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Caltech's CS interview prep course

courses.cms.caltech.edu

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Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#131

Post by cutenewt »

barry-cotter wrote: post #97
mkl95 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take home OR coding challenges is a false dichotomy. > In the end, even if these coding challenges might not reflect the actual work you do, they might still be predictive of success in the job They are snake oil. You cannot predict success at some job by asking candidates to prove their ability at something that is only tangentially related to the actual job.

General mental ability is general, that’s the point. > The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 100 Years of Research Findings > On the basis of meta-analytic findings, this paper presents the validity of 31 procedures for predicting job performance and the validity of paired combinations of general mental ability (GMA) and the 29 other selection…

Do you have any insights on what kind of "integrity test" they used?

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#132

Post by game_the0ry »

WalterBright wrote: post #101
mkl95 wrote: post #40

My career path in tech so far has been junior engineer -> mid level -> senior -> tech lead. As I've progressed through that path, I have had literally no opportunities of applying the stuff I've learnt on HackerRank, save for a couple of interviews. At this point I'm convinced that the focus of those interviews was entirely wrong. Once you pass those tests and get hired, you will be dealing with tons of legacy code r…

> I have had literally no opportunities of applying the stuff I've learnt on HackerRank I have. Many times.

Yes, the opportunities are possible, but exceptional.

For the most part, you will be wiring crud APIs or trying to figure out why your button is misaligned by 12 pixels. Those problems also pay better too, bc those are business problems. The hackerrank problems have mostly been solved.

Think about that - you think Ed Dijkstra or Tony Hoare ever made more than a facebook swe?

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#133

Post by porcoda »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #5

Are there other major economic sectors which have circled the wagons around making job applicants do remedial coursework as live performance art?

I've noticed that people here paint the whole industry with a broad brush that reflects what a handful of giant companies and companies imitating them do. I've been on both sides of the interviewing table at a few places and it's never been the whiteboarding dystopia that everyone talks about here. The last job I took had a long interview process, and at the end of the day someone spoke up and said "oh yeah, we probably should ask you some code question", which I blew since I was exhausted and it was an obscure C++ thing. They laughed it off and I still work there.

HN is a poor barometer for the broader tech industry - everything from hiring practices, tech choices, etc. HN has a tendency to make it sound like all the world acts and smells like a giant tech company or a startup. There are a TON of companies that are not like those.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#134

Post by cutenewt »

honksillet wrote: post #57
Apocryphon wrote: post #28

Tech interview discussions always seem to run the same course and hit the same points, so I'll repeat one of mine: What's wrong with the idea of turning the standard Leetcode algorithms interview into a license that only needs to be completed once, or maybe once every 5-8 years, similar to what physicians must undergo? Much more efficient than having to retake it with every single company during an interview cycle.

As someone who is licensed in a different field, awful idea. Each state tends to have their own (often quite different) license requirements. They tend to be expensive to get and need to be renewed frequently (more $$$). There are usually other hoops you have to jump through to get both license and relicensed. I would never wish licensure on my own profession.

I agree on the downsides, but I believe licensing is a good forcing function to get others to 1) gain knowledge and 2) standardize training for a base level of competence.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#135

Post by almost_usual »

ozzythecat wrote: post #122

Interviewing is broken. When I was at Amazon, it became impossible to hire candidates, and generally the engineers we brought on board were non-US citizens. Typically they're Indians without U.S. residency status, often times U.S. college grads or often even transfers from Amazon's Indian offices. Not only did we pay below other FAANGs, but with these hires, we'd pay them at the low end of our own scale. What are the…

I’ve never worked at Amazon but this seems to be a common theme with interview candidates who work there. They talk about to burnout and stressful on-calls shifts. I’m not sure how this unfolds for Amazon in the long run.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#136

Post by ip26 »

singron wrote: post #83
Apocryphon wrote: post #28

Tech interview discussions always seem to run the same course and hit the same points, so I'll repeat one of mine: What's wrong with the idea of turning the standard Leetcode algorithms interview into a license that only needs to be completed once, or maybe once every 5-8 years, similar to what physicians must undergo? Much more efficient than having to retake it with every single company during an interview cycle.

