Caltech's CS interview prep course • Hacker News Board

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#211

Post by thetallstick » Mon, Feb 28, 2022, 1:22 AM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #150

majormajor wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is that supposed to be telling? There are a quite a few industries where there are profitable neighbor industries around breaking in to it. Even ones with licensing and blah blah blah instead of whiteboards. Hell, the cynics would call the entire current university system one! And if not that, than it least the massive industries around getting into better schools...

Why don’t other STEM fields have those neighbor/parasite industries?

They do. Google “VLSI interview prep”

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#212

Post by knightofmars » Mon, Feb 28, 2022, 1:22 AM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #203

knightofmars wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a memory test not an intelligence test. If you truly wanted to measure intelligence it would have to be based on a priori knowledge and not on the ability to memorize algorithms and their implementation.

I feel like people who only memorize would not be able to pass contemporary test at most of these big companies.

I feel like you don't know that you're talking about. That's not meant to be an insult but to highlight the fact that "feeling" doesn't matter. Because my feelings about your statement has no bearing on the accuracy or content of your statement.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#213

Post by yodsanklai » Mon, Feb 28, 2022, 1:25 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #195

yodsanklai wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they're offering this course, and that makes me think that no, the worst student from these schools in the US, at least cannot nail any algorithm interview with minimal prep! I think it's impossible to nail these interviews without minimal prep. It's very specific, and every candidates are well-prepared, many of them have done 500+ leetcode questions before interviewing. Regarding the US universities, I'm not s…

> I think it's impossible to nail these interviews without minimal prep. It's very specific, and every candidates are well-prepared, many of them have done 500+ leetcode questions before interviewing. It’s definitely possible. Mostly you’d want to learn your algorithms well in college and continue to exercise them in your work. The rest of the interview is a lot about how you present yourself, which is mostly along t…

> Mostly you’d want to learn your algorithms well in college and continue to exercise them in your work. The rest of the interview is a lot about how you present yourself, which is mostly along the lines of “work out the problems out loud and ask questions”.

Not my experience. When I interviewed at Google for a senior position, I mostly had difficult questions with little interaction with the interviewer.

Before my preparation, I could solve all the questions within let say a couple of hours and I knew very well all the algorithms. But that's not what's expected to pass. You're competing with people who have been working very hard on this style of interviews and you need to be among the best.

You're expected to find the answer to a couple of questions within a 40 min. That includes finding the solution, writing the code (not pseudo-code), testing your solution and discuss complexity.

Thinking 15min + sketching some pseudo code is not enough, or maybe for a particularly hard problem.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#214

Post by ipaddr » Mon, Feb 28, 2022, 1:28 AM UTC

dilyevsky wrote: post #194

singron wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But people from those places still perform really poorly in interviews at about the same rate as everyone else This doesn’t match my experience at all at least wrt to coding sessions. I don’t think I ever had someone from goog/fb bomb a coding part but I regularly had tenured engs from other well known shops not being able to code 2 nested for-loops // I did 200+ of interviews not counting when I worked for goog my…

A successful engineer at well known shops will fail a pressured evaluation where a google engineer will pass the interview. It make sense because google's interview process is harder.

That says nothing to what happens after they get hired.

It also doesn't tell you tenured eng can't do two for-loops. It probably tells you that this person hasn't been interviewing for years. You are a part of their process and are a practice interview. Each time this candidate interviews they will get better and hired. If a person is really good at interviewing that probably means they do it a lot and are probably looking at moving more often. If you want to hire someone who will stay you need I would give tenured engineer a chance they will probably blow you away.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#215

Post by Ao7bei3s » Mon, Feb 28, 2022, 1:34 AM UTC

novok wrote: post #193

dilyevsky wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in my day if you changed the employer without changing the role you didn’t lose your place in line after PERM application was completed. I knew many Indians/Chinese nationals who changed several jobs while waiting EB2/3 to come through. Frankly I think green card golden handcuffs are heavily played up in these discussions to advance a specific narrative

Yeah the start to perm process to get your priority number is a 6 month - 1 year thing, and you only really need to do it once. And once your priority date is up maybe you have to stay there for 1 year.

Your info on how long it takes is out of date (edit: at least for companies not large enough to "optimize" the process; see comment below mine).

First, PERM currently takes about 16-18 months now. Processing times are way up: the PWD (Prevailing Wage Determination) phase alone is now 6 months; PERM certification itself is another 6 months (source: https://flag.dol.gov/processingtimes). To this you have add ~3 months for the recruitment phase, plus however many weeks/months it takes management and the lawyers to work out the job description. If you're audited (which I can tell from personal experience can happen for the most straightforward cases), that adds 4 months.

