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Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

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Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#51

Post by smt88 »

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #28
retskrad wrote: post #16

Do Apple attract the best software engineers? If I were a talented hardware engineer, chip designer, hardware designer - I'd want to work at Apple because Apple attracts the best people in these fields. I imagine that Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon get the lion share of the best software engineers. No one has ever said Apple services, like the iCloud and Apple Music backend, or Siri, are quality piece of software en…

Apple has pockets of excellence. It used to be most of the company, something about how Jobs ran it, inspired people much overqualified to apply, and not even for very high salaries. At NeXT infamously a PhD (EDIT: in comp-sci, or physics?) worked as a janitor as he simply wanted to be around Jobs and cool smart people. Currently entropy is getting to Apple in many ways. iTunes and Apple Music didn't use to be medioc…

Under Cook, Apple products have become bland and overpriced in most categories (the M_ processors are a huge exception), but it's also wildly successful. The stock price is 7x what it was when Cook took over. He's one of the most successful CEOs of all time.

Unfortunately the only conclusion we can draw is that consumers don't care about:

- software quality

- bugs

- voice assistants

...and do care about:

- hardware quality

- integrated ecosystems

- cameras

- battery life

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#52

Post by thebruce87m »

smt88 wrote: post #35
thebruce87m wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you don’t think about them probably tells a story.

Siri is the worst piece of software I'm forced to interact with daily. iOS is also near the top. GP didn't seem to be saying they didn't think about that software. They were saying they didn't have a good reputation, which is true. Apple is actually astonishingly bad at software considering the amount of money they have to do it properly. Even Google eventually got Android to a place where it's very resilient and rar…

I have no reason to doubt you, but that does not mirror my experience. I generally don’t have to think at all about iOS. It just silently does everything I need, including backups with no fuss. The only time I have to think is every three years when I upgrade, but that has always gone seamlessly.

Siri being bad is probably more to do with data collection / privacy. I’ve not looked into it, but that’s my assumption.

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#54

Post by PaulRobinson »

KaiserPro wrote: post #30

The problem is that "leetcode" is a definitely a thing that exists in "FAANG" interviews. The biggest stumbling block with leetcode is that you shouldn't be programming like that in real life. "make a linked list" no, just use a library like everyone else. "Implement addition in python but with string inputs", "no you can't use the built in x" All of that "clever" shit should be filtered out at PR/MR/diff review time…

The problem is though how do you evaluate for real work without a portfolio of experience? Real work projects take weeks - perhaps months - to design, build, review and release. How do you test for that, really?

I agree leetcode style interviews are artificial, but I think they persist because few people have identified and popularised effective alternatives. At least with leetcode you've shown people in front of you have been prepared to go learn arcane stuff and apply it. It's not good, but it's better than nothing.

I was once asked to do the Gilded Rose kata[1] for one ~200 headcount Series D "startup", and it not only resembled real work - it's a refactoring problem - but it also showed their engineering culture. When I joined, I found smart people who weren't leetcode robots, but thoughtful engineers trying to solve tricky engineering problems. I "stole" Gilded Rose to use in other companies when interviewing until I joined my current employer (a FAANG, heavily prescribed process), with great success. I would like to see more katas that are as good at testing real world skills.

Also, something I've only ever been interviewed for twice in 25+ years, which I think is underplayed: pair programming and handling code review feedback. Do this more, please. If you hire people not knowing how they're going to respond to a principal engineer telling them "we need you to think about 4 other things that weren't in the original scope given to you by the PM, can you please go deal with them", why are you surprised when toys are subsequently thrown out of metaphorical prams?

[1] https://github.com/emilybache/GildedRose-Refactoring-Kata

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#55

Post by robryan »

djcapelis wrote: post #15
pocketarc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it makes sense to use LC or something like it. Is there a better way to judge the 100 random developers who've applied to your position? - They may not have formal education, you can't judge on that. - They may not have active GitHub projects, you can't judge on that. - They may not be active on social media or have any kind of fame, you can't judge on that. - They may not have built anything they can show of…

It’s simple: don’t hire devs by the army.

Even if you aren't, it is still going to be roughly driven by how many hours of recruiter/ interviewer time you want to allocate per hire.

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#56

Post by intelVISA »

SilverBirch wrote: post #27

I think the sort of more general point, rather than "build something great that someone at Apple notices", is that Graduate and Internship programmes are scale businesses. They get thousands of people applying and will hire atleast dozens, probably some FANG are hiring hundreds. So yes, we're all special snowflakes, but that's not what this process is for. It's about harsh rounds of easy to design problems to winnow…

can confirm, it's as simple PG says "just build something people want"

it will open many doors :)

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#57

Post by pavlov »

robryan wrote: post #48
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also doesn't resemble "real" work with regards to gathering requirements, clarifying ambiguity, weighing up trade-offs, making sure code is clear, etc. It tends to be a rote regurgitation exercise.

A lot of places will also do a desgin interview to cover this aspect of the job.

Which raises the question of why do the other kind of interview at all. I mean the leetcode nonsense whose end state is often a theatrical performance: “I’m pretending to invent this clever algorithm on the fly although I’ve practiced it for weeks”.

Is there any evidence that candidates who do well on design interviews but fumble on leetcode would be any worse at the actual job?

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#58

Post by kubrickslair »

eclectic29 wrote: post #3

This is just "one" experience, certainly not the norm. Even as an experienced engineer of 15 yrs I'd to solve leetcode (LC) style problems on the whiteboard a few yrs go. For better or worse (depending on whose perspective you see), LC allows companies to judge you based on a common framework of solving algorithmic problems using computer science fundamentals (data structures and algorithms) in a language of your cho…

Some of the highest salaries I know are in core ML at big tech or some of the foundational labs like Allen AI. While whiteboard coding interviews are often part of the process, it is generally pretty basic LC.

The crux of the evaluation often revolves around have you built something amazing before? For most new grad folks it is the work done as part of their PhD thesis, but for non PhDs it often boils to amazing past work. And it’s a similar process for more experience folks except the reliance on LC fades even more.

If this works well for cutting edge ML why shouldn't it work for everything else?

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#59

Post by photon_lines »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #33
KaiserPro wrote: post #30

The problem is that "leetcode" is a definitely a thing that exists in "FAANG" interviews. The biggest stumbling block with leetcode is that you shouldn't be programming like that in real life. "make a linked list" no, just use a library like everyone else. "Implement addition in python but with string inputs", "no you can't use the built in x" All of that "clever" shit should be filtered out at PR/MR/diff review time…

It also doesn't resemble "real" work with regards to gathering requirements, clarifying ambiguity, weighing up trade-offs, making sure code is clear, etc. It tends to be a rote regurgitation exercise.

LeetCode has no correlation with great software development. Great development is more about paying attention to the end users, having an eye for usability and design and great communication & the ability to execute. The current LeetCode churning explains why Google hasn't produced anything worth using since Brin & Page checked out and why so much of software today is absolute garbage - but it is what it is I suppose. I suppose its better to screen for IQ and desparation than you know...people who love developing great software. Let them keep doing what they're doing while treating their own people like disposable garbage during hard times (like Google & Meta just did) and we'll see what they'll churn out over the next decade or so (I'm not expecting anything from either of these companies).

Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

#60

Post by lazyasciiart »

sacnoradhq wrote: post #31

Clickbait. This isn't a FTE with TC, it's an internship. Unlike Apple, most MANGs cut internships to functionally zero. You're never going to get a corporate coding job without multiple rounds of technical interview because common sense.

> Unlike Apple, most MANGs cut internships to functionally zero.

Uh, when are they supposed to have done that?

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