Technical Fraternity : hazing in technical interviews

[cguy]

As you've said not everyone is inclined to want to learn this, hence I guess you've narrowed your interviews around that. Yet I believe the floor on complexity is being lowered, because we can express things far more simply than we previously did, even very complex parts of a codebase.

Side question: do you employ any functional aspects, or are you using any of the strictly functional languages like Haskell, Clojure, Scala, ...

We generally narrow our hires down to established researchers or top students at top universities, so we have yet to see someone who is surprised to get algorithm questions. Some of the research is done in R, but all the production code is C/C++ for performance.

 

[cguy]

You do know that book is no 1 top seller in computer programming on Amazon and is in its 6th edition?
Reading the reviews its almost all 5 star.

Yes. Not surprising - doubt it would be if they had a job placement guarantee though.

 

[cguy]

In SA many programmers might use it everyday indirectly by using a library or tool or cloud service, but I would say very few people code that low level stuff themselves because in SA you rarely have the opportunity to have such a specialized job where you code those specific algorithms you mentioned above daily.
I seriously doubt you get many local candidates that know that stuff offhand when interviewing , unless they just recent graduated or know you are going to ask them it.

All those things you mentioned I learnt in Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at university.
Have I used it since? No.
Do I use it daily tasks? No.
If I get a problem where I can make use of it as I can vaguely remember it so I can look it up to refresh my memory? Yes.
If get asked about it in a interview without preparing for it specifically will I go blank? Yes
Does it mean I am a bad programmer for not knowing it offhand? I don't care. I enjoy reading about programming and I bookmark stuff where I can find it when I need to.
Apart from that I am just an average programmer, definitively not in the top 1% and know my own memory limitations and my challenge is try to avoid burnout while still staying relevant and have a passion for what I do.
Is my intelligence penis size smaller than yours. Yes.
Do I care it isn't? No I don't care.
Will they turn me away for being too small at the Playboy Mansion of Silicon Valley. Yes
Do I care? No. It works and gives me enjoyment and can give others enjoyment. I don't have to use medication to get it up either. I also don't have any in STD (BS) in me so have that at least going for me.

... because giving useful career/interview advice is totally about intellectual penis size... I'm sure not everyone needs to be able to do this stuff, in the same way as I'm sure not everyone needs to know how to read. I'm well aware that not everyone will need skills with algorithms, but those who have the skill and figure out how to use it will go farther in life than those that don't. Take it, or leave it, that's your choice, but please, if you have an issue, try address it rather than making a childish ad hominen attack.

EDIT: Oh, and yes, many locals know that stuff and I've hired quite a few of them in the past - back when I was in SA, and also to work in SV.

The point I'm trying to make was not to belittle your achievement, was trying to show it makes your inflexible in your views. In my view to exclude a candidate for a position in a country like SA because he doesn't have instant memory recall is rather illogical.

I have to admit too I found the posting by you and [)roi(] rather humorous and ironic considering the title of the thread. (Hence the Dilbert reference)

Huh? Who is saying anything of the sort? Are you following the discussion at all? Droid seems to think white board interviews always imply rote learned hazing, which is an idiotic notion. Nobody here thinks rote learning is a good idea.

 

[[)roi(]]

We generally narrow our hires down to established researchers or top students at top universities, so we have yet to see someone who is surprised to get algorithm questions. Some of the research is done in R, but all the production code is C/C++ for performance.

Surprising re C/C++ (and a little if the top universities == SA); re C/C++ it's a little surprising, re there's a trend amongst many corps to shift processing to stricter functional programming languages, not only for performance and but also integrity: when a program needs to do exactly what you expect every time and needs to operate in an environment where its tasks can be shared across hundreds or thousands of networked node, for example:

• Clojure, for example, powers Akamai, the massive content delivery network utilized by companies such as Facebook,
• Whilst Twitter famously adopted Scala for its most performance-intensive components
• Haskell is used by AT&T for its network security systems.

Also become aware that many UK / Europe financial and banking institutions are shifting to Haskell, F# and the like.

