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The technical interview is an ego trip

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Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#171

Post by bJGVygG7MQVF8c »

umvi wrote: post #35
TheCapn wrote: post #10

This was my take on interviewing with Amazon at one point a long while ago. The initial interview itself was pretty straight forward, but it seemed like every answer I gave was "wrong" because the interviewer was looking for key phrases instead of understanding of the concepts. We talked about hashing, and when he asked if I knew what hashing was I said sure, its a one-way function to create a unique identifier. He a…

I don't take crap like this from interviewers. One time an interviewer asked me "how would you go about counting the ridges of a US quarter?" I rattled off some ideas about counting the ridges in an arc and then multiplying to get total ridges but the interviewer kept prodding and eventually ended the question and said he was looking for me to say "google it" (I didn't realize it was a known, fixed number). I just ro…

Neither do I. I always ask up-front to try to suss out if a "technical interview" is going to consist of this kind of BS and I preemptively prune my candidate company set aggressively.

If I do end up in this situation it's already a pretty big turn-off, so if the spirit moves me I take it as an opportunity to collect data before ending it. I like to respond with something like "Tell me more about this question. What are you trying to gauge?"

I'm looking, minimally, for some indication that they've actually thought about what they need for the role and how they're attempting to elicit a signal with regards to it.

Nine times out of ten, they have no clue. What they actually want is a gesture of submission. It's a hazing ritual, and in part, pushing back this way is also a way to indirectly tell them to fuck off with their petty ego trip.

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#173

Post by jhanschoo »

leafboi wrote: post #145
jhanschoo wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent wasn't slightly wrong, you just tunneled in on the signature of the operator function, when the reason why parent comment brought it up was to illustrate that the operator function is not necessarily associative, and that the function signature was meant to suggest the difference in associativity. You're wrong about the operations possibly not being commutative; as you pointed out, whether the parameter list i…

Function composition is associative but not commutative. So in essence given three functions z,g,f and composition operator f . g . z != z . g . f (commutativity) which is sort of what fold left or right is doing (but with z g and f being the same function). but: f . g . z == z . (g . f) (associativity) My edit is right about the operations not being commutative. Parent is wrong about associativity as it has nothing…

You're right.

> which is sort of what fold left or right is doing (but with z g and f being the same function).

> it's a more higher order form of composition

More precisely, a fold performs function composition on the provided operator curried with the respective elements, so that z g and f above are different functions (hence not commutative in general, but associative in general, wrt folding).

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#174

Post by rvz »

TheCapn wrote: post #10

This was my take on interviewing with Amazon at one point a long while ago. The initial interview itself was pretty straight forward, but it seemed like every answer I gave was "wrong" because the interviewer was looking for key phrases instead of understanding of the concepts. We talked about hashing, and when he asked if I knew what hashing was I said sure, its a one-way function to create a unique identifier. He a…

> His smugness in the way he concluded each topic was just a giant turn off of ever seeking further work with companies like Amazon (giant & highly competitive software conglomerates). I feel like everyone is trying to one up or appear to be king shit in some way, it left a bad taste. (For the record, I did a couple interviews of this style before totally writing the experience off. Others were better, but this experience always stuck with me)

Well this is the typical behavior towards those who cannot interview properly and has to introduce pedantic point scoring to bring people down. It would take an experience of resentment, denial or some sort of impactful rejection from the interviewer to be at the point to certainly enjoy this ego trip as an interviewer at somewhere like Amazon.

Now it seems everyone and the whole tech industry thinks they're Amazon, Microsoft or Google by asking about implementing efficient algorithms, libraries or the like yet they continue to use the slowest languages, spinning up multiple VMs or clusters at higher runtime costs and choosing Electron for software development. Unless they are also contributing to writing a production grade compiler or systems software, companies who ask these data structures and algorithms questions are doing it simply 'because of reasons'.

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#175

Post by akdas »

hashkb wrote: post #160
swatkat wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> We want you to be confident... Who is this “we”?

Interviewers who want to make sure you don't think Googling is shameful.

Every interview is different. You're asking people to read your mind: https://hiringfor.tech/2020/03/02/are-you-asking-candidates-...

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#176

Post by asddubs »

daggerdrone wrote: post #8
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #5

Of course it is, it's a way to gauge whether "someone is dedicated to the job by cramming the algorithms section they haven't touched in years" I've done dozens of interviews and after all of it, I realized there are only four qualities we quantify as useful: caring, ability to listen, ability to learn.

Fourth quality: ability to count

there are four kinds of people: people who can count, people who can't, and pedants

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#177

Post by [deleted] »

monkeycantype wrote: post #161
umvi wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't take crap like this from interviewers. One time an interviewer asked me "how would you go about counting the ridges of a US quarter?" I rattled off some ideas about counting the ridges in an arc and then multiplying to get total ridges but the interviewer kept prodding and eventually ended the question and said he was looking for me to say "google it" (I didn't realize it was a known, fixed number). I just ro…

I hope his google doesn't land on this thread: The US 25 cent denomination coin or 'Quarter' has eleven ridges

[deleted]

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#178

Post by scollet »

jaaron wrote: post #169
scollet wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are all the roles strictly senior?

Not strictly. At this stage of the studio, we are orienting to a more "senior" team, but that basically means senior+. We're not particular about titles as it's still a small, flat team. As the team grows, we'll gain the mentoring capacity for more junior talent, but for now, we're focused on an experienced team.

Thanks for your response.

I just started game dev this year, so I'm slowly gauging the complexity the same way I might gauge complexity in my eng domain: fullstack web development.

If you have the time, what are your clear indicators on who is a competent mid-level game systems engineer?

I'd love to apply your advice to my portfolio before I feel ready to assume that role.

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#179

Post by jokethrowaway »

TheCapn wrote: post #10

This was my take on interviewing with Amazon at one point a long while ago. The initial interview itself was pretty straight forward, but it seemed like every answer I gave was "wrong" because the interviewer was looking for key phrases instead of understanding of the concepts. We talked about hashing, and when he asked if I knew what hashing was I said sure, its a one-way function to create a unique identifier. He a…

It's because they don't know the answer, the first round is a recruiter asking you trivia to separate you from people who know nothing, in the hope of not wasting their engineers' time.

To be honest, I don't think money is a good reason enough to tolerate that kind environment, I'd rather work in a smaller company paying less and build a small business on the side to increase your passive revenue streams.

Maybe things will change with faang going remote because of COVID (given one perk of small companies was their flexibility) but it looks like your salary at big companies will also scale according to your location, so I'm not too hopeful.

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#180

Post by yodsanklai »

whycombagator wrote: post #119
yodsanklai wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I applied two times at Facebook, and two times at Google (they contacted me each time at one year interval). Each time was 0 to 2 screening interviews, then 5 to 7 on-site interviews. Yes, I'm counting each interviewer as a separate interview (not counting discussions with the recruiter, but counting "culture fit" interviews).

Not entirely on topic, but could you share what your preparation was like for these interviews? Resources/timelines etc

You can have a look at the Leetcode forums. A lot of people share their experience there.
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