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Stanford CS9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview

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Re: Stanford CS9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview

#71

Post by sjg007 »

firstplacelast wrote: post #36
brailsafe wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, preparing for interviews is standard practice irrespective of the industry.

Sister is a travel nurse. She does not prepare for interviews and typically has several a year. Her entire interview process goes: call the agency and tell them she is looking for a new position, have one to several 30-45minute phone calls with hiring managers at the hospitals she is interested in (she actually took one once in the middle of a wine tasting - and got the job), then wait to hear back. That's what it's…

Right but she is licensed, this is the main issue.

Re: Stanford CS9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview

#73

Post by bearforcenine »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #63
bearforcenine wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of prep has been common place in other desirable fields for many years. Law, medicine, finance. They all have books, classes, etc. that you can take to prepare for interviewing, taking the bar, mcat, etc. Compared to college admissions, the CS interview process looks downright sane.

They all have prep for everything but interviewing. An interview to get a residency or a junior assistant position will be much more about your credentials and a history of your performance.

Finance at least has prep for interviewing for investment banking, trading, and consulting. When I was in undergrad it was common to have mock interviews and prep for commonly asked interview questions. Most people prepped on being able to walk you through basic financial statements, valuation, brain teasers, case interviews, and stuff like that.

I'll take your word for the other fields as I can't speak directly to interview vs exams there.

Re: Stanford CS9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview

#74

Post by sjg007 »

lz400 wrote: post #20

I think this is terrible. I feel there are many good engineers that can't possibly compete for decent jobs in tech companies because they haven't spent 6-12 months reading cracking the code interview, doing this Stanford course, practicing mock interviews in crowdsourced websites, getting their leetcode rank up, attending bootcamps where they pad their githubs and practicing any single interview question they can scr…

Stanford kids do well on the SATs which require similar prep. Same thing, different day.

Re: Stanford CS9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview

#75

Post by sjg007 »

quotheth wrote: post #37
czardoz wrote: post #3

This is what I was afraid of. I always thought interviews were something where you present your abilities, experience and knowledge. It should not be something you "prepare" for because then you're not showing off your skills, instead you're just regurgitating what you are trained to do. I do somewhat blame the whiteboard culture, but I guess that's the one that has given the best results so far. I've no doubt that i…

Why should interviews test your ability to solve a problem you never expected to have to solve, rather than test your ability to prepare, research, and teach yourself?

One can argue that this is the same thing.

Re: Stanford CS9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview

#76

Post by sjg007 »

tinokid wrote: post #69
bearforcenine wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt this is a sign of a decline in quality of higher ed, and more a sign of the popularity of CS as a major and software engineering as a career. These kinds of courses and prep has existed in similarly popular fields for many yeas: law, medicine, finance, etc.

1) Those are professional schools 2) Even so, no respectable law school offers a bar prep class. Nor does any med school offer "How to ace the USMLE".

But do most law school grads take bar prep classes?

Re: Stanford CS9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview

#77

Post by eli_gottlieb »

bearforcenine wrote: post #39
NTDF9 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> FWIW, preparing for interviews is standard practice irrespective of the industry. Industry is sane. They ask stuff relevant to actual work or real basics. They don't make a gameable process full of rules and techniques.

It's been my experience that any industry that * Is attractive enough (compensation, lifestyle, etc.) * and has a larger supply of qualified applicants than desirable positions Will result in applicants preparing for however they are interviewed, tested, etc. This isn't unique to software engineering interviews. People prepare for interviews or exams in finance, law, medicine, etc. They all have a system that is game…

The funny thing is that software engineering does this while also complaining of labor shortages. Or, if we're being a bit more honest, it's not funny, it's cynically self-serving.

Re: Stanford CS9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview

#78

Post by eli_gottlieb »

tinokid wrote: post #69
bearforcenine wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt this is a sign of a decline in quality of higher ed, and more a sign of the popularity of CS as a major and software engineering as a career. These kinds of courses and prep has existed in similarly popular fields for many yeas: law, medicine, finance, etc.

1) Those are professional schools 2) Even so, no respectable law school offers a bar prep class. Nor does any med school offer "How to ace the USMLE".

>1) Those are professional schools

And a computer science degree is deliberately, emphatically NOT a professional training regimen towards a career in software engineering.

Re: Stanford CS9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview

#79

Post by Blazespinnaker »

czardoz wrote: post #3

This is what I was afraid of. I always thought interviews were something where you present your abilities, experience and knowledge. It should not be something you "prepare" for because then you're not showing off your skills, instead you're just regurgitating what you are trained to do. I do somewhat blame the whiteboard culture, but I guess that's the one that has given the best results so far. I've no doubt that i…

Preparation is a huuuuuuge part of being successful in the workplace[1]. Simply showing up just doesn’t cut it.

Part of interviews aren’t even testing skills, but testing prep. Of course, you want to test for innate genetic talent as well.

Good interviews do that, but as with gattaca, we see that desire and sincere interest counts too over genes.

Preparation, sincerity, and genes. That’s what I like to see in potential employee, in that order.

Sometimes, of course, one attribute really outshines the others - but its order in priority should always be factored in.

1. Source: individual who tried just showing up for 75% of his 20 year career.

Re: Stanford CS9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview

#80

Post by qwerty456127 »

czardoz wrote: post #3

This is what I was afraid of. I always thought interviews were something where you present your abilities, experience and knowledge. It should not be something you "prepare" for because then you're not showing off your skills, instead you're just regurgitating what you are trained to do. I do somewhat blame the whiteboard culture, but I guess that's the one that has given the best results so far. I've no doubt that i…

The reality is the majority of tech interviews today are filled with questions/tasks that have little or nothing to do with the actual job you are going to be assigned. In fact an average programmer doesn't actually need to know a single piece of computer science or math (almost all such stuff is abstracted by common libraries and frameworks, whatever is not can be looked up on demand) nor to memorize anything (thanks to auto-completion and all the docs and Q&As being just a couple of clicks away), let alone to have skills in solving puzzles. Yet every other interviewer will ask you to write code on paper and give you puzzles on computer science, physics and everything. They will also ask you about your previous salary and the reason you have left the previous job (both matters are purely private IMHO), why have you chosen them (ridiculous, I just want to earn living in a sound company and have sent the CV to a number of companies to land the first one that feels fine and wants me), what do you want to achieve in n years (never thought about this, just want a job) etc. And a funny thing: a friend of mine (an experienced developer with history in multinationals) has once told me he was rejected told being "too unsociable", "talking too little" which is the perfect opposite of what he actually is (dozens of his friends would undoubtedly confirm). Puzzles are fun, intelligence is reasonable to be benchmarked, nevertheless the interviewing thing is done at least slightly wrong usually IMHO. I just hope some scientific research is going to emerge in this area in near future to help rationalize the hiring process. As for myself I ask nothing but the candidate's opinion on some relevant subjects (the opinion itself doesn't really matter much but it can indicate certain degrees of awareness, understanding, intelligence and motivation, also the talk can somewhat demonstrate the personality) and their GitHub profile.
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