61–70 of 399 posts
Is a 3 month internship considered a job? I don't think it is; it's a great booster for one's career and an opportunity to get a fulltime / permanent position, but from the employer's point of view, it's a cheap trial period.
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…
This is a weird take because the whole point of the last decade of leetcode was that people with special skills or that built something great can't even get hired. which was dumb. but reinforced the supposed uniformity of that process. I'm glad people aren’t just continuing the practice simply because they experienced the practice.
No, it looks like you're missing the point. Leetcode is not for people with special skills. It's for people with NO SKILLS other than "can code". Well if the only thing you can do is write code, you better be really good at writing code.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 q…
An ecosystem has stickiness, so many things go wrong, that people strongly care about, but the overall equation still tips in favor of "I'll stay".
The UI design went completely downhill in iOS7 with Forstall leaving and Ive taking over. I love Ive, but he's not perfect at all. Currently it's almost as if it's slowly, slowly, slowly recovering, but we'll see. Vision Pro's OS also shows some excellent design sensibilities, although the product as a whole is a solution in search of a problem.
Tim Cook needs a "product guy" to help him round out the management team. He was/is an insanely good COO, though.
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…
You thought the point of leetcode was to simulate live work conditions? lol
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…
However some preinstalled apps on Macs are indeed terrible. Within a week of getting my Macbook I found ways to crash two apps with normal UI interactions. And it kind of baffles me how much the app for displaying pictures has trouble with opening pictures.
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…
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…
My understanding is that they use it to filter candidates a bit. FAANG positions get loads of applicants, so they have to find efficient ways of thinning the herd a bit. The correlation between people who are willing to grind leetcode and who turn out to be good engineers is high enough that it's worth it for them to keep as a tool to sort the massive pile of applicants they get. Of course, hiring someone purely on h…
One "subtlety" this misses is that leetcode-style trivia tests only work for those who are willing _and able_ to grind leetcode etc.
There are many who have the aptitude and experience but have e.g. children, or interests outside of programming which means they do not have the required free time to spend rehearsing for this kind of interview.
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…
In a company like Google (or Google 15 years ago really) there are problems with many possible solutions, but some solutions are better than others. The aim of leetcode recruitment is that it filters for people who can not only solve hard computer science problems, but also recognize what problem they're solving and find good solutions rather than just solutions.
"I can implement this with a library" is only a good solution if the library is solving the problem in the right way. If the library is solving the problem but solving it in an inefficient-but-working way that is not good programming. At the end of the spectrum where Google exists you need developers who know the difference.
The problem with leetcode is that it doesn't actually filter for people who can understand problems in a general sense. It filters for people who know leetcode problems.