|
Pie Colony posted:what we have now is literally the best we know how to do, whiteboarding (or coderpad link) included. btw your question wasn't about some obscure algorithm, it was about how to convert a recursive program into an iterative one making use of an explicit stack. to disagree with everyone else in this thread, that's not an outlandish request of a programmer counterpoint: it's a bunch of loving morons cargo-culting big 5 interview practices e: this kind of bullshit shouldn't exist at all. ever read "Cracking the plumbing interview" or "cracking the pilot interview" no because that would be loving stupid. 
PokeJoe fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Mar 9, 2019 |
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 02:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 16:26 |
|
|
i should probably get me a copy of that to study, huh I feel like I agree with Pie Colony that I should have been able to get through that better, though. I did, but only with a couple hints and 40 of the 45 minutes of the interview, so idk
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 02:47
|
|
|
self driving car interview was rough... two pretty difficult coding sessions, the second of which was so intensely stupid I can't really even wrap my head around it. And an architecture/design session. Then capped it off with a "behavioral assessment". Ok, cool, I thought, this poo poo is easy. We're shooting the poo poo, when was a time you disagreed with your boss, blah blah blah. At some point my career aspirations come up, i told him I'm looking for that next level, maybe staff engineer or principal, etc etc. He tells me that this company is like 90% of software shops in SF where most people spend the rest of their lives in a senior role. I tell him its no big deal, what i want is bigger and bigger projects, more and more responsibility, I'm not super hung up on the title. I can't remember if we talked about stuff after that or how the conversation wrapped up, but basically it ended like 20 minutes before it was scheduled to.... Oh and by the way, during my questions to him, he revealed that he was the hiring manager... whoops! So the interview ending 20 minutes early with the hiring manager isn't a great sign. He told me they frequently schedule more time than is needed for the behavioral assessment, but, ehhhhh do they? So whatever, that's probably a no...
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 02:48
|
|
|
PokeJoe posted:counterpoint: it's a bunch of loving morons cargo-culting big 5 interview practices what? there are absolutely interview prep books in other industries https://www.amazon.com/Plumber-RED-HOT-Career-Interview-Questions/dp/1719230676
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 02:49
|
|
|
PokeJoe posted:counterpoint: it's a bunch of loving morons cargo-culting big 5 interview practices agreeing with pie colony here it’s a good skill to possess to understand how it is possible to convert recursion to iteration and it just indicates that the person knows some algorithms and data structures theory bear in mind this was no entry level interview the fact that cargo culters use this exercise does not make it a bad thing
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 02:51
|
|
|
Pie Colony posted:what? there are absolutely interview prep books in other industries ciaphas.exe has crashed
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 02:51
|
|
|
Pie Colony posted:what? there are absolutely interview prep books in other industries Yeah except quote:Tell me about one of the more challenging Plumber projects you've done in your career. What was the goal, and how did you achieve it? - More questions about you question: What are three positive Plumber character traits you don't have? - Career Development question: How can YOU monitor your Plumber data? Are good questions.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 02:53
|
|
|
Pie Colony posted:it was about how to convert a recursive program into an iterative one making use of an explicit stack no. that’s a lovely question unless your job is 90% converting recursive functions into iterative ones. should a non-garbage programmer know how to do that? of course. like I’ve said before, the purpose of the interview is to judge “is this person going to be successful in this role?” judge them on poo poo they are actually going to do in their role
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 02:58
|
|
|
Pie Colony posted:what? there are absolutely interview prep books in other industries this seems different, admittedly this is a little goal-post moving but i read CTCI and found it was only useful if i wanted to work at google or facebook or companies that copy their process. and the ones that copy it in my experience emphasize correctness. checking for if someone can get a trivia algorithm question right under pressure is not a good measure of technical skill. Im sure ciaphas could have solved that question easily under normal working circumstances. fyi I have interviewed dozens of people and I never ask these kind of trivia questions. i ask about technologies and projects they worked on. i make them do a pull request of some bad code. i have them tell me the architecture of a feature i give them. i do not ask them to implement quick sort. i do not ask them to invert binary trees (something i have never done once in my professional career)
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 03:01
|
|
|
Feisty-Cadaver posted:no. that’s a lovely question unless your job is 90% converting recursive functions into iterative ones. should a non-garbage programmer know how to do that? of course. after about 15-20 minutes I'd reached the "okay, I'm getting frustrated, take five minutes then check Google for a quick refresher" stage--i'd realized a stack was necessary but was fumbling on the details of populating it iteratively so in the real world I'd check that, remember the trick, plug it in, do a test case or whatever i need to do to check it over, and get on with my main task. If I worked on it by myself without pressure I'd get there or remember what I needed to remember, but not as quickly as just checking a reference so does that make me a garbage programmer? idk, probably? i don't care what i do, man, i just wanna solve computer problems, get paid for it and go home 
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 03:07
|
|
|
Ciaphas posted:after about 15-20 minutes I'd reached the "okay, I'm getting frustrated, take five minutes then check Google for a quick refresher" stage--i'd realized a stack was necessary but was fumbling on the details of populating it iteratively in the real world you can, and should, check references frequently. reading documentation is fundamental to programming. even though your old job wouldn't let you use the internet to check references (???)
