Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Interview Engineers

blog.triplebyte.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 489 posts

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#121

Post by stephenbez »

bogomipz wrote: post #107
stephenbez wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a YC company that wanted me to do a trial week. They wanted me to quit my job when I said I couldn't take off a week of vacation. When I said no, they wanted me to come out Friday through Monday and since the whole company works on the weekend, they would get 4 days to work with me. At that point I said I wasn't interested.

Wow this is next-level outrageous! Could you share the name of the company so others might avoid them and avoid wasting their time with such nonsense?

Since it was in 2014 and I don't know if they still do this, I won't name them.

I guess the lesson learned is to ask what the interview process looks like before getting involved.

However for this company, I applied online, they sent me a InterviewStreet/HackerRank coding test, and only after I passed that did a recruiter call me, and tell me they wanted me onsite for a week.

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#122

Post by bogomipz »

padobson wrote: post #36
angryasian wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm already employed, it be weird to take a week off just to work for another company. Also ramp up time takes at least a day or two. This whole process seems troublesome for both the employee and employer

When did you last switch jobs? I recently went through a round of employment where I quit my job at the beginning. Between updating my resume/social networks, brushing up on academic CS, finding leads, scheduling interviews and follow-up interviews and managing/negotiating offers, it was absolutely a full-time job. I can't imagine finding a new programming job while still working at the old job.

>"Between updating my resume/social networks, brushing up on academic CS, finding leads, scheduling interviews and follow-up interviews and managing/negotiating offers, it was absolutely a full-time job."

Can you break down how much time you spent on each of those tasks that they took up the equivalent of an entire 8 or 9 hour work day 5 days a week?

I think you might be in the minority with your outlook. Most people opt to keep their paycheck and health insurance and vacation time until they find something new. Not least those with families. Also its much easier to negotiate a higher salary using your existing salary as a starting point.

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#123

Post by Bahamut »

mattnewton wrote: post #55
padobson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did you last switch jobs? I recently went through a round of employment where I quit my job at the beginning. Between updating my resume/social networks, brushing up on academic CS, finding leads, scheduling interviews and follow-up interviews and managing/negotiating offers, it was absolutely a full-time job. I can't imagine finding a new programming job while still working at the old job.

I think this is a crazy expectation. I last switched jobs while working at Apple last October. Having the BATNA of your current employment is crucial to the negotiation process and I can't imagine forgoing that- if you have no current income that's an insane bargaining handicap. Anyone with experience absolutely is not going to go for "quit your job, and maybe we'll give you a new one after a week, maybe it won't wor…

Not only that, working for a company like Apple, you aren't allowed to write any code unless its been approved by the appropriate people...that just wouldn't work.

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#124

Post by barrkel »

Stratoscope wrote: post #114
tkxxx7 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to tell if GP miswrote, or you misunderstood, but it doesn't sound like they've made the mistake you're alluding to (I would expect them to be explicitly wrong).

Hmm.. Perhaps I did misunderstand something. But if the test for a conflict is: b > c and a > d with conflicting appointments from 1-3 and 2-4: a = 1, b = 3, c = 2, d = 4 won't that evaluate to: 3 > 2 and 1 > 4 true and false false (no conflict) I could be wrong, but I think you have to do all four comparisons as in aldarn's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14641043 (no fair peeking!)

The test is the opposite of (X ends before Y starts) and (Y ends before X starts). You only need two comparisons.

With two events, X going from xb to xe, and Y going from yb to ye, you have these possible sequences:

    xb xe yb ye (no conflict)
    xb yb xe ye (conflict)
    xb yb ye xe (conflict)
    yb ye xb xe (no conflict)
    yb xb ye xe (conflict)
    yb xb xe ye (conflict)
As long as (xb >= ye or yb >= xe) there's no conflict. You can flip those: (xb We can evaluate this expression over those cases:

    xb xe yb ye : yb  false => no conflict
    xb yb xe ye : xb  true, conflict
    xb yb ye xe : xb  true, conflict
    yb ye xb xe : xb  false => no conflict
    yb xb ye xe : xb  true, conflict
    yb xb xe ye : xb  true, conflict
So you only need two comparisons, and an and operation.

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#125

Post by bogomipz »

zippergz wrote: post #111
bogomipz wrote: post #109

>"After an engineer passes our process, they go straight to the final interview at companies we work with (including Apple, Facebook, Dropbox and Stripe)." Can anyone from any of these companies confirm this? This strikes me as really odd. So only one employee from FB, Apple, Dropbox, and Stripe needs to interview a candidate that Tripplebyte say is a "Go"? I'm having a hard time believing that.

