interviewing: Senior by reference, not by value

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Ciaphas: Nov 20, 2005; > BEWARE, COWARD

it was a wide interview across four potential positions i had applied for, not even just one visible/competitive position, and i still managed to blow it before i even met anyone face to face

# ? Sep 13, 2018 19:15

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# ? Jan 25, 2025 20:38

GenJoe: Sep 14, 2010; Rehabilitated?

That's just a bullshit word.

Ciaphas posted:

i mean yeah that's a perfectly sensible answer too--and the very first thing i said was 'if I had my full IDE and stuff I'd think for a minute and probably LINQ statement this sort of thing because how am I supposed to know if this is even a performance pinch point or not'

i would probably red-flag a candidate if their answer to "how can you make this algorithm better?" is "I need an IDE so I can do linq statements." they were just looking for you to spitball a few basic CS solutions (hash-sets, sorting) and were seeing if you could talk competently about how they would impact the time/space requirements of the algorithm

this question was also simple enough that you probably should have started right away with one of the better solutions (but let them know that if the actual problem space is trivial then you would consider just looping twice because that's easy to understand and hard to introduce bugs with). the "start with easy solution, iterate on a more advanced algorithm once you get something down" approach is a good approach when you aren't exactly sure from the start what a better algorithm would be, but I would expect an intermediate candidate to know right away what a few of the o(nlogn) (or n + n space) solutions to this problem are

# ? Sep 13, 2018 19:16

Ciaphas: Nov 20, 2005; > BEWARE, COWARD

GenJoe posted:

i would probably red-flag a candidate if their answer to "how can you make this algorithm better?" is "I need an IDE so I can do linq statements." they were just looking for you to spitball a few basic CS solutions (hash-sets, sorting) and were seeing if you could talk competently about how they would impact the time/space requirements of the algorithm

this question was also simple enough that you probably should have started right away with one of the better solutions (but let them know that if the actual problem space is trivial then you would consider just looping twice because that's easy to understand and hard to introduce bugs with). the "start with easy solution, iterate on a more advanced algorithm once you get something down" approach is a good approach when you aren't exactly sure from the start what a better algorithm would be, but I would expect an intermediate candidate to know right away what a few of the o(nlogn) (or n + n space) solutions to this problem are

fair enough. i don't like that at all because it runs completely counter to what 10 years employment have taught me*, but fair enough. i'll re-assess how little i actually know after all this time i guess

*that being that optimization questions are always so domain specific that instead code should isolated in a way that can be optimized later, when it becomes necessary (which is just good writing practice anyway); that first-time code should be absolutely clear to the lowest common denominator of coder, where possible; and that often optimization can come down less to complexity analysis and more to guess-and-check in the loving profiler. i believe i said as much during the interview but i don't remember anymore

Ciaphas fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Sep 13, 2018

# ? Sep 13, 2018 19:22

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

REIGNING YOSPOS COSTCO KING

qhat posted:

If they didn't give you feedback then it can be literally anything.

ive said this before, but there is literally no figuring interviews. none. organizations make decisions based off of completely opaque criteria that will never reveal themselves to you. dont beat yourself up, just move on to the next job lead, and the next one, and the next one, until you land a suitable gig

jesus WEP posted:

they probably just had a person lined up for the job and have spent less than 0.01% of the time you have thinking about your answer to that question

this absolutely happens. the company knows who it wants to hire but they are required to go through the motions of conducting an open job hunt so its a waste of everyones time and energy, especially the poor candidate's. seems to be most prevalent in government agencies and school districts, where they are required by law to post all job openings.

# ? Sep 13, 2018 19:24

GenJoe: Sep 14, 2010; Rehabilitated?

That's just a bullshit word.

