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Interviewing in Silicon Valley

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Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#21

Post by theunixbeard »

wowoc wrote: post #19
ultimoo wrote: post #12

I am in grad school and live with roommates in the SV. Amongst the six of us, we have interviewed at a cumulative of 20 big SV names in the last month and of course we discuss the interviews frequently with one another. Companies like Broadcom, Cisco, Juniper, Anritsu, Apple etc. solely rely on the programming problems the OP talked about. HP focuses on riddles and puzzles to a point where it is ridiculous and mind-n…

What's SoMA?

An area of San Francisco: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_of_Market,_San_Francisco

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#22

Post by nilkn »

I personally would quite like an interview where I work with the interviewer to solve a problem or puzzle that he himself has not solved--as opposed to the traditional setup where the interviewer acts as the all-knowing oracle who happens to withhold the solution to this one problem. This could be difficult to set up on a regular basis, though.

I actually had an interview somewhat like that recently. The team was about to start working on a new feature for their software. We had a sort of round table discussion of the feature and how to go about it. They actually didn't have me write any code at all. We just discussed approaches to the problem, algorithms, architecture design, potential problems, etc.

Another place had a pretty cool interview process. They were going to give me a take-home project with a week to work on it and pay me market rate for it (in the form of an Amazon gift card for a few hundred bucks). I didn't end up doing it, though, as I took another offer right before they gave me the project, so I voluntarily withdrew. Still, I think it was an interesting and worthwhile idea.

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#23

Post by k__ »

nilkn wrote: post #22

I personally would quite like an interview where I work with the interviewer to solve a problem or puzzle that he himself has not solved--as opposed to the traditional setup where the interviewer acts as the all-knowing oracle who happens to withhold the solution to this one problem. This could be difficult to set up on a regular basis, though. I actually had an interview somewhat like that recently. The team was abo…

I don't like this puzzle idea at all.

I mean, what puzzles can I give a recuiter to test things relevant to me?

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#24

Post by nilkn »

k__ wrote: post #23
nilkn wrote: post #22

I personally would quite like an interview where I work with the interviewer to solve a problem or puzzle that he himself has not solved--as opposed to the traditional setup where the interviewer acts as the all-knowing oracle who happens to withhold the solution to this one problem. This could be difficult to set up on a regular basis, though. I actually had an interview somewhat like that recently. The team was abo…

I don't like this puzzle idea at all. I mean, what puzzles can I give a recuiter to test things relevant to me?

I'm not a fan of puzzle interviews at all either, and I agree that they're usually not very relevant except as a sort of specialized intelligence test which may or may not really be indicative of job performance. That said, working with the interviewer on something neither of you have solved does sound more enjoyable, interesting, and informative for both of us than having the interviewer sit behind a facade of perfect technical knowledge. At least that way you'd get to experience some sort of teamwork with the person, whom you'd presumably be working with.

I've heard of places having a candidate sit down and do some pair programming with one of the developers. That seems like a similar approach which emphasizes concrete development and coding over algorithms or puzzles.

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#25

Post by ecspike »

nilkn wrote: post #22

I personally would quite like an interview where I work with the interviewer to solve a problem or puzzle that he himself has not solved--as opposed to the traditional setup where the interviewer acts as the all-knowing oracle who happens to withhold the solution to this one problem. This could be difficult to set up on a regular basis, though. I actually had an interview somewhat like that recently. The team was abo…

I think all take-home projects should pay market rate.

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#26

Post by wowoc »

balloot wrote: post #18

I despise interviewing for software positions. Engineers love to treat interviews like some kind of hazing. They're gonna make you quiver and sweat and if you can still solve their stupid brainteaser maybe they'll give you the honor of working with them. Problem being, this has basically nothing to do with how good you'll be at the job. I spend 0% of a normal day with someone I don't know staring me down and judging…

I remember one such interview. I had to write a relatively small and simple routine. I was supposed to start talking/coding immediately, when I stopped doing that for maybe 5-10 seconds (I think it's pretty normal that you might need a little bit of private time with your brain...), I was asked to tell what I'm thinking about. This question was being repeated throughout the whole interview. But how can I think about anything, when I have to constantly blabber?

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#27

Post by estebank » 

  > I emailed them back asking if they had any feedback from
  > my interviews, but I’ve failed to receive a response.
I've been bothered by this as well, because we want to improve ourselves, and the best way to do so is through feedback. At the same time, you have to understand that not everybody is like us, and enough people that where given that feedback in the past have used that opportunity to "argue" that they really should have been hired or argue that the feedback was wrong. Between helping a stranger improve and avoiding a potential headache for themselves, as much as I would like to have had feedback on some interviews, I can't blame anyone for avoiding the issue altogether.

