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In, the spirit of the thread, I recently got a summer internship at Microsoft, so if anyone has questions about the interview process, feel free to ask.
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# ¿ Dec 31, 2010 14:43 |
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# ¿ May 2, 2024 13:03 |
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wolffenstein posted:Are MS interviews as bad as the rumors say? I personally loved the experience. It was very casual. You get interviewed by developers themselves, not some HR crew, at their offices (and over lunch with one of the guys). Really nice people and most of them were just brilliant! The key is (as with most professional interviews I guess, although I have nothing else to compare against) that you actually TALK and discuss the problem at hand extensively before and while you are tackling it. The impression that I got was that if you fail a tough question, you can still be very much in the running if you've put across the impression that you actually know HOW to tackle problems, rather than memorize and recall solutions from memory. Plus discussing the problem and probing about potential issues will help the interviewer realize that you can be a team player and not some gun-ho pro-coder guy who just works by himself and can't socialize.
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# ¿ Jan 2, 2011 11:43 |
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Ithaqua posted:Beware: this is a company that thinks brain teasers are a measure of your programming ability To be fair, this "teaser" is immediately translatable to a programming problem (100 bits, all set to false, flip every other bit, flip every third bit, etc) so it is actually a decent measure of programming ability.
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# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 20:27 |
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Che Delilas posted:Keep in mind that good interviewers will try and find where your limits are. In other words, they're going to give you problems with a range of difficulty, so realize that being unable to solve a problem doesn't necessarily mean you've failed the interview and you aren't good enough for the job. They just want to get a bead on you. This can't be overstated. I've had at least one interview (for an internship in one of the big places) during which I didn't get the right answer but went on to get an offer. Being able to display a coherent train of thought and ability to analyze the problem is arguably more important than the solution itself. It also demonstrates that you didn't just memorize Cracking The Code back to back and are just riding of that.
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# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 23:53 |
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sarehu posted:You think they'd ask for a transcript? Who asks for a transcript?? 3.1 is totally kosher, go for it. They might ask for a transcript and background check you to the point where they'll call your school to check out your story. I'm in a PhD program in the US and I had a company call my alma matter in GREECE, multiple times, until someone in the registrar's office pulled their heads out of their asses and picked up the phone to confirm that I actually graduated from there. But no, a rounding error of 0.02 isn't gonna hurt you.
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# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 19:44 |
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Did a second round phone interview for my dream gig on Friday and throughout the weekend I've on pins and needles, waiting on HR to get back to me so I'll rant a bit. I've been doing native code development for 7 years as part of my studies and internships (undergrad and then PhD). Yet somehow all interviews that I encounter now that I'm looking for full-time gigs are of the "how do I linked list" persuasion (guess that's what happens when you're interviewing for "entry" level positions). It's annoying that the expectations for incoming developers are so low that they candidates have to be filtered based on their ability to memorize solutions from Cracking the Code versus actual problem solving and engineering chops.
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# ¿ Oct 19, 2014 22:22 |
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Cicero posted:Job descriptions like this make me laugh. There's like 30 bullet points exhaustively addressing what your responsibilities would be and what your qualifications have to be, and then a vague sentence or two on what you get out of the deal. Potentially an H1B-requirement filing too?
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# ¿ Nov 4, 2014 03:28 |
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Tunga posted:In my technical interview at Google I missed a couple of edge cases in an algorithm that I would have normally caught with unit tests. When he prompted me I was able to see the issue and resolve it quickly. How picky are they on this stuff? I was coding in a Google Doc so obviously my code is going to be a little less perfect than if I was working in an IDE. Everything else went pretty well I think, all of the customer/partner interaction stuff, personality questions, "tell me about a time you X", general Android stuff, etc. all seemed fine. So I'm hopeful that it'll turn into something but might have not quite hit the technical mark. It was a fun experience either way and pretty cool to get a (brief) look around their offices. Phone screen? I'd wager you are fine.
