As, a software developer I started my path exactly before 12 years. At the end of month August 2006 I got the first job to work for an Austrian company as Junior C# developer. Until today, I worked mainly as .net, asp.net, ruby on rails developer.
In this period I worked in office for 7 years. Last 5 years I am working from home, remotely for different clients from EU/USA.
So, in general I entered in IT as a software developer as my hobby profession. Before IT I finished the Political Science University and worked with in my diploma profession for about two months and 24 days. The job wasn't so bad for any other person from my country at that time, but for me it wasn't so good. Working with many people on daily basis was so exhausting. I couldn't see myself working this job for a next 40 years.
So, I left that job and spend two years in thinking about my future and what would be interesting profession where I can best express myself. And which will be enough interesting to me and which can hold my attention for a while.
After, lot of investigating I started with experimenting with programming. Downloading programming tools with my dial-up connection and writing 'Hello, World!' in more than 30 languages, just to see is there a programming language which will best suit to me.
In period of investigation I started to write some games with GameMaker later also with Liberty Basic and after 2 years I got my first job to work as c# developer.
Long story short or long? hah.
So, that's me and my entry into programming profession.
Today, 12 years later I am working as Remote Freelance Ruby On Rails Contractor and it's okay. Last year I really had so much free time for myself, for traveling for enjoying in life. Probably the best time of my life for now.
As I mentioned above last five years I am working from home and I know that working remotely is not for every person. If you really want good paid job or contract you will need to be a senior, or let say very experienced software developer, because when you get the task you are alone, you and your stackoverflow!
In the period of last 5 years I had very often many job offers from many companies mostly by the linkedin message contact.
And as I am Contractor I tried to get the best Contract I can get. So I had so many interviews, testing, waiting, many offers and rejections.
Almost all the interviews consisted of informal talk and the code testing. Mostly they give you some task on HackerRank or any similar testing site online.
Few times they also asked me to write some algorithm in my Notepad by sharing a screen and so. I tried, to do my best many times. But unfortunately, very often I didn't finish the test or I spend too much time and left it.
To be honest in most of the cases I didn't leave testing because I am ignorant or because I don't have a knowledge to finish it, no! I left it because I really don't see correct purposes of writing code test live or on some testing site in some requested time period. Spending my time by solving some testing problems chosen from recruiters or one of company seniors, where they try to be smart and choose a test that's really, in most of the case I never had to do in a real situation in my earlier career, wasn't very motivated for me.
Recruitment process is designed to take part of the cake from IT industries, and they do so many mistakes only to prove their expensive engagement in process of hiring.
Maybe I am wrong, but that's me. Why? Hmm.
From past experiences I learned that it is very important to make a clear note to recruiter or person who makes first contact by offering a job position to me is that I need to tell them about my experience by sending an updated CV and insists that they read my CV and check the links of my earlier work and GitHub or bitbucket code.
In that case if they really thinks that I am good choice for position they can save us precious time by reading completely my CV and checking all other info about me my experience and my code.
If my previous projects are not good enough? If my code is not written good enough? We can talk. I can explain why I wrote that in that way or what would be a better solution and that is okay for me.
But preparing myself for some coding interview from some unknown person/recruiter and trying to make my best on test which they choose, and they think it is important for me to know and it's important to their business and on other side I never needed in my decade of working its very debatable. I am too old for that.
So, if you don't have anything to show yet. You are a beginner, or you worked on some internal project and you wrote only small part of codes and you can't show that publicly, in that case I think it's a good thing to do something besides your work. Spend some of your free time in learning and making some interesting stuff. Or write a blog, explain problems and solutions you got on your work, in that way we all can see who you are and how do you use your brain and logic.
In other case if you are in The Game for a years and you worked and working for few companies and you build stuff in your free time. You work is accessible online. Your code is visible online. Then writing interview testing code is really obsolete!
Yes, it's okay to talk in general about the work, requirements, experiences. It's okay to show code, to talk about code, to discus, acknowledge mistakes, offer better solutions, but if its is not enough for them all of this and solving tasks on HckerRank is more important than this company is not for me.
My sites and free time projects:
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