41–50 of 53 posts
This article strikes really close to home for me. The company I had worked for nearly seven years laid off a bunch of people and I could see where things were headed. Fortunately I've been doing mobile development and it's particularly in demand right now, so I was able to land a new job in a few months. > Interview at Least Every Other Year If you struggle to communicate under pressure like I do, then it's important…
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The notation may not be valuable in itself, but the concept is very important.
Right, question was about the notation itself -- I understand that optimization is important.
If you have a basic understanding complexity you almost certainly have seen and can more or less read the notation, as you probably needed it in order to develop that understanding of complexity in the first place. Whether you really need to understand some of the finer details, if you should have a tattoo of the Master theorem, well, I don't know.
("You" being whoever, not you).
Someone convince me that Big-O notation is useful anywhere outside of interviews. Because I don't believe it is.
I cannot agree with this at all. Conflating duration with personal growth is the problem here. People who get "comfortable" in a job and just keep doing it for multiple years, those folks will find that all of a sudden[1] things have changed and they don't have a job and they don't know what they want to do. But that is because they stopped growing, not because they spent too long in their job. [1] "Sudden" to the pe…
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at my startup, the dress code is casual/sandals-ok except when meeting with clients. as a rule, you never want to be under-dressed when meeting with people who you want to give you money. being wrong on this even once could cost you money, possibly a great deal of it. if you show up in a suit and tie and everyone else is wearing sandals, the proper etiquette is to say "mind if i remove my tie?" and then remove your t…
The obvious solution is to enquire about dress code at the company at the time of setting the interview. It doesn't have to be awkward at all - 'what do people wear to the office?' is a perfectly reasonable question. If they say 'business casual', then you can go +1 and wear a suit. If they say 'casual' then turn up in business casual. If they laugh and say 'whatever' then just turn up looking smart and confident. Th…
the point is not to fit in, the point is to minimize the risk of sartorial faux pas to zero. ZERO.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The notation may not be valuable in itself, but the concept is very important.
Right, question was about the notation itself -- I understand that optimization is important.
Knowing the complexity of algorithms is important, correct? How would you go about teaching something like that to a student? Limit yourself to generic terms like linear vs exponential? Would that student have as nuanced an understanding of the subject compared to if he or she learned Big-O notation?
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The obvious solution is to enquire about dress code at the company at the time of setting the interview. It doesn't have to be awkward at all - 'what do people wear to the office?' is a perfectly reasonable question. If they say 'business casual', then you can go +1 and wear a suit. If they say 'casual' then turn up in business casual. If they laugh and say 'whatever' then just turn up looking smart and confident. Th…
yeah, this works, until the boss's boss is also there unannounced, in a suit. meeting of equals? not anymore. it happens in both technical and executive interviews. the point is not to fit in, the point is to minimize the risk of sartorial faux pas to zero. ZERO.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
yeah, this works, until the boss's boss is also there unannounced, in a suit. meeting of equals? not anymore. it happens in both technical and executive interviews. the point is not to fit in, the point is to minimize the risk of sartorial faux pas to zero. ZERO.
At many tech companies in SV (not even startups - tech companies like Amazon, Google, etc), it would be a sartorial faux pas to wear a suit to an engineering interview.
you have this impression because your typical engineer will wear a cheap, ill-fitting suit he bought the day before. this will make him look like a schlubby teenager trying to make a good impression among his cooler peers, instead of a manicured professional.
also, the suit isn't going to make you any smarter. you have to be competent. engineers also shy away from suits because they see morons wearing suits. correlation != causation.
show up looking like vint cerf, and the story is different. if you don't know who vint cerf is, look it up. he happens to work for google at this point in time.
http://pseudodoctor.com/2012/06/vint-cerf-is-the-architect/
scroll to the bottom.
you lost me at wearing a suit...
One time, I wore a suit to an interview (where the recruiter forgot to tell me to wear casual) and was literally mocked for doing so. Not just a good natured ribbing either, this was a good five minutes of really angry tear-down. And this was no startup, they had probably 200+ people. I got to stand there in front of maybe ten interviewers getting "dressed down" for my attire, like some sort of boot camp grunt. I lost all respect for my interviewers at that moment. If a group is so single-minded that me dressing up a little "too much" gets mocking, I'm happy working elsewhere. This same group also picked on me for using Linux instead of a Mac.
If conforming is so important to a group that someone dressing up or using a different OS is so offensive they cannot even pretend to be decent people, I'm happy to see that signal as early as possible.
But please, if you find yourself acting like this: turning down (or even openly mocking) candidates for their formal attire, please consider that you are hiring people who disregarded common wisdom about interviewing. You are hiring people who, when dealing with something as important as interviewing, decided "it's recommended I do x to increase my chances, I'm too cool|awesome|unprofessional to bother with that!"
That doesn't mean mock someone for being sloppy either, I'm just tired of clothes being such a big deal either way.
you lost me at wearing a suit...
In my experience, it is very common for the recruiter and/or HR person to suggest what you should wear. If they don't, I would think it somewhat safer not to wear a suit to most tech interviews. (As much as I know y'all want to be all contrarian - "I'm not a nerd, I love looking smart!")
Now I just ask everytime, "tell me what to wear". If there's no recruiter, I'll cold email. Stupid clothes.