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Comment on The only thing doing tech tests has taught me is that I'm too stupid to do the job I've been doing professionally for the better part of 2 decades.

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varsock@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

thanks for sharing, didn’t know they got rid of it - makes sense though

from the same article:

if the boards aren’t regulating the [software engineering profession], it’s tough to get people to take the exam

Now middle managers and HR are regulating the software engineering profession -_-

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shagie@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I looked at it when it came out. The problem is that taking classes back in the early 90s with computer programming - the CS department was an offshoot of the Math and Statistics departments rather than engineering (the engineering department was hardware focused - designing chips and circuit boards)… and so I don’t have the deep physics background that the FE exam expects you to have prior to taking the PE exam.

prepfe.com/…/electrical-and-computer-fe-exam-prac…

www.engproguides.com/feelectricalsample.pdf

If I had taken electrical and computer engineering… well, assuming that I got through the math (had to take the CS numerical methods class three times)… maybe. But if people want to complain about the irrelevance of reversing a list or describing two different approaches to balanced trees… they’d probably complain more about being tested on generators and RC frequency response in low pass filters even if you only have to take it once.
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- varsock@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  But if people want to complain about the irrelevance of reversing a list or describing two different approaches to balanced trees… they’d probably complain more about being tested on generators and RC frequency response in low pass filters even if you only have to take it once.
  
  LOL! absolutely.
  
  I think the skills tested on tech interviews are important, though; At least fundamentals. I don’t encounter many people that consider time and space complexity of a unit of code (big O notation) and that’s unfortunate.
  
  Data structs and their method for language built-ins are already optimized so I get that most people just use them but man, I see so many developers not even choose the correct structures. That includes me until I started leetcoding for a new job after 4 years of professionally work.
  
  But of course, this needs to stay in reason. Asking Brainteasers and optimizations like dynamic programming are dick moves. I don’t want my team to prematurely optimize and make our code base complex just cause.
  
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