Anyway the SA University thing is something that personally irked me i.e. they've almost hit rock bottom in the top 500 worldwide rankings; and after the current ruckus I'm happy I'm not engaged locally.

 

[[)roi(]]

Yes. Not surprising - doubt it would be if they had a job placement guarantee though.

Agreed the book purchase vs. placement probably has the monadic equivalency of null, chance over agency or head hunter arranged interviews.

With the value equivalence of "a snowball's chance in hell"

 

[skimread]

... because giving useful career/interview advice is totally about intellectual penis size.

Career advice is definitively not about scaring away prospective applicants by making interviews sounds incredibly difficult when in fact you can prepare for them. This is South Africa. Companies battle to get enough applicants and ask the most basic questions as a result. Difficult algorithm questions rarely get asked. Maybe 20 years ago when there was a strong focus on teaching on C and C++ in SA universities but with smartphones and the web becoming so popular the focus has moved away from C and C++. You just have to look at the number of electronic engineers in SA who learnt C++ exclusively at university but are now coding in C# and Java to see the trend. Instead of being asked questions in inteviews about algorithm you get asked do you know framework X,Y,Z and you have to do coding tests to prove you do.

I do found it interesting how you made light of the most well know expert on software development career advise,Gayle McDowell, who herself has a computer science degree, and has worked with Google, Microsoft,Apple and was a lead interviewer for Google and part of their hiring committee.

You went as far as saying

She is in the founder and CEO of a company called CareerCup - following the money, what do you think she would want you to believe, and what do you think actually makes sense?

If there is BS in her book like you are implying it certainly would not be in its 6th edition,the top selling book in programming for the past 5 years all with all positive reviews. One should rather be objective and read the reviews how hundreds of software developers have benefited from the book in the interview process, than dismiss it offhand.

Take it, or leave it, that's your choice, but please, if you have an issue, try address it rather than making a childish ad hominen attack.
.

Just what this thread needs is latin phrases. You read my mind.

It is an odd statement though. I make fun of my own penis size, you quote me doing so, and say it is a personal attack on you via your "ad hominen" comment (I won't lie I had to look it up).

How should it be interpreted? It should be interpreted as me making jokes at my own expense to make the conversation less serious to not scare off programmers as that is what I felt this thread would ultimately do, although it don't think that was the intention.


I have clearly in my posts played the ball, giving in detailed explanation for my viewpoint

I will quote myself

When you don't apply for C or C++ or machine learning positions I also don't see the need to test it (algorithms) in interviews.

then you say

We generally narrow our hires down to established researchers or top students at top universities, so we have yet to see someone who is surprised to get algorithm questions. Some of the research is done in R, but all the production code is C/C++ for performance.

I explicitly excluded C,C++ from my viewpoint and made clearly my view is only to applicable to SA but still you dismissed it. I still stand by my viewpoint and I am sure you will say your viewpoint still stands. Let's agree to leave it at that and let people reading this thread make up their own minds.

 

[cguy]

Surprising re C/C++ (and a little if the top universities == SA); re C/C++ it's a little surprising, re there's a trend amongst many corps to shift processing to stricter functional programming languages, not only for performance and but also integrity: when a program needs to do exactly what you expect every time and needs to operate in an environment where its tasks can be shared across hundreds or thousands of networked node, for example:

• Clojure, for example, powers Akamai, the massive content delivery network utilized by companies such as Facebook,
• Whilst Twitter famously adopted Scala for its most performance-intensive components
• Haskell is used by AT&T for its network security systems.

Also become aware that many UK / Europe financial and banking institutions are shifting to Haskell, F# and the like.

There is a flexibility vs throughput trade off here. For many of these applications the developers want to be able to change things quickly and get good performance. C and C++ are not optimal for this - rather use a higher level language as you say and just add hardware as needed. We don't have as many developers, and tend to be more compute limited than data limited so writing highly optimized code in C/C++ makes sense - every clock cycle is accounted for. Since low latency in the critical path is also a priority, and throwing more hardware at the latency problem doesn't really help, we focus on raw speed here so we use C/C++.

