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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

#291

Post by vippy »

game_the0ry wrote: post #108
mkl95 wrote: post #40

My career path in tech so far has been junior engineer -> mid level -> senior -> tech lead. As I've progressed through that path, I have had literally no opportunities of applying the stuff I've learnt on HackerRank, save for a couple of interviews. At this point I'm convinced that the focus of those interviews was entirely wrong. Once you pass those tests and get hired, you will be dealing with tons of legacy code r…

Bingo. It should be telling that there are a number of, usually for-profit, resources for prepping for just the interview process: * leetcode * Cracking the Coding Interview * Elements of Programing Interviews * Interview Kickstart, which costs like $5500, is a bootcamp just for passing interviews * educative.io * algoexpert.io That being said, I might just play along with the DS / Algo interview game. Having an inte…

No post body was provided.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#292

Post by watwut »

ketzo wrote: post #263
stillblue wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you suggest instead?

I mean, I don't even have to suggest; I can let the OP suggest instead. > Having an interview process that is artificially arduous Make your interviews less artificially arduous. > way outside the expectations of the job duties Re-design your interview questions to be more in line with the actual job. > leetcode monkeys who can barely deploy and manage k8s cluster on AWS See previous suggestion. If you want my person…

> leetcode monkeys

I hate this from someone who manages interviews. They are leetcode monkeys, because they are not dumb and this is what gets them rewards and jobs. If he changes the criteria, they will change what they spend time on.

But, instead, he chooses to insult them ... for doing exactly what he rewards.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#293

Post by lmm »

pc86 wrote: post #249
urthor wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"One common misconception I keep seeing is the idea that the interview result revolves around solving the question." Candidates know this. The issue is: Interviewers who do their job, and build a broad based picture of a developer's skills and give fair ratings, are rare. The perception is 75% interviewers don't even bother. They're tired, they're unmotivated. Their annual bonus doesn't reflect "conducts fair and bal…

I had an interview a few weeks ago that ended in an offer and was basically a verbatim Spiral Matrix problem from LeetCode (they had changed the starting direction of the spiral but that's it). Didn't run it once because we ran out of time, and when I pasted it into LC after the interview, noticed several errors to the point where it's honestly probably better we didn't run it. The interviewer was super engaged the w…

That sounds even worse in terms of setting realistic expectations for what the job will involve day-to-day. How many times is someone actually going to redesign a system like that?

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#294

Post by lmm »

jltsiren wrote: post #253
dionidium wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Algorithm design is a skill you can learn. It probably correlates with IQ, but you have to control for experience to see it. Experience is certainly more important than intelligence. In my experience, algorithm design is primarily pattern matching. You have a toolkit with a set of abstractions for modeling the problem and a set of algorithmic techniques for solving it. If you have the right tools in the toolkit, pote…

> primarily pattern matching. You have a toolkit with a set of abstractions for modeling the problem and a set of algorithmic techniques for solving it. If you have the right tools in the toolkit, potential solutions will jump out. You then pick a promising solution and figure out the details. If you don't have the right tools, you have to go back to reading or start building new tools from basic principles. That can take hours, days, weeks, months, or years, if you succeed at all.

But you're claiming this is somehow not "intelligence"?

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#295

Post by lmm »

dmkirwan wrote: post #126
mkl95 wrote: post #40

My career path in tech so far has been junior engineer -> mid level -> senior -> tech lead. As I've progressed through that path, I have had literally no opportunities of applying the stuff I've learnt on HackerRank, save for a couple of interviews. At this point I'm convinced that the focus of those interviews was entirely wrong. Once you pass those tests and get hired, you will be dealing with tons of legacy code r…

I totally agree with you. Some of the content there seems relevant to CS in general, but I hate the fact that you need to study content that you won't use on the job in order to pass an interview. It doesn't make sense to me. I've seen new grads perform as well as senior engineers with these Leetcode-style questions so I've stopped using them to assess engineers. Further, I know we're specifically trying to assess te…

> I've seen new grads perform as well as senior engineers with these Leetcode-style questions so I've stopped using them to assess engineers.

