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

I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

uxdesign.cc

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 615 posts

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#301

Post by mxcrossb »

corndoge wrote: post #240
agrippanux wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When interviewing execs who would be building new departments a few years ago, I would pose the question of "In the wake of Arab spring in Libya, the people decide that you are their next leader. What happens in your first 100 days?". The answers ran the gamut from lazy to fantastic to terrifying. A lot of answers where generic "coalition building" variety. The better answers identified key areas to focus on like inf…

>Bad answers had... Asking a politically charged question on statecraft and judging the answer based on your own personal ideas about how to run a state strikes me as a bizarre way to conduct an interview, even for an exec. >The worst answers had the exec killing people Play stupid games, win stupid prizes?

It would t surprise me if a lot of these stupid questions were actually useful because they indirectly measure something else. On that note, assigning lengthy interview projects is probably a good proxy for “won’t negotuate to hard on his salary”.

But as an employee, I’d sure prefer being treated like a human being...

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#302

Post by klyrs »

harlanji wrote: post #224
klyrs wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in 2000, I had an in-person interview at a very small b2b website. They'd been using overseas contractors (zero local technical people) and the founder/interviewer barely knew a thing about computers. He didn't know how to run a technical interview, so he sat me down at a computer, logged in as root on prod (lol the only server), and pointed me at a couple of bugs. I knocked them out lickety-split and was hired…

I'm making it like that again. I'm back down with the blue collar proles in Mountain View, landscaping and moving and waiting tables and the like. That's how things work outside of speculation... employer has a business where they get paid, and they outsource their own functions. I'll never run an engineering org like Silicon Valley again, it's so broken in delivering results as a result of the speculative nature. I…

I'm in high tech and dying. This is making me feel nostalgic and thinking... maybe taking 3 steps back would be 10 steps forward in terms of my mental health.

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#303

Post by jldugger »

ALittleLight wrote: post #221
geofft wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/06/05/business/the-quiet-allure... > Though David Rowe, a veteran architect of the Wharton forecasting model, has played a key role in developing the firm's econometric model, the senior staff, including Miss Eickhoff, Judith Mackey and Lucille Wu, is mostly female. Mr. Greenspan explains the gender bias with the free-market pragmatism that has become his hallmark: "I always valued men an…

Isn't this admitting that he's underpaying women? Because if he paid them as much as he would pay a man then they wouldn't be cheaper.

Not necessarily. He could be underpaying everyone. In which case, the degree to which women accept offers vs men would contribute to a systemic pay gap, without directly intending to.

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#304

Post by flashgordon »

It is interesting to see this outrage from a lot of candidates. Back in "my" day (ie 10-15 years ago), it used to be that treatment of employed engineers was shoddy enough (without the benefit of decent compensation or environment) that it was relatively less risky to start a startup (aka ISV). But back then interviewing was specific, experience based and not standardized. Ofcourse as companies caught on and started selling the "we are Agile(tm) but also pay really well and pamper you", the incentives to start your own decreased. This resulted in an increased supply of candidates (at least for the "branded" companies). I wonder if the next catalyst to start startups is the shoddy treatment of candidates who are now pretty much moved through the cattle class of interviewing pipelines?

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#305

Post by thoreauway »

I interviewed at Uber before they launched. Their "take home" was to create... Uber.

Here's the exact challenge:

UberCab Coder Challenge

1) Write a program that determines the wait time, trip time, rating, and fare for a black car trip in San Francisco, given that the customer's pickup location and destination is randomly placed anywhere in San Francisco proper, and given that there are X number of cars all placed randomly across the city. Use GoogleMaps API for trip duration time. Run simulation 100 times for 1, 5, 10, 20, and 50 cars. Output average wait times and trip times for each # of cars the simulation was run on.

