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

My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

lmjabreu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 295 posts

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#271

Post by madez »

nsxwolf wrote: post #244
madez wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they intentionally asked you an impossible question that is not obviously unsolveable to see how you react when given and how you approach hard problems.

Here are your options: 1. You either know immediately that it is impossible and you say so, which means you've encountered the problem and its related research before. 2. You are a savant, like Kim Peek, and work out the solution to a PHd level research problem in your head in a few minutes, giving the answer that it is impossible. 3. Pretend to be (2) by already knowing (1), but having a good poker face and then fak…

There are more option than the following scenarios:

(1-3). Know the solution already or be a genius and find the solution surprisingly fast.

4. Sit there feeling stupid.

The idea is to give you an extraordinarily hard problem without the expectation that you'll solve it. The reasoning of the employer is the following:

I. You fall into the options (1-3) and you are either a genius or the question was too easy. Either way its not bad for you.

II. You don't have enough knowledge at hand to approach the problem. Then you do either what described in option 4. xor you accept and be honest when you don't know something and you know what to do next; identify information you are missing and how you can get it.

Since the case I. is rare and the case II. gives the employer a good picture of you it's a good question for an interview.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#272

Post by gaius »

downandout wrote: post #135

Though this isn't as bad as many I've read, stories like this are the reason I have never applied to work at any of these large firms (Google, Apple, etc.). I have been a full-time developer for more than 20 years. I have 4 software patents to my name, one of which formed the basis of a startup that was acquired for $64 million. I know a few people at Facebook and Google (not at Apple), and I am definitely in the sam…

Interviews weighted towards undergrad topics, are just a way to slip ageism past HR, who don't know that dicking around with linked lists and hand-coding sorts aren't what real actual working programmers do all day.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#273

Post by gaius »

EnderMB wrote: post #180
downandout wrote: post #135

Though this isn't as bad as many I've read, stories like this are the reason I have never applied to work at any of these large firms (Google, Apple, etc.). I have been a full-time developer for more than 20 years. I have 4 software patents to my name, one of which formed the basis of a startup that was acquired for $64 million. I know a few people at Facebook and Google (not at Apple), and I am definitely in the sam…

In a similar vein, I'd also like to know how many people manage to land jobs at the Google's and Facebook's of the world, and ultimately prove to be less-than-spectacular developers. I dropped out of a masters degree to join a startup as a .NET developer, but kept in touch with a few guys finishing there. One of them now works for Google. He was always great in the algorithm classes, and he knew his theory reasonably…

Let's be honest, 99% of Google employees are not working on hard problems like self-driving cars, they're just finding new things to slap ads on. You might need to be impressive in a very narrow way to get in, but the work isn't going to be that challenging.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#274

Post by mentat »

roylez wrote: post #228
downandout wrote: post #135

Though this isn't as bad as many I've read, stories like this are the reason I have never applied to work at any of these large firms (Google, Apple, etc.). I have been a full-time developer for more than 20 years. I have 4 software patents to my name, one of which formed the basis of a startup that was acquired for $64 million. I know a few people at Facebook and Google (not at Apple), and I am definitely in the sam…

Sometimes it was not only intimidating. Several months ago I had interviews with apple for a devops position. While most interviewers were friendly, there was a very aggressive one. He started with "I am going to ask you some of my favorite questions", and the tone of the interview went sour. Most of the questions should be from the skill sets he was mostly proud in but remotely related to the requirements of the pos…

I've interviewed at Amazon and Google. Amazon was just poorly structured overall. Google really tried hard to make the experience good, but my last interview was one of these where he had a particular very clever and very proprietary method to solve the question he asked and wanted to see if I could guess it. I could not. Though he ended up telling me about it and it was interesting, reflecting back on the experience I thought it was not very useful.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#275

Post by mentat »

nvarsj wrote: post #212
downandout wrote: post #135

Though this isn't as bad as many I've read, stories like this are the reason I have never applied to work at any of these large firms (Google, Apple, etc.). I have been a full-time developer for more than 20 years. I have 4 software patents to my name, one of which formed the basis of a startup that was acquired for $64 million. I know a few people at Facebook and Google (not at Apple), and I am definitely in the sam…

I feel the same way. Every time I think about applying to, e.g. Google, and start looking at how I need to prepare, I realize it's going to take around 40hrs of algorithm prep followed by a gruelling interview process. And at the end, I may fail due to interview nerves or whatever. It's hard to justify so much time. Then again, maybe working at these big companies is really worth it (many people seem to think so!). N…

Doing the review was useful for me in prepping for an interview at Google. I really learned a bunch of stuff that I'd been just brushing over for years. If you are just doing it to interview, that's probably not using the opportunity well.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#276

Post by gaius »

collyw wrote: post #227
hackerboos wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur. As a contractor in the UK, you are likely not paying National Insurance contributions, are able to write off mileage and other expenses, can reduce your tax liability with dividends. Plus you'd still get access to the NHS. I'm perm at the moment, but if I was a contractor I'd be saving a significant amount of money.

You ought to be paying National Insurance.

There are a lot of people like this in the UK, not just in IT, the BBC, the media, even the government are full of them. They look like employees, quack like employees, but dodge PAYE. They are the problem, not a couple of billionaires with Swiss bank accounts.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#277

Post by kjs3 »

I got roped into one of these idiotic interviews at a Very Important Company.

Them: How would you solve (well understood, theoretical and tedious to solve problem). Me: I'd Google it. Them: That's cheating. I want to understand how you think about the problem. Me: We're not in school. You'd be paying me to be efficient and solve problems. Why would I waste time on something I can Google. That's how I think about the problem.

And that was about the end of it.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#278

Post by mgcross »

raverbashing wrote: post #178
adamnemecek wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just wait until the circus recruiters get a whiff of your profile

Don't worry, they will come back They only grep the CVs for words, if you put you're a lion tamer, archeologist, but has the word PHP in your CV (or something similar) you'll get a flood of IT jobs

Yep. A good while ago, I added T-shirts, short hair, fig newtons, beer, speeding and disorderly conduct to my list of skills. Doesn't matter.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#279

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

>> I invested around £4000 (~$6000) of my time (2 weeks @ £400/day rate) into that article, I’ve written 8 of the total 16 topics I intended to, and replicated dozens of Apple logos which I made freely available on Dribbble. (terrible ROI)

that's dedication

>> So when Apple asks me if I want to help improve their Developer Documentation: I’m in.

(rofl) I have never seen anyone put in so much effort/investment for so little return. IMO his creativity and drive belongs in a start-up. pearls to pigs I guess, but sure he doesn't see it that way

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#280

Post by foobarqux »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #121
foobarqux wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But no one seems to spend time on trying to figure out how to do it right or even how well the current methods perform.

Studying people is much harder than doing math proofs or experimenting with chemicals.

I meant that corporations should be trying to figure this stuff out, not academics.
Post reply on HN