Good point, it could start a real crisis if the industry collectively admitted that senior engineers are no better than new grads.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#296

Post by lmm »

dvt wrote: post #3

If you don't think modern interviewing practices are a problem, this should be proof enough. Not only do we have an entire programming book sub-genre dedicated to this nonsense, but now we're also wasting class time on memorizing sorting algorithms. Fantastic. Of course, we're going to see the inevitable arguments that "40% of the people I interview lie on resumes" or "I interviewed this guy once, and he couldn't eve…

> I've told at least 5 or 6 companies that wanted to white-board me to suck it. It's honestly insulting that I'm forced to white-board when I have two books with my name on them (published by Apress), contributions to Golang (small commits, but they still got me in the AUTHORS file), and OSS projects with hundreds of stars on GitHub.

So you've done a bunch of stuff that's easy to game, that requires me to learn a bunch to even evaluate whether it's good or not, and you feel insulted by being asked to do some honest coding? I'd far rather hire a fresh grad who did decently on leetcode and was able to hold a vaguely normal conversation in the interview. In my experience that has a much higher rate of finding people who will contribute positively to actually getting the work done.

There's nothing wrong with the interview process, just a bunch of entitled prima donnas who are always going to think they're better than any standard process. You're better off without those anyway.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#297

Post by deltaonefour »

ketzo wrote: post #263
stillblue wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you suggest instead?

I mean, I don't even have to suggest; I can let the OP suggest instead. > Having an interview process that is artificially arduous Make your interviews less artificially arduous. > way outside the expectations of the job duties Re-design your interview questions to be more in line with the actual job. > leetcode monkeys who can barely deploy and manage k8s cluster on AWS See previous suggestion. If you want my person…

This means all salaries go back to 100k. The salaries in silicon valley normalize with india.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#298

Post by gmadsen »

game_the0ry wrote: post #108
mkl95 wrote: post #40

My career path in tech so far has been junior engineer -> mid level -> senior -> tech lead. As I've progressed through that path, I have had literally no opportunities of applying the stuff I've learnt on HackerRank, save for a couple of interviews. At this point I'm convinced that the focus of those interviews was entirely wrong. Once you pass those tests and get hired, you will be dealing with tons of legacy code r…

Bingo. It should be telling that there are a number of, usually for-profit, resources for prepping for just the interview process: * leetcode * Cracking the Coding Interview * Elements of Programing Interviews * Interview Kickstart, which costs like $5500, is a bootcamp just for passing interviews * educative.io * algoexpert.io That being said, I might just play along with the DS / Algo interview game. Having an inte…

Personally, I'd much rather rather have a strong understanding of Algo/DS than deploy K8s clusters.

To me, not only is that an annoying external cognitive load, but one that will probably be irrelevant within the decade.

I use my knowledge of graphs quite frequency, and what was true about graphs in the 60s is still true today.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#299

Post by trinovantes »

mettamage wrote: post #107
Firmwarrior wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I had the choice between a Caltech grad who had all A's and no experience or a student from some random state school who had interned every summer and contributed to open source, I'd pick the latter. I really wish someone had explained this to me while I was in college.. I had ONE professor who'd actually worked in the real world who explained it, but all the other professors were lifetime academics who just par…

A lot of talent is wasted by young people doing their utmost best at uni only to find out that no one cared. I applied to FAANG after graduating CS and no one got back to me. A friend of mine in the HFT world told me “I know how hard some of your courses were. But you can’t highlight them on your cv because no one will believe you that they were that hard. And even if they did, they wouldn’t believe that those skills…

This is partially why same alumni hire each other as they already have a priori knowledge of the education the other has received e.g. whether or not a course is difficult/easy etc.

Back in undergrad, I was talking to a hiring manager who was an alumni from my school that said if he will hire anyone no questions asked if he sees anyone with X course on their transcript/resume (listing the project from the course)

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#300

Post by pewpew2020 »

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 pay for a new grad (even non US citizens) entering Amazon is 120k+. This not low at all. It should not be mind boggling why someone would choose to interview at Amazon.
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