6 ms·

I wonder if he had to do whiteboard coding and if the in house recruiter blindly placed him on a team.

by donretag 9y ago

pavement 9y ago
They had him invert a binary tree on a whiteboard.
- foo101 9y ago
  Source?
  - rekwah 9y ago
    It's a reference to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9695102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9695102
  - mathnode 9y ago
    It's a little in-joke https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en-gb https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en-g... Even spoofed on a recent Silicon Valley episode.
- geodel 9y ago
  At least they did not ask him to implement unsigned integers in Java.
- eternalcode 9y ago
  Sorry, that question is only reserved to the author of homebrew. :D
yeukhon 9y ago
Perhaps he shared his dismay at Oracle and one of his Amazon connection came to him with an offer. He probably did have a few interviews to make sure his future manager and his peers are comfortable. More of a cultural fit.
- geodel 9y ago
  In between he was at Google and Liquid robotics. He also hated Google quite a bit due to usage of Java in Android without license from SUN/Oracle. With all due credit to him, I am not too sure the enormous success of Java was due to language excellence or massive marketing expense by Sun and Oracle.
stevenwoo 9y ago
I know this is a joke but an Amazon recruiter sent me prep info for an interview last month ( I declined ) but it says no one does whiteboard coding. They give you a laptop for those portions of the interview. They only use a whiteboard for systems design questions for software developer interviews. (not that James Gosling would get the standard interview, either)
- moron4hire 9y ago
  That must be a recent change. I interviewed with Amazon a year ago and it was 4 or 5 hours of pretty much nothing but whiteboard coding. I don't mind, though. I don't understand why people can't do whiteboard code. It's usually super simple stuff yet people get caught up on things like not remembering that for-loops take three parameters. I mean, yes, the compiler will stop you. But just how long have you been doing this job that you can't do THAT one in your sleep? What I did mind about Amazon was that clearly they were lying to me about the expectations of overtime, as well as the compensation package was ludicrously bad.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    You don't have Stack Overflow built into the whiteboard.
    - moron4hire 9y ago
      I know this is a super-unpopular opinion these days, but... Why can't you program the simple problems that interviewers use for whiteboard coding without Stack Overflow? It's not even like interviewers are looking for syntax-perfect code (which you wouldn't need Stack Overflow for anyway, the compiler is what catches that for you). I've never had an interviewer that would quibble over a missed semi-colon here or there. Hell, most of the time I end up using "begin/end" style pseudo-code instead of curly-braces, because curly-braces are stupidly hard to draw well on a whiteboard. And even if you don't know off the top of your head what "invert binary tree" means, every interviewer I've ever had has been more than willing to answer any questions I have about the problem. Ask questions about requirements and you should be able to figure it out. If, once you know what the inputs and outputs of "invert binary tree" should be and you still can't do it, I seriously gotta question what the hell you're doing interviewing for the job of programmer. I once passed an interview for a job I wasn't even applying for, even though I didn't know off the top of my head what "LRU cache" meant, by asking enough questions ("oh, LRU means least-recently used? Well then, something like this?") I tend to think of whiteboard coding problems as being ineffective for interviewing because the problems are so simple. To me, anybody should be able to solve these problems. I know a lot of people can't, and this serves as a quick filter to winnow them out. But they are so ludicrously easy I just don't get how you can say you need Stack Overflow to solve these problems. I'm with Jonathan Blow on this one: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768
justicezyx 9y ago
I understand people's hatred towards whiteboard coding, but be realistic, James will find no problem doing them, and no one would bother to waste the time either.
namelezz 9y ago
If they like you, no whiteboard coding will be given. If they don't, you can do perfectly on whiteboard coding and still get rejected. This applies to all companies not just Amazon.

I wonder if he had to do whiteboard coding and if the in house recruiter blindly placed him on a team.

pavement 9y ago

They had him invert a binary tree on a whiteboard.

foo101 9y ago
Source?
- rekwah 9y ago
  It's a reference to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9695102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9695102
- mathnode 9y ago
  It's a little in-joke https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en-gb https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en-g... Even spoofed on a recent Silicon Valley episode.
geodel 9y ago
At least they did not ask him to implement unsigned integers in Java.
eternalcode 9y ago
Sorry, that question is only reserved to the author of homebrew. :D

yeukhon 9y ago

Perhaps he shared his dismay at Oracle and one of his Amazon connection came to him with an offer. He probably did have a few interviews to make sure his future manager and his peers are comfortable. More of a cultural fit.

geodel 9y ago
In between he was at Google and Liquid robotics. He also hated Google quite a bit due to usage of Java in Android without license from SUN/Oracle. With all due credit to him, I am not too sure the enormous success of Java was due to language excellence or massive marketing expense by Sun and Oracle.

stevenwoo 9y ago

I know this is a joke but an Amazon recruiter sent me prep info for an interview last month ( I declined ) but it says no one does whiteboard coding. They give you a laptop for those portions of the interview. They only use a whiteboard for systems design questions for software developer interviews. (not that James Gosling would get the standard interview, either)

moron4hire 9y ago
That must be a recent change. I interviewed with Amazon a year ago and it was 4 or 5 hours of pretty much nothing but whiteboard coding. I don't mind, though. I don't understand why people can't do whiteboard code. It's usually super simple stuff yet people get caught up on things like not remembering that for-loops take three parameters. I mean, yes, the compiler will stop you. But just how long have you been doing this job that you can't do THAT one in your sleep? What I did mind about Amazon was that clearly they were lying to me about the expectations of overtime, as well as the compensation package was ludicrously bad.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  You don't have Stack Overflow built into the whiteboard.
  - moron4hire 9y ago
    I know this is a super-unpopular opinion these days, but... Why can't you program the simple problems that interviewers use for whiteboard coding without Stack Overflow? It's not even like interviewers are looking for syntax-perfect code (which you wouldn't need Stack Overflow for anyway, the compiler is what catches that for you). I've never had an interviewer that would quibble over a missed semi-colon here or there. Hell, most of the time I end up using "begin/end" style pseudo-code instead of curly-braces, because curly-braces are stupidly hard to draw well on a whiteboard. And even if you don't know off the top of your head what "invert binary tree" means, every interviewer I've ever had has been more than willing to answer any questions I have about the problem. Ask questions about requirements and you should be able to figure it out. If, once you know what the inputs and outputs of "invert binary tree" should be and you still can't do it, I seriously gotta question what the hell you're doing interviewing for the job of programmer. I once passed an interview for a job I wasn't even applying for, even though I didn't know off the top of my head what "LRU cache" meant, by asking enough questions ("oh, LRU means least-recently used? Well then, something like this?") I tend to think of whiteboard coding problems as being ineffective for interviewing because the problems are so simple. To me, anybody should be able to solve these problems. I know a lot of people can't, and this serves as a quick filter to winnow them out. But they are so ludicrously easy I just don't get how you can say you need Stack Overflow to solve these problems. I'm with Jonathan Blow on this one: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768

justicezyx 9y ago

I understand people's hatred towards whiteboard coding, but be realistic, James will find no problem doing them, and no one would bother to waste the time either.

namelezz 9y ago

If they like you, no whiteboard coding will be given. If they don't, you can do perfectly on whiteboard coding and still get rejected. This applies to all companies not just Amazon.