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

#591

Post by torgian » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 8:49 AM UTC

I can’t help but wonder how I would do in these interviews.

Honestly, I think I’m a horrible programmer. My current gig is developing an api for a survey app, as well as an environmental sensor data app (which me and my partner built from the ground up).

It’s tough though. I don’t know many algorithms, and I have to do a lot of research. That said, I still get shit done and deliver.

I have no formal education and have taught myself.I would most likely fail these kinds of interviews.

How I got my current gig? No idea. Maybe my honesty won them over. Yes, I can do front end development. No I don’t know that, but I can learn.

Seems to have worked out so far.

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

#592

Post by pishpash » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 8:50 AM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #437

rock_hard wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all comes down to what the company is optimizing for. Everybody here seems to assume they are trying to filter for the good candidates...but what they are actually trying to do with these kind of interviews is filter out the bad ones! Because the damage when hiring a bad candidate is much higher than the damage from missing out on a good one!

> Because the damage when hiring a bad candidate is much higher than the damage from missing out on a good one! I get that this is the conventional wisdom in a subset of this industry, but in my experience this "truth" does not have as much objective support as the people who keep repeating it think it does.

In at least one aspect, the adage becomes facially untrue -- you can fire bad employees, but you cannot get back good candidates rejected by means of a degrading exercise. You probably lose them forever.

In companies where opportunity cost and hidden losses are nobody's responsibility, this sort of mediocrity is well accepted.

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

#593

Post by quickthrower2 » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 8:54 AM UTC

sys_64738 wrote: post #385

quickthrower2 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BFS is common sense. It’s what you use when you’ve lost your car keys for example. Quickly check each room in the house, then if no luck go one layer deeper in each room.

I don't think I've ever lost my car keys so does that make me a NULL pointer!

In that case you get O(1) regardless of algo choice.

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

#594

Post by torgian » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 8:57 AM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #578

Pharmakon wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From later in his same post... But ultimately, should Google have hired me? Yes, absolutely yes. I am often a dick, I am often difficult, I often don’t know computer science, but. BUT. I make really good things, maybe they aren't perfect, but people really like them. Surely, surely Google could have used that.

> I am often difficult, I often don’t know computer science, but. BUT. I make really good things Having worked with people who are dicks but make really good things...I wouldn't want him on my team either. There are plenty of people who make really good things and aren't dicks.

Gotta agree. People sometimes underestimate the power of actually getting along with others!

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

#595

Post by hello_moto » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 9:04 AM UTC

xur17 wrote: post #406

jedberg wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

When everybody can solve a simple loop, a base bar, then the bar has to be raised.

The bar is being raised all the time as much as it is painful and hard for me to see/experience this :(.

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

#596

Post by hello_moto » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 9:09 AM UTC

kamarg wrote: post #544

hello_moto wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you choose one-hit-wonder over proven engineers (Jeff Dean, Sanjay, other ex SUN microsystems folks?) that lead high-profile projects? I know that sounds rude... but one seems better to be a leader while others are better engineers would you agree?

Total cop out answer but if DHH and people like Jeff Dean are both interviewing for a position with me you can be sure I'm doing everything I can to hire all of them. Even if it means starting entirely new departments. I'd totally fanboy and hire Jeff though if it came down to just one though.

I don't mean to diminish/belittle DHH. What he's done (web framework, productivity SaaS, self-help books, sales/marketing, conference speakers, racing) it's not what Google does (web-browser, OS, AI, maps, search, scale, etc).

I also don't get why people like DHH is assumed to be a "miss" for not being hired by some of these company...

DHH is a unique individual with his own way of thinking. He wouldn't be DHH if he works for someone else (or under someone).

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

#597

Post by laumars » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 9:10 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #382

laumars wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get some peoples fascination with working for FAANG anyway. As you said yourself, you've had some amazing jobs outside of FAANG. People seem to hold such prestige for working at a household named software house but that doesn't mean the work is going to be any more interesting than at any of the countless other technology companies out there that are on the bleeding edge.

It’s the same reason high school students apply to Stanford and MIT; there are amazing programs everywhere but top-level universities carry prestige and may have higher quality opportunities.

I did cover those points. As I said, the prestige is misguided (in the case of FAANG) and you don't need to go down the FAANG route to have access to higher quality opportunities.

Those companies sure want you to believe what you're claiming because it means they get the first bite of the cherry but the reality is very different (from my experience anyway).

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

#598

Post by zoom6628 » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 9:24 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…

You are so right. Im 55 now and have developed on tools, a lot of ERP/Manufacturing stuff, compliance, integration tools. Have never had the need to reach for Knuth so that shows either I am pig-ignorant, arrogant, or there is no real need in general. It is good to know algorithms but these are not the main stuff of the real world. Learn about design patterns, user experience, product philosophy, and invest time in learning about your company (who, how and why started, markets, competition) and you will go further and faster than being able to ace a whiteboard interview on the foibles of event processing in Vue. And yes i still cant write good javascript - because IT IS NOT IMPORTANT so i have avoided until this year and Im now learning it as a hobby, not a need.

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

#599

Post by ageek123 » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 9:25 AM UTC

JimboOmega wrote: post #277

swozey wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had internal referrals at a few FAANG myself, I have one of the "unique" (no degree, some high school, ops/coding since 12 so about 15 years on/off) backgrounds and the people who referred me would be on the team that I'd be joining and all seemed incredibly excited to get me on board. I work on FOSS projects with them already. At each place it was people from other teams completely unrelated to that team who in…

One of my recent FAANG interviews was ENTIRELY whiteboarding. It kind of shocked me. It's weird that it's that skill, and only that skill, that gets evaluated. I did another interview at a different one where there was at least a design interview (though I flubbed it and wound up being incoherent). It really feels like they aren't even trying to evaluate anything other than whiteboard coding. Accepting that it's not…

Trust me, companies would love to have at least one woman on every interview slate, and not just for women candidates. The problem is that the ratio of women engineers at the FAANG companies is such that this would put an incredibly unfair burden on women engineers. They would have to spend all of their time interviewing, or at the very least a disproportionate amount of time.

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

#600

Post by namelosw » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 9:29 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 found essentially most 'algorithms' code is just terrible code. A lot of people spent a lot of time learning algorithms other than more broad techniques write terrible code every day.

An alias for so-called 'algorithms' is 'imperative style' for 'functional programming style', or 'procedural programming' for 'object-oriented programming'.

They are too arcane to read, hard to modify and error-prone. Most of them require mutable data structures, intermediate snapshot for a special optimization purpose, make everything much harder to reuse.

It mostly requires you to instruct every piece of code, every step of execution. Instead of just describing what you need, and let the code find a way to fulfill it autonomously, in a declarative manner like Haskell or Prolog.

And 99% of software companies do not really have the need of requiring their employees having a deep grasp of algorithms, while most of them need their code somehow more maintainable. Those of the Leetcode oriented interviews are just really bad.

Personally, I believe business sense and culture stuff are very important. As for skill part, a lot of concepts could be more useful than algorithms like understanding of domain and relation modeling, immutable data structures, lazy evaluation, reactive design etc.