Becoming a dungeon master for an interview

Post by midasuni » Sun, Feb 11, 2024, 11:27 PM UTC

NikolaNovak wrote: post #154

midasuni wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really need two in physically different locations (ideally ASes) with some form of failover, assuming you want a reasonable guaranteed uptime

We've run 375,000 self-service employees ERP system (so much heavier single transaction than HN) on a single (large:) db2/aix box with no downtime over last 8 years. That's well within published specs for that hardware / software combo. Yes we do have a DR box in another data centre now, in case of meteorite or fire. This used to be the norm . A single hardware / software box CAN be engineered for high uptime. It's p…

Post by baner2020 » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 1:31 AM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #50

dmoy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm curious what changed around 2015-2016 that led to the current interview process. In the before times the interview was more of a technical conversation, sure they had some gotcha questions, but nothing too brutal. If you had real experience that you co... Places just copied big tech companies that were already doing that for many years prior to 2015. I had leetcode style interviews well before 2010 even.

Part of the problem is people just memorize things for interviews. We interviewed three candidates that were almost exact copies of each other in their responses. Maybe they all read the same interview book? I also witnessed someone give a completely wrong (algorithm) whiteboard answer to a problem. Obviously they weren't thinking about the problem as they did it.

Post by borkyborkbork » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 6:10 AM UTC

ascar wrote: post #97

midasuni wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really need two in physically different locations (ideally ASes) with some form of failover, assuming you want a reasonable guaranteed uptime

Does 99.995% [1] of hackernews sound reasonable enough to you? The reality is a lot of systems (especially simple ones) run perfectly fine on a single server with next to no downtime and all the additional redundancies we introduce also add additional points of failures and without the scale that makes these necessary you might actually end up reducing your availability. [1] https://hn.hund.io/

Post by lupire » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 2:27 PM UTC

jmspring wrote: post #130

dr_kiszonka wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of their hiring criteria is cognitive ability. If it correlates with strong proficiency in CS algorithms, then this might have been why they focus on it when hiring engineers. (I am not saying that this strong correlation exists.)

The correlation doesn't exist. A large segment of the Leetcode-uber-alles practitioners are also the ones that are obsessed with total compensation as the ultimate measure. It was a mistake by google and others to focus purely on this , but we are where we are. Many of the leetcode fanatics can't deal with real world issues in software or operations.

Post by lupire » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 2:32 PM UTC

dinobones wrote: post #51

majormajor wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget about the people who don't have to spend weeks or months focused just on interview prep to do well on the average leetcode question... That's who interviewers are looking for. Now, a case can be made that there aren't that many of those people and you might not need them anyway, but... if you can spend a few weeks to catch up that's not all bad compared to what high-end job offers in other professions de…

If you want to receive top compensation, and work at the Meta/Roblox/AirBnBs etc, you will need to be able to solve 2 Leetcode medium questions in 45 minutes, correctly and optimally. I work for a big tech company where people smell their own farts and think they are geniuses even though they work on CRUD interfaces for admin portals for Cloud. The interview process is well known. I have seen wrong solutions made by…