Ciaphas posted:

fair enough. i don't like that at all because it runs completely counter to what 10 years employment have taught me*, but fair enough. i'll re-assess how little i actually know after all this time i guess

*that being that optimization questions are always so domain specific that instead code should isolated in a way that can be optimized later, when it becomes necessary (which is just good writing practice anyway); that first-time code should be absolutely clear to the lowest common denominator of coder, where possible; and that often optimization can come down less to complexity analysis and more to guess-and-check in the loving profiler. i believe i said as much during the interview but i don't remember anymore

you're not wrong on that at all, but the point of a CS algorithm question is for you to demonstrate competency with basic areas of CS, like data structures and time/space requirements. It's not a deep dive into software engineering best practices like you're turning it into. Just take the whiteboard question at face value and demonstrate that you understand how to solve it.

still definitely bring up those points about optimization while you're going through the problem, though. it will tell them that you understand how things actually work on the software engineering side, and depending on how they react it'll also give you a feel if they're the kind of developers who have to optimize /everything/ (this isn't uncommon), in which case you've gotten some useful information and can walk away

# ? Sep 13, 2018 19:34

Ellie Crabcakes: Jan 31, 2008; Stop emailing my boyfriend Gay Crungus

Mostly it's just dick-waving and shibboleths, because if I had a nickel for every conference room grilling over binary trees/hash collisions/linked lists I've slogged through only to find, for one example, a script that was ran every 30 minutes whose runtime started to go over. The problem? It was using a fresh connection to postgres for nearly every goddamn query. After fixing that, runtime was down to about a minute and a half.

So just keep that in mind when you feel lovely about bombing the Stupid Coder Tricks portion of the interview, because the person judging you probably writes incredibly lovely code despite their mastery of toy problems. And they probably write off-putting furry erotica in their spare time.

# ? Sep 13, 2018 20:46

Ciaphas: Nov 20, 2005; > BEWARE, COWARD

GenJoe posted:

you're not wrong on that at all, but the point of a CS algorithm question is for you to demonstrate competency with basic areas of CS, like data structures and time/space requirements. It's not a deep dive into software engineering best practices like you're turning it into. Just take the whiteboard question at face value and demonstrate that you understand how to solve it.

still definitely bring up those points about optimization while you're going through the problem, though. it will tell them that you understand how things actually work on the software engineering side, and depending on how they react it'll also give you a feel if they're the kind of developers who have to optimize /everything/ (this isn't uncommon), in which case you've gotten some useful information and can walk away

in that case, yeah, fair enough again, i got the wrong context on things. guess proving i know what i'm doing well enough to iteratively talk things out isn't what they're looking for at that point.

maybe next time, however many bloody months away that'll be.

# ? Sep 13, 2018 20:52

Bloody: Mar 3, 2013

Peeny Cheez posted:

Mostly it's just dick-waving and shibboleths, because if I had a nickel for every conference room grilling over binary trees/hash collisions/linked lists I've slogged through only to find, for one example, a script that was ran every 30 minutes whose runtime started to go over. The problem? It was using a fresh connection to postgres for nearly every goddamn query. After fixing that, runtime was down to about a minute and a half.

So just keep that in mind when you feel lovely about bombing the Stupid Coder Tricks portion of the interview, because the person judging you probably writes incredibly lovely code despite their mastery of toy problems. And they probably write off-putting furry erotica in their spare time.

i just let .net's automatic connection pooling handle that in all of my sql adventures

# ? Sep 13, 2018 20:58

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

jesus WEP posted:

yeah but like management never has the first clue who the least valuable people are

source: ive never been fired

but your excellent username indicates you know how to present yourself

meatpotato posted:

think of questions you'll be asked and come up with answers in advance

in fact, just use this table straight out of cracking the coding interview and fill in the boxes

Ty, tyvm

Peeny Cheez posted:

Mostly it's just dick-waving and shibboleths

From the outside, yes; from the inside it's the hard-to-execute secret handshake of the """Real Coders' Guild"""

Sorry, I can't resist waving the old e-peen-- Knowing nothing else, my gut solution would be sort the array, then initialize two index vars to be the first and last elements of the array and walk them towards each other to find dupes--

code:


//slightly excessive termination condition
//but "gotta go fast"
while(ix < jx && a[ix] < 0 && a[jx] > 0) {
  if(-a[ix] == a[jx]) {
    pairs++;
    ix++;
    jx--;
  } else if(-a[ix] > a[jx]) {
    //no pair for element at ix
    ix++;
  } else if(-a[ix] < a[jx]) {
    //no pair for the element at jx
    jx--;
  } else {
    assert(false, "why are there NaNs in this array???");
  }
}

This solution is optimal because you're supposed to be trying to prove to the interviewer that you are A Very Smart Person

# ? Sep 13, 2018 22:42

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Christ, I'm an rear end in a top hat, sorry.

