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the hardest part of the question is coming up with an efficient method for checking for diagonal conflicts. after that you can just enumerate n-rooks solutions or do hill climbing.
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Feb 15, 2014 05:39
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The problem I have with N-queens is that the most obvious representation of the problem is drawing the board as a matrix. Once you start down that path, you have to write a bunch of helper functions and it's no longer small enough for an interview. It brings to mind the Sudoku solvers of Norvig and Mohan (How to not solve a Sudoku). Norvig already has all the tools to solve his problem, so it's no big deal. Mohan doesn't, and he just flails around. Unless you're hiring an AI person, I wouldn't expect a candidate to have the tools in hand. You wouldn't want a candidate who stumbles around for 5 days and tons of LoC, but you're not going to weed them out with a whiteboard coding exercise.
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Feb 15, 2014 14:45
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A while ago I wrote a DLX based latin square generator and sudoku sovler and in the process familiarized myself with N-queens as an exact cover problem. But if someone asked me that in an interview I'd be hosed if they really expect a working solution from me. I agree that this is a reasonable question for an AI specialist, and maybe just a good topic for a discussion with the candidate to see their thinking.
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Feb 15, 2014 15:46
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Here's an article about DropBox doing a crappy job of hiring women. The article suggests that besides being generally dumb and useless, interview questions like "how many golf balls could Superman eat?" also weed out women. What's more shocking to me, though, is that the anonymous sources say that they signed a "non-disparagement agreement". If there's anything that's going to be a red flag about a company, it's got to be when they make you promise to never say anything bad about the company.
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Feb 15, 2014 20:41
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So I got placed in the Kindle Content team. Anyone know anything about it? 
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Feb 15, 2014 20:42
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Mniot posted:interview questions like "how many golf balls could Superman eat?" "Not as many as Goku. Next question."
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Feb 15, 2014 21:38
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I'm applying for a summer internship and the company instructed me to email them my resume and include a cover letter. Does the cover letter go in the email or do I attach a resume and a cover letter as separate .doc files? Also, does it look bad if I am immediately looking for another internship to follow up my current one?
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Feb 15, 2014 21:54
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Cover letter in the email and no.
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Feb 15, 2014 22:03
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Rello posted:So I got placed in the Kindle Content team. Anyone know anything about it? Nope, but how does one "get placed" at Amazon anyway? Weren't you applying for a specific position? Like, I applied for a C++ dev role, and it was specifically about developing new features for our database.
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Feb 16, 2014 10:58
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mobby_6kl posted:Nope, but how does one "get placed" at Amazon anyway? Weren't you applying for a specific position? Like, I applied for a C++ dev role, and it was specifically about developing new features for our database. It seems like it's different for internships (which I think he applied for), just guessing but it sounds like they just try to grab up all the good students before other companies do.
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Feb 16, 2014 11:20
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How often do people actually ask for/check your references?
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Feb 16, 2014 14:09
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mobby_6kl posted:Nope, but how does one "get placed" at Amazon anyway? Weren't you applying for a specific position? Like, I applied for a C++ dev role, and it was specifically about developing new features for our database. New college grads get their choice of teams to work on, as long as there's room for another person on that team.
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Feb 16, 2014 15:19
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Yeah, It's the same for interns. I got to rank 4 of about 8 different groups. I ranked Kindle as the top one and got placed in the Kindle Content team.
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Feb 16, 2014 15:30
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Rello posted:So I got placed in the Kindle Content team. Anyone know anything about it?
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Feb 16, 2014 18:26
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Mniot posted:Here's an article about DropBox doing a crappy job of hiring women. The article suggests that besides being generally dumb and useless, interview questions like "how many golf balls could Superman eat?" also weed out women. It was strange for me seeing quotes from the head of the Anita Borg Institute being juxtaposed with Dropbox's practices, because I distinctly remember Dropbox giving out t-shirts at the Grace Hopper Celebration last year (which is a conference specifically for women in computing run by the Anita Borg Institute). I guess the career fair at GHC doesn't select based on company culture but on who gives them money for a booth. Thanks for sharing, I find articles about women in computing to be relevant to my existence.
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Feb 16, 2014 18:39
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Ok goons, I need help! I recently applied to an internship that sounded really right up my alley. A little bit of a commute, but oh well. Anyway, I applied through LinkedIn, because they gave the option. So I didn't have to fill out any of those questions they ask you. They just emailed me back asking two questions: one is about clearence level, fine, and the second wants to know about my "current/desired salary range". Ugh. I'm making $20/hr at my current gig, which is a non-coding job, and I would ideally like to make that or more. But I don't want to come off the wrong way and blow this, it seems like a great opportunity. How should I respond to this question? I want this internship but I also would like to be compensated decently. Also, they say most of their positions - which I assume includes this one - require a TS/SCI Polygraph clearance. I don't really have anything to hide  but is there anything I should worry about?
