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

#441

Post by QML » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:12 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…

As someone who is interviewing for internships, I view all of these algorithms interviews as a necessary evil. While they may not reflect the day to day job demands of programming, they are certainly easier to measure and serve as a benchmark for candidates.

Not all of them are bad though; I had an interview that had me implement a basic data structure in accordance to the specifications given. It didn’t require memorization, practice, or any “Leetcode grinding” — only fundamentals in communication and programming. The time I had was about an hour so this is definitely a plausible substitute.

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

#442

Post by um_ya » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:13 AM UTC

slimshady94 wrote: post #431

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…

Reiterating my view, I feel like the interviewing grind has become akin to gymming - you go to your mental gym, build up your 'muscles' by doing pointless repetitive tasks AKA algorithms you'd never use in real life (probably like how bodybuilders would never need to deadlift 125kgs in their daily life). It doesn't directly help you do your job but you know bodybuilders have higher than average fitness levels. So in…

Except lifting weight has a DIRECT affect on increasing muscle mass. Doing pointless algorithms don't have any direct affect on your coding skills. I know plenty of college grads that can memorize all sorts of algorithms, but are shit at real world code. If I'm a company hiring to do REAL WORLD CODE, I'm going to ask questions pertaining to the position I'm willing to fill. The problem with these companies, is that they are hiring more than they need, therefore they aren't asking questions pertaining to any REAL job they're looking to fill.

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

#443

Post by BurningFrog » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:13 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'm in a similar situation.

I think the counterargument might be that at our age, you should have a network of people who will hire you just based on your stellar performance on previous jobs, if you're that experienced and sophisticated.

If you somehow don't, well, maybe you need to brush up on your tree balancing skills...

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

#444

Post by gassiss » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:14 AM UTC

ForrestN wrote: post #151

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…

I encourage you to read the essay, and then also imagine your last paragraph with "cigarettes" instead of "FB."

I understand your point of view, but honestly, this type of comparison makes no sense. Cigarettes are not good in any way.

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

#445

Post by alextheparrot » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:15 AM UTC

slimshady94 wrote: post #431

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…

Reiterating my view, I feel like the interviewing grind has become akin to gymming - you go to your mental gym, build up your 'muscles' by doing pointless repetitive tasks AKA algorithms you'd never use in real life (probably like how bodybuilders would never need to deadlift 125kgs in their daily life). It doesn't directly help you do your job but you know bodybuilders have higher than average fitness levels. So in…

It is also a form of “proof of work”. If you are willing to go to the lengths of learning these things, maybe you’ll be able to learn other things that are harder to assess during an interview.

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

#446

Post by QML » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:16 AM UTC

dom96 wrote: post #272

andrewla wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technical interviewing scheme is not great, but I haven't seen another system that works. > I cannot help but think that these big tech companies (FAANG, et. al) are missing out on diversifying and increasing their engineering expertise by passing over developers like you. I think this is certainly true. > I often think what would Google/Facebook would be like if they hired in some experienced engineers that may…

> Well... how do we find these people? By looking at their resumes where they claim this? By contacting references who will attest to it? By trusting the intuition of subjective evaluators of the candidates? While not perfect I wonder if a person's projects are a good signal for this. There certainly are those who have developed a significant open source project but who get rejected by the FAANG companies, the author…

Every time the interview story of the guy behind Homebrew gets brought up, there’s the reminder that he interviewed for a software engineering position while he would’ve been better suited for a product manager position — he also mentions this as such.

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

#447

Post by gassiss » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:18 AM UTC

ryandvm wrote: post #51

azhenley wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have some really interesting projects going on. For example, they have recruited some top researchers in program analysis and compilers (among many other areas).

I think his point wasn't that Facebook isn't doing neat stuff, just that at the end of the day, the result of everything they do is objectively horrifying. It boils down to: "Give people just the right amount of dopamine and fiddle with their psyche in all the right ways in order to maximize the amount of time they spend staring at their phones."

I find funny that people say Facebook is evil because of this quote:

"Give people just the right amount of dopamine and fiddle with their psyche in all the right ways in order to maximize the amount of time they spend staring at their phones."

And yet, that's basically what every entertainment driven person/business wants to do. Every app, TV show, news media, magazine or even the guy playing the guitar in the subway, all they want is the money that comes from constant attention.

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

#448

Post by adamnemecek » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:20 AM UTC

honkycat wrote: post #78

avitzurel wrote: post #8

I really dislike the fact that you need to study for weeks with specific questions that really have no hold in real life. I've been doing this for 16+ years and I have never asked the type of questions you encounter in these books. Not even once.

Getting a computer science degree from a fancy university would prepare you for these types of questions. They are a ( maybe unintentional ) dog-whistle for coming a wealthy background which means you will fit right into the cultures at these sorts of places. Learning to program takes a lot of privilege. Look up the stats for how many google SWE's do not have degrees / where they come from.

Compared with what? Not being a doctor or a lawyer or finance or idk.

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

#449

Post by QML » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:21 AM UTC

Cookingboy wrote: post #275

pradn wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interview at Google and I never look at resumes - to avoid bias. I don't want to be biased by whether you went to Yale or UT Austin. My question is always a standard algo/DS question anyway.

That is a good way to eliminate bias, but in the end, is that a good way to make sure each position is staffed by the best candidate possible? I always pondered about that when I was at Google. We had mostly smart people, but I argue not all of them were the perfect fit for the position/skills needed. Sure some bias are best eliminated such as what school they went to, but if work experience in general should not be…

Sadly that’s the trade off when you want a common benchmark to measure students, but then students optimize for that benchmark instead of something else — basically Goodhart’s law.

As a current student studying CS, I find all of this “leetcoding” disheartening since it unnecessarily takes away time and deprives some people of passion.

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

#450

Post by Aeolun » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:23 AM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #214

fokinsean wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Out of these companies Google felt most impersonal and "test like" I had this same experience too. I went through the 4 technical interviews onsite which were all whiteboard problems. Not once did we actually talk about my past experience or rather anything software engineering related. Unfortunately(?) I didn't receive an offer despite making it to the hiring committee. Two weeks later they called me back and want…

I've found that I get a lot more signal out of asking people to actually solve a problem by writing a program than by asking them about past experience. Hence I spend most of the interview time on the former. It's surprisingly common for people to be able to talk about something in a way that sounds impressive, but then after seeing their actual coding skills you realize they were likely not a star performer on the t…

I don’t have that impression at all. If someone is talking about something impressive, a few deeper questions generally poke holes in whatever inflation they are doing.

Of course there should be some coding question, but I definitely look at their resume and it’s discussion just as much.