I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days • Hacker News Board

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#321

Post by acpetrov » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 11:50 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #291

When I was a new college grad, I felt trapped by the fact that everywhere I looked they wanted several years of experience, and I had none yet. How can I get experience if it's required to get the job? Now that I am 51, I feel annoyed that all of these stories of interviews involve asking questions about algorithms that rarely come up in real coding, and if they do you should NOT be rolling your own code, you should…

I just graduated, so I'm not dealing with constant internship interviews anymore, but at the time I absolutely hated it.

My frustration isn't exactly like yours (my time is probably a lot less valuable). I feel that the questions are all geared at puzzle solvers.

If you're a puzzle solver, you love answers. You love digging into the details. You love finding out the basic components of a system. I think these are the people who excel in academics.

Almost every other intern I met once I got to the bay area was a puzzle solver. They were also competitive and had amazing grades. And these people LOVED algo questions. Over lunch, they could go through half a dozen questions.

I slipped through the cracks I guess. I'm bored by puzzles, have awful grades (and in a worse program), and not so competitive. What I do enjoy, however, is building up. I like modeling and being about to think at greater and greater levels of abstraction to solve problems that aren't puzzles, but instead open ended questions.

Anyway, I think both of these types of people have a place is software, and only one is given attention

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#322

Post by mancerayder » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 11:51 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #291

When I was a new college grad, I felt trapped by the fact that everywhere I looked they wanted several years of experience, and I had none yet. How can I get experience if it's required to get the job? Now that I am 51, I feel annoyed that all of these stories of interviews involve asking questions about algorithms that rarely come up in real coding, and if they do you should NOT be rolling your own code, you should…

Honestly, there are so many posts like yours on HN, it's a surprise companies don't change this ridiculous algorithms thing. Hiring managers here complain that candidates all lie and they need to weed them out. However, algorithms bias towards younger people, recently out of college, math hobbyists and people with a lot of free time.

Me, I tell them in the first phone screen, "I'm a Systems/DevOps guy, I don't do algorithms and whatnot so I'm just letting you know in advance in case you ask me to whiteboard something like that." So far I was only spurned once out of half a dozen screens employing this statement.

If you want to screen liars, there are a million ways to do it. Truth is, folks, most interviewers don't read resumes in depth, and they're not clever enough to interview for honesty.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#323

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 11:51 PM UTC

dcre wrote: post #237

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I've been out of college several decades, and if I wanted to go back into a programming job I would need several months to study these problems. Which is one of the things these problems really test: determination and effort. Look at the author of this piece - they said they studied a lot and did a ton of interviews over months. That alone is a huge positive signal that they would be someone I would want…

They really are irrelevant to the vast majority of software jobs. It's nice to be able to go deep when necessary, but that is very different from knowing a bunch of algorithms off the top of your head that you'll never have to implement.

I guess I'll answer from a different perspective: When I hired folks that knocked it out of the park on those kinds of technical interviews, I didn't ever have a problem with those employees from a technical skills perspective (other types of issues, like work ethic or interpersonal skills, sure). On the other hand, when I had folks who were borderline iffy on those types of questions, but we hired anyway due to success in other interviews, I came to regret that hiring decision fairly often (definitely not all the time, and some of the folks in this bucket were stellar, but certainly noticeably more technical aptitude problems on average).

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#324

Post by yuchi » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 11:52 PM UTC

ergothus wrote: post #311

rossdavidh wrote: post #291

When I was a new college grad, I felt trapped by the fact that everywhere I looked they wanted several years of experience, and I had none yet. How can I get experience if it's required to get the job? Now that I am 51, I feel annoyed that all of these stories of interviews involve asking questions about algorithms that rarely come up in real coding, and if they do you should NOT be rolling your own code, you should…

I share both of your concerns (while I was very lucky in getting initial experience, I know of other beginners that haven't/arent, so I'm very sympathetic.) . Started coding for work in '95. > was I wrong then? Or am I wrong now? Perhaps both. Neither, I think. The Algorithm interviews are bad for 90% of the positions out there, and experience matters much more than trivia, so you were right then. And today, everyone…

I’ll share my process:

1. The first interview must not be a technical assessment — identify shared interests, look for collaboration opportunities. You need to understand if the person in front of you will be someone you would work with for the next 10 years, their current technical skills have little to do with this.

2. At the end of the first interview, right before the logistic questions, assess how they position in the junior-senior axis — either with direct questions or by pushing them to the topic. Once you‘ve done that ask an evil surgically difficult question — the correctness of the answer is not what you‘re looking for: pay attention to how they present their (eventual) missing knowledge, or how the address the answer by giving context. A senior developer doesn’t know everything, but must know enough to manage gaps in their knowledge.