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Feb 17, 2014 17:14
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Doghouse posted:Ok goons, I need help! I recently applied to an internship that sounded really right up my alley. A little bit of a commute, but oh well. Is this a government internship or a defense contractor one? I've worked as both so if you have specific questions feel free to PM me. As far as clearances go, just be prepared to have a background investigator ask random people you know everything about you. Getting a clearance isn't that big of a deal, just don't lie about anything (i.e. if you've smoked weed or something in the past just say you've smoked weed in the past). If you lie about it they will find out, but as long as you are up front about stuff and you aren't currently doing drugs they probably won't care. Also, regarding your polygraph don't worry about failing it. It's fairly common for people to fail their first (or second or third) poly's just due to nervousness, and they will just let you take it again in a few weeks if that's the case.
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Feb 17, 2014 17:20
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It's a contractor. Thanks for the feedback! I may PM you. I'm also really, really nervous about leaving my current job, which is on a project whose future is uncertain, but could very well last, at least until I'm out of school (I have another year and a half or so). It seems like internships are generally just for short stints, and I kinda need to be working during school to pay the bills and so on. Any tips on how to handle this? I realize that in the long term the experience of the internship will be very important, but I gotta pay the bills now too.
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Feb 17, 2014 17:26
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For what it's worth, yes an internship will probably be a short term thing, but getting cleared is a huge deal and will open a lot of doors for you in the future. Having an active TS/SCI w/poly clearance will essentially guarantee you a very well-paying full time job in the DC metro area. Almost any major defense contractor will hire someone with an existing clearance regardless of that person's experience and technical ability because not having to get that person cleared saves the company potentially tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. edit: Also, TS/SCI stays active for either 5 years since your last SF86 (which is the background check form you will fill out initially), or 2 years since you were last in-access (which means actively working on whatever job required the clearance), whichever comes first. So as long as you finish school or whatever within 2 years of when the internship ends your clearance will still be good. And even if your clearance lapses, the fact that you were previously cleared still helps a lot. astr0man fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Feb 17, 2014 |
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Feb 17, 2014 17:30
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How do you get cleared without having to enlist in the reserves or whatever, anyway? I'd love D.C. and that kind of job would let you actually afford it.
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Feb 17, 2014 19:42
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Get hired by a defense contractor for a position on a contract that requires a clearance. edit: really this just means get a job with a defense contractor because almost everything would require a clearance. astr0man fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Feb 17, 2014 |
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Feb 17, 2014 19:54
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I've had some degree of a clearance already, though it was largely "allowed to fix and potentially cut holes into warships floating in a harbor under no supervision" or "supervising people cutting holes into floating warships." Guess it's time to send feelers to D.C.?
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Feb 17, 2014 21:12
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The "just don't lie" advice is a little sparse. You should check out this site, which lists the decisions of appeals of clearance denials (that is, someone tried to get clearance, got denied, and now they're asking a judge to give them a second chance): http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/doha/industrial/ The most common elements are: drug-use, arrests, personal debt, and ties to foreign countries. None of them are insurmountable, but if you smoke pot every day (or even every day until last month when you decided to apply for the job) they won't get you a clearance no matter how honest you are. What they do like is if you spill your guts about your past but have clearly reinvented yourself. The organization getting you the clearance also makes a big difference. I got mine through Lockheed, who has a "department of getting people cleared" that makes the whole thing run like clockwork. I later worked at a tiny place and one of my coworkers got denied because he had a 6-year-old DUI. I am confident that if he'd been with Lockheed they would have gotten his clearance through. Clearances are valuable because you need a clearance to do most Washington-area work and the number of clearances granted each year is tightly constricted. The company has to have already won a contract that requires clearances, then they get awarded some number of clearance pipelines, and the clearances themselves take over a month. Personally, I did not enjoy it. There are lots of smart, hard-working people in the business, but you also end up with nimrods who are there because Lockheed gets $X/year (I don't know, but it's high) for every warm body with a clearance. You get stuck with old, crappy technology because the government is required to move slowly and take low bidders. Or else you get stuck with new, crappy technology because a politician or general is doing favors for a friend. (Some of my information may be out of date, since my clearance lapsed ~5 years ago.) Edit: Here's a good one. The polygraph operator says that the guy's a pedophile because he saw some child porn. He has to explain to the judge that yes, he looks at porn all the time, but here are some affidavits from his wife and friends that they went through his porn and it's all legal. Mniot fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Feb 17, 2014 |
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Feb 17, 2014 22:13
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2banks1swap.avi posted:I've had some degree of a clearance already, though it was largely "allowed to fix and potentially cut holes into warships floating in a harbor under no supervision" or "supervising people cutting holes into floating warships." I can't tell you about the programming side of this business, but I have a friend who works in sales at Tenable Network Security in Columbia, MD and got 78k to start, fresh out of college. They seem to have a lot of openings and internships. Some positions are remote, and some are local http://www.tenable.com/careers/find-your-career.
