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I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

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

#451

Post by gjm11 »

josh2600 wrote: post #128
ScottFree wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if this is brilliant or sadistic. On the one hand, it really tells you who's smart enough to realize the task can't be done in the allotted time. On the other hand, not being able to do something as simple as adding a button in 45 minutes has to screw with the candidate's mind. That sort of thing would shatter what little confidence I have. I'd probably tank the rest of the interview. > I learned a lot a…

Yeah, adding a button to a codebase is an awful test. If someone made it to an onsite and you don’t know whether they can add a button in swift, something failed in your screening process. If you’re testing how someone navigates a codebase, you can just look at it with them, and let them drive the chat. If you’re testing an engineer for a serious job, do an algorithms test. If you’re testing an engineer for a specifi…

The murder question sounds quite interesting, but I'm not sure I understand it. You have n people (initially n=13) in a circle, firing shots that are fatal with probability p (here we apparently fix p=1/6, but I guess that for large n the final answer doesn't depend on p provided it's neither 0 nor 1?), and then 1 fires at 2, then 2 (if alive) or 3 (if not) fires at 3/4, and so on. And you're person 1 (this isn't stated explicitly, though...) so you're the last to have a chance to get shot at, and then you live if person n dies or if person n lives but misses.

So, let's see. Suppose n is very large; then the probability that you live is approximately equal to the probability that your predecessor does; call that q. Then, as above, you live iff your predecessor dies (probability 1-q) or your predecessor lives but fails to kill you (probability q(1-p)). So q = 1-q+q(1-p) = 1-pq and 1 = 1/(1+p).

That's a long way from 1/e, and a quick simulation seems to confirm this answer. It doesn't change a lot if we assume that a random person always fires first, instead of you, or if we assume that you're always last (which I think was the situation in that movie).

If everyone has a revolver with n slots and one bullet, and they all fire at _you_, then you have a 1/e chance of survival for large n, but that sounds too different (and too easily found to be 1/e) to be the right thing.

The probability p(n) that a permutation of n things is a derangement -- which tends to 1/e as n->oo -- satisfies the recurrence relation p(n) = [(n-1)p(n-1)+p(n-2)]/n; is it possible that the correct statement of the problem here leads to that same recurrence?

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

#452

Post by jboggan »

During a recent interview process I was given a take home assignment for data engineering. Well, I had to wait two weeks for the team to come up with a take home since they didn't have a data engineering assignment at the time. Eventually they sent it to me with a 2 hour time limit. I read the multi-page problem description which had bulleted requirements at three different places in the document, somewhat at odds with one another. There was a request to code a certain NLP technique from scratch and create a recommendation engine based on similar user history. I read through the sample data which had no notion of individual users or any table like that.

The whole thing seemed like something copied and pasted together by committee, with a strong smell of "PhD CTO" trying to test for intelligence by quizzing on an esoteric corner of their own grad school experience. After about an hour of trying to figure out conceptually how I could begin to implement the things asked, let alone the 6+ hours I thought it would take in practice, I emailed the recruiter back and said "Thanks but no thanks!"

My other recruiter friends later confirmed that they had burned through almost every firm in town with their ridiculous take home exams that no candidate could pass within the allotted timeframe. I think bailing was a good choice.

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

#453

Post by dlandis »

xiphias2 wrote: post #433
busterarm wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember my Uber interview. My interviewer was sitting in a room full of people when they called me, asked me questions and then proceeded to have conversations with the other people in the room without listening to me and would ask me to repeat my answers. And do it again. 15 minutes of this and I hung up on them. This was about 4 years ago and the equity that I have in the company I joined instead is on an upward…

I'm sure they were acting against the policy of the company. It wasn't Uber, just an asshole guy. Every company has that.

Well, you are talking about one of the most infamously toxic tech companies. Harassment and discrimination were also against their company policy: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/technology/uber-sexual-ha...

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

#454

Post by ghaff »

ryandrake wrote: post #415
ghaff wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of thing mostly works fine for students and similar. (And internships are often great for everyone concerned.) But this doesn't really work for someone who already is working full-time. Some pay is fine but there's no way I'm taking a week of vacation to interview with you.