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 03:09
|
|
|
PokeJoe posted:in the real world you can, and should, check references frequently. reading documentation is fundamental to programming. even though your old job wouldn't let you use the internet to check references (???) oh they let us, it was just an overall five to ten minute process per question with all the walkin'  (and inevitable walking back when your first Internet answer was wrong, or you misremembered--"should have printed that code sample after all, damnit" was a regular refrain)
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 03:11
|
|
|
Feisty-Cadaver posted:no. that’s a lovely question unless your job is 90% converting recursive functions into iterative ones. should a non-garbage programmer know how to do that? of course. do you know which role ciaphas was applying for? or if the company knew 90% of the code they need to get written?
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 03:18
|
|
|
i guess the lesson to be taken here is I may or may not be any good at touching computer, but interviewing remains garbage
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 03:18
|
|
|
Ciaphas posted:I hope relocation doesn't end up being a sticking point--or rather I guess if it does I should dismiss the company from my mind and move on, but that still sucks Relocation should be “We will move you.” Barring that, tell them about the 3k deal. If they pass on you over 3k extra, then bullet dodged.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 03:21
|
|
|
Feisty-Cadaver posted:judge them on poo poo they are actually going to do in their role ok i checked and its a bunch of proprietary garbage, and for Some Reason i can't get candidates to sign extensive NDA's for a white boarding session?? wait wait what if we just focus on some questions that have this property: Feisty-Cadaver posted:should a non-garbage programmer know how to do that? of course.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 03:21
|
|
|
ratbert90 posted:Relocation should be “We will move you.” Barring that, tell them about the 3k deal. If they pass on you over 3k extra, then bullet dodged. don't be fixed on it coming out of a "relo" budget or check too, it's a cost of doing business with you and they can cut the check from whichever source they want
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 03:23
|
|
|
Ciaphas posted:i guess the lesson to be taken here is I may or may not be any good at touching computer, but interviewing remains garbage on the plus side, because everyone copies the same pattern, you get good at interviews just by doing more interviews. when i was interviewing a couple years ago i completely bombed a question about consistent hashing, and now i feel like more than half the companies i interview with ask me about it
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 03:27
|
|
|
JawnV6 posted:my last signing bonus was $40k. i said 10 was small and the recruiter bumped it there. one-time costs like sign-on and relo come out of a different bucket where did you go and how long have you been at this that they give you forty thousand dollars to work for them, i can't even conceive of such a thing happening to me
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 03:29
|
|
|
PokeJoe posted:ever read "Cracking the plumbing interview" or "cracking the pilot interview" no because that would be loving stupid. this kind of exists for the legacies in the US though; they want to see crap like community service hours
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 03:29
|
|
|
JawnV6 posted:great idea! if you can't generalize what that person would do in that role with Whatever Proprietary Garbage you're using into meaningful questions, you are a bad interviewer and should practice more to get better. and yeah, maybe the role he applied for was converting recursing functions into iterative ones for, uh performance reasons or something. in that case it's a Good Question.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 04:21
|
|
|
Ciaphas posted:where did you go and how long have you been at this that they give you forty thousand dollars to work for them, i can't even conceive of such a thing happening to me Feisty-Cadaver posted:if you can't generalize what that person would do in that role with Whatever Proprietary Garbage you're using into meaningful questions, you are a bad interviewer and should practice more to get better. im saying the mechanics underlying "converting a recursing function into iterative ones" is a generalized, abstract, meaningful question representative of dev work even if the role isn't your asinine suggestion of "unless your job is 90% converting recursive functions into iterative ones". if it isn't, how is it lacking and what would the generalized abstract meaningful one look like? JawnV6 fucked around with this message at 09:11 on Mar 9, 2019 |
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 04:43
|
|
|
Pie Colony posted:what? there are absolutely interview prep books in other industries This isn't even remotely close to the same thing. CTCI is literally targeted specifically at the big tech companies "the Microsoft interview", "the Facebook interview", etc. The fact that you can predict these interviews that strongly in advance is a testament to how bad the interviews actually are, they are hiring only people who have read this stupid book, as opposed to basically any kind of merit at all. And of course, everyone just follows what those companies do to hire because hey if it's good enough for Microsoft then it's good enough for us.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 06:19
|
|
|
lol remember in the late 90s and early 00s when everybody followed microsoft and built their interviews around tricky math problems? why are manhole covers round, how many piano tuners are employed in the US, how many different places on earth can you walk one mile north then one mile east then one mile south and still end up in the same place? and how they gave up on them when a/b testing showed there was no difference in the quality of employee selected when using or not they were good at solving GAMES Magazine brainbusters? that was awesome
