I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

Post by jacurtis » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:02 PM UTC

gregd wrote: post #183

mrisoli wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done that a few time actually. My last company they flew me from another continent to do a 3-days assessment, I worked with the team on a legitimate feature(that would be trashed after as they couldn't use the code because I was unpaid). I liked it, I met the team, I interacted with them, I did the task and got a job offer in the end. All engineers at the company highly valued the 3 days assessment because we go…

I'm not sure what country you're from or what country you flew to for this ridiculous 'interview' process, but it's one of the many things I loathe about this field...right up there with "rock star" and "ninja" coder. Honestly it's stuff like this, that has me contemplating giving up this career path because there's just no more room for people in their 50s with 25 years of experience in information technology, who a…

Post by lkbm » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

throwaway552231 wrote: post #252

charlesdm wrote: post #223

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Perhaps I'm in the minority here, but I don't like this question because you know there is a politically correct answer and then an actual course of action people would take. The proper answer is: introduce democratic government, clean up the country, introduce proper amenities (healthcare, etc) and spread the wealth for the benefit of the people. Fact of the matter is: absolute power corrupts, and plenty of people w…

Has it ever worked in that order? It seems like most current democratic countries first cleaned up the country and then introduced a democratic government. I’m thinking of recent democratic countries in Asia, like South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. Or if they did start with a democratic government, to limit the voting to certain groups, like the US, Canada, and Australia did before universal suffrage. Are there any…

Post by 0xffff2 » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #198

jordansmithnz wrote: post #39

This reminds me of a take home software engineering interview I was once given via email. Same deal, I was told about 5 hours. I’m an iOS developer, so I was expecting a pretty simple app. I opened the PDF to find not one, but three separate tasks. Completion of all three was expected, with an estimate of about two hours each. One of the tasks was to replicate Apple’s ‘Reminders’ app in its entirety, backend sync fun…

> you’re about to dedicate up to 5 working days on this task, with the potential for them to ghost you straight afterwards I often give companies a list of open current open source tasks I'm working on. Pick one and I'll complete it for your interview. Every singe company turned me down, except one, who just accepted one of the tools I had on Github and examined that.

Post by DoofusOfDeath » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

tasty_freeze wrote: post #220

jcadam wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am a software engineer and I was once asked during an interview at a large hedge fund to pick a side and debate why war is justified. Heh, I actually wouldn't have minded that too much - but in addition to being a software engineer I'm also a former Army officer. In any case, I think such a task can be relevant, if you're working in a fast-paced and competitive environment (esp. one with a lot of non-technical st…

> you need to be able to hold your own in an argument Then you'll hire a bunch people who like arguing about things they aren't qualified to argue about. I'd much rather have a coworker who admits what they don't know and is willing to learn about it rather than someone who is willing to vigorously argue in support of an arbitrary position.

Post by max76 » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

0xffff2 wrote: post #258

cecilpl2 wrote: post #157

I recently was given a toy problem in an interview - read data in some format, process it, and write the output. Expectation was 4 hours of work, which is pretty close to what it took me to get all the edge cases, test suite, requisite documentation, and VS project/solution files. The feedback I got afterwards was "We're passing on you as your code doesn't compile/run on Linux", a requirement that wasn't specified.

>The feedback I got afterwards was "We're passing on you as your code doesn't compile/run on Linux", a requirement that wasn't specified. I have to ask, was there something that implied that it should specifically run on Windows? If I got a software spec that didn't spell out exactly which platforms needed to be supported, one of the very first things I would do would be to ask for clarification.