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# ¿ Nov 4, 2014 15:31 |
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gently caress them posted:What I'm thinking is the timing would make it so if I even end up getting the offer there instead of working a notice where I'm at now, it would be so brief I could just forget that from the resume. A bit shitbaggy but not something that would follow me. Google's the probably pickiest of all the top-tier companies in terms of interview criteria (at least the ones that I or my close circle have been exposed to). Still, it seems like you had everything under control. Being "nudged along" by the interviewer is part of the process, at least in entry-level engineering interviews.
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# ¿ Nov 4, 2014 17:58 |
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Jsor posted:Wait, are we talking unit tests and batch testing scripts, or things like static program analysis and formal verification (e.g. as plugins for IDEs)? Because the latter is pretty hardcore work. It largely depends on the team. SDETs in the group that i interned for in MSFT would put together some very awesome automated testing infrastructures that would look for perf/correctness/security regressions. You'd give it a patch and it would compile the product for all architectures and run it on 100s of physical machines simultaneously. SDETs would design/implement the infrastructure, add hooks to the product so it could be tested automatically, etc. Very impressive stuff. On another topic, what's the etiquette for scheduling multiple on-sites with companies that are located near each other (e.g. the Valley) around roughly the same period of time? Is it kosher to tell recruiters that you are trying to schedule multiple on-sites, or that you only need Company A to get the incoming flight for you because company B is paying for the way out? My job search is ramping up and I'd like to avoid throwing a blood clot from doing the NY-SF route in coach 5 times in 3 weeks...
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# ¿ Dec 6, 2014 02:16 |
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Just got an offer for a dev position in the UI team of a flagship product of one of the "big three". Needless to say, I am extremely excited.
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# ¿ Dec 11, 2014 03:01 |
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Che Delilas posted:Hey congrats! Did they say they'd withdraw the offer if you told other people which company it is? Nope, not at all, I'm just being a bit cautious about it what with this being a public forum and what not
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# ¿ Dec 11, 2014 03:45 |
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return0 posted:Facebook, Google, and... ? Apple/MS/Amazon? Blackberry :P.
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# ¿ Dec 11, 2014 22:18 |
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Che Delilas posted:Edit: You should still enumerate the specific features and projects you worked on. Just make it clear somewhere that this job involved a team of developers, not just you. However, it's important to be honest in outlining your contributions and you really gotta be prepared to talk about them...I've interviewed students who wanted to join our lab who couldn't back up their CV claims with concrete technical details (even though they were involved in the projects in question, they just overstated their roles). That brings one's honest into question very very rapidly...
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# ¿ Dec 23, 2014 01:52 |
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Safe and Secure! posted:When you say "average", you mean at places other than Google, Amazon, etc.? Even at those places, you don't need to memorize CoC to apply and be successful. Being able to project to your interviewers that you posses problem solving abilities is more important than actually solving the coding question itself or solving it sub optimally.
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# ¿ Dec 23, 2014 03:49 |
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Onion Knight posted:
Do you have "formal" CS education (maybe i missed this in your post)? If you're interviewing for entry-level positions, unless it is a specialized shop, your success will be contingent on various "How do i linked list?" type of questions (data structures, complexity theory, etc) rather than expertise with specific APIs. Having a portfolio is good, especially if you don't have a CS degree (which kinda serves as a portfolio, in the sense that it gives you projects to talk about in interviews and on your CV). However, you might want to throw some online courses on CS fundamentals in there as well. You can get completion certificates from those and I've been getting the vibe that recruiters are paying more attention to those things lately.
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# ¿ Dec 31, 2014 00:29 |
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Onion Knight posted:Nope, no formal CS education unfortunately. I think I might focus more on getting course certs than textbooks, then (not to say I'll stop reading textbooks, just shifting focus) No problem . Once you are comfortable with the interview-fodder material, then you can also look into some of the cooler and more applied MOOCs that are available out there. Anything that has to do with big data and data science is very catchy these days. Same thing for computer vision. Plus those courses can be a ton of fun. Also, based on how you describe yourself and your engineering skills, you are already way ahead of 90% of the CS MSc graduates that come out of my University and its all about overcoming the fact that you don't have a degree in the field .
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# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 16:33 |
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Acer Pilot posted:I'm having lunch with my old boss soon and he's probably going to talk about job opportunities. What should I order? It's a sit down restaurant in a nice area of downtown and serves sandwiches, pasta, and pizza. Whatever's on the menu that you can eat without making a mess and which doesn't take too long to chew.