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 07:35
|
|
|
what i am badly failing to get across is Ciaphas has, iirc, 10+ years of experience. when i interview people if i'm lucky I get 90 minutes with candidates to do tech deep dive interviews. asking basically "do you know recursion" is a waste of time. that's the sort of thing I ask juniors in college who are looking for an internship. plus stuff like how's a hashmap work, what's the diff b/w a list and a set, the sort of basic stuff that will tell you if they can maybe code their way out of a paper bag. with people like ciaphas you want to know how far down the rabbit hole they can go in whatever tech stack. you want to find the point where they say "i don't know." e.g. if you're a good js dev you will know how webkit renders a frame in detail, and how to diagnose and fix your poo poo-slow webpack monstrosity. maybe they did do this and i'm just reading into a bad question too much ps. looking through hundreds and hundreds of college kids resumes after a job fair is extremely unpleasant, i don't recommend it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 07:57
|
|
|
qhat posted:This isn't even remotely close to the same thing. CTCI is literally targeted specifically at the big tech companies "the Microsoft interview", "the Facebook interview", etc. The fact that you can predict these interviews that strongly in advance is a testament to how bad the interviews actually are, they are hiring only people who have read this stupid book, as opposed to basically any kind of merit at all. And of course, everyone just follows what those companies do to hire because hey if it's good enough for Microsoft then it's good enough for us. my coworker got a job at facebook and he said they sent him a literal study guide for the interview
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 08:13
|
|
|
Feisty-Cadaver posted:what i am badly failing to get across is Ciaphas has, iirc, 10+ years of experience. when i interview people if i'm lucky I get 90 minutes with candidates to do tech deep dive interviews. asking basically "do you know recursion" is a waste of time. that's the sort of thing I ask juniors in college who are looking for an internship. plus stuff like how's a hashmap work, what's the diff b/w a list and a set, the sort of basic stuff that will tell you if they can maybe code their way out of a paper bag. pretty much this. my concern with seniors is not "can they program", obviously they loving can if they've been able to hold down software engineering jobs. my main concern is "if i give this guy an important project, is he going to blow it to hell", and that you really just have to speak at length with them about past experiences, maybe get them to talk in depth about tech stacks, get them to propose architectural solutions to problems, project management, and try to vibe them out.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 08:19
|
|
|
qhat posted:pretty much this. my concern with seniors is not "can they program", obviously they loving can if they've been able to hold down software engineering jobs. my main concern is "if i give this guy an important project, is he going to blow it to hell", and that you really just have to speak at length with them about past experiences, maybe get them to talk in depth about tech stacks, get them to propose architectural solutions to problems, project management, and try to vibe them out. you don't get any fewer non-fizzbuzzers if you advertise for a senior dev position. you don't get any more than for the junior dev but you don't get any fewer. it's disappointing but it's how it is. you must give them a computer touching test, you can't avoid this
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 08:27
|
|
|
Feisty-Cadaver posted:what i am badly failing to get across is Ciaphas has, iirc, 10+ years of experience. when i interview people if i'm lucky I get 90 minutes with candidates to do tech deep dive interviews. asking basically "do you know recursion" is a waste of time. that's the sort of thing I ask juniors in college who are looking for an internship. plus stuff like how's a hashmap work, what's the diff b/w a list and a set, the sort of basic stuff that will tell you if they can maybe code their way out of a paper bag. I don't know whether they were better questions but they at least seemed more relevant to the day to day for the team (ed) oh i remembered just now, one of the interviewers the other day focused entirely on testability and similar subjects. that felt like more of a back and forth than the rest Ciaphas fucked around with this message at 08:40 on Mar 9, 2019 |
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 08:32
|
|
|
qhat posted:pretty much this. my concern with seniors is not "can they program", obviously they loving can if they've been able to hold down software engineering jobs. my main concern is "if i give this guy an important project, is he going to blow it to hell", and that you really just have to speak at length with them about past experiences, maybe get them to talk in depth about tech stacks, get them to propose architectural solutions to problems, project management, and try to vibe them out. lol I was on the other end of this today... During the interview, the guy I'm speaking with is talking about the team, their stack etc. Turns out they use not only Apache Beam/Dataflow, but also prefer the Python SDK for it. I'm like no way, we also used a bunch of Dataflow and I really enjoyed the Python SDK. Instead of exploring this, maybe even coming up with some toy problems centered around this technology, or talk about its drawbacks, what you'd like to see it do better etc etc... lets head over to the whiteboard... design me a set that provides insert()/contains()/clear() operations that all run in constant time (hint: garbage collection time counts, so you can't just make a wrapper class that points to a new set when you call clear()) Cool, cool, good stuff