What's worse is that, as per our law firms briefing, due to a recent lawsuit that Facebook lost, companies now have to be more conservative with the recruitment phase (make a much stronger effort to find Americans). And with that, the recruitment phase should be expected to "fail" (from the perspective of the potential immigrant) more often, which can multiply the PWD and recruitment phase time.

This means that going forward, all in all it could take several years to get to PERM approved. If you switch jobs before you've filed I-140, gotten it approved and waited out 6 months (for portability under AC21), that resets the progress. Also note some companies like to delay starting the process until a few months after the employee starts working for them.

Now remember that the maximum duration of an H-1B (without an approved I-140) is 6 years (5 years for L-1B). So there's definitely a bit of time pressure which makes changing jobs somewhat risky. Possible, but not a decision made lightly.

You are correct that you only need to do it once... as long as your job duties stay within 50% of what your original job description was. If it was somewhat specialized, and the immigrant changes jobs, then they incur some amount of risk of an I-485 denial later.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#216

Post by dionidium » Mon, Feb 28, 2022, 1:37 AM UTC

knightofmars wrote: post #201

dionidium wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason this complaint never changes anything, despite being very popular, is that these interviews serve two purposes that it doesn’t address: 1) they’re an intelligence test; 2) they’re a perseverance/conscientiousness test. Will you take the time and put in the work to pass one of these interviews? That measures perseverance and conscientiousness. Having put in the time, can you recall and adapt what you learne…

They are a memory test not an intelligence test. If you truly wanted to measure intelligence it would have to be based on a priori knowledge and not on the ability to memorize algorithms and their implementation.

The notion that somebody could simply "memorize algorithms" and then apply that information on-the-fly to questions they won't know in advance -- demonstrating adaptiveness, creativity, and the application of general problem-solving knowledge to novel problems -- and that this doesn't measure intelligence is not credible.

I'd bet my net worth that the ability to perform well on these interviews positively correlates with IQ.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#217

Post by ipaddr » Mon, Feb 28, 2022, 1:38 AM UTC

lhorie wrote: post #111

dvt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How are you supposed to hire 50,000 people a year with a process like that? This is a straw-man. What company has to hire 50,000 engineers a year? Facebook has (in total) ~10,000 engineers (hired over a decade+). Someone has nothing published and no OSS? Great, ask for code samples and the candidate to walk you through the code. It's completely trivial to fix the busted status quo, but people are invested in this n…

I think the more important overarching point is that most candidates aren't prolific github people like you, and likewise most companies are not going to cater their interviewing practices to woo your preferred flavor of interview style. Most candidates don't have code samples laying around (e.g. they only write proprietary code for work), so asking for some is a non-starter in a lot of cases. Another point worth of…

What percentage of people study leetcode and can't provide coding sample vs can provide coding sample / have something on github / etc

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#218

Post by senthil_rajasek » Mon, Feb 28, 2022, 1:42 AM UTC

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…

The entire post is about how a specialized course is required to pass a technical interview in companies like Amazon and here you are making a comment that implies desperate Indians are hired with zero qualifications for the job only because they are desperate.

I can't comment on the working conditions at Amazon but I have to say that those Indians must be highly qualified to have that job and should be paid fairly.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#219

Post by dionidium » Mon, Feb 28, 2022, 1:45 AM UTC

knightofmars wrote: post #212

whimsicalism wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like people who only memorize would not be able to pass contemporary test at most of these big companies.

I feel like you don't know that you're talking about. That's not meant to be an insult but to highlight the fact that "feeling" doesn't matter. Because my feelings about your statement has no bearing on the accuracy or content of your statement.

"I feel like" in this context is a synonym for "it is my belief that," so your response is a non sequitur based on a misunderstanding of a colloquialism.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#220

Post by game_the0ry » Mon, Feb 28, 2022, 1:47 AM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #207

game_the0ry wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What’s your suggested alternative? In my experience, any alternative to leetcode provides a better signal-to-noise ratio. You are better off asking trivia questions. Additionally, this is the common narrative among leetcode advocates - "If no leetcode, then what?" As a hiring manager, you think harder and do better, that's what. > Please remember that while some of us would do well and prefer some live pair program…

> You are better off asking trivia questions Bet you most people would disagree with just trivia. > So does studying for leetcode for hours. You honestly do not have to do this to pass the LC interview. I didn't. Certainly not as much as a takehome test.

> You honestly do not have to do this to pass the LC interview. I didn't.

You were able to prep for 2-4 hours and still pass LC interviews? I find this hard to believe given that I, and peers I know, took much longer to prep.