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Caltech's CS interview prep course

courses.cms.caltech.edu

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Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#41

Post by SmellTheGlove »

zizee wrote: post #17
im_down_w_otp wrote: post #5

Are there other major economic sectors which have circled the wagons around making job applicants do remedial coursework as live performance art?

This is largely a result of low barriers to entry into the profession. You do not need to have a qualification from an accredited institution to be a practicing software engineer/programmer/developer. Unlike doctors, lawyers, dentists, civil engineers... So you have a well paying profession, hot demand, good working conditions, and no external framework to ensure a base level of competence. Of course people will try…

Nah it’s still broken. Using lawyers as an example because that was my past career, 3-4 years of law school also doesn’t teach many practical skills. In fact, most of us took what amounts to a semester long course just to prep for the bar exam. And even then, you still don’t know anything!

As I shifted into tech, the hiring process didn’t surprise me but for the wrong reason. All I learned was software engineers put up with similar bullshit to lawyers!

All that said I don’t know how to fix any of it easily. Maybe no one else does either, and so here we remain.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#42

Post by Apocryphon »

giantg2 wrote: post #36
Apocryphon wrote: post #28

Tech interview discussions always seem to run the same course and hit the same points, so I'll repeat one of mine: What's wrong with the idea of turning the standard Leetcode algorithms interview into a license that only needs to be completed once, or maybe once every 5-8 years, similar to what physicians must undergo? Much more efficient than having to retake it with every single company during an interview cycle.

I'd say cert, not license. I don't think anyone should have to pass a LeetCode exam to professionally code. But otherwise a good idea.

Sure, I'm using them interchangeably to mean an "officially-decided standard that allows you to not have to retake the same interview at every company." Whether that standard is created by some sort of industry consortium, the IEEE or ACM, CS academia, or some combination thereof, is left as an exercise to the discourse.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#43

Post by Apocryphon »

mherdeg wrote: post #39
Apocryphon wrote: post #28

Tech interview discussions always seem to run the same course and hit the same points, so I'll repeat one of mine: What's wrong with the idea of turning the standard Leetcode algorithms interview into a license that only needs to be completed once, or maybe once every 5-8 years, similar to what physicians must undergo? Much more efficient than having to retake it with every single company during an interview cycle.

Is this the Triplebyte model?

I thought Triplebyte just allows candidates to skip the tech screen step, the on-site can and does still include algo/ds questions depending on the interviewing company.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#44

Post by ZephyrBlu »

amznbyebyebye wrote: post #22

So wait you are smart enough to get into caltech, smart enough to graduate with a degree in CS. And yet the curriculum on its own does not do a good job enough on its own to prepare you for getting a job? Very hard to graduate with a decent GPA in CS at caltech and not be able to thrive as an entry level engineer. If you got B’s in caltech CS I’d make you an offer for 200k+ without blinking or even asking you anythin…

> If you got B’s in caltech CS I’d make you an offer for 200k+ without blinking or even asking you anything

Why? This is not necessarily a good signal for competence on the job and also doesn't cover people who have lied or cheated.

Also, this wouldn't help create a less broken job market. You'd just be breaking it in a different way.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#45

Post by NERD_ALERT »

amznbyebyebye wrote: post #22

So wait you are smart enough to get into caltech, smart enough to graduate with a degree in CS. And yet the curriculum on its own does not do a good job enough on its own to prepare you for getting a job? Very hard to graduate with a decent GPA in CS at caltech and not be able to thrive as an entry level engineer. If you got B’s in caltech CS I’d make you an offer for 200k+ without blinking or even asking you anythin…

Computer Science is not Software Engineering. A PhD does not translate to real world engineering skills. If you just go through a bachelors CS curriculum, designed to give a survey of all topics in academic computer science, that wouldn't make you a competent engineer. This is especially true now that through the internet, just about anyone with a laptop can get as good as they want at software engineering without ever stepping foot in an academic institution. Sites like Free Code Camp, Kaggle etc. have torn down all of the barriers preventing anyone from learning how to be an incredible engineer. Some of the most important software in industry is open source and anyone can take the time to learn how to contribute to it.