# ? Sep 14, 2018 00:11

Corla Plankun: May 8, 2007; improve the lives of everyone

i really like the idea of incredulous questions as runtime error messages

# ? Sep 14, 2018 00:26

Fluue: Jan 2, 2008

If you get a code "challenge"/takehome assignment that is 99% solvable using a well-regarded 3rd-party package, should you use that library or just slap something together that is a tiny subset of that library but shittier because "should take 2 hours" does not translate into "production quality"

# ? Sep 14, 2018 04:41

PIZZA.BAT: Nov 12, 2016

Corla Plankun posted:

i really like the idea of incredulous questions as runtime error messages

yeah i'm gonna start doing this

# ? Sep 14, 2018 04:42

Ellie Crabcakes: Jan 31, 2008; Stop emailing my boyfriend Gay Crungus

Fluue posted:

If you get a code "challenge"/takehome assignment that is 99% solvable using a well-regarded 3rd-party package, should you use that library or just slap something together that is a tiny subset of that library but shittier because "should take 2 hours" does not translate into "production quality"

If it's feasible I do both.

# ? Sep 14, 2018 05:08

distortion park: Apr 25, 2011

Do interviewers normally help you during algorithm questions? We have an easy programming test but then in the actual interview will ask harder algorithm questions. We don't expect candidates to be able to solve them first time on their own though, we'll work through it with them and give hints, counter examples etc and ask them what they think of their current solution as they are doing it. It isn't so much you ability to solve the problem but communicate about coding stuff

# ? Sep 14, 2018 06:25

Xarn: Jun 26, 2015

prisoner of waffles posted:

This solution is optimal because you're supposed to be trying to prove to the interviewer that you are A Very Smart Person

dunno I don't think creating overly complex sub-optimal solutions is a good way to wave your dick around :shrug:

It is kinda amazing how this derail always happens tho (yes, I am not helping either :v:

)

# ? Sep 14, 2018 06:29

hobbesmaster: Jan 28, 2008

Gazpacho posted:

bullshitting an interviewer is a valuable skill,

if you�re actually good at it you should jump over to management or technical marketing/sales

# ? Sep 14, 2018 06:59

4lokos basilisk: Jul 17, 2008

told my bosses to either give me a 2x raise and let me clean up the poo poo show that claims to be a software development process here, or switch me to a 4-day work week where I clock in to fix whatever stuff they need to get done this week

i put up with a lot of poo poo but don't come giving me attitude on top of lovely management, below market rate pay and having to unfuck phd code on a windows

# ? Sep 14, 2018 11:49

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Penisface posted:

told my bosses to either give me a 2x raise and let me clean up the poo poo show that claims to be a software development process here, or switch me to a 4-day work week where I clock in to fix whatever stuff they need to get done this week

i put up with a lot of poo poo but don't come giving me attitude on top of lovely management, below market rate pay and having to unfuck phd code on a windows

dang, let us know how it goes

# ? Sep 14, 2018 14:51

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Xarn posted:

dunno I don't think creating overly complex sub-optimal solutions is a good way to wave your dick around

It is kinda amazing how this derail always happens tho (yes, I am not helping either )

it's funny that I agree with you but also want to be like "noooo algorithm above is actually very good!!! (because I am good, please approve of me)"

In an interview I was asked a question where they explicitly said to do the simplest version fast, and the complexity was n^2, largely because the size of the output was n^2 in the worst case. So I wrote the n^2 thing. Then they asked if I could think of "some ways to make it faster". I then wrote something (uncannily similar to the algorithm above) that had runtime proportional to n log n + size of output and I think they didn't want that; they just wanted me to suggest things like "use a cache" or "sort the input".

guess who has never fully grown out of being a child who likes being the smartest and getting the right answer? that's right, this poaster.

# ? Sep 14, 2018 15:03

Pie Colony: Dec 8, 2006; I AM SUCH A FUCKUP THAT I CAN'T EVEN POST IN AN E/N THREAD I STARTED

so i tried some practice interview sites this week

triplebyte-- basically glorified recruiters that do the tech screen for the companies they work with. except you only have to do one of them so it saves you some time. the interview is 2 hours separated into programming a game, short answers to a variety of questions, debugging a 500 line program, and systems design. feedback was meh: they just rate how you did on each portion and send you a non-personalized list of resources to study up on. you only get one interview, then they try to get you hired by setting up talks with companies.

