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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

#211

Post by wrinkl3 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #185
bearforcenine wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is silly that you have to train for an interview for months to land a SWE position at a top company. However, until someone comes up with a less gameable system or a magic wand that stack ranks applicants, then I don't see a viable alternative :\ As someone who gives a lot of interviews, I'd love a better way to assess a candidates ability that is less gameable, but we haven't found one yet.

> until someone comes up with a less gameable system or a magic wand that stack ranks applicants, then I don't see a viable alternative This is exactly the concept of an IQ test, right down to the stack ranking. They're pretty well understood by now, and they take less than a day, which compares pretty favorably to "months".

Isn't it illegal to hire people based on IQ in the US?

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

#212

Post by scardine »

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…

Set up any system with money rewards and people will game it.

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

#213

Post by alexvoda »

walshemj wrote: post #197
35bge57dtjku wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> surely not a hard question, you would think! Not so much hard, more that it sounds like a complete waste of time and could be signaling to people that this is one more non-technical/HR interview they have to get through before getting to talk to people they'd be working with and who can fill them in on details specific to their prospective job or team. Whatever you're trying to figure out with that question, there'…

I wouldn't want some one on my team who had know idea of what the company did. I normally for public companies read the annual report and accounts.

This only works depending on the scale of the company. If the company is huge and involved in many things there is less engagement from each employee with the overall mission of the company. This is even more pronounced when employees can't even see the fruit of their work in society. Like when the developer workforce of a company is spread across many countries but the clients are focused only in one company. I think expecting candidates to have a basic idea what the company does is fine. But unless the company is a small startup, expecting them to be engaged with the mission is unreasonable.

There are many reasons for candidates to be excited to work for a company:

- friends

- great team fit

- technological challenges or preferences

- work-life balance

- location

These and others contribute to an employee doing his job with passion. (note: money is not one of them. there is a study that showed that above a certain level for a person, no amount of extra remuneration will result in an increase in productivity)

And I imagine this is the case even for pinnacles of vision like SpaceX. I imagine employees at SpeceX do not care about the future of SpaceX , they care about putting man on mars, making space available cheaply, pushing the boundaries of human exploration and of technological capabilities, Musks vision and enthusiasm. But not SpaceX as a company.

People should really stop expecting companies to have emotions. Companies do not care about people so people should not care about companies either. People care about other people and society at large.

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

#214

Post by erispoe »

pjmlp wrote: post #164
SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our industry also has quite a lot of self-taught professionals, who can perform as well as their college educated counterparts, which is something you won't really get in professions like Law or Medicine. I think that's a good thing, when it comes to software.

Just because in countries like US, one can call himself/herself engineer, without any actual meaning. At least in Europe things are a bit more strict.

If you do the same job, and do it equally well, why should you have a different title?

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

#215

Post by kulu2002 »

shagie wrote: post #92
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd be willing to take either side of a debate for "is there a shortage of people who, when given tight specifications for a piece of software (write a function that takes X as input and provides Y as output) that enumerates all of the corner conditions can produce a program in a language that they are familiar with." At the same time, the "person who can work with the business user on the software, think about the a…

This is by far brilliant insight I have come across and actually experienced!

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

#216

Post by mratzloff »

ianamartin wrote: post #130
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…

One of the things I miss about being an orchestral musician is that you always knew what you were getting into when you went into an audition. You've known the pool of excerpts for your instrument since you were in college; you've been working on them for years; you've probably known the excerpts for this particular audition for months if not a year. Every one of them is the same: you go in behind a screen, and you h…

I wish that instead of teaching classes about how to win the CS technical interview, schools would teach classes about how to interview for technical roles.

Aside from security, I think this is the biggest challenge we face as an industry. Everyone interviews differently and almost all are done poorly. But the vast majority think they are good interviewers, and they're just not. It also won't improve on its own, because there's almost never any effort at honestly evaluating the hiring practices or decisions.

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

#217

Post by clarry »

shagie wrote: post #92
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd be willing to take either side of a debate for "is there a shortage of people who, when given tight specifications for a piece of software (write a function that takes X as input and provides Y as output) that enumerates all of the corner conditions can produce a program in a language that they are familiar with." At the same time, the "person who can work with the business user on the software, think about the a…

> "I learned language X and that was hard enough, I'm going to stick with it and not learn anything else."

There's also a sizeable portion of companies that have the attitude of "we want someone who's really passionate and good at learning. oh and they need to be expert in language x. oh you're not an expert in x? sorry, we can't wait for you to learn it. we don't care if you learnt something else"

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

#218

Post by pjmlp »

erispoe wrote: post #214
pjmlp wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because in countries like US, one can call himself/herself engineer, without any actual meaning. At least in Europe things are a bit more strict.

If you do the same job, and do it equally well, why should you have a different title?

Because the skillset is not the same.

It is quite different to have spent 5 years doing nothing other than building up engineering knowledge, and just learning a few things to get the job done.

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

#219

Post by Tehnix »

Tehnix wrote: post #189
pjmlp wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because in countries like US, one can call himself/herself engineer, without any actual meaning. At least in Europe things are a bit more strict.

It's an unfortunate situation honestly, because it pollutes the term "engineer" (at least for Europeans), when it's being conflated with "I just know how to code".

while it might to some seem slightly controversial, it would make more sense to argue against it instead of just down voting.

Would you disagree if people from the US did not need to pass the bar to call themselves lawyers, or the equivalent for doctors? Is it just because I compared this specific thing from the US in a negative light compared to EU?

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

#220

Post by sjg007 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #183
sjg007 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The SATs are specifically designed to meet these goals, among others: - Preparation not required. - Preparation not beneficial . And it shouldn't be surprising that they achieve that well. Consider these scatterplots comparing students who took the SAT without preparation to students who prepped: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2012/02/test-preparation-and-s... . As further described at the same link, research quite co…

You can definitely prep for the SAT and it makes a big difference.
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