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Feb 17, 2014 22:27
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Mniot posted:The "just don't lie" advice is a little sparse. You should check out this site, which lists the decisions of appeals of clearance denials (that is, someone tried to get clearance, got denied, and now they're asking a judge to give them a second chance): http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/doha/industrial/ quote:On one occasion in 1991 and again on two occasions in 1995, Applicant downloaded pornographic images or erotic stories onto the company computer in his office. In doing so he misused the IT system. In 1997 or 2001, he deliberately downloaded and viewed nude and pornographic images of what he believed to be prepubescent girls in provocative poses. As recently as 2007, he downloaded and viewed adult pornography as well as Japanese cartoon images and animations and Hentai images and animations. While there is evidence of credible adverse information provided by Applicant regarding his downloading and viewing of pornographic images of prepubescent females, as well as evidence of his downloading and viewing adult pornography and cartoon pornography, there is insufficient evidence to conclude that Applicant deliberately provided false or misleading information concerning the issue of child pornography. To the contrary, with the exception of the actual year in issue (1997 or 2001), Applicant has been consistent in his rendition of the facts. Disagreeing with summarized unverified information in the record is not the same as deliberately lying or recanting what has been characterized as previous “admissions.” There are no significant questions about Applicant’s reliability, trustworthiness, and ability to protect classified information Clearance is granted. CASE NO: 11-05850.h1
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Feb 17, 2014 22:30
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Now what with Edward Snowden and all they should probably just apply a "Don't be a weeaboo" rule.
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Feb 17, 2014 22:37
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"Are you now, or have you ever, been in possession of goons.txt?"
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Feb 17, 2014 22:46
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Mniot posted:The "just don't lie" advice is a little sparse. You should check out this site, which lists the decisions of appeals of clearance denials (that is, someone tried to get clearance, got denied, and now they're asking a judge to give them a second chance): http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/doha/industrial/ This is very true. But regarding drug use I've found that mostly they don't care about past use, but yeah I should have maybe clarified that by "past use" I don't mean "literally quit the day before my poly". This is obviously anecdotal, but I did a DoD internship through college that required TS/SCI. One of the other kids in the program was a huge pothead but I guess he was a pretty smart kid from an engineering standpoint. He obtained his clearance with the instructions to stop smoking weed. The next summer he failed a drug test, and they let him off again with a "lol are you an idiot we weren't joking when we told you to stop" warning. In the end he did end up getting fired halfway through the second summer because he failed another pair of drug tests that he knew he had to take beforehand  .I guess the moral of the story is that if someone really wants you, they will get you cleared unless you are a total fuckup. quote:The organization getting you the clearance also makes a big difference. I got mine through Lockheed, who has a "department of getting people cleared" that makes the whole thing run like clockwork. I later worked at a tiny place and one of my coworkers got denied because he had a 6-year-old DUI. I am confident that if he'd been with Lockheed they would have gotten his clearance through. This is also true, and all of the really big companies will have this.
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Feb 17, 2014 23:16
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Kumquat posted:I can't tell you about the programming side of this business, but I have a friend who works in sales at Tenable Network Security in Columbia, MD and got 78k to start, fresh out of college. They seem to have a lot of openings and internships. Some positions are remote, and some are local http://www.tenable.com/careers/find-your-career. quote:(Yes, we use our own custom C/PHP like language for the entire Backend!) The gently caress.
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Feb 17, 2014 23:47
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rsjr posted:The gently caress. I'm pretty sure that's referring to the scripting language that they use for Nessus which is a webapp for penetration testing stuff.
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Feb 17, 2014 23:50
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Working somewhere with a custom language sounds like just about the worst thing you could do for your career.
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Feb 18, 2014 00:29
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Don Mega posted:Working somewhere with a custom language sounds like just about the worst thing you could do for your career. The backend web developer position was the only one I looked at that made mention of it. When I spoke to my friend about the place he emphasized C++ more than anything. But like I said, I can't speak to the programming side of things, so caveat emptor.