Anyway the SA University thing is something that personally irked me i.e. they've almost hit rock bottom in the top 500 worldwide rankings; and after the current ruckus I'm happy I'm not engaged locally.

On that I certainly agree.

 

[HavocXphere]

Its interesting how this differs by profession.

My side (Audit) - zero technical questions despite it being a pretty technical field. Its mostly assumed as a given. They just keep handing you lots of rope & see if you hang yourself. e.g. They'll ask about prior experience & see if you go into specifics (=confidentiality broken=gtfo).

 

[[)roi(]]

There is a flexibility vs throughput trade off here. For many of these applications the developers want to be able to change things quickly and get good performance. C and C++ are not optimal for this - rather use a higher level language as you say and just add hardware as needed. We don't have as many developers, and tend to be more compute limited than data limited so writing highly optimized code in C/C++ makes sense - every clock cycle is accounted for. Since low latency in the critical path is also a priority, and throwing more hardware at the latency problem doesn't really help, we focus on raw speed here so we use C/C++.

Sounds interesting... What about Cuda / OpenCl; do you also throw GPUs at the problem?

 

[[)roi(]]

Its interesting how this differs by profession.

My side (Audit) - zero technical questions despite it being a pretty technical field. Its mostly assumed as a given. They just keep handing you lots of rope & see if you hang yourself. e.g. They'll ask about prior experience & see if you go into specifics (=confidentiality broken=gtfo).

sounds boring...joking... was involved in technical auditing early in my career; still when Mainframes, AS/400s, Sun SPARCs and Crays were the mainstay.

 

[cguy]

Sounds interesting... What about Cuda / OpenCl; do you also throw GPUs at the problem?

Yup, for the throughput sensitive problems.

 

[HavocXphere]

sounds boring...joking... was involved in technical auditing early in my career; still when Mainframes, AS/400s, Sun SPARCs and Crays were the mainstay.

OK...I've got to admit...that is an amusing misunderstanding.

When I said differs by profession I meant it. Audit as in financial auditors.

We are in /software & development/ section though so your assumption was 100% justified. Just saw an interview thread & decided to read it...

 

[[)roi(]]

OK...I've got to admit...that is an amusing misunderstanding.

When I said differs by profession I meant it. Audit as in financial auditors.

We are in /software & development/ section though so your assumption was 100% justified. Just saw an interview thread & decided to read it...

Lol.. Yip it was more focused on how people could commit fraud, or more specifically ways to detect it; linked with large mining Payroll / Time & Attendance / ATM Banking (basically lots of RPG, COBOL and PL/I)

 

[cguy]

Career advice is definitively not about scaring away prospective applicants by making interviews sounds incredibly difficult when in fact you can prepare for them. This is South Africa. Companies battle to get enough applicants and ask the most basic questions as a result. Difficult algorithm questions rarely get asked. Maybe 20 years ago when there was a strong focus on teaching on C and C++ in SA universities but with smartphones and the web becoming so popular the focus has moved away from C and C++. You just have to look at the number of electronic engineers in SA who learnt C++ exclusively at university but are now coding in C# and Java to see the trend. Instead of being asked questions in inteviews about algorithm you get asked do you know framework X,Y,Z and you have to do coding tests to prove you do.

The particular language has no bearing on whether or not algorithms are necessary, it's the type of work being done. Throwing out candidates in a supply shortage because they don't understand algorithms for a low grade software job has never been my position.

I do found it interesting how you made light of the most well know expert on software development career advise,Gayle McDowell, who herself has a computer science degree, and has worked with Google, Microsoft,Apple and was a lead interviewer for Google and part of their hiring committee.

She was an intern at Microsoft and Apple, and a junior developer at Google. Interviewing a bunch of people (likely, just college grads at her level) at one of these firms isn't some sign of competency or prestige - most almost view it as a punishment since it hinders us from getting actual work done. All one has to generally do is volunteer. I really don't know how on the pulse she actually is, but what you list is a fairly run of the mill background at best - certainly no reason for hero worship. Turning an interview book into a successful business is, however very impressive.

