So the hiring procedure is to optimize for people who adhere to the advice of a specific training manual that's not actually mentioned in the job posting? You just have to want to work there so much that you find out about it? What is it about that kind of candidate that makes them desirable? Obsequiousness?
I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
391–400 of 740 posts
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
From what I've heard from hiring managers, when you open a position and interview applicants without the use of headhunting, the majority of applicants are wildly under-qualified, even if they do have some relevant experience.
Also, I see no reason not to combine both a background check and a technical interview. You have no way of knowing what someone's actual contributions to a previous software project are, even with a background check; maybe they were about as productive as an observer even if they understood the project at a high enough level to explain it.
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
i mean if had to choose between no graph theory vs no ruby on rails...i would probably go with no ruby on rails
What if you had to choose between someone with a proven track record of building high quality software used by millions of people who has also shown they're capable of leading groups of people in successful projects but hasn't memorized the specific algorithm you asked about and another candidate who doesn't have as good of a track record but can totally nail that easy algorithm you asked for? Edit: Typos.
Would you choose one-hit-wonder over proven engineers (Jeff Dean, Sanjay, other ex SUN microsystems folks?) that lead high-profile projects?
I know that sounds rude... but one seems better to be a leader while others are better engineers would you agree?
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sure, but that's my point. So long as the interviewer is telling you what they'd actually like you to do, you should be able to just derive the algorithm you need to do it. At some point the algorithms become difficult enough (particularly if you add lots of constraints like efficiency) that it's pretty unreasonable to expect that in an interview though, and at that point it's a bad question.
Rather than memorizing a thousand algorithms, I generally focus on being able to solve problems simply, quickly, and elegantly, which will help in actually doing most jobs.
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wife and kids are (top) priorities, not excuses.
right but then you’ve made your choice and you live with it.
It's only in the tech industry that having a family isn't a regular, normal thing people do.
Maybe it being a choice with a negative association is more of a cover for the fact that most of us who choose this industry are extremely poor communicators and that an out-sized number of us _will not_ get married or have kids (and not by our own choice).
And I say that as someone without such attachments myself.
Or maybe we're okay with being exploited by employers who want us working extremely long hours for their benefit and the choice to keep the engineers away from the older, more normal folks with families is deliberate.
I would bet if you were to sample the average mid-career folks in non-tech groups at FAANGs, you would see normal (or even above average) numbers of people who have families and normal hours.
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#396When 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…
You are absolute right. I’m telling recruiters upfront that I will spend 0 time preparing and if it is a deal breaker - it is what it is.
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#397When 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 alg…
I’m a software developer first and foremost, I am a software architect second these days specializing in building stuff on top of AWS.
But I might try to do some algorithm type interview, but wouldn’t feel bad if I bombed it. In fact, the only algorithm type interview I have done in the last 10 years, they made me an offer but I declined it for another job that asked more architectural questions.
The way I see it, if I could write 65C02 and x86 assembly language programs in the 80s, I think I can handle the needs of your software as a service CRUD app.
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can't handle simple data structures problems you need to stay far, far away from software architecture.
In the real world software architecture is rarely about “data structures”. Software architecture is about teasing out the needs of the customer - whether that be internal or external - and knowing how to design systems that are maintainable, scalable, fault tolerant, etc.
Scalable, fault tolerant systems is a distributed systems problem, which is a harder form of data structures problem.
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#399When 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…
Bfs is just one of examples. I can ask you a question you will not be able to answer without knowing the answer. There is a reason it took researchers years to find those optimal solutions
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People just expect to be paid top dollar on their word. And their education, previous employment, etc. No one makes a neuro-surgeon perform a surgery before hiring them.
> No one makes a neuro-surgeon perform a surgery before hiring them. True, but I also know that a neurosurgeon graduated from an accredited school, did an internship at an accredited hospital, and then passed a standardized licensing exam. If we had that for engineers we wouldn't need to test their skills either. When I was doing hiring, I would see resumes of people with 10+ years of experience who couldn't write a…
> If we had that for engineers we wouldn't need to test their skills either.
I think we will, eventually. Other fields of engineering already do, of course. Software is new and not that many people have been killed by bad software (unlike bad buildings), but I think we'll get there.