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ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


Walmart Labs started out as strictly R&D, but since it was perceived as more prestigious than plain old Walmart eCommerce, they moved teams under the las umbrella in lieu of paying them more. That didn't work out so well, but there's no going back from something like that.

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raminasi
Jan 25, 2005

a last drink with no ice

Coco13 posted:

3. Odds are the people in the lab didn't get into their field of research to get really good at coding. You make their lives easier and they will take a bullet for you. I'm an analyst in health care, and it does not get old being told "I've heard you're the guy" by total strangers because I created a way they can do their jobs painlessly.

I was the software guy in an academic lab that needed a software guy and it was an absolute blast, and I wanted to echo this because it was my biggest mistake there. None of the people I worked with really cared about the programming they did (it was just a chore they had to do to publish) and I was new enough in my career that I figured my job was to “set standards” or some bullshit instead of helping them do their jobs. It still went well but it could have gone even better!

Also, yeah soft money is a big reason I left.

kitten smoothie
Dec 29, 2001

Twerk from Home posted:

I'm struggling with an interesting opportunity, and curious if i would ruin my future career options.

I started my career in an academic lab and spent the better part of a decade there. It was interesting work, and I mean you can’t deny getting to work on curing cancer is good and noble. We had similar fun toys, like 15-20PB of disk online and a 5000 core cluster, back in 2012.

Because of the nature of “do research, publish paper, do next thing” it was a constant struggle between PIs wanting to do things on a purely ad hoc basis, versus me and the software people trying to build some frameworks so we’re not constantly throwing stuff together. It was a tough needle to thread.

I found limited options for advancement. I saw one or two people get told “if you got a masters degree you’ll get more money/responsibility,” only to peace out to industry with their fresh MS degree because the lab didn’t hold up their end of the bargain. I was basically told I hit the wall there career-wise unless I had a PhD, and the catch-22 there was while that would mean advancement, it’d also be less money than being a pure software person.

We were also at the mercy of grants. We were funded by several layers of multi-year grants that started/ended different years so there was always either a new pile of money or a grant falling off. Sometimes there were good years, and then there were times like those three years in a row we had a big multi-year grant expire without replacement and had to lay people off.

I’ve still got friends working there who don’t care about all that, it’s an interesting problem to solve, and they’re okay with the money. The low money comes with the benefits of not getting paged with P1s, not having external customers, a generally heavier emphasis on open source software, and getting to play with cool toys.

Ghost of Reagan Past
Oct 7, 2003

rock and roll fun

Twerk from Home posted:

I'm struggling with an interesting opportunity, and curious if i would ruin my future career options.

Has anybody taken the lower paying, more interesting option? I'm doing corporate boring web and mobile app full-stack development at a company, and have been for quite a while. I've been a Senior Engineer without promotion for the 4 years I've been here, and since I took on people leadership about ~1 year ago and am now managing people I'm being put up for promotion to Principal Engineer, which is mostly a management position here.

My wife works in a university research lab, and I've occasionally helped them out some, and even done a small amount of official paid consulting. I have a really good relationship with her lab's PI, and they've joked for years that I have a job offer with them if I ever wanted. Now the department chair and PI are actually trying to make it happen, and they're putting together an incredibly interesting-to-me package that involves both developing open-source human genetics software, helping them design and maintain a large-scale data processing pipelines, and helping cloud-migrate some of their tools as the university is moving their biorepository to a cloud solution. This department doesn't own the biorepository, but consumes it, and they're pretty concerned that their current usage pattern would result in a bill of untold millions to AWS if they just naively continue doing things as they were before. I know and would really enjoy all of the people I'd be working with, and I'd be working with my wife sometimes but not always, which sounds pretty great to me. Her PI mentioned casually that they ordered another Petabyte of disk for their on-prem storage last month, they're growing about about 500TB/year of the lab's own data.

Here's the catch: It's a huge pay cut. They just are not capable of paying me what I'm getting right now, because of University pay scale rules, regardless of what they title me as, because I only have a BS. If I had an MS they could match my base pay, but not my current total cash comp. I would have the opportunity to get an MS for free while I'm there, including in a data science degree that I think could open doors for doing some really interesting, highly compensated specialist work supporting data science at more prestigious tech companies after this. Obviously the university would like to have me there for years, and they're mentioning basically that if I get an MS they could pay me more, so if I did decide to do this I'd likely try and rush through a masters.

