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Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.
Your explanation is basically fine, but since your resume just says "CSE major since 2009" they'll probably expect you to know the basics.

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Strong Sauce
Jul 2, 2003

You know I am not really your father.





Yeah Algorithms and Data Structures are probably going to be asked. I'd be surprised if it wasn't.

Wasse
Jan 16, 2010

HipsLikeCinderella posted:

So I guess it depends on the company whether it's easy to move to developer from a tester position. How easy is it in general? I would really like to work for this company but I had a really terrible day at the interview and know I have the skill set to be a developer there. Being a tester would bring me new perspective but I'm not interested in doing it for more than a year and I don't want my career path to narrow if I take this job.

Unfortunately it's all going to depend on the company. But normally the most important thing you can do is excel in the current job (or in your case, the job offered).

Bruegels Fuckbooks
Sep 14, 2004

Now, listen - I know the two of you are very different from each other in a lot of ways, but you have to understand that as far as Grandpa's concerned, you're both pieces of shit! Yeah. I can prove it mathematically.

Strong Sauce posted:

Yeah Algorithms and Data Structures are probably going to be asked. I'd be surprised if it wasn't.

To be fair though you can probably cover that weakness by reviewing one of the many books on programming interviews.

Try http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/dp/098478280X

Bruegels Fuckbooks fucked around with this message at 12:30 on Apr 20, 2013

NovemberMike
Dec 28, 2008

Strong Sauce posted:

Yeah Algorithms and Data Structures are probably going to be asked. I'd be surprised if it wasn't.

Eh, I just went through a 7 hour interview yesterday that included 3 hours of actual programming and there were no algorithms/data structures questions. Of course, it's kind of a weird company so I wouldn't expect that to be the norm.

Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal
Interview with HP done.

Algorithms/Data structures did come up a tiny bit. I had to solve two problems (one being an array modification, arranging an array full of numbers. Arrange the numbers so odd is on one side, even is on the other). I struggled a bit with the questions. The array modification, instead of modifying the array I instantiated two new arrays, used modop to decide whether it was an odd or an even, pushed into the arrays, combined them to the original array, and then returned the modified original array. He changed the parameters to not allow me to instantiate new arrays, and instead we just talked through the problems. Would something like this use an XOR op or something? I couldn't figure out how to do it without overwriting the array index.

He mentioned going over my github and said they're looking for someone with diverse skills in different languages, so he liked that I have a C#, bash, javascript/node, and PHP repository each on my GitHub.

They said they'd get back to me in a week. I think it went just OK but we'll see.

Next week I have an interview as a junior web dev in Wisconsin. The job and it's benefits sound really great, and the pay is the best of all so far. There's another live coding session with them, which I imagine won't be more difficult than the HP position since it's JR.

baquerd
Jul 2, 2007

by FactsAreUseless

Knyteguy posted:

Algorithms/Data structures did come up a tiny bit. I had to solve two problems (one being an array modification, arranging an array full of numbers. Arrange the numbers so odd is on one side, even is on the other). He changed the parameters to not allow me to instantiate new arrays, and instead we just talked through the problems. Would something like this use an XOR op or something? I couldn't figure out how to do it without overwriting the array index.

Start a loop through the array, with two indices: the start and the end. If the start is odd, increment start, otherwise switch the values in start and end and decrement end.

Bhaal
Jul 13, 2001
I ain't going down alone
Dr. Infant, MD
What baquerd said, you can also think of the operation like this:

code:
while start < end

  if( start is odd && end is even ): advance start & end cursors;
  if( start is odd && end is odd ): advance start cursor;
  if( start is even && end is odd ): swap start & end values; // you can optimize here and advance start & end but technically the swap is all you need to keep it going
  if( start is even && end is even ): advance end cursor;
These are the 4 results you'll get when comparing start & end, and those are the 4 basic operations you'll do in each case. "advance cursors" means move start up and move end down so they'll eventually meet in the middle and break the loop.

Scaevolus
Apr 16, 2007

He was asking for an in-place partition function, like in Quicksort.

Acer Pilot
Feb 17, 2007
put the 'the' in therapist

:dukedog:

Would he have accepted operator overloading?

Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal
Bhaal and baquerd thanks for the information. I'll be working out a solution with the information tomorrow. I think I'm going to pick up the coding interviews book earlier too; if I don't make it to the next stage of the HP interview cycle it will be because of my weakness in this area.

Scaevolus posted:

He was asking for an in-place partition function, like in Quicksort.