An equivalent idea is to hire anyone who has worked at any well-known company with similarly rigorous interviews. But people from those places still perform really poorly in interviews at about the same rate as everyone else. I wish I knew if it was a fluke that they bombed this time or that they passed the original.

More likely is that any company big enough to have a reputation is also big enough to have strong & weak departments, and it can be hard to tell which the candidate is from.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#137

Post by mkl95 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #97
mkl95 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take home OR coding challenges is a false dichotomy. > In the end, even if these coding challenges might not reflect the actual work you do, they might still be predictive of success in the job They are snake oil. You cannot predict success at some job by asking candidates to prove their ability at something that is only tangentially related to the actual job.

General mental ability is general, that’s the point. > The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 100 Years of Research Findings > On the basis of meta-analytic findings, this paper presents the validity of 31 procedures for predicting job performance and the validity of paired combinations of general mental ability (GMA) and the 29 other selection…

> General mental ability is general, that’s the point

I've seen PhDs melt under pressure at two different jobs. Which tells me that an exceptional IQ or work ethic doesn't necessarily equate with success in the industry. Those two people had something in common, and it was their poor communication skills, both input and output. If your brain cannot process some coworkers feedback efficiently and it cannot spit out feedback efficiently, the logical / mathematical side of your brain is not going to make up for it.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#138

Post by ip26 »

shahbaby wrote: post #86
Apocryphon wrote: post #28

Tech interview discussions always seem to run the same course and hit the same points, so I'll repeat one of mine: What's wrong with the idea of turning the standard Leetcode algorithms interview into a license that only needs to be completed once, or maybe once every 5-8 years, similar to what physicians must undergo? Much more efficient than having to retake it with every single company during an interview cycle.

Reminder, our field isn't regulated. Anyone can go online and learn enough to be useful at a high paying entry level job. At some point there has to be a filter and that's what these interviews are for.

The curse of a field which is both competitive yet difficult to measure. A meritocracy where your true status is opaque.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#139

Post by bluedino »

shahbaby wrote: post #86
Apocryphon wrote: post #28

Tech interview discussions always seem to run the same course and hit the same points, so I'll repeat one of mine: What's wrong with the idea of turning the standard Leetcode algorithms interview into a license that only needs to be completed once, or maybe once every 5-8 years, similar to what physicians must undergo? Much more efficient than having to retake it with every single company during an interview cycle.

Reminder, our field isn't regulated. Anyone can go online and learn enough to be useful at a high paying entry level job. At some point there has to be a filter and that's what these interviews are for.

The trick is proving to an employer what you know. Hard to get a resume past HR when you've worked in other industries and learned all your coding online.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#140

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

shagie wrote: post #61
Apocryphon wrote: post #28

Tech interview discussions always seem to run the same course and hit the same points, so I'll repeat one of mine: What's wrong with the idea of turning the standard Leetcode algorithms interview into a license that only needs to be completed once, or maybe once every 5-8 years, similar to what physicians must undergo? Much more efficient than having to retake it with every single company during an interview cycle.

We tried that once. https://ncees.org/engineering/pe/software/ But nobody was interested. https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineerin... --- I've interviewed software developers who have on their resume "Oracle Java 8 certified", but aren't able to name three different spots where the static keyword appears in Java or the situations where they'd be used. There are certainly many possible reasons why…

> "But nobody was interested."

No, no one took the PE exam for software engineering because it was effectively impossible.

To become a PE, first the candidate has to pass one of the Fundamentals of Engineering exam to become an engineer-in-training. Except, whoops, there wasn't ever a software specific FE exam; the most relevant one is the EE/Comp. E. exam. Take a look at the list of topics: https://ncees.org/wp-content/uploads/FE-Ele-CBT-specs.pdf. Most developers aren't going to pass that even with a CS degree.

Secondly, you need 4-8 years of job experience while supervised by a licensed engineer. Again, whoops, there are barely any software developers with a PE license, so who would they get to supervise them?

Only then do you get to take the PE exam for software engineering and become a licensed professional engineer. Frankly, the situation was so absurd that one has to suspect that NSPE didn't want to certify software developers as PEs.

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