I'm fairly certain that getting to do this stuff would make me a better engineer all around. I'm salivating at the bit of using a $300k/year IT hardware purchasing budget to run workloads that would cost several million per year to run in AWS, as well as the chance to do HPC work. They're unhappy with their current server setup, and looking to bring me in to use this latest new batch of fresh disk to set up & tune Ceph (or similar), and fix their HPC job queue.

I'm feeling pretty bored and directionless with CRUD react and mobile app development, and corporate microservice Kabuki where everybody is fine with 7 network calls and application-level joins to get any bit of information. I'm also concerned that the type of work that I'd be doing for the university pays less, even at corps, despite being more complex and being a rarer skill-set. I also haven't gotten a masters because my understanding is they don't carry much weight in corporate hiring, and I'm about 10 years into my career, it seems to late to be doing a masters without wanting to do a major change of direction.
So I had an opportunity that would've been a $20k paycut in April. I got cold feet because I worked in health insurance, had a good salary, and had just moved into a much nicer apartment that cost me a lot more money. To be clear that $20k paycut wouldn't have made finances tight, but in the overall environment of early pandemic NYC it was really terrifying to change jobs. I regret not taking that position, because it was super interesting at a really cool place that had a bunch of perks on top of neat work (lots of other people with similar educational backgrounds, every other Friday off, etc.).

There's a lot to be said about salary being a huge thing but I ended up taking a $5k paycut to leave my last job for a place that's quite boring and tedious, but it's a much nicer working environment. I think about it this way, overall: above a certain salary, more money is great, but other benefits can override. It's just a matter of finding that salary point for you. Academia can be extremely cutthroat, though, and nothing is going to really prepare you for the sheer brutality they can inflict on each other and you -- people talk about academia as a coddling environment but in my experience private industry is so much more friendly and collegial, and I was in a comparatively healthy environment in academia.

ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


The brutality of academia varies a lot of from field to field, from department to department, and from lab to lab. But it can get bad in a way that few other sectors can. As an employee of the university you have some protection from the worst of it, but that doesn't mean you're always safe.

bob dobbs is dead
Oct 8, 2017

I love peeps
Nap Ghost
you can predict the brutality with a single feature: ratio of new grad phds vs open assistant professorship positions. i would actually go and actually calculate this ratio.

cs isnt that bad, philosophy looks like mad max

ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


That won't tell you anything about a specific department or lab, and doesn't really matter that much for staff.

bob dobbs is dead
Oct 8, 2017

I love peeps
Nap Ghost
individual labs no. but ive found its p good for individual departments. and if they have the position in hand the real question they wanna answer is how mad max-like it is

reversefungi
Nov 27, 2003

Master of the high hat!
Question: I'm in the midwest (Colorado) and having been here for the last few years, it seems like most job interviews are pretty laid back compared to the coasts. I usually have to do some sort of small take home project then answer some questions/general personality fit stuff and that's it. Never been asked any of the leetcode type questions.

With everything becoming remote, I'm getting lots of messages from recruiters from places all over. What I'm wondering is, if a company is in SF or NYC or some other more intense place, will their interview questions for remote positions be on that NYC/SF/etc level, or do places generally adjust based on where they are interviewing? I've never had to really study all that leetcode stuff but wondering if it might not be the worst idea to start brushing up on it.

ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


Are you asking if companies put thought into their interview processes?

Truman Peyote
Oct 11, 2006



changing the interview based on where the applicant is from would be more effort and potentially discriminatory, I wouldn't expect it

tortilla_chip
Jun 13, 2007

k-partite
You should expect to have a couple leet code style questions.

marumaru
May 20, 2013



The Dark Wind posted:

I've never had to really study all that leetcode stuff but wondering if it might not be the worst idea to start brushing up on it.

in my experience (ymmv) way too many companies ask you to do really asinine leetcode type challenges. it sucks.
Cracking the Code Interview is good.

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

We’ve expanded our candidate searches to include folks living out of state and everything about the interview is the same as with local candidates.