I asked him verbatim if he wanted a Quicksort and he said no. I actually had a great sort function I've had for awhile in the language we working with, and I told him so, but he didn't want them sorted, either.

Anyway I'm really exhausted. I ended up doing maintenance for a client of mine, and was trying to contact another client that was referenced to me, on top of 3 phone screens, two coding tests, and fixing my truck stereo :psyboom:. The other coding test was pretty basic and dealt with more practical problems, and the company who gave it to me seems really awesome. It was a group interview and everyone was very light, and the head of programming said 'interwebs' in his email to me after the fact. :)

e: ^ the only parameter was I couldn't declare two new arrays AFAIK.

Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Apr 20, 2013

baquerd
Jul 2, 2007

by FactsAreUseless

Knyteguy posted:

Bhaal and baquerd thanks for the information. I'll be working out a solution with the information tomorrow. I think I'm going to pick up the coding interviews book earlier too; if I don't make it to the next stage of the HP interview cycle it will be because of my weakness in this area.

He misunderstood you. The problem is literally sorting by odds and evens, just because it's effectively a sort on 1's and 0's (odds and even's) doesn't make it not a sort.

greatZebu
Aug 29, 2004

baquerd posted:

He misunderstood you. The problem is literally sorting by odds and evens, just because it's effectively a sort on 1's and 0's (odds and even's) doesn't make it not a sort.

I think he probably understood fine. He asked for a partition function, not quicksort, and I'm sure he expected O(n) running time. Sorting with a comparison function such that a < b iff a is even and b is odd is a neat solution, but a very inefficient one.

Scaevolus
Apr 16, 2007

Knyteguy posted:

I asked him verbatim if he wanted a Quicksort and he said no. I actually had a great sort function I've had for awhile in the language we working with, and I told him so, but he didn't want them sorted, either.
Quicksort is
1) Choose pivot
2) Partition around pivot
3) Quicksort each partition

The algorithm he was asking for is step 2

Gazpacho
Jun 18, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
Slippery Tilde
With the graduation season approaching (haha no, it's basically here) I've given up on the job boards and set my resume public for any recruiter who wants to call me.

But my last job was at a company that made all their own service tech IT WAS AMAZON, DON'T WORK FOR AMAZON and I swear at least half the screens go like this:

:butt: "I see you developed Java services for company XYZ for three years. Were you using Spring/REST/SOAP?"
:v: "No, you see--"
:butt: ~AIRHORN~

Kill me.

Gazpacho fucked around with this message at 10:26 on Apr 20, 2013

seiken
Feb 7, 2005

hah ha ha

baquerd posted:

He misunderstood you. The problem is literally sorting by odds and evens, just because it's effectively a sort on 1's and 0's (odds and even's) doesn't make it not a sort.

It's technically a sort, yes, but as others have pointed out the fact that there are only two possible "values" (odd and even) in the list makes this a much easier problem, so you can do it in O(n) instead of O(n log n).

This corresponds to a general pattern in complexity where a problem for N = 2 is much easier than the general problem where N > 2 (e.g. many NP-complete problems become possible in polynomial time when their parameter is restricted to 2).

evensevenone
May 12, 2001
Glass is a solid.

Gazpacho posted:

With the graduation season approaching (haha no, it's basically here) I've given up on the job boards and set my resume public for any recruiter who wants to call me.

But my last job was at a company that made all their own service tech IT WAS AMAZON, DON'T WORK FOR AMAZON and I swear at least half the screens go like this:

:butt: "I see you developed Java services for company XYZ for three years. Were you using Spring/REST/SOAP?"
:v: "No, you see--"
:butt: ~AIRHORN~

Kill me.
Just get rid of the "no" and it sounds like a yes.

:butt: "I see you developed Java services for company XYZ for three years. Were you using Spring/REST/SOAP?"
:v: "At XYZ we developed our own RESTful service interface, very similar to xxxxx tech.

Bhaal
Jul 13, 2001
I ain't going down alone
Dr. Infant, MD

Gazpacho posted:

With the graduation season approaching (haha no, it's basically here) I've given up on the job boards and set my resume public for any recruiter who wants to call me.

But my last job was at a company that made all their own service tech IT WAS AMAZON, DON'T WORK FOR AMAZON and I swear at least half the screens go like this:

:butt: "I see you developed Java services for company XYZ for three years. Were you using Spring/REST/SOAP?"
:v: "No, you see--"
:butt: ~AIRHORN~

Kill me.
But Steve Yegge told me Amazon's SOA was a jewel of the industry :confused:

I mean I can get being wary if you come from some small shop that wanted to roll their own everything, but you'd think the name Amazon would carry enough weight to override that wariness. That's an unfortunate case of failing the buzz word pattern matching portion of HR screening.