  > Almost all interview questions I take a long time with. I 
  > probably have a 85–95% rate of solving puzzles—using almost 
  > all of the allotted time—on my own, and the rest I’ve needed 
  > a very small hint to get me in the right direction to begin 
  > with. I can’t think of an instance where I’ve been given the 
  > answer because of being unable to solve the problem.
Well, that's one problem right there. The kind of companies that ask you the kind of questions that you say are beyond Fizz-Buzz, are usually just starters, to get the ball rolling, give you confidence and keep iterating after the first solution is reached if it isn't perfect, or by adding new constraints to make it so you have to keep thinking.

The interviewer most likely has allotted time for 2-5 of these questions in his interview, if you are taking all this time on the first one, then most likely you are not going to be highly regarded, as the interviewer hasn't got enough information to say wether the one question you answered is representative of your skills.

  > Is a total of eight cumulative hours of interviewing with 
  > around seven different people not enough to get a good 
  > signal? What does this say about the interviewing process?
It says that they want to make sure they hire somebody who's "a good fit" and the hiring pool is high enough that they can get away with false negatives.

  > Don’t sell me your product, sell me your challenges
The fact that they talk about the business instead of the tech, at least gives you some confidence the company will not go belly up because they are selling cuecats. Of course it's not the best way to entice a developer, but it's not as much of a red flag to me as you make it out to be.

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#28

Post by reikonomusha »

estebank wrote: post #27

> I emailed them back asking if they had any feedback from > my interviews, but I’ve failed to receive a response. I've been bothered by this as well, because we want to improve ourselves, and the best way to do so is through feedback. At the same time, you have to understand that not everybody is like us, and enough people that where given that feedback in the past have used that opportunity to "argue" that they rea…

    > Well, that's one problem right there. [...]
Of course it depends. Getting the ball rolling is probably not best done by giving an NP-complete problem (subset sum) as a first exercise.

When presented with an interview question, I usually say "well, it can be solved by doing $NAIVE_SOLUTION, just to get that out there, and I know you're looking for a better one." By doing this, I've established that there is a naive solution and that I'm going to spend time thinking of a better way. Unfortunately, with these kinds of algorithmic puzzle problems, it's usually a waste of time to give the naive solution in full detail, because no incremental development will ever make it monumentally better unless some cheap trick, like memoization, can be done.

    > The interviewer most likely has allotted time for 2-5 of these questions in
    > his interview
This is usually the case when the problems are easier. For example, "compute the square root of a number" where the solution is, for the most part, cut-and-dry. (Though I would never blame someone for taking longer if they have to re-do the calculus by hand to rediscover the solution.) FizzBuzz is another. Simple binary tree exercises are another.

As said, it entirely depends on the questions. To some interviewers, asking "how do you traverse a binary tree" on-site probably would be a waste of time; that is expected by a first-year CS student.

    > It says that they want to make sure they hire somebody who's "a good fit" and
    > the hiring pool is high enough that they can get away with false negatives.
This is the easy way to explain it, but I don't think it's a very good answer. I don't think someone is a good fit if 7 people across 8 hours couldn't come to a consensus. If there's that much controversy, what is another coding question going to tell?

    > The fact that they talk about the business [...]
This isn't an issue. In fact, it's good to talk about the business and mechanics thereof. But spending half an hour preaching to an interviewee about why the product is so good from a consumer standpoint isn't the best way to capitalize on either person's time. I think, aside from a brief introduction, that propaganda should be disseminated when the interviewee asks questions about the product.

In addition to the above, I think it's a problem when the scales tip way in favor of talking about the product instead of the engineering. If the product gets a 30 minute talk and engineering gets a 5-10 minute talk, I think it's indicative about the priorities of the company toward its employees.

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#29

Post by jmaskell »

The urgency to interview, followed by the abrupt halt in communication isn't something that is unique to Silicon Valley or engineering positions. I had it a lot in London a couple of months ago for mostly product jobs.

It's incredibly unprofessional / downright rude - especially when so much pressure is put on to get you through the interview process quickly. It also means that I now have a negative opinion of a number of companies - and advise friends against applying or interviewing there if approached.

I've been in a position of hiring before, and while it's not nice to tell someone that they haven't got the job, it's the polite thing to do. Most people are reasonable, and it increases the chances of them recommending your company to others.

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#30

Post by negrit »

balloot wrote: post #18

I despise interviewing for software positions. Engineers love to treat interviews like some kind of hazing. They're gonna make you quiver and sweat and if you can still solve their stupid brainteaser maybe they'll give you the honor of working with them. Problem being, this has basically nothing to do with how good you'll be at the job. I spend 0% of a normal day with someone I don't know staring me down and judging…

The hiring process is for sure broken.

Nowadays when recruiters ask me more than two algorithmic questions in the same interview I just tell them gently to fuck off because "I'm not an algorithmic dictionary and when I need to use one i google it and it's done."

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