Only difference in the process is compensation/benefits discussion (if candidate gets to that point). Benefits get weird across state lines (at least for small companies), and our particular problem is that we’re in a pretty low CoL city and we’ve been attracting remote candidates from some of the most expensive areas on the eastern seaboard, which makes our generous-for-rust-belt-but-pauper-level-for-the-likes-of-NYC salaries a harder sell.

ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


Queen Victorian posted:

We’ve expanded our candidate searches to include folks living out of state and everything about the interview is the same as with local candidates.

Only difference in the process is compensation/benefits discussion (if candidate gets to that point). Benefits get weird across state lines (at least for small companies), and our particular problem is that we’re in a pretty low CoL city and we’ve been attracting remote candidates from some of the most expensive areas on the eastern seaboard, which makes our generous-for-rust-belt-but-pauper-level-for-the-likes-of-NYC salaries a harder sell.

If candidates are living in a high CoL city, applying for jobs with companies outside of those areas, and getting surprised when the compensation is lower than what they'd expect, that's on them. However, there's something to be said for being upfront about what you can offer so you don't have to go through the whole interview process with people who will never take your offer.

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

ultrafilter posted:

If candidates are living in a high CoL city, applying for jobs with companies outside of those areas, and getting surprised when the compensation is lower than what they'd expect, that's on them. However, there's something to be said for being upfront about what you can offer so you don't have to go through the whole interview process with people who will never take your offer.

I’m not privy to every stage of the interview (I’m just in technical screens and behavioral), but I think we’ve taken to giving out of town candidates a heads up about salary range potential. We had an offer rejected because even though we were able to meet raw salary expectation despite the higher CoL, it wasn’t enough convince the guy to switch sectors to our less sexy one.

I’ll have to ask if relocation ever comes up. We’re currently 100% remote and will be for the foreseeable future so it’s technically pointless right now, but we’re keeping our office and plan to go back to it eventually (but with super flexible and generous WFH options remaining in place), and even during quarantine we’ve gotten lots of value out of most of us being within a couple miles of each other and the office - easy to go grab supplies/equipment, have (very) occasional socially distanced face to face meetings or picnics, exchange seedlings (we are dorks who like our victory gardens), etc.

Lord Of Texas
Dec 26, 2006

In a few weeks I'm leaving a Fortune 100 company to a company with <50 employees recently out of the startup phase.

I worked at the Fortune 100 company for a decade and last year was promoted to architect. I'll be "software architect" at this new place, which seems like a proxy for "do whatever is needed" (in a good way, not a fix-the-printer way, hopefully)

Anyone made a transition like this who can share stories or things to watch out for?

kayakyakr
Feb 16, 2004

Kayak is true

Lord Of Texas posted:

In a few weeks I'm leaving a Fortune 100 company to a company with <50 employees recently out of the startup phase.

I worked at the Fortune 100 company for a decade and last year was promoted to architect. I'll be "software architect" at this new place, which seems like a proxy for "do whatever is needed" (in a good way, not a fix-the-printer way, hopefully)

Anyone made a transition like this who can share stories or things to watch out for?

Startup life is very different. New projects, crazy ideas, room to try out new tech and architecture.

Don't let them crunch you. Ever. No delivery deadline is worth the stress. Otherwise, have fun.

bob dobbs is dead
Oct 8, 2017

I love peeps
Nap Ghost
heres the deal w new stuff in startupland: you get more room in practice and you will get large rewards technically from using as little of that room as you can. one or two secret weapons, is the byword

poo poo is a lot faster tho

wins32767
Mar 16, 2007

Assume that the processes all are barely functional. Also watch out for engineers who know every line of code and feel a rightful sense of ownership over everything. They're likely going to have a hard time letting go of that, so be gentle and patient since they are really valuable to have around as the company scales.

ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


Be ready to fix the printers.

Lord Of Texas
Dec 26, 2006

Thanks all for the advice!

ultrafilter posted:

Be ready to fix the printers.

Ha! Indeed.

wins32767 posted:

Assume that the processes all are barely functional. Also watch out for engineers who know every line of code and feel a rightful sense of ownership over everything. They're likely going to have a hard time letting go of that, so be gentle and patient since they are really valuable to have around as the company scales.

