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Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search

robertheaton.com

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Re: Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search

#41

Post by petenixey »

temuze wrote: post #35
petenixey wrote: post #5

(sorry for sidetracking the excellent piece but...) When I examine the ~13,000 hours I've spent programming I find it hilarious that interviews should centre around algorithmic problems. I've been guilty of it myself and failing FizzBuzz is definitely a true negative but it's so little of a true positive it's not even funny. What I would really love to know about you as a candidate is: - do you know how to actually n…

I think most interviews don't focus enough on systems. I expect every software engineer to know: - How virtual memory works - How threads work - How TCP works - How ports work - How ethernet works - How DNS works - How a web server works. And so on. A lot of these things are more important than theory (but I think theory is important, too!).

This is purely anecdotal however I've been doing Rails dev (and prior to that Javascript, PHP and even Matlab) for 14 years and I have only a vague grasp how most of that list works.

That's not because I'm lazy or scared or even disinterested. I've exhaustively learned everything about anything that what I do involves and how most of what it touches works as well. However the simple truth for me has been that I've never worked on things that needed to know about the things you're talking about.

I constantly do need to know more about the fundamentals of the systems I actually work with - Rails, Angular, HTML, caching, Node etc. I'm sure there will come a point when I need to know more about some of those things too.

However there is a tonne that I don't know even about the things that I need to know about and I will always invest my time in learning those things. That's why I would always focus interviews on the languages and frameworks that someone actually uses. Those may be the ones you describe but for plenty of developers may well not.

Re: Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search

#42

Post by Fenicio »

bluejet wrote: post #10

I recently went through the same process and didn't have quite the same luck. Background: London. Comp Sci. from top 10 worldwide college. 2 years C++, Python, iOS experience in well known company on high profile project. Internship at start up with VC funding before that. Github profile with open-source projects, own projects etc. Started blog etc...basically everything that is recommended. Studied for 5 months (up…

> Comp Sci. from top 10 worldwide college

Hogwarts?

Re: Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search

#43

Post by onion2k »

petenixey wrote: post #5

(sorry for sidetracking the excellent piece but...) When I examine the ~13,000 hours I've spent programming I find it hilarious that interviews should centre around algorithmic problems. I've been guilty of it myself and failing FizzBuzz is definitely a true negative but it's so little of a true positive it's not even funny. What I would really love to know about you as a candidate is: - do you know how to actually n…

Most software isn't hard to invent; all software is hard to maintain. For the overwhelming majority of software development, being organised is more important than being clever.

Re: Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search

#44

Post by jfb »

baby wrote: post #18

> “Design the infrastructure for a link-shortener.” I'm wondering how to answer that? * Get a short and memorizable url. * When you enter an URL hash it, put it in a hash table and use the hash for the link. > “If I type https://google.com into my browser and press enter, what happens?” How would you guys answer this one? I'm not sure I've enough knowledge to do that. I'd say: * first TLS handshake thanks to RSA to s…

I'm wondering how to answer that?

Ask the interviewer. One of the things that I find most difficult about interviewing is when the candidate doesn't ask me any questions during the technical parts of an interview. If you aren't sure, you need to ask me -- I am perfectly capable of misphrasing a question or assuming you have context that you don't. Asking your coworkers for help is a perfectly legitimate problem solving strategy.

Interviewing is stressful and hard; no need to make it more stressful and harder on yourself.

Re: Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search

#45

Post by meritt »

mpeg wrote: post #9
sergiotapia wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you work at Google or Facebook or any other of the tech giants, you need to know your algorithm-type questions. For the other 98% of companies, there's just no need. I've also never ever had to do strange things with binary trees.

Why? Do Google or Facebook engineers live in a magical world in which they need to know off the top of their heads the big-O complexity of every possible sort function ever mentioned in an academic paper? I see this argument used time and time again, but it makes no sense to me. Surely they can just search for it when they need it too :)

Because small to medium sized companies are looking for people to help grow their business and revenue.

Large companies tend to already have very stable revenue and now need people to make their systems more efficient in order to decrease expense.

Re: Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search

#46

Post by steven2012 »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #40

>> You want to start negotiating at your strongest point - when they have said “we love you, let’s make a deal.” One simple practice is at the end of the interview when you get the, "So what's the salary range you're looking at?" question, I always give them about 5-10K higher than what I'm currently making with the caveat, "But I'm always open to negotiating." which keeps the door open for the company/agency to get…

Never, ever, ever pin yourself down with a number. This weakens your ability to negotiate tremendously. Not giving a number forces the other side to present what they believe to be a good offer, as opposed to what you already mentioned as a desired number, which might be a lot lower than what they were thinking of.

I always say "I'm fine with a market-rate salary. I'm open to a salary cut from my current salary if the position has a great opportunity."

Re: Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search

#47

Post by beachstartup »

donretag wrote: post #22

"Flying out to interview with a single company is easy - they pay for the flights and hotel and you use them. Interviewing with 7 companies made for a surprisingly stressful round of negotiation before I’d even arrived, as I tried to spread the cost according to who could most afford it and who was getting the most time with me." When I last was searching for an out-of-state (albeit not California) job, every company…

why didn't you just skip the flight out they paid for, and go on a flight you paid for?

you don't have to use a ticket that someone else paid for. why deny yourself agency in this situation? i guess i'm missing something here.

and if you're concerned they follow up and spied on you afterward, then you dodged a bullet.

Re: Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search

#48

Post by alandarev »

michaelochurch wrote: post #7

Getting a job in Silicon Valley, as an outsider, isn't hard. Getting a good job is hard. Many offers will come through at a lower level just because, whatever you did, you didn't do it in the Valley. That's Cali arrogance for ya. Hedge fund interviews are a lot more intense and technically difficult (and you feel good when you pass) but don't come with the VC-fueled, youthful arrogance of a proper Valley company. Hed…

A week ago had an interview at Hedge Fund company (London). Let me ask you what sort of 'seriousness' they look in me while asking questions like:

What is the name of Java technology which loads classes? A: Classloader.

Yes, I do have two years of Java experience, I got used to their "Describe red-black tree algorithm"-like questions. But thank you, I measure myself not by remembering names of JVM components.

Re: Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search

#49

Post by [deleted] »

tegeek wrote: post #24
mpeg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Do Google or Facebook engineers live in a magical world in which they need to know off the top of their heads the big-O complexity of every possible sort function ever mentioned in an academic paper? I see this argument used time and time again, but it makes no sense to me. Surely they can just search for it when they need it too :)

I can do time complexity etc. I know about compilers, trees, graphs & other shit data structures and I can read academic papers on any new shit with a comfortable head. I can learn any new imperative, oop or functional language in a week. But I still can't find a job in Google.

[deleted]

Re: Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search

#50

Post by mac1175 »

"Some places like Matasano, Stripe, Github and I’m sure many others are aware of this and are equally aware that it has the potential to harm their company a great deal." I actually had the pleasure interviewing with Matasano. I thought their process was fun and really enlightening in regards to what they do. Everyone I met during the process were really cool (and extremely smart).
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