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Feb 18, 2014 02:05
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Kumquat posted:The backend web developer position was the only one I looked at that made mention of it. When I spoke to my friend about the place he emphasized C++ more than anything. But like I said, I can't speak to the programming side of things, so caveat emptor. You don't need/get a clearance to work at Tenable typically (not sure if you were implying that when responding to 2banks). We do have a lot of former NSA people though, including the CEO. astr0man posted:I'm pretty sure that's referring to the scripting language that they use for Nessus which is a webapp for penetration testing stuff. That's NASL (Not Another Scripting Language); it's somewhat perl-like in that it has a lot of emphasis on regex but syntactically it's like a dynamically-typed C (or a PHP without the goofy $ prefix for variables). I don't think that it had anything to do with the custom backend language referenced in the job description. Nessus, NASL, PVS and such are all written in C++. Don Mega posted:Working somewhere with a custom language sounds like just about the worst thing you could do for your career. I can't speak for the backend web stuff but if you're working on the Research side (which is where you'd be using NASL), you're hardly doing your career wrong. NASL is very widely used, is not all that weird, and more importantly the research you're actually doing and the language-agnostic skills you're picking up are what matter. It's very different from being a dev in that sense since you spend much of your time reverse engineering stuff anyway. In general, Tenable is a great opportunity. Company size has doubled in the past year and is poised to double again in 2014. Just this past year Tenable landed a multi-million dollar contract with the DoD as their security compliance solution, which is a big deal. Also, pretty much every big company in existence uses Nessus and such to protect/monitor its IT infrastructure.
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Feb 18, 2014 02:26
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I just finished doing a practice interview with Cicero and he told me I should get feedback on my resume. PDF resume. Please tell me how I can improve it. Thanks! Also the practice interview was fun and involved way less mocking than I expected/deserved. Would recommend.
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Feb 18, 2014 03:16
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Frolic posted:Please tell me how I can improve it. Thanks! [A privacy warning sat here] Developed application to replace windows shell...Implemented UI according to specifications. This is so vague it's useless. What is meant with "shell" here? What did it do? What technologies did you use? Same remark for the first part of the job, though it's slightly less bad there. You didn't just enter SQL statements, did you? Hiowf fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 11:43
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I took off the github stuff. Skuto posted:Developed application to replace windows shell...Implemented UI according to specifications. The shell that we are replacing is explorer. The program lets you turn a windows box into a kiosk/limited environment. Written in C#/C++. The first part was more than just entering SQL statements. The program pulls info from the database->organizes it in the format we need ->uploads the files/configurations to the right place. Before this was a manual process. Thanks for the feedback. I'll try to add some more description to the experience when I get home.
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Feb 18, 2014 17:45
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Frolic posted:The shell that we are replacing is explorer. The program lets you turn a windows box into a kiosk/limited environment. Written in C#/C++. Awesome. This tells me much more: I can now assume you have at least some understanding of deeper Windows APIs, and I have a bit more confidence you can write the sort of lower-level C++ this entails. (Maybe I'm wrong and you can actually do almost all of this via C#. Doesn't matter - I'll err in your favor almost all the time). quote:The first part was more than just entering SQL statements. The program pulls info from the database->organizes it in the format we need ->uploads the files/configurations to the right place. Before this was a manual process. Right, but that still doesn't tell me what actual technologies you used. "Organizes in the format we need" was presumably done in some programming language, and consequently we can assume you have real practical experience in that language now. If we knew what it was  Not everyone here agrees with me it's useful to restate the technologies you know in the experience section, but there isn't all that much in the resume (yet) so I don't see any reason not to.
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Feb 18, 2014 18:02
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Today was my first day at work. I'm joining at a really exciting time. Going from finance to a "startup" (they've been around a while) is an awesome change. Wearing whatever the gently caress I want rules so hard. Thanks thread.
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Feb 19, 2014 05:18
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I'm looking for some resume help. I'm not actively job searching as I'm employed and also a student that owes my company a year of service post graduation. However, a professor wanted to nominate me for something and wanted my resume. I did the best I could in getting it to one page, but I really need some assistance as far as describing my current experience and the "Other" section of the technical skills. https://www.dropbox.com/s/m5wytfiy082ox48/uziel_resume.docx
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Feb 19, 2014 16:13
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Uziel posted:I'm looking for some resume help. I'm not actively job searching as I'm employed and also a student that owes my company a year of service post graduation. Here's a question you're going to get asked in an interview setting: "You were a helpdesk tech for 3 years, then suddenly you became a senior application developer? How'd that happen?" Break everything down into bullet points. Your experience is just a big, impenetrable wall of text. I put technical skills first, but that's a personal preference. I liked scanning for certain things that were applicable to the job, like "TDD". Don't mention your communication skills, ever, anywhere. Everyone says they have excellent communication skills, especially people who don't. It's meaningless.
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Feb 19, 2014 16:49
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