Apple Interview – 1995
engineersneedart.com
Apple Interview – 1995
1–10 of 109 posts
Re: Apple Interview – 1995
#2An ex-engineer recounts how they got a job at Apple in the 90's.
Re: Apple Interview – 1995
#3An ex-engineer recounts how they got a job at Apple in the 90's.
There are no ex-engineers, only recovering ones.
Re: Apple Interview – 1995
#4Re: Apple Interview – 1995
#5>I should pause here and point out that an interview at Apple was an all-day affair. Pairs of engineers would meet with and interview me for perhaps an hour. The first pair of engineers might grill me on some esoteric topic like code design, afterwards the next pair of engineers would sit down and maybe cover programming language specific questions.
This took place in 1995, and sounds pretty much exactly like a technical interview panel today. Were people similarly disgruntled about the process back then? The author certainly doesn’t come across that way.
Re: Apple Interview – 1995
#6>I should pause here and point out that an interview at Apple was an all-day affair. Pairs of engineers would meet with and interview me for perhaps an hour. The first pair of engineers might grill me on some esoteric topic like code design, afterwards the next pair of engineers would sit down and maybe cover programming language specific questions. This took place in 1995, and sounds pretty much exactly like a techn…
No, people were not.
What changed is the demand grew enormously and in response, as in every other business of life, a lot of people who only have passing interest in it got into it because it pays well.
So now you have companies have to sort through huge pile of mediocre candidates. This causes the process to be very noisy, a lot of screwed incentives and a lot of false positives and negatives.
Applicants are now hedging their bets and applying to multiple places means that they are unwilling to spend entire day in each one. And companies (those that do not understand how important hiring is) also have incentives to spend less effort on hiring.
And developers became much more cynical. Partly because of high demand they are aware of. Partly because companies do not treat them well (like not giving raises at a rate their potential salary is appreciating as the market and their experience changes). And partly because new generations are just much more disillusioned.
I had a person recently refuse to come to 2h interview. Apparently it was too much effort. Good riddance and thank you for saving my time.
Good news is that good developers can still easily find a good job wherever they want.
Bad news is that most people are not good developers and they don't even know about it because really good developers are so few and concentrated in relatively few places. In effect, most developers will never have a chance to work with one.
Re: Apple Interview – 1995
#7> though not the cleverest engineer, [I] was one that worked quickly to prototype new ideas and took on some of the gruntwork that not every engineer wanted to work on.
This is basically all I want from anyone I work with.
Re: Apple Interview – 1995
#8>I should pause here and point out that an interview at Apple was an all-day affair. Pairs of engineers would meet with and interview me for perhaps an hour. The first pair of engineers might grill me on some esoteric topic like code design, afterwards the next pair of engineers would sit down and maybe cover programming language specific questions. This took place in 1995, and sounds pretty much exactly like a techn…
No, people were not. What changed is the demand grew enormously and in response, as in every other business of life, a lot of people who only have passing interest in it got into it because it pays well. So now you have companies have to sort through huge pile of mediocre candidates. This causes the process to be very noisy, a lot of screwed incentives and a lot of false positives and negatives. Applicants are now he…
i don’t think you’re wrong, i just think you may have lost sight of some external factors. in 1995, the market was naturally filled with folks interested in computers more organically. now, software writing is the modern “factory floor” worker bee position. interestingly, a huge part of the field can’t accept that we aren’t especially unique or smart, just able to tell a computer how to process inputs. we take this need to feel as if we are a part of the intellectual class, based on a rose colored glasses view of a time 20 to 30 years ago when the only people that worked on software were all staff+ enigneers. then we create this perverse concept of a “real” engineer, and that engineer is just way more willing to aquiesce to _any_ thing you do, and therefore is a “team player”.
telling someone to interview for two hours, having them decide that of all the offers of interviews they had yours was least interesting with the highest barrier to entry, and you deciding they were at fault isn’t going to help you deal with the modern realities of software, and how far we’ve come for our idealized version of where we came from
Re: Apple Interview – 1995
#9>I should pause here and point out that an interview at Apple was an all-day affair. Pairs of engineers would meet with and interview me for perhaps an hour. The first pair of engineers might grill me on some esoteric topic like code design, afterwards the next pair of engineers would sit down and maybe cover programming language specific questions. This took place in 1995, and sounds pretty much exactly like a techn…
> The author certainly doesn’t come across that way.
1) The author got the job.
2) The author has kept that job ever since, for over 25 years.
Perhaps that was the last job interview the author ever had, in 1995? So there would be little reason for the author to come across as disgruntled in 2022 about 1995. Though the author does go on and on about the "Andy" interviewer...
There's a certain irony to this, because Apple itself was flailing and failing in 1995, unable to produce its own new operating system, and had to acquire NeXT and Steve Jobs to come back and save the company from bankruptcy. So Apple's hiring process was not necessarily producing results.
Re: Apple Interview – 1995
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, people were not. What changed is the demand grew enormously and in response, as in every other business of life, a lot of people who only have passing interest in it got into it because it pays well. So now you have companies have to sort through huge pile of mediocre candidates. This causes the process to be very noisy, a lot of screwed incentives and a lot of false positives and negatives. Applicants are now he…
i don’t think you’re wrong, i just think you may have lost sight of some external factors. in 1995, the market was naturally filled with folks interested in computers more organically. now, software writing is the modern “factory floor” worker bee position. interestingly, a huge part of the field can’t accept that we aren’t especially unique or smart, just able to tell a computer how to process inputs. we take this n…
> telling someone to interview for two hours, having them decide that of all the offers of interviews they had yours was least interesting with the highest barrier to entry, and you deciding they were at fault isn’t going to help you deal with the modern realities of software
But that is not my goal.
My goal is hire as good developers as I can retain.
I don't care about people bitching and moaning that the process is too arduous. Actually, I am happy about it because I can efficiently swipe left on them. If somebody does not care enough to work for us to put in couple of hours of work then they are very likely not a good candidate anyway.
And if they have to apply to a huge number of companies to get a job there is probably some problem with them. I mean... a lot of companies are happy to put a warm body in a chair. If you can't find a job as a developer in this economy then you have to take a serious look at what you are doing wrong.