3 ms·

> Indeed, you (almost) never need to reverse linked lists in practice And there are thousands of other things that you (almost) never have to do, yet you do, t

> Indeed, you (almost) never need to reverse linked lists in practice And there are thousands of other things that you (almost) never have to do, yet you do, throught the course of your career. When they arise you're not an expert in them, but after some careful research you become one, or become enough of one to say which solutions are better than others for the problem you have. And you'll be able to implement it, support it, and explain it to the people with whom you work. These types of interviews don't see the forrest for the trees. The problems that you have had won't always be like the problems that you will have. What's important is the ability to solve problems you've never seen before (a graphql request took down the database cluster), not recite known but not widely remembered tasks (balance a b-tree in-place). Getting to the point where you have to start to worry about Big O is the hard part, not the other way around. And Jesus, I really hope we work in places where if you're unsure about Big O you can ask someone and they'll help you, not judge you. Edited to add: What these types of interviews say to me is the companies who use them have no interest in their employees growth and education.

beagle3 9y ago
> What's important is the ability to solve problems you've never seen before Most definitely! And that's exactly why I no longer use this question (as I wrote in my original post) -- by now, everyone has seen it. > Getting to the point where you have to start to worry about Big O is the hard part, not the other way around. And Jesus, I really hope we work in places where if you're unsure about Big O you can ask someone and they'll help you, not judge you. I disagree. I deal with lots of data (just ordered another 100TB storage the other day; I do that every couple of months these days). Toy solutions that work well for small 100GB datasets often don't extend. Without a good grasp of complexity, it is easy to build solutions that don't scale properly, or cost $100K more in hardware/AWS than they should. I've seen it happen a lot of times. As they say, "a year in the lab can save you a week in the library!". If you don't know that you should go to the library, you're likely to lose that year. > What these types of interviews say to me is the companies who use them have no interest in their employees growth and education. Some of us are bootstrapped in a cut-throat market and can't afford to plan employee retention 10 years into the future; And neither are most employees interested in that.
- tvaughan 9y ago
  > And that's exactly why I no longer use this question This matters? Any other question stinks just the same, like my example of balance a b-tree in-place. > I disagree... What is it you desagree with? "Getting to the point where you have to start to worry about Big O is the hard part, not the other way around." or "I really hope we work in places where if you're unsure about Big O you can ask someone and they'll help you, not judge you." > Without a good grasp of complexity... I don't see how the interview style you seem to advocate finds people who are good at understanding complexity. This comes from experience, the opportunities to have worked on unfamiliar projects, not from reading a how to pass a job interview book. > Some of us are bootstrapped in a cut-throat market Some of us work in toxic environments that are hostile to women and people of color but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, right? > can't afford to plan employee retention 10 years into the future; And neither are most employees interested in that. I would wager that everyone is interested in learning something new or deepening an existing skill in whatver job they take no matter the time period. The alternative would be to, which you seem to advocate, take a job, stand still in it for a few years, then wehn you're bored or feel like you're becoming obsolete, read some books on nights and weekends on whatever new trends people ask about in interviews, take a new job, stand still in it for a few years, and so on.
  - beagle3 9y ago
    > What is it you desagree with? "Getting to the point where you have to start to worry about Big O is the hard part, not the other way around." Or maybe I misunderstood what you meant. I think that unless you are doing mostly "do this and then do that" style programming (e.g. CRUD), you have to be aware of big-O, or you're going to hit a lot of walls. In things I do, anyway. > I don't see how the interview style you seem to advocate finds people who are good at understanding complexity. Complexity here being the well defined CS term about space and time, of which big-O is the customary notation: How your resources (time, space, etc) grow with the problem size. I suppose you meant complexity as some measure of cohesion/details/size - in which case, you are correct - this kind of questions do not address it (others in my interview do, though I admit it is much harder to judge one's view of other-complexity in an interview). > Some of us work in toxic environments that are hostile to women and people of color but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, right? Some of us make unrelated remarks, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, right? What exactly were you trying to say here? > I would wager that everyone is interested in learning something new or deepening an existing skill in whatver job they take no matter the time period. Then you would lose this wager. There are so many people who just want to clock in, do their job, clock out and get paid. Yes, even in technology. And you know what? that's fine; They are not lesser people because of that - they likely care more about hobbies or other things, and would happily quit their job and have fun if they won the lottery. > The alternative would be to, which you seem to advocate, take a job, stand still in it for a few years, then wehn you're bored or feel like you're becoming obsolete, read some books on nights and weekends on whatever new trends people ask about in interviews, take a new job, stand still in it for a few years, and so on. Not at all -- but there's a huge difference between "being interested in something new" and "train someone in a new field they are not proficient in" especially when there is no commitment (nor could there be) on their side. The latter costs money to the employer, which some can afford and some cannot -- either way, it is not a basic human right.

