That’s not really how evolution works, but who knows!

And it’s totally fair to run your project however you choose. My point is just that FOSS doesn’t automatically mean you can’t make money, tons of businesses are built on a FOSS-first basis. Pick the model that works for your business, and I sincerely hope you find a way to make FOSS part of it.

In general, for me, Rust > C > C++.

I’ve heard people say that C is like a loaded and cocked revolved, and if you’re not careful, you could blow your foot off, whereas C++ is like a loaded and cocked sawed-off shotgun, and if you’re not careful, you could blow your leg off.

I don’t know about you, but I prefer provably correct code over “just trust me bro.”

There’s an analogy I like here. A manager at a trucking company was hiring a new driver, and he asked each of them how close they could get to the edge on a mountain pass. The first said, “I can get within a wheel’s width.” The second said, “I can drive on the edge, with part of the tire hanging off.” And the third said, “I stay away from the edge.” The third applicant got the job, because why take the risk?

That’s how I feel about C/C++. Why use them if Rust can do the job? You get a lot more safety features without sacrificing performance, what’s not to like?

Yup, Sienna.

The other thing I do is ask questions about disagreements with previous coworkers or managers

I like these kinds of questions as well, but I keep it to technical disagreements (i.e. best idea wins) since we have another round where we cover soft skills specifically.

map out a loose architecture for some sort of API data process or frontend data process

I think this is pretty easy to BS through though.

We usually cover this as a follow up to a live coding exercise, where we ask them, without any code, how they’d adjust the project if the requirements change. How can they optimize for storage size? Lookup performance? As it gets more complex, what can we do to keep it maintainable? If we add feature X, is it better to put that on the FE or BE? Why?

Again, I could be mistaken, but I thought it was my Toyota minivan. My other Toyota (2007 Prius) definitely has a “maintenance” light, and the minivan also occasionally threw check engine lights due to the fuel sensor (often tripped with low fuel in the tank), so I could honestly just be misremembering.

Yes, I know. It was an intentional “misunderstanding”, i.e. a switcheroo, or a joke. I guess it didn’t land for you.

Why would you set aside bail money assuming you’ll get arrested 50% of the time? That’s just ridiculous…

One of my older cars (2006) did trip the check engine light for oil changes IIRC. I could be mistaken though.

Regardless, checking the codes is always a good idea, never assume.

Don’t listen to the parts store guys, they are there to sell you parts.

Absolutely. But pulling the code is absolutely the first step to figuring out what went wrong. Sometimes it directly indicates the issue, and sometimes it trips due to another issue. I take the code, do a little research, and if I’m not confident in my own diagnosis (or it’ll be a costly repair), I’ll take it to a mechanic.

But don’t just sit on the check engine light. Figure out what it is and address it. In my state, you can’t pass emissions testing w/o having a clear check engine light (and yes, they check if you cleared it) or apply for an exemption, so we at least need to take care of it by then.

I blame bundles. I’ll go to Fanatical or Humble or something and see 1-2 games I want to try, then buy the whole bundle. I’m lucking if I actually play those 1-2 games from the bundle…

That said, I’ve found some great games that way, so I think I get value from it. But the number of games I have vs games I have actually played is a depressingly low ratio, but I think I spend less than I would if I only bought the games I was about to play.

Exactly. So many people hate on them for their DLC policy, but if it’s your jam, having a game get freshened up every year for $15-20 or whatever for another few hundred hours is totally worth it.

Same. Most of the money I spend on games goes to indie devs, and I’ll usually only buy a AAA if it’s either on steep discount or actually really good. Something like 70% to indies, 30% to AAA.

Yeah, even 50% would be baller. So like 20% to the storefront, 20% to the publisher, and 10% to random other costs.

I think it’s half-bail, meaning they got arrested every other time they went out drinking.

Esp. for CPU temps. A much more interesting range is 50-100C.

I meant for buying ebooks w/o DRM.

I’m happy for you! 😀

Friendship is the most important ingredient IMO, because a good friend is willing to change for the other, as well as look past deficiencies that don’t matter.

Online coding assessments

Yeah, that’s the first problem here, don’t do that.

We do live coding and have them explain their thought process. Working code is nice, but we’re really testing communication and reasoning. Coding ability in a given language isn’t super important, that can be learned, provided you’re good at reasoning.

Comp Sci Fundamentals-

We blast comp sci questions as well, but we rephrase if they obviously don’t have a comp sci background. The point isn’t pass/fail though, but more to assess breadth of knowledge.

I don’t really care if you know what the L is in SOLID or the term for an iterative alternative to recursion, but I do want to know if you can come up with the search terms for a problem you have.

Architecture / Design

We ask everyone these questions, and only dig deeper if they give good answers. We’re looking to see what role you should have, which might not be the one you applied for. For example, we hired a frontend intern candidate as a full time jr backend due to how the interview process worked out. We also hired someone as mid tier that applied for senior.

AI

If you use AI to answer questions in an interview, you’re immediately disqualified. It’s pretty easy to tell if they’re reading from a script or actually answering honestly, and if it’s not, it’s easy to fire them in the first few weeks once they prove their incompetence.

If you can fool us during the interview process and produce good code afterward, then I guess good job? I don’t really care how you do it, as long as you do the job.

We do in-person interviews when practical, but online works too. You just need to be on your guard more for remote interviews.

Not OP, but here’s my 2c as someone also part of the interview process.

I had an interviewe where the candidate asked if they could use AI, and I told them to use whatever they normally use in development. I’ll skip the details, but basically the AI generated wrong code, which they missed, and they corrected when we pointed it out. That happens. But then we had them refactor and the AI made the same mistake and they missed it again, which we pointed out, and they fixed. But that wasn’t the nail in the coffin. We then asked them how confident they were about the code (we saw other errors that we didn’t mention), and they said 100%. They didn’t get the job.

I don’t care what tools you use, I mostly care how you approach problems and whether you overstate your abilities. We’re in the business of producing working code on time, so we need devs who can at least notice when they need more time to check things. We were hoping they’d say they needed to write some tests to get a code review, not just ship it.

Our coding projects are designed such that a competent dev can complete them quickly (5-10 min for first round “weeder” task, 20-30 min for second round “engineering” task), and we allow double the time expected to cover for nerves. In fact, we might hire you even if you fail spectacularly, provided you can explain your approach (i.e. it’s just nerves).

If you think it’s bad here, try other countries. I don’t know about Taiwan specifically, but lots of countries have even worse enforcement.