Algorithms Interviews: Theory vs. Practice
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Re: Algorithms Interviews: Theory vs. Practice
#2> Some companies will give very large out of band bonuses to people, but that work wasn't for a company that does a lot of that kind of thing, so there's nothing the company could do to indicate that it valued additional work once someone did "enough" work to get the best possible rating on a performance review. From a mechanism design point of view, the company was basically asking employees to stop working once they did "enough" work for the year.
and
> This also happened in another way. As is common at a lot of companies, managers were given a team-wide budget for raises that was mainly a function of headcount, that was then doled out to team members in a zero-sum way. Unfortunately for each team member (at least in terms of compensation), the team pretty much only had productive engineers, meaning that no one was going to do particularly well in the zero-sum raise game. The team had very low turnover because people like working with good co-workers, but the company was applying one the biggest levers it has, compensation, to try to get people to leave the team and join less effective teams
are pretty important points to note.
Accepting that organizations are incentivized to extract the maximum amount of value from you means you should be: 1. Aware of the value you produce 2. Know how to sell it
This also comes up during promotion season in places that require that you perform at 50%+ of the next "level" to be eligible for a promotion. The unsaid part is that you will be under compensated for that 50% "next level" and when the promo comes, you'll be at the bottom of the comp band at the new level (no wonder people tend to quite shortly after a large promotion)
Re: Algorithms Interviews: Theory vs. Practice
#3> At one point, after getting a promotion and a raise, I computed the ratio of the amount of money my changes made the company vs. my raise and found that my raise was 0.03% of the money that I made the company, only counting easily quantifiable and totally indisuptable impact to the bottom line.
Would profit/revenue sharing help with this?
Re: Algorithms Interviews: Theory vs. Practice
#4>"I’ve done maybe 40-ish "real" software interviews and passed maybe one or two of them"
I'd say that about mirrors my experience as well. Is this really that common? Here I was thinking that I'm just an idiot.
Re: Algorithms Interviews: Theory vs. Practice
#5> Some companies will give very large out of band bonuses to people, but that work wasn't for a company that does a lot of that kind of thing, so there's nothing the company could do to indicate that it valued additional work once someone did "enough" work to get the best possible rating on a performance review. From a mechanism design point of view, the company was basically asking employees to stop working once the…
> Accepting that organizations are incentivized to extract the maximum amount of value from you means you should be: 1. Aware of the value you produce 2. Know how to sell it
Do you think this is important even if one is already satisfied with one's compensation and mainly cares about the positive impact that they're making for end-users of the company's software?
Re: Algorithms Interviews: Theory vs. Practice
#6> Some companies will give very large out of band bonuses to people, but that work wasn't for a company that does a lot of that kind of thing, so there's nothing the company could do to indicate that it valued additional work once someone did "enough" work to get the best possible rating on a performance review. From a mechanism design point of view, the company was basically asking employees to stop working once the…
> Accepting that organizations are incentivized to extract the maximum amount of value from you means you should be: 1. Aware of the value you produce 2. Know how to sell it Do you think this is important even if one is already satisfied with one's compensation and mainly cares about the positive impact that they're making for end-users of the company's software?
If you are satisfied then it is not important.
What matters in the end is that you're content/happy with where your life is and the trajectory you're on - whether that's making 200k a year or having enough time off at work so you can do other interesting stuff
Re: Algorithms Interviews: Theory vs. Practice
#7> Some companies will give very large out of band bonuses to people, but that work wasn't for a company that does a lot of that kind of thing, so there's nothing the company could do to indicate that it valued additional work once someone did "enough" work to get the best possible rating on a performance review. From a mechanism design point of view, the company was basically asking employees to stop working once the…
> This also comes up during promotion season in places that require that you perform at 50%+ of the next "level" to be eligible for a promotion.
There is no objective criteria for the next “level”, despite the fact that corporations pretend otherwise. Level is more related to years of experience than actual skill from what I’ve observed. Working extremely hard for a promo and then being compensated far less than external hires who can barely code but managed to pass the leetcode interviews is a real morale killer. And that’s if you get lucky and get promoted instead of passed up for promo, since promos tend to be given for exaggerating impact “metrics” instead of actual total impact which is unmeasurable.
Re: Algorithms Interviews: Theory vs. Practice
#8>"I’ve done maybe 40-ish "real" software interviews and passed maybe one or two of them" I'd say that about mirrors my experience as well. Is this really that common? Here I was thinking that I'm just an idiot.
According to Dan, you're both outliers: https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1058029337923014656.
Re: Algorithms Interviews: Theory vs. Practice
#9>"I’ve done maybe 40-ish "real" software interviews and passed maybe one or two of them" I'd say that about mirrors my experience as well. Is this really that common? Here I was thinking that I'm just an idiot.
Same here. I never thought that made me an idiot, though. I just don't interview well. I had far more problems than just the technical portion of the interview when I first started in the field. I've gotten considerably better at the non-technical portion of the interview over the years, but being able to do higher level thinking in an interview has always been a non-starter for me.
Re: Algorithms Interviews: Theory vs. Practice
#10>"I’ve done maybe 40-ish "real" software interviews and passed maybe one or two of them" I'd say that about mirrors my experience as well. Is this really that common? Here I was thinking that I'm just an idiot.
According to Dan, you're both outliers: https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1058029337923014656 .
I wouldn't call 25% an outlier. Also, that's only people he knows. The numbers from interviewing.io (Aline Lerner) suggest that interview performance is arbitrary[0] and that engineers are bad at gauging their own interview performance[1]. The numbers suggest it's far more common than just 25%.
[0]: http://blog.interviewing.io/after-a-lot-more-data-technical-...
[1]: http://blog.alinelerner.com/people-cant-gauge-their-own-inte...