Live data from Hacker News

Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

aheze.substack.com

301–310 of 399 posts

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#301
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the word "wageslave" to describe 300k TC office workers is out of touch at best and downright offensive at worst.

Huh, its like calling couch potato is offensive to someone is offensive who watch TV and sit in couch all day because their TV is 77" OLED, couch is full grain leather and beer artisanal. If someone with 300K+ TC gets offended by this term, playing world's smallest violin for those snowflakes would be most appropriate.

Offensive as in “offensive to real wage slaves”

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#302
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just ask, and we'd answer "it's just a simple problem so both of us can see what it's like to work together." You'd be surprised how many people show up who don't actually know how to write a for loop. And if you didn't like the experience you wouldn't want to work for us so the interview would be a success too.

you don't actually believe that "work together" crap do you? You realize you're dangling a job over their head, right? There is a power imbalance. You'll never see "work together" in an interview because you're not colleagues on equal footing.

Often candidates already have a job and are looking to see if they want a change. There's parity in such situations.

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#303
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just ask, and we'd answer "it's just a simple problem so both of us can see what it's like to work together." You'd be surprised how many people show up who don't actually know how to write a for loop. And if you didn't like the experience you wouldn't want to work for us so the interview would be a success too.

Come up with better problems, please .

What would you recommend?

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#304

I think the sort of more general point, rather than "build something great that someone at Apple notices", is that Graduate and Internship programmes are scale businesses. They get thousands of people applying and will hire atleast dozens, probably some FANG are hiring hundreds. So yes, we're all special snowflakes, but that's not what this process is for. It's about harsh rounds of easy to design problems to winnow…

Most of this is correct - But Faangs have also been having their managers (eg EMs and PMs) do reach outs to make it look authentic - only to forward you to a recruiter and a standard 6 hour interview round (I know because I am not special and have fallen and almost fallen for this trap dozens of times)

Always nice when the startup CEO emails you directly via CRM automation about your unique potential at the company and when you agree to chat he hands you off to the "senior technical recruiter". Always makes me feel extra special :)

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#305
post #220
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want to become a wage slave if you've already built something that people want (thus can monetize it yourself)?

If you care about achieving a particular mission, you could view joining a large funded organization as an opportunity to achieve that mission with higher likelihood or speed. For example, if you had an idea about planting trees via drones and a big company said "come to our company and we can get this launched at scale as early as 2026". Then you think about how long it would take to do it on your own and you'd stil…

Decoupling an income from the time spend on work.

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#306
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah, yes. The American Dream of living in a 50 year old shitbox fixer that costs $2M in the suburbs of Cupertino. If you can make that much remote out in Nebraska then sure, fine. There are people doing a lot worse. But when doing much better looks like that, what even is the point?

Living in Nebraska when you have the means to live in civilization is a punishment. Why would someone choose to live in a place where the nearest restaurant is a Denny’s 45 mins away?

Quiet and peaceful, cleaner air, you can play loud music and stomp around without upsetting neighbors, and for many people most of their time is spent on a computer anyway.

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the word "wageslave" to describe 300k TC office workers is out of touch at best and downright offensive at worst.

I do think it's still true in my experience that someone with the the capabilities to build useful things on their own tend to not stay very long at these giant companies, unless for specific visa reasons

depends entirely on the person. The startup life isn't for everyone, especially people with families that value stability and life balance over the idea of millions.

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#308
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the Graphing Calculator story is not something that could work after approximately the turn of the century. Security tightened up considerably sometime around then.

Possibly, but a great deal of security only works because people never really tests it. There’s a few cases of people walking into ‘secure’ data centers plugging in their laptops only to realize they’re at the wrong company. People while swipe badges, act befuddled because it didn’t work, and then get let into the building. Or get out of an elevator with a bunch of people and just walk in as part of a crowd which hol…

The "badging" culture at Apple is pretty extreme. It is routine and totally expected for a low-level worker bee to watch and call out a VP behind him who fails to badge through any external or internally locked door. One of the highlights of my time there was once having to remind Craig Federighi that he forgot to badge into a secured area.

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah, yes. The American Dream of living in a 50 year old shitbox fixer that costs $2M in the suburbs of Cupertino. If you can make that much remote out in Nebraska then sure, fine. There are people doing a lot worse. But when doing much better looks like that, what even is the point?

people choose to live in bay area not because its housing situation, but despite of it. mainly because cutting edge R&D type technology has been developed in the area and alternatives to SV have not developed yet. its not even pay - I would say bay area pay is bad, because of cost of living & taxation. But opportunities for growth are unmatched in bay area

The point is you can't adequately judge whether a job counts as "wageslave" just from the salary. A $300K job where houses cost $2M is like a $30K job where houses cost $200K.

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#310
post #164

This should probably be titled "getting an internship" at apple?

I'm still confused on how the author got discovered. It's very impressive for what I assume is a 18-21 year old who hasn't even gone to college yet. Made a photos IOS app, got 600 likes, and happened to find the eye of someone at Apple.

Good eye on the manager/employee, but it almost feels like winning the lottery.

Post reply on HN