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I think I've been rejected for all 3 reasons: 1. Docusign, for not using Coffeescript, Angular, and Stylus (3 technologies I had never previously used) to solv
by seattle_spring 9y ago
I think I've been rejected for all 3 reasons:
1. Docusign, for not using Coffeescript, Angular, and Stylus (3 technologies I had never previously used) to solve their very long take-home test. I apparently provided a great solution, but they were concerned that I didn't follow those rules specifically. No, I'm not going to spend hours getting up to speed on your framework just for an interview, nor am I going to submit sub-standard solutions to to conform to your arbitrary restriction of using the framework du-jour.
2. Google, for not being able to, "prove a random number is truly random," during my onsite interview panel. The guy offered no hints when I wasn't sure where to start, he simply continued to repeat the question, a bit slower each time.
3. A local Seattle startup, who required 3 onsites: A technical, a culture, and then a full-day of "integration" (working on real problems with the team). I apparently passed the first 2, but was not invited to the 3rd. Turns out the HR director that was working with me quit before scheduling the 3rd. I never found out until after I had already accepted another position.
- meesterdude 9y ago> The guy offered no hints when I wasn't sure where to start, he simply continued to repeat the question, a bit slower each time I hear the same approach works really well when trying to talk to someone that doesn't understand english
- nraynaud 9y agonope, it's louder and always at the same speed.
- nether 9y agoMaybe it does? When I was learning Russian, it just helped to hear everything slowed down by 2x.
- ben_w 9y agoI’m in Germany, and I keep forgetting to ask them to slow down when they German at me too quickly. Of course, when they know I’m English, then they English at me and I don’t learn German anyway…
- hanbura 9y ago>Google, for not being able to, "prove a random number is truly random," I really hope they just wanted you to argue that the task is impossible.
- skosch 9y agoOr maybe bring up some heuristics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diehard_tests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diehard_tests) – but of course proving a negative is always a futile exercise.
- fgonzag 9y agoYou can't run statistical methods on a single number though
- GoToRO 9y agoIt's not impossible: make a dice with all the numbers up to that number; throw the dice until it falls on that number; done.
- PeachPlum 9y agoDefine a PDF thus: 1 when n = number, 0 everywhere else
- matthewbauer 9y agoWon’t that be true for any number though? Might as well cut out steps and say accept all numbers as random.
- GoToRO 9y agoOf course. But now you proved it.
- xrisk 9y agoIf the last 'n' generated numbers were also given to you, this seems like a fair task - to check the randomness of a sequence of numbers. Wikipedia has an article about "randomness tests". [1] An example algorithm could determine if a run of integers represents a random sequence with some probability 'p'. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_tests https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_tests
- s3nnyy 9y agoThe three onsite days were paid I hope? If a coding task takes longer than four hours I ask companies to pay for it.
- drdeadringer 9y agoHonestly, I have not heard of this before. Is this real? Is this common? How does asking to be paid for an interview pan out?
- s3nnyy 9y agoSince I am an external recruiter, I ask for payment on behalf of my candidates but I can imagine if you formulate it nicely that it might work out, too without having a recruiter representing you. You can argue that you are interviewing with five companies and all have 4-8 hours coding task, you can't possibly do all of them and you will just do three maximum.
- rsyring 9y agoAt Level 12, we pay for the time spent taking our skills tests. About 16 hours worth if a candidate makes it through all phases. But I've not paid for the on-site interview, other than travel expenses for remote candidates.
- lwhalen 9y agoSixteen _hours_ of testing? I would've disqualified myself after the first hour. That's insane.
- guitarbill 9y agoHe's saying that's in total/spread out, but still seems on the high side. Between a take-home coding challenge (2h?), online coding challenge (1h), talking to recruiter/HR/hiring manager (1h), multiple interviews (coding 1h, culture/fit 1h, system design/architecture 1h, whatever 1h), you're already at 8 hours for a lot of places. I appreciate them even knowing how long a person would spend on their interview process though.
- _nalply 9y agoRe 2.: It's not possible to prove that a single number is random. You can run some tests on a series of numbers. If this were me getting that question, I would first say that I'd google for some standard tests, then if being asked if I know some by heart, I would start with the average and standard deviation, then I would draw a histogram and expect the distribution to be flat and finally I would try to visualise the numbers in a two-dimensional grid and look for patterns. A truly random number generator doesn't produce patterns.
- beojan 9y agoThere's a difference between random and uniformly distributed.
- wodenokoto 9y agoNo. Numbers have to be uniformly distributed in order to be random, since Randomness is the lack of pattern or predictability in events[1]. You can randomly sample from any distribution, but as long as you do it from a non-uniform distribution, you can start predicting the pattern (e.g. if you are sampling from a gaussian, you can start predicting median value) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness
- Applejinx 9y agoum no. Even on an infinite sequence, it's infinitely unlikely to get a flat distribution. That's what's annoying about real randomness, compared to 'a flat distribution'.
- matthewbauer 9y agoWell don’t they flatten out over time? That’s my understanding of randomness any way...
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
- NiceGuy_Ty 9y agoI'm currently interviewing with a company where the HR person in charge of my case left the company. My emails to him were getting Postmaster responses, so I emailed someone else asking what happened, and apparently no one knew that I was just hanging out in interview limbo. Being proactive in your interviews never hurts; so long as you aren't bombarding them with emails it's unlikely to hurt your application.
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoI get that things just happen sometimes, but, wow, does this sound like a red flag against working there to me.
- mixmastamyk 9y agoPeople quit, things happen, need more info.
- liveoneggs 9y agoIS 17 RANDOM OR NOT?!
- CodeWriter23 9y agoObviously not, your RNG has a bias toward prime numbers.
- candiodari 9y agoI'm changing my pin to a better code again. Four fours, but I'm setting their sequence to be completely random !
- cableshaft 9y ago4, 4, 4, 4. Checks out, totally random.
- DrScump 9y agoCan't be. It's all straight lines.
- wodenokoto 9y ago> 2. Google, for not being able to, "prove a random number is truly random ... You should have referred to xkcd's getRandomInteger function: https://xkcd.com/221/ https://xkcd.com/221/
- PhantomGremlin 9y agoDownvotes? Maybe you should have gone with Dilbert's version? http://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25 http://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25
- jhanschoo 9y ago>2. Google, for not being able to, "prove a random number is truly random," This definitely does not seem like a question that should be in a coding interview. However, this is an answerable question under certain assumptions. It's possible to make a source of randomness more entropic. (c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_extractor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_extractor) What we can do is slice up the number into a given length and estimate the H_{\infty} entropic measure among our sliced-up numbers, treating the numbers as samples from some random source. edit: if for example you're a crypto researcher, then this question seems warranted.