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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

#201

Post by slt2021 »

pavlov wrote: post #57
robryan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of places will also do a desgin interview to cover this aspect of the job.

Which raises the question of why do the other kind of interview at all. I mean the leetcode nonsense whose end state is often a theatrical performance: “I’m pretending to invent this clever algorithm on the fly although I’ve practiced it for weeks”. Is there any evidence that candidates who do well on design interviews but fumble on leetcode would be any worse at the actual job?

Leetcode is simply testing whether you studied Computer Science, took Data Structures & Algorithms course, and read the CLR book on algos and practices it. Nothing else. This is really freshman level cs work. very simple.

people who cannot leetcode - a simple data structures & algorithms inteview - cannot understand runtime nuances of what they write.

This is how you end up with N+1 algorithms and exponential runtime.

For example look at all modern front-end in javascript - usually leetcode is more relaxed for front end, and you end up with ungodly gobbles of unnecessary loops inside loops wrapped in loops that traverse DOM for no good reason and freeze the browser.

it is the javascript people who import node libraries that contain 3 lines of code, instead of writing it properly

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

#202

Post by whateverman23 »

KaiserPro wrote: post #102
catiopatio wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "make a linked list" no, just use a library like everyone else. If you cannot sketch out a simple linked list on a whiteboard, you’re not an engineer and have no business being hired as one at a place like Apple, full stop. I was asked to sketch out a hash table on the whiteboard. It was trivial, because a trivial hash table is trivial.

> you’re not an engineer and have no business being hired as one at a place like Apple well, unless you have a engineering degree, you're not actually an engineer, but we'll gloss over that. (big hint CS isn't an engineering discipline, otherwise testing, requirements gathering and cost analysis would be a big part of the course. ) I was once asked to implement a distributed fault tolerant hashtable on a whiteboard.…

> well, unless you have a engineering degree, you're not actually an engineer

That's not a requirement in the US.

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

#203

Post by marliechiller »

pphysch wrote: post #196
marliechiller wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The filter works perhaps for whatever niche you might be working in. I cant imagine asking this to one of my candidates and then assessing their entire professional experience off of something like this though.

What domain do you program in where handling strings/bytes is not a weekly if not daily task?

The point is not whether an applicant can or cannot do it, the point is that the question is deliberately rephrasing to obscure a candidates understanding. If you ask your average candidate to do that in laymans terms or they were given 5 seconds to google this would be a trivial task and you would have a different outcome. All this selects for is the candidate to have a working definition of an ascii decimal string in their head, it represents no ability to problem solve whatsoever.

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

#204

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

thereisnojesus wrote: post #138
angarg12 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Machine Learning Engineer with 5+ years of experience at FAANG. I have designed and built real time ML systems that support millions of QPS with And yet I can't escape leetcode interviews. In fact I recently sent a spree of CVs and got automated rejection emails for most of them. I don't buy your take.

This is privilege if you think 3 CVs is a lot. I applied for 100 yesterday.

At 100 resumes/day it's hard to believe that you're optimizing them for the position or for that matter, doing anything other than shotgunning.

You're far more likely to get 100 rejections doing this than if you research a handful of the positions and send targeted resumes to those.

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

#206

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

thejazzman wrote: post #103
121789 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Every hiring process will have false negatives. Pointing out every one doesn’t invalidate the effectiveness of the process

Effective for whom? And at doing what? SV is full of mediocre engineers; so it fails at guaranteeing you got yourself a star. And I don't think anyone needs more anecdotes to think great candidates lose for arbitrary/subjective/misunderstanding/random reasons -- I'm 15y into my career with a degree from CMU; I am treated like royalty everywhere I work ... and yet I still absolutely dread, hate and repeatedly have bad…

> insane amount of time every prospective employer demands of you

I have worked an average of 40-hour/week jobs for my entire 30-year career. What's this "demand" nonsense?

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

#208

Post by OkayPhysicist »

KaiserPro wrote: post #102
catiopatio wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "make a linked list" no, just use a library like everyone else. If you cannot sketch out a simple linked list on a whiteboard, you’re not an engineer and have no business being hired as one at a place like Apple, full stop. I was asked to sketch out a hash table on the whiteboard. It was trivial, because a trivial hash table is trivial.

> you’re not an engineer and have no business being hired as one at a place like Apple well, unless you have a engineering degree, you're not actually an engineer, but we'll gloss over that. (big hint CS isn't an engineering discipline, otherwise testing, requirements gathering and cost analysis would be a big part of the course. ) I was once asked to implement a distributed fault tolerant hashtable on a whiteboard.…

They're not asking you to re-implement it on a whiteboard so they can open a PR and shove it in their new app. They're asking you to re-implement it to demonstrate that you understand it, and that given an understanding of something, that you have the skills to implement it.

If you can't hammer out a technical interview using off-the-top of your knowledge, you're in the group they're trying to weed out.

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

#209

Post by afavour »

zerr wrote: post #114
intelVISA wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

Your hilarious perspective on highly paid FAANG jobs aside: because now that you’ve made it and demonstrated there is a target market it’s trivial for the billion dollar company to make their own version and eat your breakfast. If they’re offering you the chance to join them as they do so it’s very often in your interest to do it.

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

#210

Post by porridgeandrice »

pavlov wrote: post #57
robryan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of places will also do a desgin interview to cover this aspect of the job.

Which raises the question of why do the other kind of interview at all. I mean the leetcode nonsense whose end state is often a theatrical performance: “I’m pretending to invent this clever algorithm on the fly although I’ve practiced it for weeks”. Is there any evidence that candidates who do well on design interviews but fumble on leetcode would be any worse at the actual job?

IME it's a test in which it is easy to grade many people in a way that it is really unlikely that two people end up with the same grade. That is what leetcode achieves and that is really the majority of the reason it is used. So it is just very convenient for hiring. In India, we have companies coming to hire students from colleges, and as the first filter, they give you three leetcode questions, and average the number of test cases you passed in each of them and rank you based on that. I spoke to one of the companies, they said that they had _very_ few people that had the same score, and it was easy to choose within those small sets by reading their resume/whatever.
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