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# ¿ Jan 5, 2015 10:11 |
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theDOWmustflow posted:Thanks for the advice! Grad school does that to you. I know plenty of folks that started out as software engineers in their very late 20s or early 30s (granted, that's PhDs, but still). I haven't had any employer care about my age either during my recent job search.
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# ¿ Jan 7, 2015 09:38 |
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Pollyanna posted:If AngelList isn't the top resource/approach to take, what is? Aside from networking, which has the best chance of success but I suck the most at, trolling AngelList has been my best bet. What else should I be doing? The advice I've gotten from my program's career advisor has been "get your name out" and "let people come to you", but that feels way too ineffective to me. Find a startup/company that you are interest in, track down their HR person on LinkedIn and message them, introducing yourself.
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# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 18:55 |
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Shrimpy posted:If there's no HR person, you can also try reaching out to pretty much anyone at the company. Now my company has an in-house recruiter, but we've had people reach out to our CEO and CTO directly as well as some of our junior engineers to get themselves into the interview pool. Hey, depending on the stage of the startup, the CEO/CTO IS the HR person .
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# ¿ Jan 10, 2015 22:02 |
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Knyteguy posted:Thanks a lot. I'll make those changes shortly. Pet peeve of mine but I would say that either stick to describing yourself in the first person or the third person. In these bullet points you switch half-way through each sentence and it reads somewhat awkwardly.
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# ¿ Jan 15, 2015 23:13 |
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Tunga posted:These sentences do not switch person. They are a little awkward, sure, but not grammatically inaccurate. There is no third-person in any of them. Maybe I phrased my self incorrectly. All sentences are of the form "I am a dev who is good at XYZ". I think it is simpler and reads less awkwardly if expressed as "I am a dev. I love doing XYZ".
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# ¿ Jan 15, 2015 23:29 |
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Safe and Secure! posted:So I'm looking to apply to the following big companies, because I figure they tend to have the smartest people, the highest compensation, and name-recognition (not sure if it would help me much in the long run, but I would enjoy having recognizable a name on my resume): FWIW I've heard that Amazon isn't exactly the happiest place to work at + their comp isn't that great (might have changed in the past couple of years). Companies like Uber have substantially smaller engineering organizations than Apple and MSFT (hundreds of people vs tens of thousands) and their culture will be closer to a startup (albeit a $40B one). I've heard from a couple of friends that got offers this year that financial places are actually picking up the pace salary-wise, salaries for PhD grads in the 150K range (although the bonuses/stock are worse than tech firms). I think they are realizing that they are having trouble attracting top tier talent. However, if you join one of them now, be prepared to interact mostly with folks that could not make it to the Tier 1/2 tech firms.
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# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 04:20 |
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Blotto Skorzany posted:150k is on the low end for financials for someone with a bachelors Not for software engineers unfortunately.
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# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 04:29 |
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Safe and Secure! posted:Correct me if I'm wrong (especially if I'm underestimating!), but I think $120k-130k/yr salary + $20-50k/yr in RSUs at Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook is typical, plus about 20-30% more on top of that if you ask for more and show similar offers from similar companies. And if you apply to all 4, plus Apple, LinkedIn, Yahoo, etc., you have a good chance of getting multiple offers, even if only two. So it seems that with adequate preparation, it should be feasible to make >= $200k/yr in salary and stock, and definitely feasible to make > $150k/yr. Add to that the chance to work with people who are at the top of the industry skill-wise, and it seems like there's zero reason to consider working for any finance companies if $150k is really considered decent for a SWE at those places. What's your educational background / experience like? I personally have not heard of anyone getting $50K in RSUs YEARLY out of any (edit: big tech) company fresh out school at any level.
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# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 04:47 |
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Blotto Skorzany posted:What financials are you referring to where programmer salaries are lousy? The recruiters for trading firms that are talking to me currently are giving out numbers considerably higher than the base salary and bonus at InFaceGoogeZon, though I assume their stock grants are much worse and everything besides comp is probably worse. They also care more about signal processing things on my resume than any of the tech firm recruiters do, though that's understandable. Most banks, Bloomberg, etc...From what you're describing it seems that you're getting recruited for more of a quant position that generic S.E...I would figure those pay substantially more.
