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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

#221

Post by returningfory2 »

Ao7bei3s wrote: post #215
novok wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Your info on how long it takes is out of date (edit: at least for companies not large enough to "optimize" the process; see comment below mine).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

Just a nit, really: this is true at smaller companies but many bigger companies have a "batch PERM" system such that individuals essentially skip the wage determination and recruitment steps. See e.g. [1]. In such cases hiring to PERM approval is 7-11 months.

[1] https://www.teamblind.com/post/Which-companies-have-a-BATCH-...

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#223

Post by syspec »

analog31 wrote: post #161
syspec wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think you nailed it, will have to borrow this point in the future. A lot of it is about gauging the candidates aptitude, and of course their willingness to put in the work. It's like those kids in math class that say, "I'm never going to use this in real life."

Those kids are right. School math is mainly an attrition machine. Most students, including in STEM fields, look forward to forgetting all of their school math on graduation day. The math that engineers need is baked into their high level software. Most engineering teams have a "math person" who handles any higher math related problems that crop up. I'm one of those people at my workplace. I was a college math major,…

> The math that engineers need is baked into their high level software.

Well, someone, has to write that software.

When people used to say, "I'm never going to need to know this", my teacher would reply "You're right you won't, but the smart kids will"

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#224

Post by bogwog »

syspec wrote: post #130
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…

I really think you nailed it, will have to borrow this point in the future. A lot of it is about gauging the candidates aptitude, and of course their willingness to put in the work. It's like those kids in math class that say, "I'm never going to use this in real life."

Reading comments like this makes me think that the real problem is that recruiters have never worked in engineering so have no idea what the job is actually like.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#225

Post by lumost »

LC interviews are well past the curve of utility. 10 years ago, FB and others would do a simple fizzbuzz + lc easy/medium demonstrating that you had a good grasp of complexity, pointers, recursion, and iteration. I got a job or two by showing that I could DFS a binary search tree, count letter occurrences in a paragraph, or return the top k elements from two sorted lists.

Then people learned to practice these simple coding questions, and employers had to up the anty. Now everyone wants an LC expert who can do an LC hard in under thirty minutes with perfect code and no hinting. I wouldn't be surprised if LC has to open a new category of problem difficulty based on current trend lines.

At some point you really are hiring for a skill which is only applicable in interviews. Solving an LC hard in under 30 minutes has little bearing on whether a candidate could solve a novel research problem or difficult refactoring task in their day to day work.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#226

Post by dionidium »

bogwog wrote: post #224
syspec wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think you nailed it, will have to borrow this point in the future. A lot of it is about gauging the candidates aptitude, and of course their willingness to put in the work. It's like those kids in math class that say, "I'm never going to use this in real life."

Reading comments like this makes me think that the real problem is that recruiters have never worked in engineering so have no idea what the job is actually like.

Recruiters have nothing to do with the structure or format of the interview, so I'm not sure I follow.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#227

Post by lhorie »

ipaddr wrote: post #217
lhorie wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Anecdotes are not data etc, but in my experience (hiring senior SWEs for a big tech co) less than 1 in 20 candidates have a link to github or side project listed in their resume. Distribution-wise, they seem to appear more frequently w/ younger candidates.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#228

Post by dilyevsky »

ipaddr wrote: post #214
dilyevsky wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pr…

> 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.

Nonsense. Googlers will pass bc they on average ship more code than an average eng at all other companies i worked for combined together. More code written -> more practice -> better outcome in coding sessions. It’s not really a great mystery. I can only assume same is true for fb based on the outcomes I’ve seen personally

> If a person is really good at interviewing that probably means they do it a lot and are probably looking at moving more often

No it doesn’t mean that. It’s also really obvious from the resume

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#229

Post by dilyevsky »

returningfory2 wrote: post #221
Ao7bei3s wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just a nit, really: this is true at smaller companies but many bigger companies have a "batch PERM" system such that individuals essentially skip the wage determination and recruitment steps. See e.g. [1]. In such cases hiring to PERM approval is 7-11 months. [1] https://www.teamblind.com/post/Which-companies-have-a-BATCH-...

So not really that different from 10 yrs ago when it took me roughly 6 months. The processing time for everything in uscis is longer now - can take up to a year a longer to stamp n400

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#230

Post by sodality2 »

syspec wrote: post #223
analog31 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those kids are right. School math is mainly an attrition machine. Most students, including in STEM fields, look forward to forgetting all of their school math on graduation day. The math that engineers need is baked into their high level software. Most engineering teams have a "math person" who handles any higher math related problems that crop up. I'm one of those people at my workplace. I was a college math major,…

> The math that engineers need is baked into their high level software. Well, someone, has to write that software. When people used to say, "I'm never going to need to know this", my teacher would reply "You're right you won't, but the smart kids will"

Can't that be taught in the higher-education, like most skills that are only required in a certain area? It's not just "the smart kids will", but "the kids who go into the mathematics field".
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