Top Tech Companies: You filter on raw IQ, here is how to do it more effectively
nadamhu.wordpress.com
Top Tech Companies: You filter on raw IQ, here is how to do it more effectively
1–10 of 35 posts
Re: Top Tech Companies: You filter on raw IQ, here is how to do it more effectively
#2I feel like your article is just a not so subtle ad for your game.
Re: Top Tech Companies: You filter on raw IQ, here is how to do it more effectively
#3While I find the premise of the blog post to be potentially interesting (2nd post since 2011), I wonder if this is much more than a thinly veiled advertisement.
Re: Top Tech Companies: You filter on raw IQ, here is how to do it more effectively
#4This post is a mischaracterization of why tech companies as basic coding questions. Or at least Microsoft, where I learned to interview and coached my own team of interviewers over several years.
1) Basic coding questions are a nice filter. If you can't remove an element from a doubly-linked list in C on a whiteboard immediately after graduating, what were you doing the last four/five years? It's like the height signs before an amusement park ride: "you must be at least this competent." These are not intended to be hard problems. You should not be crippled if you "think differently" or "form important theories." Further, dropping one on the floor is not a deal-killer; you just have to get most of them.
2) Do you really understand how a computer works? If I give you some inputs (or you come up with them), can you walk through your program and describe the execution and memory state in some detail? You'd be shocked how many 4.0 GPA CS students from Stanford/etc. cannot. I am willing to teach new graduates how to work at scale. At a top firm, I am not willing to send them back to school to take Operating Systems and Architecture again.
3) Can we have a discussion about your code and the problem without you breaking down completely? More edge cases, expand it to a broader domain, increase perf (MSFT), scale it to web size (Google), etc.
None of these are raw IQ measures. If you want to see such measures, look to the finance industry where, for example, my wife had to take the Wonderlic Test during one interview, which is definitely more a measure of "raw sprinting smarts."
Re: Top Tech Companies: You filter on raw IQ, here is how to do it more effectively
#5Ignoring the not-so-thinly-veiled-advertisement. The premise is wrong. Companies optimize for a lot more than raw IQ (company fit, engineering skills, response to criticism and pressure etc.)
Humans can also get better a solving problems like he presents. It's not about memorizing test cases, it is about developing heuristics and noticing patterns - something humans are actually very good at. If you practice you will get better.
Re: Top Tech Companies: You filter on raw IQ, here is how to do it more effectively
#6The most effective way to filter on raw IQ would be to... filter on raw IQ. But that's illegal.
Re: Top Tech Companies: You filter on raw IQ, here is how to do it more effectively
#7The most effective way to filter on raw IQ would be to... filter on raw IQ. But that's illegal.
Except for cops.
Re: Top Tech Companies: You filter on raw IQ, here is how to do it more effectively
#8Ignoring the not-so-thinly-veiled-advertisement. The premise is wrong. Companies optimize for a lot more than raw IQ (company fit, engineering skills, response to criticism and pressure etc.) Humans can also get better a solving problems like he presents. It's not about memorizing test cases, it is about developing heuristics and noticing patterns - something humans are actually very good at. If you practice you will…
Why "response to criticism" - is that prevalent in your corporate culture? Sounds like a great reason to walk out of an interview.
Re: Top Tech Companies: You filter on raw IQ, here is how to do it more effectively
#9There are two major types of problems while programming. Firstly how to break down a bigger problem into set of smaller problems. Secondly how to solve small problems quickly and efficiently. Large scale design question represent the former. Type three interview questions test the later. While raw IQ may he correlating with it this is not what big tech companies are looking for IMHO.