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Seven Years Is Too Long

lolindrath.com

21–30 of 53 posts

Re: Seven Years Is Too Long

#21

Someone convince me that Big-O notation is useful anywhere outside of interviews. Because I don't believe it is.

I've run into plenty of cases where something was unacceptably, brokenly slow for a handful of inputs, and I wanted to figure out why, and then I realized "Oh, this bit of code is O(n^2) and it's running into a weird edge case with a large n", and then fixed it. I've also run into cases of regular expressions running in exponential time, which is always entertaining.

Re: Seven Years Is Too Long

#22

Someone convince me that Big-O notation is useful anywhere outside of interviews. Because I don't believe it is.

Big-O is an extremely easy way to sum up the running time of an algorithm. Sometimes it's misleading, but usually it's fairly informative, and with most code it can be worked out with just a glance or two. It's so simple and yet still reasonably informative that I'm not sure how it wouldn't be useful.

Re: Seven Years Is Too Long

#23
If you just want to keep up to date on interviewing skills, make a habit out of doing interview-style problems. I don't think you need to worry about wearing a suit or writing on a white board. Careercup is a fairly consistent source of interesting interview-style problems; I find myself perusing it sometimes even when I'm not remotely interested in another job, because a fair number of the problems are interesting in and of themselves and simple enough to not take up much of your time.

There are also plenty of other sites, usually with a competitive edge, like HackerRank or TopCoder. Doing problems like these really is not a waste of time even if you're completely content with your job. While a lot of it may seem like algorithmic trivia, you'll internalize it sooner than you might expect, and then you'll start finding real-world uses for some of these tricks and, more generally, your "mental overload" when thinking through a piece of tricky code will gradually go down and down.

Re: interviewing frequently just for practice, that's great if you're in an area with an abundance of tech companies. I think that could be risky if you're in a city with just a few that you'd want to work at, though. You don't want to bomb an interview at the only other company in your city you'd want to work for just because you were rusty and used them for practice.

Re: Seven Years Is Too Long

#24
post #14
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dress up a work, even going so far as to put on a tie some days. It has been mentioned by other engineers that they don't feel dressing up is the uniform of an engineer. But I say nuts to that, conformist. I dress up because I don't mind the look, I also like to draw a line between my private wardrobe and my professional one, it helps remind me I still work for "the man" and it drives me forward in the right direct…

I dress up because I look fabulous in a suit.

However, it may negatively impact your chances on an interview.

Re: Seven Years Is Too Long

#25
post #12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get his point and it's a solid plan in most fields. But for the tech jobs most people want, it's a really bad idea to put a suit on for a interview.

> But for the tech jobs most people want, it's a really bad idea to put a suit on for a interview. Why? Are you saying that some company will give you a hard time because you are wearing a suit ? That would certainly be humorous. Humorous as in "Haha, I have no intention to work in such a place, ever".

You'd probably be wrong. Cultural fit may be important, and you don't want to get strange looks on an interview. At the same time the company still might be quite good - as in "early Google"-like good.

Re: Seven Years Is Too Long

#26
post #23

If you just want to keep up to date on interviewing skills, make a habit out of doing interview-style problems. I don't think you need to worry about wearing a suit or writing on a white board. Careercup is a fairly consistent source of interesting interview-style problems; I find myself perusing it sometimes even when I'm not remotely interested in another job, because a fair number of the problems are interesting i…

I couldn't disagree more. Interviewing is definitely a skill (beyond solving interview problems), and like anything - if you don't do it often you will not be very good at it.

Re: Seven Years Is Too Long

#27
post #20

Someone convince me that Big-O notation is useful anywhere outside of interviews. Because I don't believe it is.

It's certainly useful when you find that someone accidentally made something n^5 instead of n and you need to explain to that person why they were very, very wrong.

Yes, this discussion happens with junior engineers. I keep finding O(n^2) code that should have been O(n) or O(n log n), and not just as an academic exercise, because it slows the website down.

Re: Seven Years Is Too Long

#30

Someone convince me that Big-O notation is useful anywhere outside of interviews. Because I don't believe it is.

The notation may not be valuable in itself, but the concept is very important.

Right, question was about the notation itself -- I understand that optimization is important.
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