5 ms·

I interviewed there a few years ago. I can tell you that at least at the time the impression given during the interviews was that of a deep, intellectually enr

by nilkn 11y ago

I interviewed there a few years ago. I can tell you that at least at the time the impression given during the interviews was that of a deep, intellectually enriching place. Mostly everyone I talked to went to Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, or a similarly ranked school. Many of those not straight out of school had come from Google or Facebook. The interview questions were among the hardest and most technically demanding I was asked. You're told of working on problems of massive scale involving true "big data". On top of this, the budget for seeking out top engineering talent seemed to be without bound. I was flown out and put in a really overly nice hotel room. I was treated to a very expensive steak meal for lunch. I was just one of a very large group of candidates being luxuriously herded through their HQ that day and seemingly every day without end.

laxatives 10y ago
I agree they they spent a ton of money on recruiting, but many of my interview questions were absolutely terrible trivia questions. They were strictly questions that had a single answers regarding knowledge of shell command line functions. Not familiarity with usage, like when to use grep or ps aux, but things like how do you unzip and search with 5 keystrokes (zgrep)? For a new grad, it was a complete waste of time.
sumitgt 11y ago
I had the exact same experience
TallGuyShort 11y ago
My experience was similar, but with Facebook it was even more so. I'm not sure this correlates to the work you end up doing.
askafriend 11y ago
I had a similar experience as well. They put me in a very fancy hotel and let me charge anything to the room (don't worry, I absolutely did take advantage of this). On top of that, they sent an S550 to pick me up on the day of the interview...
- untilHellbanned 11y ago
  So gimmicky and shallow, can't believe this works.
  - askafriend 11y ago
    Yeah but I was a Sophomore or Junior in college and I remember feeling super awesome and important. These kinds of things play with your ego especially if you're not mature enough to have ever experienced something like it before.
    - untilHellbanned 11y ago
      not directed at you, but more a frustration with human nature.
      - rhizome 10y ago
        It's sales pure and simple, unless they're going to hand over the keys to the S550 after the interview regardless of outcome.
  - crdb 10y ago
    McKinsey flew me and a few other fresh grads to Dubai for a week because I was helping run the entrepreneurs society. 5* hotel, mock case study for 1/3 of the time and the rest tourism. It was a holiday for the McKinsey guys running that thing as well, they appreciated being paid to go waterskiing and BBQing on the beach. For me it was luxury unlike anything I experienced until then - the rooms were so big we had to almost shout to be heard across them, and there was a sofa on the balcony! I took home loads of Hermes toiletries and cologne (I didn't have enough money on my bank account for the room deposit, and one of the consultants had to deposit with his card). In fact we even missed our Paris connection to Dubai, so McKinsey sent a consultant over to baby sit us, which meant taking a Mercedes to the Brasserie La Coupole for an epic feast followed by a night in a neighbouring 5* (I think in the Tour Montparnasse). Unfortunately, I did not graduate with high enough grades (2.2 on the BA, cutoff was 2.1) for McKinsey, which is why they rejected me the first time. So by the third time they tried to headhunt me, I just told them upfront that their system/HR would reject me because of my grades and it was not worth our time continuing the discussion. They insisted, and it happened as predicted, making me wonder why they still care about that for more senior hires. There was also a period of time in my life where I accepted conference speaking slots if the hotel was nice enough and close enough to my home. Can't resist a proper 5* hotel lunch buffet, especially if they have giant prawns and olive-roast beef and a decent beer on tap. I made my talks increasingly ridiculous, I think by the end I was explaining Starcraft cheese to middle-aged CTOs and quoting Delta Force founder Col. Charlie Beckwith before following up with droid-driven tractors (all relevant to ML in e-commerce, I promise). They loved it, got voted "best talk of the conference" a couple of times, not hard when 90% of the other talks were "so here's the 3Vs of Big Data" verbatim copied from Wikipedia.
i2shar 11y ago
Reminds me of "The Firm".

by nilkn 11y ago

laxatives 10y ago

I agree they they spent a ton of money on recruiting, but many of my interview questions were absolutely terrible trivia questions. They were strictly questions that had a single answers regarding knowledge of shell command line functions. Not familiarity with usage, like when to use grep or ps aux, but things like how do you unzip and search with 5 keystrokes (zgrep)? For a new grad, it was a complete waste of time.

sumitgt 11y ago

I had the exact same experience

TallGuyShort 11y ago

My experience was similar, but with Facebook it was even more so. I'm not sure this correlates to the work you end up doing.

askafriend 11y ago

I had a similar experience as well. They put me in a very fancy hotel and let me charge anything to the room (don't worry, I absolutely did take advantage of this). On top of that, they sent an S550 to pick me up on the day of the interview...

untilHellbanned 11y ago
So gimmicky and shallow, can't believe this works.
- askafriend 11y ago
  Yeah but I was a Sophomore or Junior in college and I remember feeling super awesome and important. These kinds of things play with your ego especially if you're not mature enough to have ever experienced something like it before.
  - untilHellbanned 11y ago
    not directed at you, but more a frustration with human nature.
    - rhizome 10y ago
      It's sales pure and simple, unless they're going to hand over the keys to the S550 after the interview regardless of outcome.
- crdb 10y ago
  McKinsey flew me and a few other fresh grads to Dubai for a week because I was helping run the entrepreneurs society. 5* hotel, mock case study for 1/3 of the time and the rest tourism. It was a holiday for the McKinsey guys running that thing as well, they appreciated being paid to go waterskiing and BBQing on the beach. For me it was luxury unlike anything I experienced until then - the rooms were so big we had to almost shout to be heard across them, and there was a sofa on the balcony! I took home loads of Hermes toiletries and cologne (I didn't have enough money on my bank account for the room deposit, and one of the consultants had to deposit with his card). In fact we even missed our Paris connection to Dubai, so McKinsey sent a consultant over to baby sit us, which meant taking a Mercedes to the Brasserie La Coupole for an epic feast followed by a night in a neighbouring 5* (I think in the Tour Montparnasse). Unfortunately, I did not graduate with high enough grades (2.2 on the BA, cutoff was 2.1) for McKinsey, which is why they rejected me the first time. So by the third time they tried to headhunt me, I just told them upfront that their system/HR would reject me because of my grades and it was not worth our time continuing the discussion. They insisted, and it happened as predicted, making me wonder why they still care about that for more senior hires. There was also a period of time in my life where I accepted conference speaking slots if the hotel was nice enough and close enough to my home. Can't resist a proper 5* hotel lunch buffet, especially if they have giant prawns and olive-roast beef and a decent beer on tap. I made my talks increasingly ridiculous, I think by the end I was explaining Starcraft cheese to middle-aged CTOs and quoting Delta Force founder Col. Charlie Beckwith before following up with droid-driven tractors (all relevant to ML in e-commerce, I promise). They loved it, got voted "best talk of the conference" a couple of times, not hard when 90% of the other talks were "so here's the 3Vs of Big Data" verbatim copied from Wikipedia.

i2shar 11y ago

Reminds me of "The Firm".