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# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 04:55 |
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Safe and Secure! posted:Bachelors in computer science, bachelors in math and getting close to two years of experience, so not fresh out of school. And I don't mean to imply that those numbers are for fresh grads - I know that fresh grad compensation packages are quite a bit lower. It's my understanding that these numbers are typical for non-entry-level SWEs. Honestly I can't speak to how work experience affects one's compensation because I haven't had interactions with people job-searching at that level .
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# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 04:58 |
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Thermopyle posted:Surely most developers are self-aware enough to realize "hey, I'm used to this language and other languages might have better paradigms, so I'm just not going to force this new language into my old way of thinking"? Right? Right?!?! Also, acquiring good habits for a particular language is also a factor of exposure over time to good source written in said language. There is only so much you can get out of Google and StackOverflow....
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 00:12 |
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Kalenden posted:I'm currently applying for a Software Engineering Intern at Google (like this one https://www.google.com/about/careers/search#!t=jo&jid=61975001& ) and I'm a bit stressed about it. Based on my experience when I was interviewing for a Google Internship, you're up for two rounds of purely technical phone interviews. The questions can be demanding (they were on the level of what i went through when interviewing for full-time positions), aka they will be harder than "reverse a string". My questions where in the upper tiers of difficulty of what you would find in CoC. The "strictness" will largely depend on whoever is interviewing you. You may get a little time at the end of the interview to talk about yourself/interests/projects/etc. However, the engineer who's interviewing you will be unrelated to the team that you end up interning for (unless you somehow got referred and are not going through the regular process). Overall, its reputation as a tough interview is well deserved IMO, but if you're comfortable with coding algorithmic questions while explaining your thought process, you should do well. shodanjr_gr fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Feb 11, 2015 |
# ¿ Feb 11, 2015 05:43 |
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UnfurledSails posted:I will be graduating this June. I will have about a year of post-grad OPT, and maybe another 17 months if I can extend it, and eventually a H1B at some point (hopefully). How the heck did you manage to go through a BSc at Stanford without doing an internship? Anyway, make sure you get your interviewing skills up to scratch, there are plenty of good recommendations in this thread on how to do that (Cracking the Coding Interview is probably the most succinct way). Your resume needs a lot of work, both in terms of look/layout and also the content. Take a look at this: http://img.docstoccdn.com/thumb/orig/119401972.png (found after 15 seconds on Google). Notice the very clear delineation between the different sections of the document. Try to get close to that. When you list your courses, skip the CSEXXX codes, they don't really mean anything...The dual column layout makes better use of space for your single-age resume. Make sure you have a "Technical Skills" section that lists not only the programming languages but also the APIs and other relevant technologies that you are familiar with (for example, you say that you made an auction website as a course project...your technical skills should at least mention HTML5). Basically any technology that you worked with during some course project deserves to be there (but obviously, order them based on experience/comfort and don't lie). The last section, rather than "Work Experience" should be something along the lines of "Selected Projects". There, you pick 2-3 senior projects that you are proud of and you describe them in a succinct way. What the project was about, what were your contributions, what technologies did you use. Make sure you select projects that you were really involved in and that you have a good grasp on because you WILL get asked about these things during your interviews. If you haven't already, make a LinkedIn profile and bring it up to speed, make sure you include all the info that you have on your resume (coursework/projects/etc). The above may sound scary but, you will soon realize that, especially with a degree from Stanford and a willingness to move, you will get more job offers than you can shake a stick at (given that you are at least semi-competent at coding). Also, keep in mind that certain companies are better than others at handling international folks (who need H1Bs/GCs/etc). Generally speaking, getting a job at one of the big guys will make your life easier immigration-wise.
