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

#401

Post by throwawaymath » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 1:19 AM UTC

ForrestN wrote: post #351

citrablue wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that FB is harmful to everyone, instead of a subset of people. I don't think that's very well proven. The mental health studies also have a bit of a correlation issue, similar to drug use. I think sugar is a more apt analogy than smoking. Facebook, like sugars, provides a source of a required human input. (Calories/human connection). Overdone, both are harmful. Tobacco is a much more charged analogy, and…

The degree of harm is correlated with the degree of use, just like cigarettes. If you smoke a handful of cigarettes a year, it probably won't affect you much at all. But if you use cigarettes multiple times a day for years, you'll do real harm to yourself. That's exactly true of Facebook. Yes, if you occasionally check in and are diligent about how you use facebook, you might escape harm. But unlike sugar, this sligh…

> The degree of harm is correlated with the degree of use, just like cigarettes. If you smoke a handful of cigarettes a year, it probably won't affect you much at all. But if you use cigarettes multiple times a day for years, you'll do real harm to yourself. That's exactly true of Facebook.

That's also true of just about anything humans can consume. For example, sugar.

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

#402

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 1:20 AM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #398

scarface74 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes but unless you are actually working on creating the system that other people implement, you are just using work made by others. You don’t need to know the ins and outs of various gossip protocols.

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

#403

Post by LearnerHerzog » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 1:22 AM 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 cannot spend hours and hours studying up on these algorithms, there are much more important things (real coding-related things) which I need to learn about, to the extent I have time to do that.

Are "real code-related things" really much more important if it only takes hours and hours to learn something that might get you an offer at one of these companies?

Perhaps those hours and hours are actually far more valuable 'financially' speaking than a lifetime of studying code that is valuable 'technically' speaking. I don't doubt that some of the big name companies use rarely-used algorithms with battle-tested solutions on purpose JUST to see if you prepared for battle. They look for non-technical smarts because they have no shortage of technically prodigious applicants.

At Google, with over 400 applicants for every position, they have no shortage of technically-competent engineers. They look for people who think way outside the box and try new things, sometimes resulting in industry defining inventiveness. It's ~10 times harder to get hired at Google than get into Harvard.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stanphelps/2014/08/05/cracking-...

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

#404

Post by manfredo » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 1:23 AM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #203

m0zg wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not an argument against FB per se. That's an argument against anything social-network-like in general, because there's nothing that makes FB uniquely suitable. If anything, because of its vast resources and investment in AI, FB is better positioned to respond to adversarial use.

> That's an argument against anything social-network-like in general, because there's nothing that makes FB uniquely suitable. Then why did they choose FB when there are so many other group-chat type websites out there? I mean, Friendster is still around, or LinkedIn, or...

Probably because it simply has the biggest userbase.

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

#405

Post by Jach » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 1:24 AM UTC

djcapelis wrote: post #365

Jach wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And should, if you have the option. There's the kicker, no? A lot of human technological progress was made under unfortunate (to put it mildly) harm-filled circumstances, and a lot of that wouldn't have been made at all otherwise because the option to make it with a cleaner conscience simply wasn't there. However if you do ever take such a role, despite its context, even if you have a clear conscience, I'd ask to t…

> There's the kicker, no? Not really, for almost everyone who works there. I know a few exceptions. A rare few. Look, I'm not arguing that we go string up all facebook engineers from the nearest tree. I'm merely saying that it is in fact quite reasonable to say that you shouldn't work for a company that is actively causing harm. And that there is "cool work" being done there does not obviate that. And yes, good resea…

> It's better to instead do good research at a good place.

I don't disagree. My logic is that sometimes the only place to do good research you're interested in and where you can have an impact is at one of these not-good, or not-so-good, places. If you can go elsewhere, of course, do so. But if you can't, I'm not going to tell you off.

I don't really disagree with much of anything else you wrote either. Most FB engineers aren't working on React/HHVM (or now Hack? That's thankfully been something I haven't had to follow but I have recognized its broader impact)/the next of these things or some other cool research project in program analysis or whatever. We aren't in disagreement that for most of them, they have no excuse if their conscience is bothering them. They do have plenty of opportunity to leave and contribute elsewhere. If we have any real disagreement, it's probably that I don't see Facebook as a net-negative (I do see some negative-pulling vertices of course), let alone "fundamentally evil" as mentioned above. My own conscience wouldn't allow me to work there even at a much higher salary than I currently have, but that's more to do with my feeling that as a business they aren't selling an "honest product". That's my own thinking, though, I don't expect others to agree with me exactly on what constitutes an "honest product", or its worth in the moral calculus, and indeed they might think what I do is dishonest in comparison.

"Selling out" is probably the wrong phrase for some FB employees, at least without clarifying what it is you're selling. Sometimes it's your soul, sometimes it's your ethical principles, sometimes it's just your desire to not work on web software. And sometimes it's nothing, because many FB engineers have a clear conscience, despite it all.

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

#406

Post by xur17 » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 1:24 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #341

idontpost wrote: post #306

Earlier 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 you've been coding for 10 years, you should be able to write a simple loop. That's the problem we're solving for here.

That's the problem some interviews solve for. FAANG interviews take it to another level.

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

#407

Post by opportune » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 1:24 AM UTC

LearnerHerzog wrote: post #403

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 cannot spend hours and hours studying up on these algorithms, there are much more important things (real coding-related things) which I need to learn about, to the extent I have time to do that. Are "real code-related things" really much more important if it only takes hours and hours to learn something that might get you an offer at one of these companies? Perhaps those hours and hours are actually far more valu…

The easiest way to get hired at Google is to let them come to you, not to directly apply

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

#408

Post by LearnerHerzog » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 1:27 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #407

LearnerHerzog wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot spend hours and hours studying up on these algorithms, there are much more important things (real coding-related things) which I need to learn about, to the extent I have time to do that. Are "real code-related things" really much more important if it only takes hours and hours to learn something that might get you an offer at one of these companies? Perhaps those hours and hours are actually far more valu…

The easiest way to get hired at Google is to let them come to you, not to directly apply

The Field of Dreams approach. "If you build it, they will come"

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

#409

Post by habosa » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

These big companies (including Google where I work) have so little idea of where they're going that they go way too general with interviews. If you want a good iOS engineer then ask them all questions about the platform and have platform experts interview them.

The concern is that priorities shift and this person might end up on a C++ backend in a year and you want to make sure they're good enough in general. The inability to forecast the existence of a role a few years down the road is a sign of incompetent planning. And having software generalists everywhere instead of domain experts is a great way to get good but not great software.

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

#410

Post by aswanson » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 1:30 AM UTC

LearnerHerzog wrote: post #403

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 cannot spend hours and hours studying up on these algorithms, there are much more important things (real coding-related things) which I need to learn about, to the extent I have time to do that. Are "real code-related things" really much more important if it only takes hours and hours to learn something that might get you an offer at one of these companies? Perhaps those hours and hours are actually far more valu…

Reminds me of the old phrase, re: academia: "The competition is so high because the stakes are so low." There is something really weird, at least to me, in working so extraordinarily hard to prove yourself worthy of serving someone/some company. But that's just me.