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Get that job at Facebook (2012)

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Re: Get that job at Facebook (2012)

#51

Post by jonathanjaeger »

cantankerous wrote: post #32
jonathanjaeger wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't trivialize Facebook. There's no other place online that so easily melds chat, messaging, wall posts, and general keeping up with those closest to you (even when they're not close to you physically). Despite its problems, Facebook provides a lot of utility for many people without having to be cynical about it. I'll put up with all the ads that are somewhat relevant and are not so obtrusive to the extent that the…

I don't think anybody who trivializes Facebook is speaking to the problems they have to tackle at the scale they're at. I think the real cynicism comes from the real added value coming from Facebook at the cost to society it brings (i.e. lost time, ad sales, impact on human interaction, etc.).

Impact on human interaction is a concern in the age of social media. We will always find a way to lose time. I'm not sure if any generation is/was immune to that.

Re: Get that job at Facebook (2012)

#52

Post by somethingnew »

ritchiea wrote: post #31

I hope this doesn't sound facetious, but what I hear over and over again is that places like Facebook have difficult technical interviews that are algorithm focused to create more false negatives than false positives because they work on hard problems. What are some concrete examples of hard problems tech companies face that require novel solutions and why are algorithms problems the best way to find the people quali…

For my Facebook interview for an internship, I was given a simple string manipulation problem which I solved quickly. Then I was given the N-Queens problem (a more generalized version of this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_queens_puzzle). Needless to say I didn't solve that with my remaining time, since the interviews are only 45 minutes. I didn't feel it was a fair assessment of my skills.

Re: Get that job at Facebook (2012)

#53

Post by shmageggy »

apunic wrote: post #27

Is there anything like HN for tech entrepreneurs only, maybe a subreddit somewhere? I see here regularly posts regarding jobs/interviews/etc. which are all great ressources but since they got so many upvotes -- this one is on #1 right now -- I wonder sometimes how many on HN are full-time (tech) entrepreneurs and how many are employed/freelance coders.

I'm in neither of those demographics, but I'd imagine part of being a good entrepeneur is understanding the hiring processes of companies that you will be competing with for talent, so this article should be popular on your hypothetical website too.

Re: Get that job at Facebook (2012)

#54

Post by ritchiea »

kubrickslair wrote: post #45
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that really bothers me about these postings is the advice that you should 'prep'. Conceivably, many applicants will already have a job that requires them to code 8 hours a day. But somehow, the skills required to pass their interview are so out of line with what a programmer does day to day, that extracurricular studying is required. It would suggest that the interview itself selects for mostly irrelevant s…

Another reason I am not fond of this- it is easily hackable. I know some pretty average people who prepared for months, went through all questions they could find online, ignored their day jobs and cleared the interviews, while some really talented people could not. Funny that this got brought on the Facebook thread. Though I never applied at FB, I have 'mentored' two people who made it through the process. Mentoring…

I think that raises another question. You assume that they don't want the process to be hackable, what if they just want someone to see the patterns in those solutions because they believe those patterns arise in the work they will be doing at Facebook?

Re: Get that job at Facebook (2012)

#55

Post by timtar »

scarmig wrote: post #26
tezka wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

knowing these are not going to guarantee good performance. But not knowing them is a clear indication of incompetence. A programmer who doesn't know basic algorithms and data structure is a bad programmer.

Obviously more knowledge is good knowledge. And perhaps the bar for being a good programmer involves being able to 1) Implement a red black tree on a white board I would argue, though, if that's the bar, there are probably other bars that are a bit lower that at least some of the algorithm triumphalists would fail, such as to 2) Throw up a basic and secure Wordpress site on an Amazon EC2 instance or 3) You're running…

lol.

questions similar to #2 - #5 are the real mccoy. algorithm winnies would likely go into stupor over them.

clearfix my algorithm developer ass.