Unfortunately one of the staff engineers who fits that description just announced that they are leaving. So that's going to hurt, but it seems like they are close-knit enough that some of that domain knowledge is shared.

kayakyakr posted:

Startup life is very different. New projects, crazy ideas, room to try out new tech and architecture.

Don't let them crunch you. Ever. No delivery deadline is worth the stress. Otherwise, have fun.

Yep. One of my hesitations is that they are an "unlimited PTO" company, and we all know what that means in practice.

One of the bright sides is that their customer base is mostly government, so outside of custs in different timezones their availability needs off hours are pretty minimal.

bob dobbs is dead posted:

heres the deal w new stuff in startupland: you get more room in practice and you will get large rewards technically from using as little of that room as you can. one or two secret weapons, is the byword

poo poo is a lot faster tho

Yeah, prudence in which shiny new techs to chase will be something I need to exercise. I don't want their architecture to end up like one of my Factorio bases, after all.

The March Hare
Oct 15, 2006

Je rêve d'un
Wayne's World 3
Buglord
For whatever it's worth I have worked at two different unlimited PTO companies who just actually didn't track time off. Took a lot of long weekends and a few legitimate vacations along with several days around Xmas and Thanksgiving at both never had any trouble. I was probably lucky but it's not always a con (outside of the con where they aren't paying out unused vacation.)

Plinkey
Aug 4, 2004

by Fluffdaddy

bob dobbs is dead posted:

heres the deal w new stuff in startupland: you get more room in practice and you will get large rewards technically from using as little of that room as you can. one or two secret weapons, is the byword

poo poo is a lot faster tho

yeah, i left about 13 year of DoD contracting to move to a ~300 person company with a dev department of about 50 and the pace will take some getting used to, also the code, legacy or not is so much better and well organized than anything I saw in my entire time working as a gov contractor.

also way more responsive if you request stuff, all of the dev were bitching about their laptops not having enough ram and within a month they ordered like 50 new laptops with twice the ram and updated CPUs and handed them out.

also when the wfh thing started they basically said 'go take anything you need from your desk to work at home including your chair if you want'

Lord Of Texas posted:

Yep. One of my hesitations is that they are an "unlimited PTO" company, and we all know what that means in practice.

I worked at a place like this, and basically what it meant was that you had to plan your vacation per quarter, but there was no real limit on what you could take (sick days, and poo poo coming up were obviously different)

bob dobbs is dead
Oct 8, 2017

I love peeps
Nap Ghost
unlimited pto is bad compared to 6-8 weeks known pto. it is not bad compared to american-style 1 week and you get fired for takin it pto

Good Will Hrunting
Oct 8, 2012

I changed my mind.
I'm not sorry.

wins32767 posted:

Assume that the processes all are barely functional.

Question the ones that appear "functional" on the surface but are actually just grandfathered in by the vets and are lovely or not working for new hires. Call them out early or you'll be in for a nightmare ride.

Can't say I'd be enthralled by working at a startup again but pay me enough and I'll work anywhere, a lot of jobs are garbage and you really, truly just cannot know to what extent until you work there or know someone (ideally 2-3 people) on the inside.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
Whenever you're learning a process as a newbie, ask if there's documentation. If there isn't, take notes, and those will become the documentation to help onboard future employees (and if there is documentation, note down any discrepancies and get them fixed). You don't really want to be the Bastion of Onboarding Knowledge, but on the other hand the org will be vastly improved by streamlining this stuff and it's a great way for you to start making an impact right out of the gate.

kayakyakr
Feb 16, 2004

Kayak is true

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Whenever you're learning a process as a newbie, ask if there's documentation. If there isn't, take notes, and those will become the documentation to help onboard future employees (and if there is documentation, note down any discrepancies and get them fixed). You don't really want to be the Bastion of Onboarding Knowledge, but on the other hand the org will be vastly improved by streamlining this stuff and it's a great way for you to start making an impact right out of the gate.

This is true. Current company's onboarding was super improved by having a triple chunk of new hires, 3 each month, for 3 successive months.

Went from a 5-6 day onboarding to a 1-2 hour by the time the 3rd group got their boxes.