I don't think "the final interview" means a single person. I took it to mean the onsite round, with however many people that entails, skipping the recruiter screen, phone screen, etc.

So why does it matter whether the first round of interviews is done by this company or the actual company doing the hiring?

I would argue that as a candidate I would rather interview with as many of my potential coworkers as possible. Interviewing is a two way street. The more exposure to the actual people I would be working with allows me to make a better-informed decision. How is reducing my exposure better for me the candidate? It seems its really better for Tripplebyte though and maybe the company looking to hire if they are short-staffed but not the candidate.

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#126

Post by delinka »

Stratoscope wrote: post #114
tkxxx7 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to tell if GP miswrote, or you misunderstood, but it doesn't sound like they've made the mistake you're alluding to (I would expect them to be explicitly wrong).

Hmm.. Perhaps I did misunderstand something. But if the test for a conflict is: b > c and a > d with conflicting appointments from 1-3 and 2-4: a = 1, b = 3, c = 2, d = 4 won't that evaluate to: 3 > 2 and 1 > 4 true and false false (no conflict) I could be wrong, but I think you have to do all four comparisons as in aldarn's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14641043 (no fair peeking!)

Just make sure your data is correct, and a single comparison works: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/c02d74eb75a51dce8dcbc027a3...

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#127

Post by SilasX »

angryasian wrote: post #23
padobson wrote: post #9

Spending a week working beside an engineer (or seeing how they complete a substantial project) almost certainly provides a better measure of their abilities than watching them solve interview problems for 1 hour Trial employment is expensive for the company. [...] Trial employment (and large take-home projects) are expensive for the candidate. I can't help but think there's way to mitigate that expense among several…

If I'm already employed, it be weird to take a week off just to work for another company. Also ramp up time takes at least a day or two. This whole process seems troublesome for both the employee and employer

Actually, I'd really be interested in knowing if there's some list of employers like that so someone in a position to take such an offer can rotate through good prospects like that.

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#128

Post by hoosieree »

dcwca wrote: post #90
pinot wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a programmer but wouldn't if (endtime[1] > starttime[2]){status=conflict} work? Assuming time is encoded in epoch format.

That's half of it, but doesn't account for the case when starttime[1] is later than endtime[2] and they don't intersect.

It works if you assume that appointment 1 starts before appointment 2 starts (or if you explicitly sort them by start time).

e.g. in J:

       'a b c' =: 50 60 3 4;3 50 49 99;2 10 10 12  NB. 3 different sets of appointments
       3 :'ok`nope{~0>*./-~//./:~_2]\ y' every a;b;c
    ┌──┬────┬──┐
    │ok│nope│ok│
    └──┴────┴──┘

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#129

Post by barrkel »

pklausler wrote: post #73

The sad reality of programming interviews is that it's absolutely necessary to ask several near-trivial questions in order to flush out the candidates with awesome resumes and impressive degrees who simply have no idea how to analyze a simple problem and solve it using a computer. Lately, I've been asking "given the starting and ending times of two calendar appointments, determine whether or not they conflict." No lo…

It's actually a tricky problem to think clearly about unless you start enumerating the cases, or get pen and paper out to draw some boxes. I don't think it's completely trivial to verbalise. But I also don't think a competent programmer should fail to work it out.

I like the problem, and I'll probably use it in future :) It'll be a low bar for those times where you're getting the impression that a bigger task will be beyond the candidate, and you want to cut your losses early.

FWIW, I've seen similar complete failures to reason when applied to the even simpler problem of testing to see if a point is inside a rectangle. Some people seem to have a very underdeveloped one dimensional measure function in their brains.

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#130

Post by bogomipz »

stephenbez wrote: post #121
bogomipz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow this is next-level outrageous! Could you share the name of the company so others might avoid them and avoid wasting their time with such nonsense?

Since it was in 2014 and I don't know if they still do this, I won't name them. I guess the lesson learned is to ask what the interview process looks like before getting involved. However for this company, I applied online, they sent me a InterviewStreet/HackerRank coding test, and only after I passed that did a recruiter call me, and tell me they wanted me onsite for a week.

>"However for this company, I applied online, they sent me a InterviewStreet/HackerRank coding test, and only after I passed that did a recruiter call me"

This is a huge red flag in my opinion and I would recommend people not agree to this. Why? Because it shows complete disregard for the candidate. "Pass a test and you can speak to an actual human being." Its demeaning. It also shows just how useless many recruiters have become. Part of the job of a recruiter's job and good ones do this, is to get a candidate excited about interviewing with the company and get the preliminary deal breaker questions out of the way to see if it even makes sense to proceed.

Post reply on HN