If I had the choice between a Caltech grad who had all A's and no experience or a student from some random state school who had interned every summer and contributed to open source, I'd pick the latter. Many people are locked out from ever attending elite schools in the first place despite competence due to coming from poor backgrounds and underfunded highschool districts.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#46

Post by gcheong »

amznbyebyebye wrote: post #22

So wait you are smart enough to get into caltech, smart enough to graduate with a degree in CS. And yet the curriculum on its own does not do a good job enough on its own to prepare you for getting a job? Very hard to graduate with a decent GPA in CS at caltech and not be able to thrive as an entry level engineer. If you got B’s in caltech CS I’d make you an offer for 200k+ without blinking or even asking you anythin…

The industry recreates the problem every so often with different variants. Previously it was the Microsoft/Google “thought problems” such as “Why are manhole covers round?” and “How would you estimate the number of gas stations in a city?”.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#47

Post by closeparen »

Apocryphon wrote: post #28

Tech interview discussions always seem to run the same course and hit the same points, so I'll repeat one of mine: What's wrong with the idea of turning the standard Leetcode algorithms interview into a license that only needs to be completed once, or maybe once every 5-8 years, similar to what physicians must undergo? Much more efficient than having to retake it with every single company during an interview cycle.

“The standard” belies a lot of variation. Some interviewers want perfect code the first time on a whiteboard, some let you go back and forth with a compiler as much as you wish. Some interviews stick to relatively shallow algorithms knowledge like DFS, others will ask you two LC Hard questions in an hour. Sometimes it’s about whether you solved the problem, sometimes it’s about your thinking and collaboration during even a failed attempt. There are too many opinions and too little hard evidence to sort them out. It’s a challenging coordination problem.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#48

Post by Apocryphon »

barry-cotter wrote: post #25
dvt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How are you supposed to hire 50,000 people a year with a process like that? This is a straw-man. What company has to hire 50,000 engineers a year? Facebook has (in total) ~10,000 engineers (hired over a decade+). Someone has nothing published and no OSS? Great, ask for code samples and the candidate to walk you through the code. It's completely trivial to fix the busted status quo, but people are invested in this n…

If it is completely trivial to fix the busted status quo you should be able to make a great deal of money doing so. Those companies you named exist to get people hired. If you have an alternative system that works you will be fishing from a different pool of candidates. That didn’t work for starfighter.io. If you can make it work for you you’ll get very rich.

Did any company even take Starfighter seriously? The companies the previous comment mentioned are at least used in industry. Even Google or ex-Google employees have gotten into this with Byteboard:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/26/byteboard-nabs-5m-seed-to-...

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#49

Post by paradygm »

dvt wrote: post #3

If you don't think modern interviewing practices are a problem, this should be proof enough. Not only do we have an entire programming book sub-genre dedicated to this nonsense, but now we're also wasting class time on memorizing sorting algorithms. Fantastic. Of course, we're going to see the inevitable arguments that "40% of the people I interview lie on resumes" or "I interviewed this guy once, and he couldn't eve…

> I've told at least 5 or 6 companies that wanted to white-board me to suck it. It's honestly insulting that I'm forced to white-board when I have two books with my name on them (published by Apress), contributions to Golang (small commits, but they still got me in the AUTHORS file), and OSS projects with hundreds of stars on GitHub

That is all commendable but none of that tells me if I can work with you. When I interview candidates I use whiteboarding as a collaborative opportunity to see how the interviewee thinks. I treat it as a similar experience when I am the one being interviewed, which is why I have never understood the hostility toward whiteboarding. How else in the limited window of time that is the interview can I learn as much about the people I would be working with?

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#50

Post by giantg2 »

amznbyebyebye wrote: post #22

So wait you are smart enough to get into caltech, smart enough to graduate with a degree in CS. And yet the curriculum on its own does not do a good job enough on its own to prepare you for getting a job? Very hard to graduate with a decent GPA in CS at caltech and not be able to thrive as an entry level engineer. If you got B’s in caltech CS I’d make you an offer for 200k+ without blinking or even asking you anythin…

"So wait you are smart enough to get into caltech, smart enough to graduate with a degree in CS. And yet the curriculum on its own does not do a good job enough on its own to prepare you for getting a job?"

This was my first thought too. A course just for passing interviews seems odd. We had two small activities that were part of a business course (business administration minor), but after hours. One was a mock interview to give you feedback about professional appearance, not fidgeting, etc. The second was a mock business dinner to provide feedback about etiquette, customs, etc. These were valuable, but they focused on soft skills that aren't covered in the regular course content.

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