interviewing.io-- you get interviewed by other people (who don't work for but are paid by interviewing.io), there's a rating system to ensure you get decent quality ones. my interview was pretty free-form, he asked what i wanted to be tested on and i said everything but we just did algorithms for an hour. the platform is a collaborative editor so not as realistic as a whiteboard, but more realistic than triplebyte's "you get to use your IDE." feedback was pretty minimal but probably through no fault of the interviewer (i solved both problems straightforwardly). the nice thing is you can have additional practice interviews (3 max maybe?) and also later have anonymized real interviews directly with companies.

a thing i would have liked to practice would have been behavioral questions but both interviews focused on technical ones. triplebyte seems more for actually finding a job, interviewing.io more for practicing technical questions. i guess overall they're worth it tho, you get to practice talking out loud to solve decent quality technical problems, they're both free, and i guess it could save me some time bullshitting cover letters since they match you up directly with companies after.

Pie Colony fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Sep 14, 2018

# ? Sep 14, 2018 16:21

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

any place that bounces you for merely using nested loops on their toy interview problem probably did you a favor

that being said, i wanna golf the thing

code:

Seq.groupBy abs
>> Seq.where (snd >> Seq.distinct >> Seq.length ((=) 2))
>> Seq.map fst

doesn�t give you zeroes back (not sure if that�s a requirement) and idk about performance because all the work is in library code but gently caress janitoring my own data structures until i know i need to

raminasi fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Sep 14, 2018

# ? Sep 14, 2018 16:40

Bloody: Mar 3, 2013

Pie Colony posted:

so i tried some practice interview sites this week

triplebyte-- basically glorified recruiters that do the tech screen for the companies they work with. except you only have to do one of them so it saves you some time. the interview is 2 hours separated into programming a game, short answers to a variety of questions, debugging a 500 line program, and systems design. feedback was meh: they just rate how you did on each portion and send you a non-personalized list of resources to study up on. you only get one interview, then they try to get you hired by setting up talks with companies.

interviewing.io-- you get interviewed by other people (who don't work for but are paid by interviewing.io), there's a rating system to ensure you get decent quality ones. my interview was pretty free-form, he asked what i wanted to be tested on and i said everything but we just did algorithms for an hour. the platform is a collaborative editor so not as realistic as a whiteboard, but more realistic than triplebyte's "you get to use your IDE." feedback was pretty minimal but probably through no fault of the interviewer (i solved both problems straightforwardly). the nice thing is you can have additional practice interviews (3 max maybe?) and also later have anonymized real interviews directly with companies.

a thing i would have liked to practice would have been behavioral questions but both interviews focused on technical ones. triplebyte seems more for actually finding a job, interviewing.io more for practicing technical questions. i guess overall they're worth it tho, you get to practice talking out loud to solve decent quality technical problems, they're both free, and i guess it could save me some time bullshitting cover letters since they match you up directly with companies after.

my 2 hours with triplebyte turned into talks with like 5 companies and on-sites with 2 before the interviewing i was doing for my current job won out. they did good work to get me opportunities that matched up well w/ my skillset

# ? Sep 14, 2018 16:54

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Pie Colony posted:

so i tried some practice interview sites this week

thanks for the report, this is good to know

# ? Sep 14, 2018 18:06

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

hobbesmaster posted:

if you�re actually good at it you should jump over to management or technical marketing/sales

lmao with talking to people and deliverables? no thank u

# ? Sep 14, 2018 19:16

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Bloody posted:

my 2 hours with triplebyte turned into talks with like 5 companies and on-sites with 2 before the interviewing i was doing for my current job won out. they did good work to get me opportunities that matched up well w/ my skillset

they bounced me because of a single bug in my tech screen code and now they're constantly sending me emails begging for referrals and name dropping how they work with Apple. they seem really dumb and lacking self awareness to me.

# ? Sep 14, 2018 19:38

ADINSX: Sep 9, 2003; Wanna run with my crew, hah? Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?

jit bull transpile posted:

they bounced me because of a single bug in my tech screen code and now they're constantly sending me emails begging for referrals and name dropping how they work with Apple. they seem really dumb and lacking self awareness to me.

Thats recruiting for you... The same recruiter for a company that tried to ghost me after an on-site bugged me today asking if I'd be interested in some other job.