beagle3 9y ago

> What's important is the ability to solve problems you've never seen before Most definitely! And that's exactly why I no longer use this question (as I wrote in my original post) -- by now, everyone has seen it. > Getting to the point where you have to start to worry about Big O is the hard part, not the other way around. And Jesus, I really hope we work in places where if you're unsure about Big O you can ask someone and they'll help you, not judge you. I disagree. I deal with lots of data (just ordered another 100TB storage the other day; I do that every couple of months these days). Toy solutions that work well for small 100GB datasets often don't extend. Without a good grasp of complexity, it is easy to build solutions that don't scale properly, or cost $100K more in hardware/AWS than they should. I've seen it happen a lot of times. As they say, "a year in the lab can save you a week in the library!". If you don't know that you should go to the library, you're likely to lose that year. > What these types of interviews say to me is the companies who use them have no interest in their employees growth and education. Some of us are bootstrapped in a cut-throat market and can't afford to plan employee retention 10 years into the future; And neither are most employees interested in that.

tvaughan 9y ago
> And that's exactly why I no longer use this question This matters? Any other question stinks just the same, like my example of balance a b-tree in-place. > I disagree... What is it you desagree with? "Getting to the point where you have to start to worry about Big O is the hard part, not the other way around." or "I really hope we work in places where if you're unsure about Big O you can ask someone and they'll help you, not judge you." > Without a good grasp of complexity... I don't see how the interview style you seem to advocate finds people who are good at understanding complexity. This comes from experience, the opportunities to have worked on unfamiliar projects, not from reading a how to pass a job interview book. > Some of us are bootstrapped in a cut-throat market Some of us work in toxic environments that are hostile to women and people of color but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, right? > can't afford to plan employee retention 10 years into the future; And neither are most employees interested in that. I would wager that everyone is interested in learning something new or deepening an existing skill in whatver job they take no matter the time period. The alternative would be to, which you seem to advocate, take a job, stand still in it for a few years, then wehn you're bored or feel like you're becoming obsolete, read some books on nights and weekends on whatever new trends people ask about in interviews, take a new job, stand still in it for a few years, and so on.
- beagle3 9y ago
  > What is it you desagree with? "Getting to the point where you have to start to worry about Big O is the hard part, not the other way around." Or maybe I misunderstood what you meant. I think that unless you are doing mostly "do this and then do that" style programming (e.g. CRUD), you have to be aware of big-O, or you're going to hit a lot of walls. In things I do, anyway. > I don't see how the interview style you seem to advocate finds people who are good at understanding complexity. Complexity here being the well defined CS term about space and time, of which big-O is the customary notation: How your resources (time, space, etc) grow with the problem size. I suppose you meant complexity as some measure of cohesion/details/size - in which case, you are correct - this kind of questions do not address it (others in my interview do, though I admit it is much harder to judge one's view of other-complexity in an interview). > Some of us work in toxic environments that are hostile to women and people of color but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, right? Some of us make unrelated remarks, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, right? What exactly were you trying to say here? > I would wager that everyone is interested in learning something new or deepening an existing skill in whatver job they take no matter the time period. Then you would lose this wager. There are so many people who just want to clock in, do their job, clock out and get paid. Yes, even in technology. And you know what? that's fine; They are not lesser people because of that - they likely care more about hobbies or other things, and would happily quit their job and have fun if they won the lottery. > The alternative would be to, which you seem to advocate, take a job, stand still in it for a few years, then wehn you're bored or feel like you're becoming obsolete, read some books on nights and weekends on whatever new trends people ask about in interviews, take a new job, stand still in it for a few years, and so on. Not at all -- but there's a huge difference between "being interested in something new" and "train someone in a new field they are not proficient in" especially when there is no commitment (nor could there be) on their side. The latter costs money to the employer, which some can afford and some cannot -- either way, it is not a basic human right.