2) Take #1 and do the same pickup and trip time calculation given that there are Y customer requests per hour (extra credit if this is done with a Poisson distribution ;)). Take into account each car's availability (given that they may have been selected to carry a customer and are in transit on pickup or on actual trip, and thus unavailable). Run simulation given the number of cars in #1, but for each simulation in #1, run once for Y=1x, 2x, 5x, the number of requests per hour (X being the number of cars in the city, as defined in #1)

3) Take #2 and then make a GoogleMaps mashup that then shows the various trips that were taken for each simulation. Provide mashup interface showing all trips but also provide ability to only show trips for each driver.

4) Write a "Hello World" app on the iPhone that for a certain driver logging in shows all of his trips taken in the last simulation, the average rating that he got, and the total fares he collected during those trips.

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#306

Post by jldugger »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #201

My last company did interviews like this - I was always disgusted at the way most of the team would sit around and just find things to pick on in the person's code. Dumb stuff too. It became an excuse for a lot of the engineers to just make fun of someone who had successfully completed the program, but didn't take the time to JavaDoc everything and follow the same code style best practices we did. Things you can easi…

The way to handle this is to _write down your grading criteria ahead of time_. If it's not important enough to be front of mind when designing the challenge, it's not important enough to bring up when evaluating the output of a candidate you've really liked so far.

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#307

Post by legohead »

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…

> They presented three design challenge options to pick from, with a weeks notice and advised that we should spend no more that 3–5 hours on the task (wink, wink)

I guess as a programmer I'm too logical. You tell me X hours, that's all I'm going to spend. For one of my past interviews I was given a task to make a multiplayer battleship game using whatever I wanted, and was told to spend 2 hours total and they didn't expect me to finish.

I got some rudimentary client/server communication going and that was it. No game logic at all.

Didn't get the job: "However, we would have liked to have seen you get further on the project in the same amount of time."

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#308

Post by bubbleRefuge »

ravenstine wrote: post #237

None of the places I've worked at had me do a coding challenge. Either they already knew who I was through networking or they asked me to show them a personal project and explain how it worked. Each job was a great opportunity. When I start looking for a new opportunity in a year or two, I may consider coding challenges to be a soft red flag in that I don't think they're worth wasting time over. I spent so many hours…

Amen brother. Networking is absolutely the way to go. As employees or grunts and not a part of the ownership/capitalist class, our network is our biggest asset beyond our skills. Some suggestions: 1) Try to socialize with fellow engineers at work. Coffee, lunch, grab a beer. Host or attend a dinner party occasionally. Put yourself out there.

2) Don't work at any single employer for more than 3 years unless you have very compelling reasons. Stock options or you have excellent opportunities staying put. Changing employers allows you to grow your network and your skill and experience.

3) Attend meetups and networking events.

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#309

Post by monocasa »

thoreauway wrote: post #305

I interviewed at Uber before they launched. Their "take home" was to create... Uber. Here's the exact challenge: UberCab Coder Challenge 1) Write a program that determines the wait time, trip time, rating, and fare for a black car trip in San Francisco, given that the customer's pickup location and destination is randomly placed anywhere in San Francisco proper, and given that there are X number of cars all placed ra…

Well, that certainly selects for engineers willing to do unreasonable amounts of work without questioning it.

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#310

Post by JansjoFromIkea »

zymhan wrote: post #291
JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #185

Is there a reason there's no naming and shaming going on here? One company asked me to do an implementation of the Bay Area MUNI network which fetched live updates of the locations of all buses every 10 seconds; there was more to it but I can't remember it now. This was to be done in React with D3 and no additional libraries were to be used to help with integrating D3 maps in React. The role was junior level, the job…

> Is there a reason there's no naming and shaming going on here? No, there is no rule, unless you signed a contract stating you will never disclose any interview information, and even then, they'd have to find your post, find out who you are, and then take you to court over an extremely shaky premise. Just name the damn company people! You're giving companies far more credit than they deserve in these situations. I'd…

> "Is there a rule I don't know about"

> Goes on to not violate the rule that seems to exist

Anyways, it was ThousandEyes

Post reply on HN