21–30 of 174 posts
Why? Work 70 hours a week finding new ways to put more ads in people's lives.
I don't just mean programmers. The advertising industry hires many of the most talented people in many areas.
Why? Work 70 hours a week finding new ways to put more ads in people's lives.
I just joined a couple of weeks ago as a product manager and in the short time here, I've loved it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you agree that these types of questions are not a good measure of job performance, why encourage this line of questioning? Wouldn't it be better for the industry as a whole to discover better ways to determine future job performance?
knowing these are not going to guarantee good performance. But not knowing them is a clear indication of incompetence. A programmer who doesn't know basic algorithms and data structure is a bad programmer.
1) Implement a red black tree on a white board
I would argue, though, if that's the bar, there are probably other bars that are a bit lower that at least some of the algorithm triumphalists would fail, such as to
2) Throw up a basic and secure Wordpress site on an Amazon EC2 instance
or
3) You're running into an issue where you're getting an error message about running out of file descriptors. Tell me what's the issue here and what you'd do about it
or
4) write a basic, safe script that makes backups of each file in a given directory and its subdirectories
or
5) tell me what the fuck is the clearfix?
Now, if intermediate algorithms is something that people should be able to do, surely you'd agree 2-5 are even lower bars to meet (since they're things that virtually all of those "bad programmers" are able to do). By the same token, though, it's absolutely the case that many hires at the BigCos actually wouldn't be able to respond to 2-5.
I wouldn't say that those people shouldn't have been hired; after all, people learn! But if algorithms are actually part of the everyday job, someone could also learn them, no?
To the extent that you're testing for raw intelligence--which is the most important aspect of any of these types of jobs--algorithms are a good ruler. But to equate the measurer with the measure is somewhat foolish, because it's a means to an end, not the end itself. If you can use other probes of raw intelligence, those function just as well as being able to vomit up algorithms and data structures that, as people point out, any person who spends a month or so studying can get a solid grasp on and then never need again.
In short, I can't cope up with them well without going through quite a few glassdoor type questions of that respective company. And partially it is because most interviewers already have a set of solutions that they are looking for, and can't appreciate novel solutions and at times even better time/space complexity if they do not fit the standard mold. In my experience only some very hot startups had smart/ open enough interviewers to appreciate new solutions or see the relevance of new CS research results that may solve their question.
Before one starts attacking me on being a CS philistine, I want you to ponder on my background- current work involves designing & implementing pretty intricate & complex algorithms, and earlier research & publications in a range of ML related sub-fields, mainly NLP & recommender systems. I also read CS papers for pleasure, code in multiple languages and did reasonably well in programming competitions- no longer participate, latter is many years ago.
For a similar experience, though from a far more accomplished person, see Tanya Khovanova's blog post on hiring 'the smartest people in the world': http://blog.tanyakhovanova.com/?p=402
Also, FYI I don't resent the system a lot. It is better than it being an old-boys-club; I just dread going through the bootcamp of memorizing/ revisiting trivial stuff in case I ever have to look for a job again.
Why? Work 70 hours a week finding new ways to put more ads in people's lives.
"pls give me job at facebook call me 5551231234"
"send link to aplication to email@email.com"