3. Search for young and talented people — search for the fire in their eyes. You want someone which, eventually, will reach goals by their own.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#325

Post by bytematic » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 11:52 PM UTC

kcmastrpc wrote: post #167

rdtsc wrote: post #128

> Leetcode Medium, Leetcode Hard, Cracking the Coding Interview ... I feel like there is something wrong with the industry. Here is a person applying to do mobile development and they need to spend weeks and weeks drilling binary tree inversions and trapping rain water ( https://leetcode.com/problems/trapping-rain-water/ ) etc. I was interviewing at AWS and I don't think most of the people I talked to even looked at…

No, these tests are carefully devised to target young college graduates who will excel at these types of interviews because the material is still fresh and they have the free time to study. This is age discrimination disguised as "technical proficiency" exercises.

News to me students have the free time to study considering the hiring season is mid-semester during some of the hardest classes. Not to mention if they are working too

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#326

Post by jahaja » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 12:00 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #307

jahaja wrote: post #195

It's interesting that software interviews have degenerated into literal auditions. Just as with auditions, you need to train specifically for them. Is there really a reason why software jobs can't hire in a blue-collar fashion where there's a background/experience + sanity check and a subsequent trial period? Even looking beyond that, is there any similar profession where interviews like these take place? I'm startin…

Would you want to work with someone who's just a warm body that claims to have experience in the field? Especially in such a high paying field where any random is highly incentivized to just pretend they know how to make software even if they can't pass fizzbuzz? Clearly interviews are flawed. But I've worked with warm bodies hired through h1b-abuse programs and no matter how much they claim to know about something,…

Why would that warm-bodies scenario even happen? I think there's an assumption here that these tests actually provide a lower false positive rate than a solid experience check or whatever non-puzzle interviews do. After all, one stark difference to an audition for a ballet, is that you can't fake your ballet skills, however, memorizing CS stuff may actually be possible. Furthermore, the hard part to memorize are the things that would be asked in a good non-puzzle interview anyway.

Clearly there's room for pragmatism for such as interns, newly graduated, relocations etc.

Honestly, I think they're primarily filtering out based on themselves as the target image.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#327

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 12:02 AM UTC

bytematic wrote: post #325

kcmastrpc wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, these tests are carefully devised to target young college graduates who will excel at these types of interviews because the material is still fresh and they have the free time to study. This is age discrimination disguised as "technical proficiency" exercises.

News to me students have the free time to study considering the hiring season is mid-semester during some of the hardest classes. Not to mention if they are working too

[deleted]

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#328

Post by acpetrov » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 12:03 AM UTC

anxman wrote: post #68

decebalus1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would anyone be willing to work there if they had offers from companies that make products that help people and don't treat society with contempt? I have someone who just went there. Because of money, basically.

You own someone?

No, no, he sold to Facebook for a big exit

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#329

Post by spyspy » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 12:06 AM UTC

cornellwright wrote: post #320

rossdavidh wrote: post #291

When I was a new college grad, I felt trapped by the fact that everywhere I looked they wanted several years of experience, and I had none yet. How can I get experience if it's required to get the job? Now that I am 51, I feel annoyed that all of these stories of interviews involve asking questions about algorithms that rarely come up in real coding, and if they do you should NOT be rolling your own code, you should…

Is BFS really that hard, especially if the interviewer is willing to talk it out with you and doesn't care a lot about finding the most efficient solution possible? I've been out of college more than 10 years now, do a mix of hardware and software (so am not coding all day everyday) and I can hack together algorithms like BFS if I spend a couple of minutes thinking about it. I get that there are many awful interviewe…

You and a lot of other commenters are getting hung up on the BFS example. It's just that - an example. There are dozens of algorithms that are "common" enough to be asked about and diminishing returns to having them all memorized.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#330

Post by m0zg » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 12:06 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #295

m0zg wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's only real "fault" is that the "wrong" person got elected president in the US. The rest is just a politically motivated pile-on with tenuous evidence IMO, which wouldn't even be a subject of "vast public discourse" if someone else won. >> negative consequences of facebook use Do those "academics" also research the positive consequences as well? I'm in touch with my high school and university friends to this…

plenty of people have been talking about the negatives of facebook long before the 2016 election w.r.t privacy, mental health, and whether we actually benefit from having this kind of tool as part of our culture

There's no such thing as "our" culture as a homogenous, averaged mass. I benefit from FB. If you don't, that's fine, don't use it. But don't tell me what's best for _me_.