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

My Startup Job Interview

blog.galler.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 108 posts

Re: My Startup Job Interview

#61

Post by pmelendez »

agibsonccc wrote: post #49
benjaminwootton wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've made a good living as a programmer for a decade now, and I'm not afraid to say I don't even understand the question. It's a silly question unless it's for a quantitative role.

Edit: Redacted: left for consistency. Had him confused there. A closed form expression is basically just a mathematical function used to model a potentially infinite series. Take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-form_expression Look at the first and second examples. You'll see the big summation sign (for loop: i to infinite) and then an explicit function. If you want to think, what the heck is this ma…

I don't think he is talking about the closed form expression (at least I know what a closed-form is and still couldn't understand the question).

There was no information whatsoever about what changes on each iteration... if nothing changes then the answer would be a constant of whatever rabbits were at the beginning... and that doesn't sound about right :/

Re: My Startup Job Interview

#62

Post by ianstallings »

enry_straker wrote: post #58
soneca wrote: post #54

This is the first post of their "saga": http://blog.galler.io/startup-dialog Maybe it will help everybody understand that this is a satire...

The problem with satire is when it hits too close to home - and you recognize it as SOP in many organizations.

That's not a problem, it's a solution. To you losing your sanity ;)

Sometimes it's best just to laugh at the sheer insanity of it all. We'll get there guys, but it might take a couple hundred years.

Re: My Startup Job Interview

#63

Post by pmelendez »

konstantintin wrote: post #48
redcan wrote: post #4

What was the closed form expression for the number of rabbits?

probaby not right... E(number_of_rabbits) = rabbits_in_last_turn - prob(land on rabbit) - sum_i_to_infinity(prob(land_on_blackhole)^i*prob(land on rabbit))

This is not a closed form thought... (although it sounds about right)

Re: My Startup Job Interview

#64

Post by infinite8s »

jzwinck wrote: post #53
facorreia wrote: post #10

> Wait, it's on production? What is this, Ender's Game? Great description of surprise push-to-production.

This happened to me once, as in my first month at a new job, I came in one day to find I had caused a bug in production. But I hadn't deployed any software! It turned out that the department had carefully orchestrated a system whereby all checked-in code would move automatically to alpha the next day, then beta, then production the next week. But nobody told me. A manager there later told me, "If the code we write is…

Was this at a company owned by the richest man in NYC?

Re: My Startup Job Interview

#65

Post by ianstallings »

[deleted] wrote: post #27
Tichy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asian ladies tend to look different from Caucasian ladies. So it evokes a different picture. I don't think racism or sexism or anything needs to be cited. Sure, you can point out that he seems to be writing from the default perspective of a white Caucasian (assuming everybody else is also a white Caucasian, unless mentioned otherwise). Is that a crime? I think not. If you are from a different background and curious a…

[deleted]

You sound like a real blast to hang out with. Perhaps we can exchange telephonic-network details and beep at each other on the phone. That is, if your protocol handshake is functioning in a timely fashion. My buffer has strict timeout definitions of two signals and then I will reset the network line, wait for the dial tone, and try again precisely 15:00 standard earth minutes later. Please encode any further communication in base64. dGhhbmsgeW91IGdvb2QgYnll

Re: My Startup Job Interview

#66

Post by ianstallings »

DigitalJack wrote: post #35
[deleted] wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Exactly. Why include physical descriptions at all. He should have said "three people" or even "three beings." And who cares what they were wearing? And why do we care what color the fonts were? He could have just said it was hard to read.

"I had interview. 3 people were present. I typed code."

That story sounds fascinating, tell me more!

Re: My Startup Job Interview

#67

Post by infinite8s »

riggins wrote: post #29
redfhendrix wrote: post #25

It seems that 90% of the comments have missed the fact that this is obviously hyperbolic satire....

yep. In light of this being satire, the HN news comments are 10x funnier than the article itself. Some unsolicited advice (you're lucky, you found out it was a crap company in 2 hours) and some PC outrage (why does it have to be an Asian lady).

And an unnamed Asian lady at that.

Re: My Startup Job Interview

#68

Post by damon_c »

DigitalJack wrote: post #35
[deleted] wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Exactly. Why include physical descriptions at all. He should have said "three people" or even "three beings." And who cares what they were wearing? And why do we care what color the fonts were? He could have just said it was hard to read.

"three beings".

Hahaha.

Really any more description than that and you're being something-ist!

Re: My Startup Job Interview

#69

Post by conjectures »

bookface wrote: post #52

Every "bad interview" story that graces the front page of HN has this common theme that the interviewee is an infallible genius who aces every question. I know there's a bias here (better engineers are probably more likely to blog in the first place and most people would rather write about an experience where they're the "victor"), but it would be nice to read an article from someone acknowledging their own failure j…

You've also got to wonder whether what gets voted to front page HN is biased. Could be there's lots of accounts of abject failure out there - just nobody is amused by them.

Re: My Startup Job Interview

#70

Post by agibsonccc »

pmelendez wrote: post #61
agibsonccc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: Redacted: left for consistency. Had him confused there. A closed form expression is basically just a mathematical function used to model a potentially infinite series. Take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-form_expression Look at the first and second examples. You'll see the big summation sign (for loop: i to infinite) and then an explicit function. If you want to think, what the heck is this ma…

I don't think he is talking about the closed form expression (at least I know what a closed-form is and still couldn't understand the question). There was no information whatsoever about what changes on each iteration... if nothing changes then the answer would be a constant of whatever rabbits were at the beginning... and that doesn't sound about right :/

Bah got ya.
Post reply on HN