# ? Sep 14, 2018 20:07

qhat: Jul 6, 2015

Just did the interview, included two whiteboards, a laptop coding interview, a design interview, and finished with a chat with the director of software which is apparently a good sign. I'm completely loving beat though, 3 coding sessions is too freaking much.

# ? Sep 14, 2018 23:31

Ciaphas: Nov 20, 2005; > BEWARE, COWARD

Bloody posted:

my 2 hours with triplebyte turned into talks with like 5 companies and on-sites with 2 before the interviewing i was doing for my current job won out. they did good work to get me opportunities that matched up well w/ my skillset

tbf now i wish i had thought to go looking for something like this while i had so much free time

# ? Sep 15, 2018 00:01

4lokos basilisk: Jul 17, 2008

prisoner of waffles posted:

dang, let us know how it goes

i have stayed my trial period and performed as best as i can, if it goes bad now i probably dodged a bullet anyway

i dont want to be a complainer type but i remember that i was hired to help them standardise and build a software platform, not some loving intern who is expected to sherlock holmes the requirements and macgyver together all the bikes we keep building

i have faith in what the company is producing, just let's start doing it with the tools available in tyool 2018

# ? Sep 15, 2018 03:08

Qtotonibudinibudet: Nov 7, 2011; Omich poluyobok, skazhi ty narkoman? ya prosto tozhe gde to tam zhivu, mogli by vmeste uyobyvat' narkotiki

goddamn the triplebyte ads never cease

i don't work in development and i'm not looking goddamnit.

# ? Sep 15, 2018 04:26

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Penisface posted:

sherlock holmes the requirements and macgyver together all the bikes

this is a pretty great description of working as a software dev in a poorly-organized shop

if being exasperated make you eloquent, maybe you should write some poems or a short essay

# ? Sep 15, 2018 14:29

Jimmy Carter: Nov 3, 2005; THIS MOTHERDUCKER
FLIES IN STYLE

found out that I bombed so hard at an interview recently that they had to redefine the job listing, and immediately after they hired someone from my team. Whoops.

anyways, I have an interview coming up that's fairly PM-y and doesn't involve programming. Post your best strategies on how to re-phrase the question of 'how do you prioritize opposing requests from different teams?' because that's what the job primarily is.

# ? Sep 17, 2018 06:24

4lokos basilisk: Jul 17, 2008

Jimmy Carter posted:

found out that I bombed so hard at an interview recently that they had to redefine the job listing, and immediately after they hired someone from my team. Whoops.

anyways, I have an interview coming up that's fairly PM-y and doesn't involve programming. Post your best strategies on how to re-phrase the question of 'how do you prioritize opposing requests from different teams?' because that's what the job primarily is.

"what happens when two different end users have feature requests that are conflicting? what if there is no time to write the software in such a way that it is possible to satisfy both?"

# ? Sep 17, 2018 06:29

Triglav: Jun 2, 2007; IT IS HARAAM TO SEND SMILEY FACES THROUGH THE INTERNET

the one that buys me a better lunch wins

(u wanna play them off one another to get 2 lunches)

# ? Sep 17, 2018 06:42

Schadenboner: Aug 15, 2011; by Shine

I can never come up with an answer to that question.

# ? Sep 17, 2018 06:53

champagne posting: Apr 5, 2006; YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Penisface posted:

"what happens when two different end users have feature requests that are conflicting? what if there is no time to write the software in such a way that it is possible to satisfy both?"

real answer: whomever has the most political power in the organisation gets their way.

what you should actually say: I don't know what you should say. Put them in a room and figure out a compromise? Who knows.

# ? Sep 17, 2018 07:05

Jabor: Jul 16, 2010; #1 Loser at SpaceChem

get them in a room together, let whoever has the most political power explain to the other person why they aren't getting the feature they need

may backfire if they both have more political power than you and they make you commit to doing both, even though you don't have the resources for it (and no you're not getting any more)

# ? Sep 17, 2018 09:12

homercles: Feb 14, 2010

What feature would you prefer to implement? That's the feature that costs the least, and the other one is prohibitively expensive and will take months of watching youtube to deliver.

# ? Sep 17, 2018 10:53

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# ? Jan 25, 2025 20:38

champagne posting: Apr 5, 2006; YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

My (now previous thank gently caress) boss always took this approach: I get you to develop whatever I feel like. Heck to whomever wants things I don't want.

# ? Sep 17, 2018 11:00

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > interviewing: Senior by reference, not by value

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