throwaway613834

It's rather jarring to read "Can lisp programmers still feel smug about using lisp? No" followed by "the average programmer is probably best actively discouraged from utilizing this freedom because they probably have flawed mental models".

Like most other people commenting here, I don't have advice on the career path—in my case, it's because you haven't given any information about what your strengths or interests are besides programming. Could you give us a little more info on what you enjoy, or what you think you're good at? What did you like in high school or college? Do you like math? Journalism? Lab work? Politics?

Aside from that, I have one other piece of advice that you may or may not enjoy hearing:

I would stop—like, right now—even thinking things like "I experience PTSD-like symptoms". (Unless you're dead serious about your symptoms being similar to that of those who really have PTSD, in which case get a real diagnosis from a professional.) There are many reasons for this, two of them being:

1. It's hard enough for professionals to get this stuff right without getting their diagnoses called into question (including by armchair-psychiatrists like us programmers on HN). Heck, people here are even questioning your assessment of the CS question's difficulty. (!) And there's so much context and prior knowledge/experience to evaluating symptoms that's difficult to judge as a layman. Just go on WebMD next time there's a weird pain or tingling or bump somewhere in your body. If your experience is anything like mine, you'll quickly find that you may have anything from M.S. to cancer... when in fact it might be nothing more than a cold (if even that) and it could go away after a while. All you're doing is depressing yourself.

2. The point of identifying any illness is very simple but very critical to keep in mind: to help find you a treatment for current or future symptoms based on the known literature. If you're not doing that, then telling yourself you have—or might have—a disease/disorder isn't doing you any good. Again, you're just depressing yourself. And what's worse is that you're suggesting to yourself that you don't have control over what's happening, when in fact there's quite a good chance you do.

You call out impostor syndrome when you actually have evidence to suggest it is the case, not completely baselessly. Like when you give someone a role because you believe in their ability (whether through prior interviews with them, or seeing their prior work, etc.), but they don't feel up to the task. In other words, we know they actually can do tasks that we believe to be of similar or greater difficulty, but they somehow don't believe that that's the case. But we have no single shred of evidence that this is the case here... or if you think we do, well, I don't see it, and neither did the parent comment point to any.

In particular, having a CS degree and finding that you're having trouble with what you believe to be easy interview problems (to emphasize: actually having trouble, not merely thinking that you might have trouble if you were to try) is not in any way evidence that you're experiencing impostor syndrome, of all things. It might be evidence that you don't have enough practice, or you didn't learn the material well, or that you lack motivation, or that you just don't find the topic interesting, etc... but the one thing it does not mean (in the absence of extra evidence) is that you're actually brilliant and yet also incapable of assessing the difficulty of interview problems accurately.

>> "Easy problems take me 2-5 hours."

> Those problems are supposed to be hard because they're based on ideas discovered by the most brilliant minds. If you can do them in 2-5 hours with no background you might actually be real good.

Putting myself in the OP's shoes, this would be really frustrating advice to hear. The OP literally said they already got a CS degree and that these are "easy problems" taking them 2-5 hours. Baselessly calling into question their own assessment of problem difficulty (as if it's likely that they're that clueless about how difficult interview problems are supposed to be after having received a CS degree) while simultaneously suggesting they might actually be brilliant and simply not realizing it is, honestly, just unhelpful advice, if not potentially actively harmful. If you're going to do this, at least ask them to post a question or two so you can independently gauge their assessment first.

Thanks! The trouble is all of these can fail for what I would consider legitimate reasons. Requiring a receipt fails if they just open it, maybe even use it a bit (or not), and wait a few months before selling it, since nowadays people seem to genuinely go through some stuff (e.g. phones) pretty quickly and not necessarily keep or have receipts, especially if they themselves bought it second-hand. Meeting at my home or office is not something I would ever feel comfortable doing, and is generally recommended against when purchasing online. Sharing phone numbers is something I'd only do when the decision to purchase has gone through and we're actively trying to meet up (obvious privacy concerns), etc.

Does anyone know what obligation the company has to provide the transcript?

You really think a judge is going to buy this?

To themselves, not you. And in the "might" sense, not in the "permitted" sense.

> That's why I like it when companies tell me they're recording - then I have a green light.

I'm not sure them having permission to record implies you also having permission to record in all-party-consent states. I would appreciate a source stating otherwise.

Erm... I wasn't asking if it's difficult, I was asking what do you look for? Why in the world would a set of things to look for be a subject to conceal?

Edit: never mind, just realized you're worried I or someone else is trying to sell stolen goods and will abuse such a list that way, sigh...

...huh. How do you tell stolen goods from legitimate ones? Obviously the price can't be the only factor since they could just try to sell it closer to a realistic price.