Bhaal fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Apr 20, 2013

Arcteryx Anarchist
Sep 15, 2007

Fun Shoe
I wish it was just HR screening that aimed for buzzword compliance; it's depressing when you have an issue with it during development interviews.

I finally landed a new job at a place I'm very excited about working at. I think what really helped me out was creating a project portfolio that I could bring to interviews (I had a blitz day of them for this job). Sometimes a resume just can't effectively bring out your experiences, at least thats the way it seemed to be for me.

Sang-
Nov 2, 2007

Gazpacho posted:

With the graduation season approaching (haha no, it's basically here) I've given up on the job boards and set my resume public for any recruiter who wants to call me.

But my last job was at a company that made all their own service tech IT WAS AMAZON, DON'T WORK FOR AMAZON and I swear at least half the screens go like this:

:butt: "I see you developed Java services for company XYZ for three years. Were you using Spring/REST/SOAP?"
:v: "No, you see--"
:butt: ~AIRHORN~

Kill me.

I've had this with "have you had any experience with JUnit" etc, when the answer has been "no, I've never had to use a JVM-based language in industry, but...." and then been completely cut-off, moving to the next question

piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.



Gazpacho posted:

But my last job was at a company that made all their own service tech IT WAS AMAZON, DON'T WORK FOR AMAZON and I swear at least half the screens go like this:

Now what's wrong with working for them? Someone I know got a job there as a recentish grad in Toronto and apparently makes like 70-90k there doing software development, which to me makes my head hurt and my heart weep since I don't really want to work for one of the big firms, what in particular is so bad about working for them though?

Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.
Amazon is powered by toxic frugality.

Although really the level of frugality is only the low end of normal for a regular company I think, it's just low compared to our competitors like MS, Google, Facebook, etc.

Arcteryx Anarchist
Sep 15, 2007

Fun Shoe
That's always kind of the way it works out in companies whose primary business is not technology (though this is kind of true of Facebook/Google as well). IT being viewed as a Cost Center can always make members of the department miserable.

tk
Dec 10, 2003

Nap Ghost

piratepilates posted:

Now what's wrong with working for them? Someone I know got a job there as a recentish grad in Toronto and apparently makes like 70-90k there doing software development, which to me makes my head hurt and my heart weep since I don't really want to work for one of the big firms, what in particular is so bad about working for them though?

I know a couple people that work at Amazon. I'll ask them what's so bad about it when they get out of work tonight.

Gazpacho
Jun 18, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
Slippery Tilde

piratepilates posted:

Now what's wrong with working for them? Someone I know got a job there as a recentish grad in Toronto and apparently makes like 70-90k there doing software development, which to me makes my head hurt and my heart weep since I don't really want to work for one of the big firms, what in particular is so bad about working for them though?
I could tell horror stories all day but I'll keep it short and focused on what I was talking about in the first place.

As an industry pioneer, Amazon had to build basically their whole application stack from scratch. They started with the OS, the database systems, httpd and Perl, and aside from that they pretty much did it themselves. Their own DB access library, text transcoding, event framework etc. all developed in the haste of the dot-com years, all undocumented, unowned, and unmaintained. That's the platform that I was given to develop on. There was no book I could read and no online help I could refer to. They've moved increasingly to Java, but it is still Java within their own stack, not any of the widespread enterprise platforms.

As Yegge mentioned they created their own internal dependency management system that is impressive in terms of its reliability and documentation, but 3 years using it is 3 years not using Maven.

Obviously experiences will vary within an organization the size of Amazon, and people who are still working there might like it. However I didn't see anything while I was there to make me doubt that the "not-invented-here" syndrome extends throughout the company.

Gazpacho fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Apr 21, 2013

Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

lancemantis posted:

That's always kind of the way it works out in companies whose primary business is not technology (though this is kind of true of Facebook/Google as well). IT being viewed as a Cost Center can always make members of the department miserable.
Amazon's primary business IS technology. Monetary compensation is actually in line with competitors, it's just the fringe benefits which are lacking.

Safe and Secure!
Jun 14, 2008

OFFICIAL SA THREAD RUINER
SPRING 2013
What are the hours like? I thought I heard somewhere that it's all 80 hours / week, all the time.

