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Gaming CS Interviews

transitivebullsh.it

101–110 of 163 posts

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#101
post #2

> Guidance is expected; a great interview should be more of a conversation than a one-sided question and one-sided answer. I had a particularly awful interview at Google where the interviewer scoffed at me needing assistance. And in an interview at Twitter with a xoogler they asked me what I knew about number theory and I said "nothing" and they said they majored in it and proceeded to ask me number theory questions.…

Well what do you expect from a person who majored in number theory but makes a living working on django tooling in a company that doesn’t really use django to begin with? Delay and reschedule interviews until you get an interviewer whose LN profile does not clearly indicate a mismatch

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really sounds like the guy wanted to talk about himself instead of actually interview you. I hope you were able to send some feedback to his superior, since they missed a hire because of his shit.

They were well aware of how he acted. I was warned by another interviewer earlier. "Whats the rest of your day?" "Oh. X is from Google and he still does their style of interviewing"

Then having him still in the interview chain is an organization failure and a great signal to the interviewee (you) that team dynamics are going to be a problem.

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently gave an interview where they asked me to open my Leetcode profile, and checked if there are any prior submissions to the asked questions. ¯\(ツ)/¯

Interesting! I suppose one could prepare for that by having a second profile with just a few questions solved?

Solve all the questions you don't want them to ask!

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#104
post #2

> Guidance is expected; a great interview should be more of a conversation than a one-sided question and one-sided answer. I had a particularly awful interview at Google where the interviewer scoffed at me needing assistance. And in an interview at Twitter with a xoogler they asked me what I knew about number theory and I said "nothing" and they said they majored in it and proceeded to ask me number theory questions.…

I remember being told once in an interview "I'll be your google, your stackoverflow, so anything you'd usually search for on there ask me". Eventually I got to the point where I forgot how to do something simple where you'd usually just google it to refresh your memory. I decided to take his advice seriously and asked him, to which he responded to me basically by rephrasing my question as another question back to me.…

At least the person who wanted to be your google didn't collect all your personal information then serve you targeted ads.

That sounds like a lame pick-up line, and they sound like a crazy stalker!

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My google coding interview was much l33t. He asked me a graph search question. However at the time I didn’t know what a graph was. I’m self taught. But I did understand the ask, which was to find a path through a series of locations. I also happened to have some experience with slime mold finding optimal paths and once even tried to simulate it using a genetic algorithm. That was the best solution I could come up wit…

I think you're a bit full of yourself here. There are objectively correct ways to search a graph, and it sounds like your solution was nowhere close. You didn't get rejected because you "did not say the word graph", you got rejected because your solution was very wrong. Software engineering is not just about knowing syntax, CS degrees include a Data Structures & Algorithms class for a reason.

> There are objectively correct ways to search a graph

Objectively false.

Years ago I was talking to some sort of CS professor who had been specializing in networking. He mentioned that within an organization you typically see network's being mapped out with dijkstra, but between them (with BGP for example) you actually see packets routed the long way around. He claimed service providers did this because it allowed them to charge their competitors more money when they had to use their network. Although, a more charitable interpretation is perhaps that a service provider will naturally want its own traffic to have the best experience and will send their competitors traffic the long way so that they don't over saturate the network of their primary customers.

Perhaps the best of all worlds would be mapping your network such that your primary customers get the optimal path using dijkstra. Then you figure out how to get your competitor's traffic routed as fast as possible without dropping your primary customer's packets. Maybe something a genetic algorithm might be good at figuring out?

There are some objective things in this world. The optimal way travel from point a to point b in a graph is one of them. However, this is the optimal way to travel, not the objectively correct way to travel.

I once traveled home from work using the backroads in a move that cost me probably 30 extra minutes. Roads are a graph. I followed the objectively non-optimal path. However, the way the clouds were that day formed something like 20 rainbows. Which I got to gawk at the whole way home. Objectively non-optimal, but not objectively incorrect.

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#106
post #2

> Guidance is expected; a great interview should be more of a conversation than a one-sided question and one-sided answer. I had a particularly awful interview at Google where the interviewer scoffed at me needing assistance. And in an interview at Twitter with a xoogler they asked me what I knew about number theory and I said "nothing" and they said they majored in it and proceeded to ask me number theory questions.…

My google coding interview was much l33t. He asked me a graph search question. However at the time I didn’t know what a graph was. I’m self taught. But I did understand the ask, which was to find a path through a series of locations. I also happened to have some experience with slime mold finding optimal paths and once even tried to simulate it using a genetic algorithm. That was the best solution I could come up wit…

I would have hired you on the spot based on your slime mold experience!

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#107

> Strings are just arrays of characters, so any algorithms you learn for arrays also applies to strings. I.e. don't believe the anti-American propaganda on Unicode.org.

This is roughly true. Obviously with UTF-8 or UTF-16 you'll have O(n) access times for an arbitrary code point, but you can always convert to UTF-32 and that encoding is just an array of code points so you get O(1) random access back.

But random access to codepoints is still useless for all purposes.

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#108
post #13
post #6

I was already halfway through the article when I realized I'd misunderstood the title: It's not about about using games to interview people (Factorio style), which still might have made sense to test self-taught engineers, but about how to game the interview process.

And honestly, it's not really about gaming the process, but succeeding in it. Gaming the process sounds to me like you are abusing some weakness in the system without doing the work required. That is not the case here imho.

For real, if you spend 100+ hours studying algorithms and system design you are not gaming anything. Gaming me would be finding out the questions before hand and memorizing the solutions.

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the heck is a xoogler? Sounds like some sci fi slime mold monster.

Xoogler is a slang term for someone who used to work at Google (ex-googler).

And MeToogler is a slang term for someone who used to work under Andy Rubin at Google, and won part of the $310 sexual harassment lawsuit settlement.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/googles-310-million-sexual-m...

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/01/google-employees-walk-out-in...

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#110
post #20
post #2

> Guidance is expected; a great interview should be more of a conversation than a one-sided question and one-sided answer. I had a particularly awful interview at Google where the interviewer scoffed at me needing assistance. And in an interview at Twitter with a xoogler they asked me what I knew about number theory and I said "nothing" and they said they majored in it and proceeded to ask me number theory questions.…

In such situations I tend to ask that question directly: "It was my understanding that you looking for someone who will help you with Django tooling. I can do that. Although number theory sounds interesting, I never felt the need of diving into it in order to solve any Django-related issue. I would be happy to learn more about how you think number theory relates to Django tooling should I start working here." When pe…

This doesn't always work - many software engineers believe that you should be a bit of a generalist. However, if you ask the question about Django tooling, you are at least keeping the door open.

Asking the "what role does number theory play" question is a way to send a message and lose your chance at the job, but so does "optimus prime."

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