Re: Get that job at Facebook (2012)

#56

Post by gizmo686 »

robryan wrote: post #20
jamesaguilar wrote: post #5

One thing I have seen repeatedly in interviews for engineering positions of all levels is people who have not gone back and reviewed the basic algorithms they learned in second year. I know coding questions as posed in interviews are not the best measure of job performance, but they are also one of the few we have that is guaranteed to be sourced from the candidate in question. To perform well at these sorts of quest…

If someone doesn't know how to approach an algorithms problem why not get them to show you how they would google around and puts the pieces together. If they have no idea, they are likely going to google and follow the wrong advice. If they have an idea but have forgotten the specifics they will know where to go and which advice to take.

The utility of google rises exponentially with your pre-exsisting knowledge (at the low end of existing knowledge). If you know nothing about algorithms, then you can still look up and implement, say, a red-black tree. However, if you run into a problem that is simmilar, but not identical to, the problem that a red-black tree solves, you will have a difficult time adapting the red-black tree to your problem.

If, however, you have a strong basis in algorithms, but still no pre-existing knowledge on the red-black tree specifically, then you will be in a better posistion to adapt or optimise it for your particular use case. Not to mention have a better intuition in what to search for in the first place, or who to structure the rest of you code to play nice with an algorithm that is a good fit.

Re: Get that job at Facebook (2012)

#58

Post by somethingnew »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #35
kubrickslair wrote: post #28

Never interviewed at Facebook but have been offered roles at similarly hard to get places. Though I am working at my own startup now, the absurdness of the interviewing process at majority of such places confounds me. In short, I can't cope up with them well without going through quite a few glassdoor type questions of that respective company. And partially it is because most interviewers already have a set of soluti…

The thing that really bothers me about these postings is the advice that you should 'prep'. Conceivably, many applicants will already have a job that requires them to code 8 hours a day. But somehow, the skills required to pass their interview are so out of line with what a programmer does day to day, that extracurricular studying is required. It would suggest that the interview itself selects for mostly irrelevant s…

I made another comment on this thread [1]. I wish instead of having to prep for interviews like this, I could just present a portfolio of clean code I made myself (non-proprietary of course) or my github. Unfortunately most of the grads they're hiring have no serious code to show for themselves.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5623922

Re: Get that job at Facebook (2012)

#59

Post by kubrickslair »

ritchiea wrote: post #54
kubrickslair wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another reason I am not fond of this- it is easily hackable. I know some pretty average people who prepared for months, went through all questions they could find online, ignored their day jobs and cleared the interviews, while some really talented people could not. Funny that this got brought on the Facebook thread. Though I never applied at FB, I have 'mentored' two people who made it through the process. Mentoring…

I think that raises another question. You assume that they don't want the process to be hackable, what if they just want someone to see the patterns in those solutions because they believe those patterns arise in the work they will be doing at Facebook?

Though I doubt that, it might be true that being good in algorithmic puzzle-solving (as opposed to real-world algorithmic research/ development) helps employees in their day-to-day work. And I do think they maybe missing some real gems because of it.

But in my opinion, they just need an easily definable and quantifiable process. And they are happy to look the other way when they see covert cheating/ hacking as long as it clears the process. And there is no denying that there is still a decent ability threshold which most covert cheating people too will pass, which I guess suffices the corp needs.

I am a far bigger fan of pair programming after a basic phone screen, but large companies just can't do that.

Re: Get that job at Facebook (2012)

#60

Post by btilly »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #50
BadCRC wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one I was given in an interview: You're working on the front-end development for a chatting website. Each conversation gets it's own 100x200px div and they are placed on the screen such that two conversation windows are never intersecting. We want to display a new conversation window, write an algorithm to determine where a conversation can be placed such that it does not overlap with any current conversations. Assum…

You can fit at most 60 chat windows on the screen. So surely you can just start at the top left and wrap around every 10 windows? When you get to 60 you can't display any more. Or is the problem different? For example you already have some arbitrary number of windows already displayed at arbitrary locations that you cannot move?

I would assume that you have an arbitrary number of windows already displayed that you cannot move.
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