Good Will Hrunting
Oct 8, 2012

I changed my mind.
I'm not sorry.

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Whenever you're learning a process as a newbie, ask if there's documentation. If there isn't, take notes, and those will become the documentation to help onboard future employees (and if there is documentation, note down any discrepancies and get them fixed). You don't really want to be the Bastion of Onboarding Knowledge, but on the other hand the org will be vastly improved by streamlining this stuff and it's a great way for you to start making an impact right out of the gate.

On one hand becoming the Bastion of Onboarding Knowledge sounds lovely but on the other hand you can get new hires up to speed so much quicker by investing time in docs and automating the process, and can then start delegating them actual interesting work. Helps people stay motivated to burn through the mundane as quick as possible and up to date documentation in any org of a decent size is invaluable.

Plinkey
Aug 4, 2004

by Fluffdaddy

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Whenever you're learning a process as a newbie, ask if there's documentation. If there isn't, take notes, and those will become the documentation to help onboard future employees (and if there is documentation, note down any discrepancies and get them fixed). You don't really want to be the Bastion of Onboarding Knowledge, but on the other hand the org will be vastly improved by streamlining this stuff and it's a great way for you to start making an impact right out of the gate.

This was the exact onboarding process for a project that I worked on, don't know the answer search the wiki, still nothing? Find someone that can help you, it's up to you to add a new wiki page. Half of your first day was getting up to speed on editing wiki pages and the syntax and all. After like a 6-9 months almost everything was documented and when a new feature was added whoever developed it did the documentation out of habbit

the talent deficit
Dec 20, 2003

self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture





Lord Of Texas posted:

In a few weeks I'm leaving a Fortune 100 company to a company with <50 employees recently out of the startup phase.

I worked at the Fortune 100 company for a decade and last year was promoted to architect. I'll be "software architect" at this new place, which seems like a proxy for "do whatever is needed" (in a good way, not a fix-the-printer way, hopefully)

Anyone made a transition like this who can share stories or things to watch out for?

figure out quickly what management actually expect from you. they'll tell you all kinds of things but you can figure out what they really want from the meetings they schedule and the questions they ask. your new job is to make them think their priorities are your priorities even if they are stupid and wrong. you'll have to make progress in actually important areas at the same time you're making progress in the ios app only the ceo uses or the billing dashboard the cfo won't shut up about

Lord Of Texas
Dec 26, 2006

the talent deficit posted:

figure out quickly what management actually expect from you. they'll tell you all kinds of things but you can figure out what they really want from the meetings they schedule and the questions they ask. your new job is to make them think their priorities are your priorities even if they are stupid and wrong. you'll have to make progress in actually important areas at the same time you're making progress in the ios app only the ceo uses or the billing dashboard the cfo won't shut up about

Yeah I'm really bad at this one. Contrarian by nature. Hopefully they value a dissenter?

Great point about reading between the lines though. So many times people will say one thing and expect you to infer the other.


TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Whenever you're learning a process as a newbie, ask if there's documentation. If there isn't, take notes, and those will become the documentation to help onboard future employees (and if there is documentation, note down any discrepancies and get them fixed). You don't really want to be the Bastion of Onboarding Knowledge, but on the other hand the org will be vastly improved by streamlining this stuff and it's a great way for you to start making an impact right out of the gate.

Yeah, they are hiring up really rapidly (have a large grant contingent on them adding X jobs in 2021) so this will be key.


Good Will Hrunting posted:

Question the ones that appear "functional" on the surface but are actually just grandfathered in by the vets and are lovely or not working for new hires. Call them out early or you'll be in for a nightmare ride.

Can't say I'd be enthralled by working at a startup again but pay me enough and I'll work anywhere, a lot of jobs are garbage and you really, truly just cannot know to what extent until you work there or know someone (ideally 2-3 people) on the inside.

Yeah, I have a friend who I trust that works at the startup, he recommended it to me. That went a long way for my decision.


bob dobbs is dead posted:

unlimited pto is bad compared to 6-8 weeks known pto. it is not bad compared to american-style 1 week and you get fired for takin it pto

True, but I came from a privileged position of 6-8 weeks guaranteed PTO (I'm US). Unlimited PTO is definitely a 1st world problem. I use most of my PTO to take random days off here and there if I feel like poo poo for whatever reason, rarely do I take long stretches of away time, so hopefully they're cool with that.

