341–350 of 374 posts
I recently did a round of interviews at various AI companies, including model labs, coding assistants, and data vendors. My first takeaway is that, wow! the interviews are very hard, and the bar is high. Second, these companies are all selecting for the top 0.1% of some metric - but they use different metrics. For example, the coding assistant interview focused on writing (what I felt was) an insane volume of code in…
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Rule #6: Perspective is earned, and cannot be given freely. If I recall, it was mostly gleaned from meetings with startup CEO/CTO after years in operation. Mostly just documents the various cons pulled on technical people... like illegally farming CVs for LLM products, and cheap work Visas. =3
> Perspective is earned, and cannot be given freely. Perspective is developed rather than earned . Having said that, a numbered list of rules can be given freely. That's, like, one of the points of writing things down or otherwise committing them to long-term storage.
That is often academic institutional marketing rhetoric. What seems reasonable or lucrative to the naive is not necessarily worth the legal encumbrances or investment risks.
Rule #16: "One should listen to the person that signs the Checks, as the bank has already validated who is currently in charge of the account". Everyone has an opinion, but some opinions are more profitable than others...
Best of luck =3
Putting so much self worth into a single job application strikes me as unhealthy. Hiring decisions are have absurdly high variance. Everyone I know has been rejected from a job that seemed like a perfect, usually many times over. I'd say that's far more common than actually getting a given job.
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That would be a rare case where I would reach back for more information. Rescinding an offer is, in my book, a huge black mark against the company and I would consider shaming them in a blog post as well. Was this your first polygraph? I never had one, but I heard that passing the first one for a high level ticket virtually always takes several tries. Did they tell you that you passed the poly?
Yeah it was my first polygraph so I was sweating buckets! The polygraph was relatively simple though, they tell you all the questions they will be asking beforehand, so nothing unexpected is thrown at you. I think I passed the poly cause if I didn't then they would tell me that instead of saying they selected another candidate and honestly I was so depressed and defeated that I just didn't bother communicating with t…
I do not know what the details of the situation were, for example was the offer contingent on additional background checks that you failed or on something else, but if it was related to a US security clearance I would seriously consider filing a request for information -- they are required to tell you their findings.
It would probably be an interesting reading (unless one has a very thin skin) and I would do it just for fun, regardless of the pulled offer. My 2c.
One great piece of advice an informal mentor gave me long ago is that there is no information in a rejection . That is to say that you cannot draw any conclusions about yourself or your interviewing technique or your skills or anything from the single accept==0 bit that you typically get back. There are so many reasons that a candidate might get rejected that have nothing to do with one's individual performance in th…
But you know, this kind of information burden is one of the factors radicalizing the youth right now. These people don't just dissappear into a void if they are unwilling to accept that, they're organizing and being drawn to more radical movements to crush you. So is this way of dealing with workers here really that sustainable?
That said, I have my doubts about the true extent of the radicalization of "the youth", at least in the USA, given that the DSA/Mamdani voter base is squarely bougie upper middle class college grads freaked out that elite overproduction has killed their job prospects. Whatever radical things they may do, the result won't be to create more jobs for college grads.
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My career long experience with these types of interviews is you get hired by the company that, when they interview you, you get lucky and they happen to ask the questions you’ve just brushed up on or you get lucky and see the answer quickly for some reason. The content of the actual work I’ve done at these companies and how the work is done, is completely different to these interviews and I’d have done equally well a…
And unfortunately, from the point of view of the company, this is a feature not a bug: * to the company the cost of a false positive (bad hire) is very very much higher than the cost of a false negative (passing on a good candidate). * AI companies have a large pool of strong candidates to interview * Therefore they are incentivized to make their interview process hard enough that a poor candidate almost never passes…
Personally I don’t agree with the crazy tech interviews at all, no other job on the planet does it like this, even high skill jobs like doctors or professors. They hire based on your experience, your references, and a good chat to make sure you’d be a culture fit. If there’s a serious problem with a doctor once they start the job, they’d be let go, but they’re professionals so this isn’t a super common occurrence.
The exact same process could be taken with developers IMO. If I have a seasoned career, you should hire me based on that, not because I jumped through hoops you set up.
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And unfortunately, from the point of view of the company, this is a feature not a bug: * to the company the cost of a false positive (bad hire) is very very much higher than the cost of a false negative (passing on a good candidate). * AI companies have a large pool of strong candidates to interview * Therefore they are incentivized to make their interview process hard enough that a poor candidate almost never passes…
No it isn't, their strategy is great at increasing the rate at which they select those deadly "bad hires". There's just an insane amount of risk in doing these sorts of tech interview things; code up a quick monte carlo simulation to convince yourself if you like. It's just that the risk doesn't fall on the improperly aligned humans conducting the interview, it's offloaded onto the company.
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My career long experience with these types of interviews is you get hired by the company that, when they interview you, you get lucky and they happen to ask the questions you’ve just brushed up on or you get lucky and see the answer quickly for some reason. The content of the actual work I’ve done at these companies and how the work is done, is completely different to these interviews and I’d have done equally well a…
>you get lucky and they happen to ask the questions you’ve just brushed up on or you get lucky and see the answer quickly for some reason My experience exactly! I've been lucky in most of my interviews that I was asked about things I just happened to brush up on or had thought about deeply in some past project, so I was offered the job. And like you say, the job rarely demanded any of the things I was asked about...…
What did you flunk? There was no interview in both cases..
Overall, I enjoyed the essay and agree with the messaging. However, there were a few sentences that threw me off. I personally struggle with self-esteem issues, and I found these words extremely triggering, despite being sandwiched between words of self-affirmation. > My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough. > I don't mind feeling ugly or low-status or whatever -- I know my place. > I don't need (or deserve)…