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Apple Interview – 1995

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Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#11

Post by sarchertech »

hasmolo wrote: post #8
twawaaay wrote: post #6

Earlier 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…

The rest of the professional class certainly doesn’t interview the way we do. Neither do people in the trades.

People in performance careers like orchestra musicians and actors are the only other professions that really come close for all but new grads.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#12

Post by mpetrovich »

Anyone else remember playing Glider? As a young kid, I gladly lost countless hours trying to navigate a paper airplane through a Rube Goldberg mess of obstacles. What a fun, imaginative game.

Would be cool if there was an emulated version somewhere. Or we could borrow the author’s book and transcribe it to a modern language, ha.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#13

Post by sarchertech »

twawaaay wrote: post #10
hasmolo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

And that’s how you know there isn’t really a shortage of developers.

My wife works in a field with a real shortage. When she gets interviewed, they fly her out and spend 2 days showing her around, taking her out, and trying to convince her to work for them.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#14

Post by fizfaz »

mpetrovich wrote: post #12

Anyone else remember playing Glider? As a young kid, I gladly lost countless hours trying to navigate a paper airplane through a Rube Goldberg mess of obstacles. What a fun, imaginative game. Would be cool if there was an emulated version somewhere. Or we could borrow the author’s book and transcribe it to a modern language, ha.

you can play several versions at archive.org: https://archive.org/details/software?query=glider&and[]=subj...

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#15

Post by twawaaay »

sarchertech wrote: post #13
twawaaay wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. And that’s how you know there isn’t really a shortage of developers. My wife works in a field with a real shortage. When she gets interviewed, they fly her out and spend 2 days showing her around, taking her out, and trying to convince her to work for them.

There is a shortage of actual developers. But there is no shortage of people who don't care about what they are doing or whether they can do it at all.

When you are looking through piles of thousands of people, you are looking for ways to pare it down so that you are left at every step with higher concentration of the first group. Because spending same amount of effort on everybody is not a viable strategy.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#16

Post by [deleted] »

twawaaay wrote: post #6
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #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 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…

[deleted]

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#17

Post by jseban »

twawaaay wrote: post #10
hasmolo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your goal is to enable your business to make more money, that requires hiring enough competent people that can do the work that needs to be done, to make that money.

Sometimes that work is really not especially interesting, or challenging. Nobody is going to love it, or be passionate about it, and it really doesn't require a person to be more than average in terms of skill, because it's just not that technically difficult.

And that sometimes is the majority of all salaried work, so statistically speaking, that's probably also you and your company.

Why pretend to be a unicorn and only insist on hiring passionate self motivated people who will be a bad fit anyway, and be bored after two weeks.

The hiring process is not for stroking the egos of middle managers who want to feel special.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#18

Post by dhsysusbsjsi »

sarchertech wrote: post #13
twawaaay wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. And that’s how you know there isn’t really a shortage of developers. My wife works in a field with a real shortage. When she gets interviewed, they fly her out and spend 2 days showing her around, taking her out, and trying to convince her to work for them.

Does your wife belong to some kind of professional guild?

You'll find most other high qualification professions require a body to certify them, conduct examinations, disqualify them for poor outcomes, organise ongoing training and so on. And most importantly (for guild members), limit numbers and ensure the government makes it illegal to conduct activities unless you are a guild member.

Developing has none of this - it's the unwashed masses. You get the full bell curve from useless CS graduate to genius high school dropout all applying for the same job, and everything in-between.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#19

Post by [deleted] »

twawaaay wrote: post #6
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #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 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…

[deleted]

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#20

Post by [deleted] »

twawaaay wrote: post #6
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #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 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…

[deleted]
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