Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Interview – 1995

engineersneedart.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 109 posts

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#81

Post by flutas »

twawaaay wrote: post #32
grog454 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. [emphasis mine] You compensate candidates for their time? I certainly assume you are compensated to interview incoming candidates, but its unusual for the candidate to be compensated (though not unheard of). I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I also get the impression ha…

Interviewing is a mutual process. The company invests time and resources into finding employees and candidates invest time and resources into finding a good place for them to work. I see no reason to compensate the candidate for the time they spend on interviewing and when companies do this I see it as a desperate marketing gimmick. Now, I assume all is done honestly. I put up an honest job offer, I explain the inter…

Do you interview one single person at a time for the job?

That's what has killed my desire for interviews with certain companies at times when they bring up long interviews as the next steps.

If I have a company say "the next round will be 3 hours of interviews, we're going to wrap up this round on all candidates then move on" I will 100% drop the interview process and not move forward.

On the other hand, if a company tells me "the next round will be 3 hours of interviews, you're currently the only candidate we are interviewing for this role" or "we're interviewing multiple people but have multiple roles open" I will gladly continue the process. (This is a question I always ask in interviews.)

It essentially comes down to "why waste my time continuing with a company when the end result could be 'oh we found someone that we feel is slightly better than you, but you're our backup'".

Have I given up on some jobs that would be cool? Yep, but I'm not going to waste my time with a company if they use a shotgun interview approach that will take my time and essentially turn it into a lottery system for them to pick from.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#82

Post by lapcat »

joezydeco wrote: post #80
lapcat wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Except this was 1995, and Steve Jobs was not in any room at Apple. In fact, Jobs left Apple in 1985.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#83

Post by asah »

magic_hamster wrote: post #49

This was a great read. Some commenters discussed the nature of the interview, and compared it to today. But personally I get this feeling that this was still in a time when software was developed mostly in bubbles. Knowing how to code was far less obvious back then than it is today, and knowing the right stack meant you could get hired on the spot. Also, I don't know of it's nostalgia, the way it's written or somethi…

can confirm all this, and more.

It wasn't until the late 2000s when programming became easy enough for the mainstream and you started to see "coding camps," upwork and the like.

In the mid-90s, you had crazy demand for development but needed to be a brain surgeon to get hello world to work, let alone a website to be remotely reliable.

There was no automated testing, let alone CI.

Source control was sometimes used, sometimes not. There were LANs but there was no "web" let alone SaaS apps - there were maybe 1,000 websites and Yahoo! listed them all in a list. It was like Product Hunt, but even smaller.

You almost have to wonder how anyone learned to code? and you'd be right for asking: it mostly happened in top-20 colleges and a handful of companies. I remember showing PhDs about PKZIP and having them not believe it was possible to compress data without losing information - I had to literally show them the (rough) algorithm.

Truly, it was a time of magick.

(I don't miss it: the pay sucked, people treated "programmers" like crap, it was often impossible to reproduce issues, and of course you could only work in an office with dedicated hardware. Compared with today, it felt like the stone age of software development.)

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#84

Post by corrral »

sarchertech wrote: post #11
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…

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.

But programming is special! The same approaches to hiring used for accountants or electricians couldn't possibly work! Don't you know programming is like painting? That's why we make people regurgitate algorithms they memorized in a high-pressure situation, while pretending they didn't memorize them. It's just like painting. eyeroll

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#85

Post by corrral »

benreesman wrote: post #77
mikelevins wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm pretty sure choking is behind most of the "LOL I caught a faker" stories from interviewers. I think it's far more common than people who've somehow been employed multiple places and can "talk the talk" but can't actually handle a for-loop. Most of them are just choking, under a very particular kind of pressure that's pretty much only ever encountered in interviews[0] and certain academic situations.

Like, there's the trope of the kid being called to the blackboard and not being able to solve some trivial problem even though they're not an idiot—and it's based in reality. IDK why we assume that reaction must be rare among adults.

[0] In certain kinds of tech interviews, to be specific. Somehow most of the rest of the white-collar and professional world gets by just fine without these kinds of hazing rituals.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#86

Post by ActorNightly »

benreesman wrote: post #77
mikelevins wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In most interviews, if you say something like "Im just going to code in silence and we can talk about this later" is going to be well accepted.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#87

Post by notakio »

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…

I went through the Apple interview process in 2006, and would say that my experience was definitely not predominantly a "technical interview panel". It was an all-day event, to which they had flown me in to do, and though I was asked technical questions by some of the interviewers, many of them were more interested in how I handled stress, or solved "political issues". A couple of them were more interested in answering any questions I had about what working in the group was like, in a way trying to let me know what I was in for if I got the position.

I got the position, and stayed there for 8 years. I remain relatively close to about 30% of the people that interviewed me to this day, and that concern for letting me know what I was signing up for was genuine. The stress of the job was at times pretty high, and keeping a cool head under circumstances where everything was going wrong was absolutely critical. I saw a number of people who came after me, leave before me for that very reason.

Since then, I've walked out of interviews where I felt like they were wasting my time. But I've also often had the luxury of not really needing the jobs I've applied for, generally, so other people's mileage may vary widely.

It's the employer's job to figure out whether you're a good fit for the position, but it is the potential employee's job to figure out whether you want the position in the first place. Being able to get an accurate read on what you're thinking about going into (and spending a sizable chunk of your daily life doing) can save you a world of hurt.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#88

Post by twodave »

no_wizard wrote: post #74
twodave wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I mean, sure, if you boycott the question you probably won't move on. But I'm not sure I want to work with someone unwilling to be curious or participate in problem-solving together. To me this filter is a positive effect of the test. In the interviews I've given I'll even handhold an applicant through to the optimal solution if need be, because to be perfectly honest I'd much rather have a coworker who is enthusiastic about learning and shows the ability to collaborate than someone who can write code but refuses to do so in a social setting (i.e. an interview). I want someone that I can have an intelligent conversation with because _I need my ideas validated, too_.

Re: Apple Interview – 1995

#90

Post by twodave »

mikelevins wrote: post #39
twodave wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I covered this in another reply, but if you use this process to see how I solve problems, you will conclude that I don't. You will witness me doing nothing, because I can't do anything in that circumstance.

Edit: nevermind, you already wrote about this elsewhere. Leaving the below here for context.

I'm curious, is this more of a social block or is it specifically the work medium (e.g. a whiteboard) that gets you blocked? I personally would happily let you use a laptop with whatever tooling you're most comfortable with, for instance. IMO whiteboards are okay for communicating high level architecture/ideas but abysmal at writing complex solutions (and IMO whiteboards imply you ought to have memorized the thing because of how punishing it is to need to rearrange content).

Post reply on HN