Yes as a janitor, security guard or if you get lucky a receptionist or PA
Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode
71–80 of 399 posts
Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode
#72The interview process for software engineers is needlessly complicated compared to other industries. Even if you’ve been successful working in the industry for years, you’re subjected to Leetcode and the interview grinder. There’s very little emphasis on the candidate, past experience and projects, and personal traits. We can do better.
Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode
#73The 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…
Not a fan of LeetCode but arguments like this almost sell me on it.
Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode
#74Heck yeah! That’s an awesome experience for you! Glad to see you went after something you wanted! I had a similar experience when I tumbled my resume and it landed me an internship at Tumblr. Thank you for sharing it and reminding us that there is always more than one path to success in the CS field.
Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode
#75The 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…
I'm not going to defend "leetcode grinding" and its pathologies but TBF this is problematic:
> "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.
Sure, those statements (just use an existing library) are what you'll do in practice especially as a beginner. But there is value in asking these kinds of questions.
One is "do you know what's going on under the hood?" On another post I just saw a comment in which someone advocated counting the number of occurrences of something in a list by filtering it and then getting the length of the result. This is almost certainly a terrible solution as it allocates memory (which has to be freed) in what can be done in a single quick pass. By asking you such a question the interviewer can learn if you have some idea of the tradeoffs and why something might be a good or bad idea.
These are the kinds of decisions that can have order of magnitude impacts on runtime, which can have huge impact on the company's costs.
Likewise doing arithmetic with strings as inputs would expose interesting but not super complicated questions about how arithmetic works, how you parse a numeric value out of its written representation (detest the word "conversion" for this), what are interesting bounds. If the job is really so high level that you don't have to think that there's an actual machine involved, then yes the questions aren't useful. But how many jobs are really so abstract?
> We don't live in the 80s anymore. we don't need to make our own sort algorithms.
No, but sometimes you have to make a choice based on the data to be operated on.
Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode
#76The 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 realize that somebody wrote that lib and maybe they want ppl with skills to build stuff instead of just reusing?
People always make weird arguments about lc, but whats the point?
Just put effort into it or not, no excuses needed
Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode
#77Nice work. I also learnt by doing instead of following endless tutorials and videos, took me 9-12 months and got hired in Dec 2021.
Personally, I'd consider taking the joke reference to extreme pornography out of the article.
Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. 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. childr…
The cynical part of thinks that that might be a feature, not a bug.
Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode
#79The point about learning Swift and directly building an app is a good one. I was thinking recently that a general rule of thumb should be "don't learn a programming language unless you have a project in mind". I have learned so many languages, Swift included, that I just didn't have a project for. As a result, I either gave up or just forgot what I'd learned.
I'm happy for OP that his hiring process went this way, wasn't this also how John Calhoun got into Apple?
Re: Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> 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. 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.
Didn't the guy who made Homebrew fail his interview at Google because he couldn't invert a binary tree? That's a guy who has built a popular product in the wild and can clearly code but failed because of the leetcode barrier at all IC levels.