You went as far as saying

If there is BS in her book like you are implying it certainly would not be in its 6th edition,the top selling book in programming for the past 5 years all with all positive reviews. One should rather be objective and read the reviews how hundreds of software developers have benefited from the book in the interview process, than dismiss it offhand.

Actually, what I said about the book was:

I do think it is a good book if one wants to brush up - I am sure it can improve one's chances a bit.

And:

Reading books about sample interview questions can certainly help by exercising the right areas of the brain,

What you think the book is about is BS. I don't know whether that comes from her, or her marketing or from your quite frankly, insane desire to believe that one of the largest and most successful tech companies in the world isn't aware that there's been a book out there for 8 years that allows people to hack its interview process.

EDIT: Looks like it's the third option above. The foreword of the book explicitly states that memorization should be avoided since you're unlikely to be asked these questions in practice.

Just what this thread needs is latin phrases. You read my mind.

...

I have clearly in my posts played the ball, giving in detailed explanation for my viewpoint

I will quote myself

then you say

We generally narrow our hires down to established researchers or top students at top universities, so we have yet to see someone who is surprised to get algorithm questions. Some of the research is done in R, but all the production code is C/C++ for performance.

I explicitly excluded C,C++ from my viewpoint and made clearly my view is only to applicable to SA but still you dismissed it. I still stand by my viewpoint and I am sure you will say your viewpoint still stands. Let's agree to leave it at that and let people reading this thread make up their own minds.

Dude, you don't appear to have any idea what my viewpoint is, and have misstated it multiple times already. Did you call yourself skimread because never read anything properly? You seem to be so in the midst of some sort of insecurity fueled confirmation bias fever, that you didn't even notice that my post you just quoted was simply answering a question that Droid asked and had nothing whatsoever to do with you.

 

[Hamster]

There is a flexibility vs throughput trade off here. For many of these applications the developers want to be able to change things quickly and get good performance.

Nim : whistle:

 

[cguy]

Nim : whistle:

?

 

[[)roi(]]

This is South Africa. Companies battle to get enough applicants and ask the most basic questions as a result. Difficult algorithm questions rarely get asked. Maybe 20 years ago when there was a strong focus on teaching on C and C++ in SA universities but with smartphones and the web becoming so popular the focus has moved away from C and C++. You just have to look at the number of electronic engineers in SA who learnt C++ exclusively at university but are now coding in C# and Java to see the trend. Instead of being asked questions in inteviews about algorithm you get asked do you know framework X,Y,Z and you have to do coding tests to prove you do.

Personally I have no problem with algorithm, structural, ... questions, yet it should have relevance to the job at hand. In this case it was linked lists; which as you know, are extremely ineffecient structures, so I would have questioned that!

But the biggest issue for me is the setting in which these questions are asked; As you probably realized I'm not a fan of white board tests. Prefer that the candidate responds from behind a computer, in the language that was stipulated; Also important is that the vultures are not circling above whilst this is happening; because it's not supposed to be a shyness or pressure test.

Can't say I agree with the notion of lowering the entry requirements; the Government's dumbing down campaign in comparison certainly hasn't made things better -- and adding ineffective programmers to mix surely just overtaxes the more senior guys?

 

[Hamster]

?

http://nim-lang.org/ (used to be nimrod).

Almost like writing Python, BUT, it transpiles to C before it compiles (gcc baby!). Only playing with it, haven't done anything serious yet. Prefer it over Go to be honest (Go is boring AF but great for showing people why NodeJS is a bad idea )

 

[cguy]

http://nim-lang.org/ (used to be nimrod).

Almost like writing Python, BUT, it transpiles to C before it compiles (gcc baby!). Only playing with it, haven't done anything serious yet. Prefer it over Go to be honest (Go is boring AF but great for showing people why NodeJS is a bad idea )

Cool - will take a look. Python is by far my favourite scripting language.

 

[whatwhat]

Why are my two moms fighting in this thread?