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

#461

Post by credit_guy » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:35 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…

> What should I choose, pytorch or keras?

I know this is off-topic, but you can't go wrong with Keras. "Deep Learning with Python" by Francois Chollet (the creator of Keras) is a Kernighan-level book. A book like this comes around once a decade (or two). If you decide to go for it though, make sure you don't follow its instructions about the amazon cloud deep learning VM's; you'll end up paying $10 per day, even if you stop the VM.

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

#462

Post by mancerayder » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:36 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #397

mancerayder wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a hiring manager I would be impressed by your background. Unfortunately most will never read that far back. Or worse, not have enough experience to understand someone who can do that can handle the needs of their software as a service CRUD app.

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

#463

Post by lr4444lr » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:37 AM UTC

alasdair_ wrote: post #456

autokad wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a data scientist, and google asked me to sum all values of nodes at each height of a tree. I had to implement the tree, bfs, and the algo (which was easy once you have bfs) in a 25 minutes, minus any talky time. BFS is not something I thought about much in the last 5 years, and quite frankly could care less about. I got stuck when I knew I needed 'something' to finish implementing BFS, but couldn't remember and t…

>I'm a data scientist, and google asked me to sum all values of nodes at each height of a tree. I had to implement the tree, bfs, and the algo (which was easy once you have bfs) in a 25 minutes, minus any talky time. THIS is the problem. The (unreasonably) timed nature of the exercise means that the only people that will do well are the people that prep heavily for this specific skill, in much the same way that peopl…

Now take this analogy one step further: why aren't lawyers asked stupid timed LSAT questions at every job interview? Because they take a really challenging professional exam called the bar, which is a strong base level guarantee of actual knowledge and competence. Software Eng. have been fighting this kind of credentialing because somehow tech is "top innovative" for such standards. Hence the status quo, and why companies like TripleByte see opprtunity.

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

#464

Post by chris11 » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:37 AM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #196

noncoml wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Finally, I realized my brain needs more time than the average programmer to find patterns in this type of problems. > I gave up on my goal to land a job in one of these big corporations. Maybe we are just not good enough.. And maybe it's sour grapes for having been rejected by them, but honestly I don't feel I would be a good fit for Google or FB ideologically. I value user privacy and freedom too much. In my eyes…

It's contextual. I've worked at a big, cool company before, and the things I had to be good at to survive (mostly non-technical) simply were not important to me, nor very useful outside of work. They were core requirements for long-term success there, though.

I'm interested in hearing more about that. What were the non-technical requirements that you didn't like?

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

#465

Post by rossdavidh » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:38 AM UTC

credit_guy wrote: post #461

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…

> What should I choose, pytorch or keras? I know this is off-topic, but you can't go wrong with Keras. "Deep Learning with Python" by Francois Chollet (the creator of Keras) is a Kernighan-level book. A book like this comes around once a decade (or two). If you decide to go for it though, make sure you don't follow its instructions about the amazon cloud deep learning VM's; you'll end up paying $10 per day, even if y…

How dare you add real information to our conversation here. :)

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

#466

Post by vonmoltke » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:39 AM UTC

etse wrote: post #381

malvosenior wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always say this, but is it true? It’s easy to fire someone. It’s really hard to find someone who can ship (something you won’t get from a whiteboarding challenge).

Seems costly to fire, not just because of HR and management process overhead. People are trying to build successful teams, and regular firings distract from goals, ruin morale, and create an unsafe environment.

Regular firings imply a pretty bad hiring process. There's a spectrum between "regularly fire bad hires" and "regularly reject good hires".

Also, what evidence is there that these high-false-negative practices are actually reducing false positives by a significant degree? In these kind of threads I read the same arguments and assertions, with the same lack of evidence, as I hear from people trying to defend airport security theater. I should start calling these practices "interview theater".

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

#467

Post by stale2002 » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:39 AM UTC

Stratoscope wrote: post #415

SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that charitably as "give newbies a chance"

I really try hard to apply the principle of charity, but as a 67 year old developer who is still working, I'm afraid it's hard to read "search for young and talented people" without thinking of it as illegal age discrimination. That said, I do like the interviewing approach we're replying to, other than that "y" word... :-)

Hey at least older people have laws that protect them.

Did you know that it is perfectly legal to discriminate against young people?

Yeah sucks to be them, I guess. Apparently nobody cares about discrimination against those people.

Old people are among the richest people in the world. But I guess when things are made fair, and neither young or old people are discriminated against, that appears like "discrimination" against those who are now being treated fairly.

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

#468

Post by nailer » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:40 AM UTC

holdenc wrote: post #377

acpetrov wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am like you. For me, the solution has been build something and show it off. Building a great and useful app rarely requires Herculean feats of logic and puzzle solving.

Years ago I was rejected by Google for a permanent position, then a year later employed at a much better rate as a contractor in the same building I'd interviewed in. I'd built a relatively cool app (full stack, from Linux to Tornado to JavaScript to UX), like Secret or YikYak (but a few years before either).

The people in Creative Lab were impressed with the ride range of knowledge I had, the SRE guys who rejected me got stuck into me for mixing up some VMware terminology.

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

#469

Post by pishpash » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:42 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #418

LaserToy wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is such a cop out. It took millennia to invent 0. That doesn't mean that 0 is an exceedingly difficult concept to grasp.

I also use 0 every day. Do you use the BFS every day?

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

#470

Post by molodec » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 2:42 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 wrote a custom HashMap for Java, used BFS and DBS on graphs, wrote a top down custom parser, custom string searching algorithms to solve real business problems. I would rather work with someone who knows how neural networks really work rather than who knows pytorch or keras, because they can be learned rather easily. In some industries knowledge of algorithms can be more valuable than knowing a myriad of frameworks that change every few years any way.