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Apple Interview – 1995

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Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#71

Post by mikelevins »

hnlmorg wrote: post #65
mikelevins wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice to know that I'm not the only one.

You're definitely not. I often hear people describe it as multitasking. My wife excels at multitasking but I perform better having my complete concentration on a specific task (the one exception being listening to music). I can't even have the TV on for "background noise" like some people like to because you can guarantee it will completely take my focus away from whatever else I'm trying to concentrate on.

Yeah, no tv and no music for me. Too distracting. I’m a musician, too, which just makes it worse.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#72

Post by Ntrails »

FabHK wrote: post #60
antihero wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a good interview puts you in a position where you are struggling and out of your expertise - being able to demonstrate you have a solution for a bunch of stuff is less important than being able to demonstrate how you do when you don’t know and have to figure it out.

As a rule, when interviewing, I want to get to the boundary of a candidate's knowledge quickly. Questions they ace provide not much information (once it is established that they ace them), questions where they're totally out of their depth neither. A bit provides maximum information when the chances for 0/1 are fifty/fifty. So, agree with the sentiment > a good interview puts you in a position where you are strugglin…

> Questions they ace provide not much information (once it is established that they ace them), questions where they're totally out of their depth neither.

Agreed. The aim, for me, is to watch someone (try to) solve a problem and communicate about it. Ideally I'd like the question to rely on some previously unknown concept to see them pick up a new idea and run with it.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#73

Post by jseban »

twawaaay wrote: post #70
jseban wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm speaking in general terms of the software industry, and common hiring processes, which according to your comments you seem to fit into pretty well. I don't mean to criticise you but rather suggest that the hiring process should focus less on intelligence and coding skills, and try to hire people that have intellect. That can pair judgement with intelligence. That can relate decisions to goals beyond their o…

I think you have some good understanding of parts of the problem but the ease with which you generalise is dangerous. Getting from "I have too many bad experiences with highly intelligent, but myopic and immature software developers" to "I just think it's a really bad idea to try to hire 'extra smart' people (..) because it won't work" is pretty poor logic. I think much better and productive statement would be "Hirin…

What I'm trying to say is: it's a bad idea to hire extra smart individual contributors as a solution to managing complexity, because nobody is smart enough. The cult of genius makes the workplace dysfunctional and inefficient.

That extra intelligence is mostly irrelevant, and sometimes negative.

Managing complexity is done with hierarchy, specialisation and careful organisation of work from accountable managers. You want this organisation to work well, and then you want to hire people who can do an acceptable job and function well within that organisation. And if you are still finding yourself in a chaos of unmanageable complexity, the organisation of the team is to blame.

The hierarchy, specialisation and organisation of the work is not done well enough, and must be fixed. You don't need more horsepower when the steering of your car has broken, that's just going to get you in the ditch faster.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#74

Post by no_wizard »

twodave wrote: post #35
mikelevins wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interviewed at Apple in 1987, and it was an all-day interview, but it wasn't much like the technical interviews I've done in more recent years--the ones characterized by brain teasers and whiteboard coding. There was none of that in my Apple interviews. They made me an offer and I worked there for ten years. Now, we can't conclude from that whether Apple has adopted whiteboarding and brain teasers generally. In tho…

I can’t speak for anybody who made you an offer, of course, but often these kinds of problems are just another way to witness first hand how the candidate goes about solving problems. Failing to solve the problem given a short window of time is indeed not relevant, but your problem solving process is _extremely_ relevant. I’ve spent a lot of time fixing crap because some engineer was engaging in “magical thinking” th…

This is the claim, of course, that solving the problem is not what matters.

However, in practice, it is what matters, There is a "minimum" threshold (I can attest to this because I've been on the other side having to conduct them) where you more or less, must finish at least with some viable answer - even if unrefined - or you won't be moving on, full stop

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#75

Post by joezydeco »

lapcat wrote: post #9
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…

> 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 A…

I think the "Andy" interviewer was key, and was a set up the whole time to see how the candidate would really perform under stress:

1) Previous interviewers set up Andy as the toughest part of the interview, preloading the stress.

2) Andy comes last, when the candidate is tired

3) Andy hits you with that wall of stress. Doesn't matter what it is. The candidate gave Andy an easy task by admitting he was weak on something right away.

The answer didn't matter as long as you didn't fold.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#76

Post by benreesman »

ozarker wrote: post #33
morley wrote: post #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.

I’m a young engineer and I’m always happy to take on the grunt work to help the team as long as I get a little time to help on big picture stuff as well. I’m worried that I might be looked down on by more senior engineers who might think I’m just trying to avoid the more brain challenging work

A nothing is “someone else’s problem” is hallmark of the true pros. Intermediate folks might run into a broken build and be stuck until the build team can unfsck it. The OGs just fix it.

Keep up the work.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#77

Post by benreesman »

mikelevins wrote: post #38
chrchang523 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're misevaluating your technical interview performance. You can feel like you're "bombing" an interview, while still performing above expectation. Some interviewers ask hard technical questions, don't expect most candidates to complete them within the allotted time, and give "hire" recommendations for some (but of course not all) that don't.

I can see why it sounds that way. Let me supply some context. I cannot answer any question in conversation with a stranger unless the answer is something I happen to know off the top of my head, or the question is about what I can see or feel or remember in the moment. It's related to a general sort of cognitive disability I have that shows up in several other ways. For example, if I'm driving and you engage me in co…

This is the best argument I’ve heard against whiteboard / leetcode interviews. A lot of people have trouble talking and coding at the same time, it doesn’t make them less smart.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#78

Post by tappdarden »

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 are in luck. author open-sourced it.

https://github.com/softdorothy/GliderPRO

also glider 4.0 is there also. Along with some of his other games.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#79

Post by lapcat »

joezydeco wrote: post #75
lapcat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 A…

I think the "Andy" interviewer was key, and was a set up the whole time to see how the candidate would really perform under stress: 1) Previous interviewers set up Andy as the toughest part of the interview, preloading the stress. 2) Andy comes last, when the candidate is tired 3) Andy hits you with that wall of stress. Doesn't matter what it is. The candidate gave Andy an easy task by admitting he was weak on someth…

Uh, that sounds sociopathic and sadistic. No thanks.

Seriously, I would run away as fast as possible from a potential employer who plays abusive mind games with potential employees.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#80

Post by joezydeco »

lapcat wrote: post #79
joezydeco wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "Andy" interviewer was key, and was a set up the whole time to see how the candidate would really perform under stress: 1) Previous interviewers set up Andy as the toughest part of the interview, preloading the stress. 2) Andy comes last, when the candidate is tired 3) Andy hits you with that wall of stress. Doesn't matter what it is. The candidate gave Andy an easy task by admitting he was weak on someth…

Uh, that sounds sociopathic and sadistic. No thanks. Seriously, I would run away as fast as possible from a potential employer who plays abusive mind games with potential employees.

This is Apple. I personally read it as "we're making sure you can handle Steve Jobs if he walks into the room"
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