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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

#31

Post by TLadd »

Last time I interviewed, I thought about how it probably would have benefitted me to take one less class a semester in college and just drill leetcode-style questions in that time. Given how almost all "prestigious" companies use these problems heavily for interviewing, it's likely to increase earnings more than any other course.

I think what caltech is doing here makes a lot of sense and demonstrates an awareness of the realities of interviewing at companies a lot of their students will want to work at. College is also a better time to build up this skill than later when other responsibilities tend to pile up.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#32

Post by Veserv »

For context, this is a CS11 class which is a catch-all small form factor elective (3 units, average class is 9 units, units are supposed to be that many hours per week) that is used to offer a dozen or so small topics that are not extensive enough to warrant a full class. In any given term they will usually offer various CS11s for learning new programming languages and a few other random topics with some being run by grad or undergrad students.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#34

Post by interview_anon »

Apocryphon wrote: post #28

Tech interview discussions always seem to run the same course and hit the same points, so I'll repeat one of mine: What's wrong with the idea of turning the standard Leetcode algorithms interview into a license that only needs to be completed once, or maybe once every 5-8 years, similar to what physicians must undergo? Much more efficient than having to retake it with every single company during an interview cycle.

No post body was provided.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#35

Post by kolbe »

amznbyebyebye wrote: post #22

So wait you are smart enough to get into caltech, smart enough to graduate with a degree in CS. And yet the curriculum on its own does not do a good job enough on its own to prepare you for getting a job? Very hard to graduate with a decent GPA in CS at caltech and not be able to thrive as an entry level engineer. If you got B’s in caltech CS I’d make you an offer for 200k+ without blinking or even asking you anythin…

This is probably because interview questions are more often than not just brainteasers stacked on top of into-level content. Much in the same way that juniors in high school taking Calculus still need to study for SAT math: it's not really consistent with measuring the content of advanced courses at top places.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#36

Post by giantg2 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #28

Tech interview discussions always seem to run the same course and hit the same points, so I'll repeat one of mine: What's wrong with the idea of turning the standard Leetcode algorithms interview into a license that only needs to be completed once, or maybe once every 5-8 years, similar to what physicians must undergo? Much more efficient than having to retake it with every single company during an interview cycle.

I'd say cert, not license. I don't think anyone should have to pass a LeetCode exam to professionally code. But otherwise a good idea.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#37

Post by relyks »

I understand part of the point of posting this is to demonstrate the problems with the educational system for CS majors and the hiring practices of the industry, but what is the actual point of sharing it here if the resources aren't open for all of us?

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#38

Post by jmchuster »

dvt wrote: post #18
barry-cotter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've interviewed dozens of people and never had that experience, because I check OSS contributions, professional history, and ask for code samples before I even engage with a candidate in a technical discussion. How are you supposed to hire 50,000 people a year with a process like that? It seems unlikely there are much more than 100,000 people with significant OSS contributions in total. Published material isn’t go…

> 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…

It's pretty simple to get a rough estimate of how many people you need to hire a year. You take your engineering count, say ~10,000, how long engineers stay at each company, say 4 years, and you come out to 2,500 engineers you need to hire every year, assuming you don't need to grow, to maintain the status quo. So then you take a larger company like google, with ~100,000 engineers, and they'll need to hire at least 25,000 engineers a year.

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#39

Post by mherdeg »

Apocryphon wrote: post #28

Tech interview discussions always seem to run the same course and hit the same points, so I'll repeat one of mine: What's wrong with the idea of turning the standard Leetcode algorithms interview into a license that only needs to be completed once, or maybe once every 5-8 years, similar to what physicians must undergo? Much more efficient than having to retake it with every single company during an interview cycle.

Is this the Triplebyte model?

Re: Caltech's CS interview prep course

#40

Post by mkl95 »

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 riddled with dumb queries, questionable code quality, and very often the wrong stack for the problem at hand.

I'd be OK with modern interviews if they reflected the job you will be doing to a reasonable degree. But knowing the state of the industry I feel that they fall somewhere between gatekeeping and a bait & switch scheme.

If you haven't spent enough time practising those problems, you will look like an idiot. If you have spent enough time practising them, your expectations will be high, and you will feel scammed when you read the steaming shit your new employer wants you to improve.

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