Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Imposter's Handbook

impostershandbook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–237 of 237 posts

Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#231

Post by emodendroket »

vonmoltke wrote: post #178
emodendroket wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skiena's Algorithm Design Manual mentions him being brought in as an algorithmic consultant to modify some genetics analysis software so that it'd actually finish but I don't really remember the details or know enough about the field to give you plausible examples.

I can see that; I did a lot of similar work with signal processing algorithms. None of what I did affected asymptotic complexity at all, though. The asymptotic complexity was tied to the algorithms chosen, and changing those was an issue of trading computational performance for system performance.

I pulled it up and found it; the problem involved modeling genome sequences as strings and finding possible substrings.

Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#232

Post by chris11 »

rianjs wrote: post #229
chris11 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once got a rejection from an internship application late one night a few hours after I applied. I wouldn't be really surprised if I had been automatically rejected. And my rejection might have been because the state university I went to was not specifically mentioned in the drop down list of schools, it was in the "other" category. I think I might have not gotten a rejection so quickly if I had been going to a targ…

More likely their internship program was full already.

It's definitely possible. It was a startup, I think they only had a few thousand employees. But I think applied in the fall. So their intern program probably filled up really fast if it was full.

Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#233

Post by cmrdporcupine »

estefan wrote: post #164
nostrebored wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Only a portion". And almost-perfectly is a big deal. You're not expected to write compiler-ready code, just to show that you understand what's happening under the hood. Which meshes up with practical expectations -- if you can't understand what potential bugs/space/time complexity you're introducing when leveraging a library, then you're a fundamentally worse coder than someone who can.

Except this is in fact bullshit since if you're ever working on some speed/memory critical code, that's the time to bother filling your brain with the different options available and picking the appropriate one. Carrying around arbitrary knowledge to show off is pointless. Most code most programmers write won't ever run at sufficient scale or be sufficiently critical that CPU or memory bounds will matter, and using e…

I agree.

But it's worth pointing out that a Google style interview also includes some portion which is "system design" oriented which would touch more on that kind of thing.

But they're more interested in avoiding false positives, than false negatives. So the process is designed to weed out most people.

Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#235

Post by collyw »

IMTDb wrote: post #116
collyw wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And many many more where it isn't. My current work, the problem isn't the algorithms that make the thing run slowly, its because the people who wrote it don't know how to use Django efficiently. Lots of loops in the application making database calls each time (our main page is making over 1000 database calls). A bit more thought in the database design, knowing a bit more about how Django's ORM works and you could do…

"Lots of loops making database calls each time" improved by "a bit more thought in the design" and "a bit of caching" sounds an awful lot like Big O analysis, and algorithmic optimisation even if it is on top on Django ORM.

Its not really. Its the same algorithmic complexity (the exception being adding appropriate database indexes), but shifting the where the computation is done.

Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#236

Post by stevenwiles »

nikmobi wrote: post #173
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A CS degree prevent you from making a lot of obvious (if you have a CS degree) and costly mistakes. I couldn't disagree more. I do not have a CS degree and have lead many teams of folks with a combination of having and not having them. It's a huge mixed bag and I'm not confident you can make a general statement in either direction. Yes CS can prepare you by knowing some of the basics but I've run into countless peo…

I agree with you for the most part, but I think if his sentence read: > A CS degree can prevent you from making a lot of obvious (if you have a CS degree) and costly mistakes. I think most people can agree that it doesn't provide any guarantee, but it definitely gives you a boost in the right direction. (For the record, I don't have a CS degree)

> A CS degree can prevent you from making a lot of obvious (if you have a CS degree) and costly mistakes.

That is just wrong. A degree is just a piece of paper. How is a piece of paper going to prevent you from making mistakes? It won't.

What you mean to say was this:

> Any intelligent person with reasonable CS knowledge will be able to work without making a lot of obvious and costly mistakes

I hope I've taught you something. :)

Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#237

Post by yashinm92 »

lamacase wrote: post #16
jcbeard wrote: post #8

Anybody else vaguely reminded of The Fountainhead's cover: http://www.steinerag.com/flw/Book%20Images/Fountainhead1994.... For some reason the combination of "imposter" and the colors evoked memories of an old paperback.

The cover actually appears to be one of the jpl "visions of the future" posters. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/images/superea... I hope the author has permission to use it?

Just bought the book. He has a few paragraphs on the cover image and states "Many thanks to NASA/JPL for allowing reuse."
Post reply on HN