Tres Burritos
Sep 3, 2009

Safe and Secure! posted:

What are the hours like? I thought I heard somewhere that it's all 80 hours / week, all the time.

Woah, at Amazon? I just got contacted by someone there, but my hopes are not high :smith:.

Gazpacho
Jun 18, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
Slippery Tilde

Safe and Secure! posted:

What are the hours like? I thought I heard somewhere that it's all 80 hours / week, all the time.
That's nonsense but during pager rotation weeks it sure as hell felt like it. Devs generally went home at 5, but I often stayed around to finish what I was working on, sometimes much too long. There was a general expectation that people would keep up with their e-mail outside of work.

Gazpacho fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Apr 21, 2013

Acer Pilot
Feb 17, 2007
put the 'the' in therapist

:dukedog:

Has anyone used Interviewstreet before? How hard is it to use and what are the questions usually like?

Good Will Hrunting
Oct 8, 2012

I changed my mind.
I'm not sorry.
Sample 1 was too long for me to read because I have a headache, but 2 and 3 are super easy.

E: Why would you ask someone to code a primality test? It's all memorization and (in my opinion) not a great test of whether someone can code or not.

Good Will Hrunting fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Apr 23, 2013

Gazpacho
Jun 18, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
Slippery Tilde

Good Will Hrunting posted:

E: Why would you ask someone to code a primality test? It's all memorization and (in my opinion) not a great test of whether someone can code or not.
I don't think anyone has prime-testing code memorized character for character. Like so many screening exercises, the purpose is to identify candidates who literally can't write code for a one-sentence spec. Do they know what a loop is and when to use one, or are you talking to someone like this or this?

Suspicious Dish
Sep 24, 2011

2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro
Fun Shoe

Good Will Hrunting posted:

E: Why would you ask someone to code a primality test? It's all memorization and (in my opinion) not a great test of whether someone can code or not.

You should be able to reason out a simple prime test. Even if it's not a fancy schmancy algorithm like a Sieve, it's a simple for loop.

Zhentar
Sep 28, 2003

Brilliant Master Genius
Their questions and system look reasonably decent to me. Cheating could be a big problem though (and they want $800/mo to even try to catch cheaters!).

Volte
Oct 4, 2004

woosh woosh
How is a primality test memorization? As long as you know what a prime number is it's not that hard to code up a naive implementation, either using trial division or a sieve of Eratosthenes. Just don't expect someone to come up with Miller-Rabin or something.

Good Will Hrunting
Oct 8, 2012

I changed my mind.
I'm not sorry.

Volte posted:

As long as you know what a prime number is it's not that hard to code up a naive implementation

Suspicious Dish posted:

You should be able to reason out a simple prime test. Even if it's not a fancy schmancy algorithm like a Sieve, it's a simple for loop.

This was my point. It strikes me as too easy for anyone with a Comp Sci degree that's seen the problem before. I thought, compared to the other two examples they gave, it was a less efficient test.

Suspicious Dish
Sep 24, 2011

2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro
Fun Shoe
It's more effective than you think, or you probably want to know.

Acer Pilot
Feb 17, 2007
put the 'the' in therapist

:dukedog:

Good Will Hrunting posted:

Sample 1 was too long for me to read because I have a headache, but 2 and 3 are super easy.

E: Why would you ask someone to code a primality test? It's all memorization and (in my opinion) not a great test of whether someone can code or not.

Yeah, I ended up finding the sample test and that was a really long description of Hanoi Towers :staredog:. It was nice having a choice of languages though.

The "interview" I had was about 2 questions on that website and was fairly painless. I hope I didn't get docked for hitting "compile and test" a few times.

Bruegels Fuckbooks
Sep 14, 2004

Now, listen - I know the two of you are very different from each other in a lot of ways, but you have to understand that as far as Grandpa's concerned, you're both pieces of shit! Yeah. I can prove it mathematically.

Good Will Hrunting posted:

This was my point. It strikes me as too easy for anyone with a Comp Sci degree that's seen the problem before. I thought, compared to the other two examples they gave, it was a less efficient test.

If you have a master's degree in comp sci and give me trial division when I ask for fastest and you have access to the internet to do the problem, you're pretty hosed.

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NovemberMike
Dec 28, 2008

Actually, the primality test strikes me as a great interview question. There's a good chance that they don't have it memorized (which is good) so you can have them work through the basic "where should I start, when should I stop, what should I increment by" stuff in front of you. I wouldn't expect a particularly fast solution but there's a lot of low hanging fruit to optimize that you can see if they catch.

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