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# ¿ Feb 15, 2015 06:31 |
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UnfurledSails posted:Thanks. I'll use this from now on. quote:Here's my second attempt: http://a.pomf.se/pudfhk.pdf. I changed the layout and added all the stuff I used in my assignments/projects in order of comfort. I also explained what I did in two of the most major projects I've worked on. I will probably update this as I'm currently working on something large for a class, and I will also work on an independent project (it's a requirement for graduation). I would categorize the technical skills between languages, APIs and technologies. Then i would order them in order of familiarity and perhaps bold the ones that you are readily familiar with. There used to be a goon in SAMart that sold resume-polishing services. You might wanna ask for his help or go to your campuses' career services and ask for theirs. quote:It's been more than a year since I worked on the PintOS project, so I'll probably need to review what I did back then. I had great fun working on that, though. I was in a team of 3, and we kind of messily worked on everything all together without any clear division of work, so I don't know how to take credit for all we have done. quote:I'll work on updating my old-rear end LinkedIn profile as well. I pretty much only got spammed by recruiters/robots so I guess that drove me away from it after a while. Recruiter spam is good, that's one way to get jobs. The more up-to-date your profile is, the more spam you will get. Regarding OPT, I think that you need to have the job prior to the Aug. 15 deadline, that's the time by which your OPT needs to be activated in order for you not to be out-of-status as far as I know (so you would need to have an offer in hand and your paperwork in before then). Make sure you talk to your international advisor before nailing down your timeframe. Recruiting times vary a lot between companies and different companies have different hiring periods. Generally, getting noticed by the big guys can take a while, especially if you just apply online. If there are any career events going on, make sure you attend them and hand-out as many CVs as possible. Lots of companies will even hold on-campus interviews right after these events which can REALLY fast-track the interview process. For what it's worth, international students at my school who graduate in the Spring generally start looking for jobs in the fall semester prior...so between polishing up your CV/LinkedIn, practicing interview skills, actually applying/interviewing and coursework, you do have a lot on your plate.
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# ¿ Feb 16, 2015 03:39 |
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UnfurledSails posted:Any ideas on how to add a "passion" on a resume without having it sound hokey? I do not have any huge tournament wins since I always pay more to play against players stronger than me, but I've been steadily improving year after year. I did draw against a couple of international masters, and represented my college, but we don't really have an established chess culture here. I have a coach and I train pretty much every day. I'm not sure how to make sure to let people know I take this seriously and it's not some nebulous hobby I do for an hour every week. quote:This is probably pedantic nitpicking, but I'm not sure how to categorize some of my skills here. web.py and Jinja2 are API's, but what about Hadoop and CUDA? Can't I also count them as tech? (I've only recently been introduced to them in my Parallel Computing class). How about the *SQL's? They can be either languages or tech. Does it matter? quote:It's not the end of the world if I don't make it, but it would make my life harder since I would need to make sure I get an H1B for my first job. I can only hope things go well.
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# ¿ Feb 17, 2015 23:47 |
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Kalenden posted:What are the chances that I succeed in this second chance, then succeed in the on-site interview (which would be the week after that due to time constraints if I want to get to Mountainview, time constraints are less strict if I want to work in Europe) and then get selected by the committee? When did they start doing on-sites for internships at Google? In any case, you should do the second interview. If you have time to prepare, you might get yourself an internship that either turns into a full-time job down the line or otherwise sets up your career (seriously, your hiring prospects change massively once you've done an internship, especially at one of the big places). If you don't have time to prepare, then at least you've gotten even more practice for one of the toughest interviews in the industry.
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# ¿ Feb 18, 2015 01:29 |
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UnfurledSails posted:It's more about the fact that I don't really have an impressive accomplishment like top three in a large tournament. Chess is really really hard, and you need to play and study it for years to get to the "my games actually make some logical sense" stage (pretty much like programming, I suppose). I started out only a couple of years ago and I worked hard to get to the strength level I am (About 1750 ELO), but "I train a lot, trust me" doesn't sound as good as a list of medals. Why would they even care? Chances are, they won't. But someone who reads your resume might be a casual chess player so they might ask you about it, giving you an additional talking point. It also allows you to point to your resume and say "I was training as a chess master" if someone asks why you didn't do an internship. You are applying for an entry-level software developer position. You are not expected to be a master of C++ or have in-depth knowledge of GPU Compute. You are expected to be intelligent, decent at communicating, have good computer science fundamentals, some school projects under you belt and good work ethic/dedication (and based on what I've seen, one doesn't even need to hit all these marks to get a job but that's another discussion). That's what your CV should bring out. Being good at chest is a small part of that.