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 08:59
|
|
|
bob dobbs is dead posted:you don't get any fewer non-fizzbuzzers if you advertise for a senior dev position. you don't get any more than for the junior dev but you don't get any fewer. it's disappointing but it's how it is. you must give them a computer touching test, you can't avoid this There is a difference between a tricky bullshit toy problem and an honest assessment of someone's skills via a practical coding assignment, usually a scaled down version of an actual problem they have. Since I was just complaining about a horrible interview question, I'll mention the best coding question I've had lately (From a company that handles a lot of documents and CSVs and stuff... text data basically): "Write me a function that takes a string, and have it return the language the string is in" So its pretty open ended, my solution was to have a variety of sets of words from different languages, and go through the words in the supplied string (including removing capitalization, punctuation, newlines, etc etc) and tally up matches in various languages. The one with the most matches is the winner. Maybe its not the best way to do it, but its some code that can be reasonably written and debugged in 20-30 minutes. There isn't a "trick" to it, just like there is rarely a "trick" to practical programming.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 09:07
|
|
|
bob dobbs is dead posted:you don't get any fewer non-fizzbuzzers if you advertise for a senior dev position. you don't get any more than for the junior dev but you don't get any fewer. it's disappointing but it's how it is. you must give them a computer touching test, you can't avoid this Yep agreed, and this is a great fit for a phone screen. Have a bunch of rapid-fire relatively easy to answer questions that you would expect anyone with some level of experience to know. If they flub a couple no big deal, but if they are on the strugglebus the whole time, hard pass. Spend ~45 minutes on the "are you an imposter or not" stuff, then 15 mins of letting them ask questions about the gig, concerns, or whatever. If you are the interviewee, this is a great time to ask some of the questions in the OP. If you're asking fizz buzz in an onsite either the interview has gone drastically sideways b/c the candidate is extremely nervous, or bullshit their way this far (this has happened to me once or twice), or maybe you need to revisit what you're asking in the phone screen. Feisty-Cadaver fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Mar 9, 2019 |
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 09:14
|
|
|
ADINSX posted:"Write me a function that takes a string, and have it return the language the string is in" lol if the solution isn't train a recurrent neural network on a bunch of freely available corpus overnight and be done with it
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 09:17
|
|
|
qhat posted:lol if the solution isn't train a recurrent neural network on a bunch of freely available corpus overnight and be done with it if you wanna write that using the standard python libraries in 30 minutes go ahead :p I told them my real solution would probably just be this
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 09:21
|
|
|
ADINSX posted:if you wanna write that using the standard python libraries in 30 minutes go ahead :p my answer was more facetious than an actual serious attempt to answer the question. i was more pointing out that the answer they most likely want is objectively the worst way of doing the thing they are asking.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 09:22
|
|
|
qhat posted:my answer was more facetious than an actual serious attempt to answer the question. i was more pointing out that the answer they most likely want is objectively the worst way of doing the thing they are asking. Yeah I figured, and nanh they were actually pretty cool about it, it was the closest I've gotten to actually enjoying an interview problem. That company had a lot of cool people... and a lot of tech debt... a whole lot of cool people and tech debt. So maybe their interview technique didn't work at all
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 09:24
|
|
|
ed: it is way too late for me to be postin' -_-
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 09:25
|
|
|
at my old org i used to think that the prevalence of tech debt would be a good thing for me since there'd be a lot of opportunity to spearhead some great initiatives, like devops and the like, and then getting recognized as a highly valuable employee. at least that's what i thought until i realized that the tech debt also prevented the good ideas from being taken seriously at all.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 09:30
|
|
|
qhat posted:at my old org i used to think that the prevalence of tech debt would be a good thing for me since there'd be a lot of opportunity to spearhead some great initiatives, like devops and the like, and then getting recognized as a highly valuable employee. at least that's what i thought until i realized that the tech debt also prevented the good ideas from being taken seriously at all. how did this work? “we have mountains of tech dept please don’t suggest solutions”?
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 09:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 16:26 |
|
|
Boiled Water posted:how did this work? “we have mountains of tech dept please don’t suggest solutions”? "we want solutions to our problem with releases taking forever but nothing that involves any money or resources taken away from getting our releases out asap"
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2019 09:43
|
|