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Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

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Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#111

Post by CoastalCoder »

SilverBirch wrote: post #27

I think the sort of more general point, rather than "build something great that someone at Apple notices", is that Graduate and Internship programmes are scale businesses. They get thousands of people applying and will hire atleast dozens, probably some FANG are hiring hundreds. So yes, we're all special snowflakes, but that's not what this process is for. It's about harsh rounds of easy to design problems to winnow…

There a wonderful Corecursive podcast [0] that touches on unexpected ways to work with Apple.

[0] https://corecursive.com/shipping-graphing-calculator/

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#112

Post by monocasa »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #104
devoutsalsa wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can’t invert a binary tree, how can I trust you to change my website’s favicon?!

You would be surprised how hard it would be to invert a binary tree, or really just what the question is asking for, if you didn't at least study up on the concept in the last decade. It is conventional enough to sound mundane, but how often are we inverting binary trees in practice?

It came out that by inverting a binary tree just meant swapping the left and right children of all nodes of the tree. It's pretty much 'can you iterate through a tree?' which comes up a surprising amount.

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#114

Post by zerr »

intelVISA wrote: post #56
SilverBirch wrote: post #27

I think the sort of more general point, rather than "build something great that someone at Apple notices", is that Graduate and Internship programmes are scale businesses. They get thousands of people applying and will hire atleast dozens, probably some FANG are hiring hundreds. So yes, we're all special snowflakes, but that's not what this process is for. It's about harsh rounds of easy to design problems to winnow…

can confirm, it's as simple PG says "just build something people want" it will open many doors :)

Why would you want to become a wage slave if you've already built something that people want (thus can monetize it yourself)?

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#115

Post by r0m4n0 »

I think most people here understand that this is a great story but not a realistic approach to how to get into big tech.

The part that had me laugh a bit is:

> Is it a coincidence that Apple was the only Big Tech company that didn’t do layoffs?

I will say no it’s not a coincidence but it’s a direct relationship to growth and spend, like any heartless corp. Apple continued to have the growth curve they wanted so they didn’t need to. One day that will not be the case and they will fire people to keep it. The company is owned by shareholders

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#117

Post by seanmcdirmid »

monocasa wrote: post #112
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be surprised how hard it would be to invert a binary tree, or really just what the question is asking for, if you didn't at least study up on the concept in the last decade. It is conventional enough to sound mundane, but how often are we inverting binary trees in practice?

It came out that by inverting a binary tree just meant swapping the left and right children of all nodes of the tree. It's pretty much 'can you iterate through a tree?' which comes up a surprising amount.

Sure, but try coming up with that without even remembering what invert meant (it isn't a word that is commonly used in practice outside of CS education and l00tcode). Most of the problem in l00tcode question is just figuring out what is being asked for, not in doing the ask. That's why studying and understanding lots of l00tcode problems as prep is very effective (even if you haven't seen the problem, the problem is probably adjacent and you can understand it more quickly during the interview).

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#118

Post by rvz »

Looks like the majority of HNers commenting here are showing clear signs of envy or resentment over this person's achievement. That's all I need to know about HN right here.

So you know what?

Massive congratulations to this student being so good that they don't need to take a LeetCode interview. Leetcode is not the only way.

Perhaps the ones that do have to take the coding interview probably haven't built something interesting themselves...

Either way, Leetcode, Hackerrank tests for hiring etc are all garbage. Great that this student's work speaks for itself enough to get an internship at Apple.

Well done for them!

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#119

Post by curiousllama »

yieldcrv wrote: post #43
SilverBirch wrote: post #27

I think the sort of more general point, rather than "build something great that someone at Apple notices", is that Graduate and Internship programmes are scale businesses. They get thousands of people applying and will hire atleast dozens, probably some FANG are hiring hundreds. So yes, we're all special snowflakes, but that's not what this process is for. It's about harsh rounds of easy to design problems to winnow…

This is a weird take because the whole point of the last decade of leetcode was that people with special skills or that built something great can't even get hired. which was dumb. but reinforced the supposed uniformity of that process. I'm glad people aren’t just continuing the practice simply because they experienced the practice.

The comment you're replying to is saying there's 2 processes, and it matters which one you're in.

System A optimizes for min(p(hire|bad_candidate)). System B optimizes for max(p(hire|good_candidate)).

System A has resume screens, long lead times, and Leetcode out the wazoo. System B has a few convos, short lead times, and review of actual previous work product.

Horror stories come from great candidates in system A. This article is describing how to get into system B.

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#120

Post by TrevorAustin »

Eddygandr wrote: post #80
sdfghswe wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a weird take because the whole point of the last decade of leetcode was that people with special skills or that built something great can't even get hired. No, it looks like you're missing the point. Leetcode is not for people with special skills. It's for people with NO SKILLS other than "can code". Well if the only thing you can do is write code, you better be really good at writing code.

Didn't the guy who made Homebrew fail his interview at Google because he couldn't invert a binary tree? That's a guy who has built a popular product in the wild and can clearly code but failed because of the leetcode barrier at all IC levels.

To be fair, Homebrew is great product design, but actually pretty janky software engineering. Anyone who's had it wreck their PATH a couple of times isn't going to be an automatic yes vote on a technical screen.
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