Also keep in mind that many tech companies have anti-moonlighting clauses or otherwise forbid side projects. You’re losing current employees from these companies from the interview funnel.

I'm sure a lot of folks take the attitude that it only matters if you get caught. However, unless perhaps I already had one foot out the door, I'd be very hesitant to flagrantly violate an employment agreement forbidding such things to accept a relatively modest payment for some outside work.

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

#455

Post by tdfx »

aantix wrote: post #333
gregd wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people putting up with this?

The worst is when you do the task and then they just don’t respond. Not even a simple, “we’re not interested”. No feedback. Just. Left. Wondering. It’s cruel. It’s demeaning. Tanium was especially cruel. 6 hours of live coding interviews and the only reason I got any response from them was because I had to consistently hound them for a couple of weeks and ask a friend that worked there to internally ping someone.

A company in PA called Monetate did this to me, on a smaller scale. I did their "leetcode" style test which wasn't difficult at all but still time consuming. After 2 weeks of no response I reached out and they told me they're interested and then I heard nothing for another month. After several followups I gave up. 6 months later I got an email asking if I can send over my resume (that I sent before doing the test)... it's infuriating.

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

#456

Post by seppin »

JudgeWapner wrote: post #412
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…

> I hated the idea that schmoozing outperforms merit, but it's absolutely true Try thinking about it quantitatively. Someone who spends the time to schmooze (read: invest time in developing a human relationship) has essentially posted that time as collateral. They added chips to the figurative pot, and if they were a fraud or recklessly destroyed that relationship, they forfeit that collateral (lose the relationship,…

> time to schmooze (read: invest time in developing a human relationship)

There's a reason why engineers are looked upon as aliens. "developing a human relationship" is the basic thing all people do, not some annoying side requirement

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

#457

Post by IggleSniggle »

swish_bob wrote: post #229
comboy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those few big companies probably have more than enough candidates. If you have too many candidates you need to adjust interview difficulty to still hire only as much as you need. I don't think these companies care that the task is too difficult for 99% of people, or that there are smart people who are not motivated enough to complete it as long as they can get as many smart and motivated people as they want. That sai…

This particular company was neither "big" nor one of the "top" companies to work for. I strongly suspect they were getting noddy developers and were happy with them. The reason I didn't want to work for them was categorically not because the test was too hard, it was a trivial spring-boot app. I didn't want to work for them because of what it, and the test process, said about them ...

I have never heard the term “noddy” but assume it is a cognate for “nodding off”? That would make sense in context but I wonder if you mean something else by it?

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

#458

Post by Alex3917 »

monocasa wrote: post #309
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.

If you've never had a job as a developer before and don't have any open source contributions, then that's actually a pretty good take home project. Yes it will take a week or two of unpaid work, but no one is going to hire you for your first job without having built at least one project of that size anyway.

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

#459

Post by Uhhrrr »

distances wrote: post #335
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…

Having never worked in SV, are these home assignments common there? I know several engineers who would refuse to do any homework at all as a matter of principle, so a task of this magnitude without compensation sounds laughable on the face of it.

I've had a few. They are usually things you can do in a couple of hours. I personally prefer it to a phone code interview. "Write Uber", though, is pretty egregious.

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

#460

Post by gorkish »

amelius wrote: post #3

> You have ‘4–6 hours’ to design a slick product, with a memorable brand and cohesive working method. No one acknowledges the fact that in reality, you’re about to dedicate up to 5 working days on this task, with the potential for them to ghost you straight afterwards. To make this more fair, why not let the designer work at the company's office, so the interviewer can actually see how much time it took, and the inte…

It's not supposed to be fair. Interview questions are designed to differentiate candidates as quickly and broadly as possible. This is one where the notional goal of completing the project is different than the true goal of seeing how the candidate performs when given an impossible scenario.

The author of this article fucked up when he tried to pass off 5 days of work as an example of what he could accomplish in 5 hours. I am glad he was able to find inspiration from it, but for the success of his startup I hope he also is able to understand other, better ways he could have approached the interview task.

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