Good to hear that several of you have had positive experiences with unlimited FTO policies. Everything I can tell about this place indicates to me that they are the "focus while at work, then disconnect" type, not the "work-everyone-to-the-bone" type. Not a ping-pong table to be found in their office which is a plus for me.

LLSix
Jan 20, 2010

The real power behind countless overlords

Just had an interview at a company where I previously worked as a contractor. The project was a dumpster fire for several reasons and virtually everyone who worked on it no longer works at the company. When I asked about what happened, the 4 owners threw the employees under the bus and said they got rid of them because of their poor time estimation and planning skills. I know from side channels that at least one of the employees left for a better paying job. On the other hand, most of the people involved with the project were very bad at planning and time estimating. How much of a red flag is this?

Two of the owners asked some moderately creepy questions about what I do in my free time and what my family life is like. I don't know if that's a bright red flag necessarily, but I certainly feel like my employers shouldn't care about anything that happens outside working hours.

LLSix fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Feb 24, 2021

ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


I'd be running like hell.

Volguus
Mar 3, 2009

LLSix posted:

Just had an interview at a company where I previously worked as a contractor. The project was a dumpster fire for several reasons and virtually everyone who worked on it no longer works at the company. When I asked about what happened, the 4 owners threw the employees under the bus and said they got rid of them because of their poor time estimation and planning skills. I know from side channels that at least one of the employees left for a better paying job. On the other hand, most of the people involved with the project were very bad at planning and time estimating. How much of a red flag is this?

Two of the owners asked some moderately creepy questions about what I do in my free time and what my family life is like. I don't know if that's a bright red flag necessarily, but I certainly feel like my employers shouldn't care about anything that happens outside working hours.

I would say this falls under the same idea that you should never talk bad about your past employers in an interview. They're throwing their past employees under the bus when trying to convince you that you should become an employee. If at their best they are like that, how will they behave at their worst? At the end of the day it depends how badly do you need the job.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
Be glad that you haven't committed to anything yet, and get the hell out of there.

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
Their best image, the one they chose to present to you, is that when an employee has weaknesses (such as bad estimation skills), their resolution is to sack the entire team (discarding all that institutional knowledge) and try to hire new people instead of trying to improve those weaknesses.

Even if you take all their words at face value they loving suck and you would prefer a job literally anywhere else

Guinness
Sep 15, 2004

Firing developers for bad estimation skills smells real bullshit. Estimates don't exist in a vacuum. Good estimates become bad estimates when provided with misleading, incomplete, or changing information, and naturally change as unknowns become knowns. On a dumpster fire project there tends to be a lot of unknowns to uncover. A project like that requires dedicated project management and requirements gathering before even touching code, and overworked developers can't also do project and requirements management on that scale unless you want it to take literally forever.

Estimates are hard, will never be perfect, and carry a lot of assumptions. Managing that is as much of a business problem as an engineering problem.

What I'm saying is don't go back to that place

Guinness fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Feb 25, 2021

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

.

Hadlock fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Feb 25, 2021

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LLSix
Jan 20, 2010

The real power behind countless overlords

I was asked about the centrifuge problem in an interview today. I hadn't heard of it before so I thought I'd mention it. This youtube video is what helped me parse the answer.

Briefly, the question is, given a function that takes two numbers n and k. Can you place k tubes in n holes such that they're balanced.

The version of the problem the interviewers used actually just asked if it was possible to balance the centrifuge, without specifying that all the tubes had to be used. I pointed out that you always have a balanced centrifuge with 0 tubes, (or two tubes for any even number of holes). They got a laugh out of that and then clarified that all k tubes had to be used.

Edit: Got an offer from them while I was typing this up, so I must have done okay even though I didn't get the full solution. It's a one year hourly contract and pays the same as the full time position I mentioned just up thread, but I like the corporate culture a lot more. (Nobody got thrown under the bus during this interview). It's a lot more risk for me, but I think the better quality of life from not being disgusted by the managers is worth it.

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