trust. If I could just believe that the "amazon choice" was actually tested thoroughly and matched a quality standard I can get behind, then I'd happily get the "amazon choice" of most things.

That's the kind of projects we need to get where we need to be in terms of emissions. It won't be easy, but clever solutions where there is real $$ incentives are the ones that can actually be implemented!

Musk is the entrepreneur version of "Move fast; break things" - something like "Make it happen; no matter the cost" kind of guy. Leaving a trail of burnt out/injured employees and other negative externalities is just his way of "getting shit done". Not sure how much or how little impact he'll have in the future direction of Twitter, but if I worked there I'd be a bit concerned!

Not if output was satisfactory before and then drops

Then you'd only ever get candidates that can afford to have a "maybe job" for a while until they get out with no pay check. I'd definitely not work for a company with that arrangement. Unless there is some guarantee they pay you until you land your next thing (within reasonable timeframes).

I'd love if OP had more details on how they ask "great questions that give her a lot of signal about the candidate’s skills while ensuring the candidate always feels comfortable and confident". I hate passing interviews and as a result try my best to be a chill interviewer, but I yet have to find good conversational questions that get me confidence in ones' coding abilities.

Somewhat tangential topic, but ... It's interesting to me how most of the companies with real transformative potential have very little need for (dedicated) software engineers.

I think half of that is that most other engineering professions now come with some non negligible coding skill and the other half is simply that "software can solve anything" is a plain and simple lie.

I can't help but feel a little left out of innovation with "just" software skills. Am I too sorry for myself or is that a shared feeling?

Btw, check this out: https://usfusionenergy.org/opportunities

Software engineering is an amplifier in almost every domain.

There's a nuclear technology company that open-sourced a tool for measuring fuel efficiency. https://github.com/terrapower/armi

But it's by no means the most important tool. There's a lot of hard, physical engineering problems that can be solved.

I think of software engineering like motor oil. You can apply it across a wide variety of contexts, but it's by no means the engine.

Software doesn't solve anything by itself -- You have to apply it to something. I guess some developers are just pure code monkeys that implement routines as specified, but there are plenty of software engineers who use their knowledge of the field their working in to create software to help solve the problems in a good way. I suppose the main difference between the two groups is the level of experience and interest in the field.

I think it depends on your definition of "transformative." Have FAANG not transformed the way we live our lives? If you restrict "transformative" to mean physical technology instead of information technology, then yeah, it makes sense that software is somewhat peripheral in that effort. There are areas where software is helping (ex: AlphaFold). Outside of AI, though, having domain expertise is necessary in addition to having programming skills, so it's more effective to teach domain experts to program than vice versa.

They are doing basic research, why would they need software engineers? They will need SWeng when they scale up no doubt, but they are doing basic research right now. Most of the coding will be done by the scientists there. Most nuclear scientists have a pretty good grasp on numerical programming, even if it usually isn't the most robust code in the world.

What's the book's name? No wonder sales are slow, you gotta promote that shit :)

I don't know if promotion really works. I think a book has to have a "moment" to be a runaway success.

(There's this French author I follow on Twitter, who just published a new novel; he's enjoying an incredible amount of press coverage, with raving reviews from so many critics. Yet his book doesn't seem to sell much, or at all.

My book is called "L'archevêque de Cologne" (it's in French). It's the - real - story of a priest in Paris during WWII who would pretend he was fighting the Germans, while he was in fact working for them, and giving them names of resistant fighters.

Most readers or prospective readers think it's a "historic" novel, and there are only so many people interested in yet another WWII story.

But it isn't.

It's about truth, and how much you can lie to other people and to yourself until you dissolve your soul into your own lies. It's also about hubris, ambition, and morals.

This is difficult to convey, even in conversation.

The space race was a wild time. "Accessory to War" by Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a fun and easy read that talks about some pretty sketchy things. And it's nothing new either, the whole WW2 showed in full display that leaving the military leverage science is a dangerous pandora box.