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# ¿ Feb 18, 2015 06:55 |
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Steely Glint posted:Happy to help! Like most people, I love talking about myself. Without naming the specific product, I can say I'm making a website that lets people perform queries on a database of Mars rover telemetry and do some simple map visualisations. It's just a pretty wrapper for an existing project, as the database, server, routing schemes etc. are all provided. So they hire you (effectively, based on the work you are doing/have been offered to do) as a software engineer intern and then pay you a tad more than minimum wage? I get that it's a research lab but jeez...SE interns in the valley make 3x to 5x as much per hour...(going by the original $10 hourly you stated).
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# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 19:53 |
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quote:I'll literally earn more in my first paycheck at Google this summer than the entire JPL internship pays Prepare to be spoilt rotten...Big-4 internships are amazingly rewarding, the perks are out of this world (i think Google's is the worst/best in terms of free stuff) and the pay is absurd. Plus, you know, you get to work on cool stuff and interact with very very smart people (most of the time).
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# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 23:04 |
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LookingGodIntheEye posted:Does CS have a problem with unpaid or low-paying internships for companies not of the Big 4? I had a friend that was doing an unpaid internship as a front-end web developer and he managed to get a paid internship at another company through a headhunter agency, but the catch was that the company that hired him originally wanted to pit him against another intern, with only one of them ultimately getting the job. He had a suspicion that this was an attempt to make him accept lower-than-expected pay and benefits, and he and the headhunter agency had to haggle with the company to get the company to leave a position for both of them if they proved themselves. Is this a common story in the CS career world? What the christ is this ? Sounds like the plot of a lovely reality show...
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# ¿ Feb 20, 2015 01:31 |
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Brownie posted:I've got a bit of a strange question: how does one go about getting started in Computer Graphics? I obviously don't mean graphic design or whatever, I mean like rendering and simulation of complex visuals. Semi-serious answer, go to grad school on the subject. Jsor's answer is spot-on, basically there is a fairly large difference between real-time graphics for interactive applications (which can include games, medical imaging, simulations, etc) and offline rendering (for movies, cad, etc). From a background point of view, if you have strong linear algebra skills, you're mostly good to go. Actually, if you have a physics background, you probably have some experience in the fundamentals of light-transport as well which is very useful. Background in statistics/integration methods is useful for some areas (e.g. global illumination algorithms, sampling, etc) while information theory would be useful in others (e.g. texture compression and filtering). If you want to look up cutting edge stuff, definitely go through the proceedings of the SIGGRAPH conferences and also the material for SIGGRAPH Courses and industrial presentations (that's where rendering engineers from game companies and movie studios will frequently describe their work). Other prime venues for the topic at the Transactions on Graphics journal of the ACM, the Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics journal of the IEEE. The Eurographics, Eurographics Symposium on Rendering, SIGGRAPH ASIA and Computer Graphics Forum are other respectable places where folks will publish work for both realtime and offline CG. If you really care about real-time CG, definitely check out the i3D Symposium.
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# ¿ Feb 23, 2015 23:16 |
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# ¿ May 2, 2024 13:03 |
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pseudospectral posted:So I applied to PhD software dev internship position with Google mostly out of curiosity. They replied and want three 45 minute technical phone interviews. Problem is, I'm mostly in applied math/scientific computing and although I know numerical methods and can write code to solve differential equations, etc., by no means am I familiar with the things on their list of things I should know for these interviews. I'm thinking of just trying it to see how it goes and what type of questions they ask me but eh...kind of wish I had a better knowledge of that stuff right about now. This is probably the most unfortunate thing about Google's interview process for devs and dev-interns...It's not domain or team specific so you can have a ton of expertise in a field and still not make it through because your last algos and data structures classes were in undergrad. If you want to prep for their interviews in a short amount of time, Cracking the Coding Interview is your best bet (and this thread should be earning commission from the sales of that book).
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# ¿ Feb 27, 2015 07:01 |