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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

#541

Post by busterarm »

barkingcat wrote: post #437
xiphias2 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But that no one shut down the asshole, and that this was allowed to continue happening in an interview situation means that in addition to an asshole guy, there are also a bunch of asshole employees who don't care enough to speak up, or would rather have side conversations with the main asshole guy. Especially when in a new hire/interview situation, HR is absolutely involved. So the HR department is also full of assh…

Interviewer was not a guy and would have been my manager.

I guess I'm glad it went this way for other reasons. It was for an entirely new team within Uber to build something very specific that nobody had done successfully yet (though there was a paper about it...it's security-related). The manager was an external hire and the entire team was to be as well. This was a big warning sign to me that management didn't care very much about this team or if they accomplished what they set out to.

4 years later they still haven't delivered on that feature yet.

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

#542

Post by qihqi »

When I was in college I preferred take-home coding challenges and whiteboard coding questions than talking through experiences.

...Because I had no experience, and school projects didn't count.

I had time that no one is paying for, I had skills (at least i believed), but no interviews because of experience. So coding challenge is the one thing that I can compete fairly with people with experiences, and I even had an edge because I value my time less.

Of course, now I don't. But I was thankful that it is a thing so I can land my first job.

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

#543

Post by m4x »

ummonk wrote: post #351
distances wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not the norm but it's not uncommon at startups. Also, it seems to be standard practice for data science interviews. I personally don't put up with it, but then there are always lots of commenters in HN who bemoan whiteboard interviews and prefer take-homes. To each their own.

What sort of take homes are you seeing for data science roles?

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

#544

Post by imhoguy »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #232
matwood wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you cannot stand from this crowd and shine by balancing the tree right I don't think memorization of an algorithm is what should make a senior level candidate stand out. Senior people need to be able to lead, mentor, self manage (this is a huge one IMO), and understand the bigger picture. "How do we avoid having to balance this tree at all?"

It’s one of the ways, for sure. But it is really interesting to me how a person without deep knowledge of fundamentals can lead or mentor anyone while being on a non-management position? They are supposed to gain authority from their professionalism, but without theoretical knowledge they won’t be able to justify their decisions, and then what? What exactly they can teach anyone?

As a senior/lead developer with years of broad experience you don't need to remember details of every algorithm in existence. But you should keep information scrap in your head to guide you or your apprentice to relevant source of information.

"Hi ! I think we may need to optimize memory consumption of this distinct element counting code a bit; I remember there is some HyperLogLog algorithm which should help here... let's check how it goes... (reading Wikipedia page)[0]"

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperLogLog

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

#545

Post by beyondcompute »

Why is Googleʼs design so bad then if they have such a tough interview process? Corporate structure/culture kills even best-of-the best talentʼs initiative? I think, what they need is non-conformism. But they donʼt select presumably for non-conformism during interview. They select for obedience. (Just thinking out loud) When Google (having so much resources) will release a product whose UI would make people say, “wow?” Not just the (superior) data-processing capabilities or pretty good hardware.

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

#546

Post by diminoten »

astura wrote: post #382
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…

>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. That's not "Hello World" app, a "Hello World" app prints "Hello World." The purpose of a "Hello World" app is to demonstrate you've setup the environment correctly, nothing more. Words and terms have mean…

It's a "Hello World" app for your system, the most basic app that can run on your platform.

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

#547

Post by [deleted] »

anarazel wrote: post #413
rosege wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its actually not such a stupid answer. Its completely inhumane etc but it worked well for Saddam Hussein (among others) who conducted a purge on taking office in 1979 and then never had his leadership questioned again.

Because that's what you want in your organisation. The person best at being an unchallanged dictator.

[deleted]

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

#548

Post by Drdrdrq »

fhbdukfrh wrote: post #521
ldoughty wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on the other coast, not even in a major tech hub, and we do a take home assignment now to screen applicants. They choose from 2 languages,and an experienced coder is done in 5-15 minutes. A fresh grad maybe 45 minutes. The tasks have no practical work application, and are just code samples. If they pass this and a phone screening, there is a live challenge as well -- the take home version we give people 48 hours…

How many steps total? How long to get through the process? This may work for lower demand markets but sounds excessive in competitive regions. We've been super successful in mining the late round rejections from companies like Google. Getting to an on-sight is a huge signaling factor, they do the early filtering and we can move fast to an offer

Hm, how do you get to them? Apart from bribing an interviewer at Google I can't see how you could get the list of rejections?

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

#549

Post by nostrademons »

max76 wrote: post #462
ummonk wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think mistake implies good intentions.

I always think of mistake as simply "to be wrong". Am I mistaken in my assumption?

Kind of, yes. If you're wrong intentionally, we have all sorts of other words for that, including trolling, propaganda, misdirection, incitement, lying, fraud, perjury, all of which have their own connotations for your intent. We wouldn't really call any of those situations a "mistake".

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

#550

Post by ScottFree »

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…

Haha, thanks for the response. Your question is worthy of being included in the nerd sniping box set.

https://xkcd.com/356/

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