4 ms·

This makes me very, very sad. I will never subject one of my potential hires to this nonsense. These concepts are valuable and academically interesting, for su

This makes me very, very sad. I will never subject one of my potential hires to this nonsense. These concepts are valuable and academically interesting, for sure, but for the practical kind of engineering that's done at most companies it's simply not needed. Either that or it's already implemented in a library. What a waste of time.

akhilcacharya 9y ago
I'm sympathetic to this viewpoint but looking at the cost/benefit for a Stanford student I think the benefit to studying for these interviews is clear - its a bit of a simplification, but for Facebook if you can do 3-6 problems over the course of 2 60 minute internship interviews you have the ability to get a $75k-$100k signing bonus if you convert to full time in addition to more shares over 4 years. Granted this depends on whether you're a high performer during the internship but I definitely understand why someone would make or take this class.
- sidlls 9y ago
  I recently got a promotion to management. I have different responsibilities, but I get paid more and have more influence over solutions to interesting engineering and technical problems. This role feels even more like what my engineer friends in real engineering disciplines do than my role as Lead did: leverage their education and experience to solve complex, large scale problems. These interviews are good at testing for jobs in software that have as an analog jobs in real engineering equivalent disciplines consisting of computing CRC integrals by hand all day. What I'm saying is: unless these students just want to sit around repeating their DS&A course(s) over and over again the rest of their lives, this sort of interview, job, and prep course is counterproductive in the long term.
  - jdiaz5513 9y ago
    Careful. Software engineering is very much a real engineering discipline, and it is a major cultural failing to not recognize it as such. Required viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDEpeWQHtFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDEpeWQHtFU
    - tedd4u 9y ago
      Thanks for sharing this +1
    - sidlls 9y ago
      It should operate like a real engineering discipline. My point is in many ways it does not.
bearforcenine 9y ago
It's very tempting to say this. However, trying to find an alternative that is not equally or more gameable is very challenging. Take home assignments are easy to cheat on and take a lot of time. Asking questions about someone's experience is a great way to find someone who is a great conversationalist that can't code. Asking someone to program at a computer in a limited amount of time falls victim to the same issues that the competitive programming, whiteboard interviews currently do.
- sidlls 9y ago
  Take home assignments are easy to cheat on? What does that mean (in the context of a take-home problem as an interview method)? Are candidates expected to derive solutions to coding or engineering problems themselves from first principles as their day to day? The answer is "no" almost without exception, even in serious research or hard core low level systems programming jobs.
  - bearforcenine 9y ago
    It means that you have a friend or someone you pay solve the challenge and prep you very well on the solution. This isn't about creating the universe before you bake an apple pie, it's about preventing a mediocre software engineer who can understand a great solution, but has a hard time writing one from being assessed the same was as a great software engineer.
    - jasonlotito 9y ago
      Okay, allowing for that, nothing this class teaches does the job of allowing you to assess someone as a great software engineer either. In fact, if you want to hire a great software engineer, you can't do that reliably with any of these interview techniques. If your interview can be studied for, you aren't going to fight great software engineers. At best, you can find someone who will do the job. A mediocre software engineer.
  - pedrosorio 9y ago
    "Are candidates expected to derive solutions to coding or engineering problems themselves from first principles as their day to day?" Does performance on these tasks correlate with performance on the job? Is it easy to measure this performance in interviews reliably? Then it's going to be used by companies.

akhilcacharya 9y ago

I'm sympathetic to this viewpoint but looking at the cost/benefit for a Stanford student I think the benefit to studying for these interviews is clear - its a bit of a simplification, but for Facebook if you can do 3-6 problems over the course of 2 60 minute internship interviews you have the ability to get a $75k-$100k signing bonus if you convert to full time in addition to more shares over 4 years. Granted this depends on whether you're a high performer during the internship but I definitely understand why someone would make or take this class.

sidlls 9y ago
I recently got a promotion to management. I have different responsibilities, but I get paid more and have more influence over solutions to interesting engineering and technical problems. This role feels even more like what my engineer friends in real engineering disciplines do than my role as Lead did: leverage their education and experience to solve complex, large scale problems. These interviews are good at testing for jobs in software that have as an analog jobs in real engineering equivalent disciplines consisting of computing CRC integrals by hand all day. What I'm saying is: unless these students just want to sit around repeating their DS&A course(s) over and over again the rest of their lives, this sort of interview, job, and prep course is counterproductive in the long term.
- jdiaz5513 9y ago
  Careful. Software engineering is very much a real engineering discipline, and it is a major cultural failing to not recognize it as such. Required viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDEpeWQHtFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDEpeWQHtFU
  - tedd4u 9y ago
    Thanks for sharing this +1
  - sidlls 9y ago
    It should operate like a real engineering discipline. My point is in many ways it does not.

bearforcenine 9y ago

It's very tempting to say this. However, trying to find an alternative that is not equally or more gameable is very challenging. Take home assignments are easy to cheat on and take a lot of time. Asking questions about someone's experience is a great way to find someone who is a great conversationalist that can't code. Asking someone to program at a computer in a limited amount of time falls victim to the same issues that the competitive programming, whiteboard interviews currently do.

sidlls 9y ago
Take home assignments are easy to cheat on? What does that mean (in the context of a take-home problem as an interview method)? Are candidates expected to derive solutions to coding or engineering problems themselves from first principles as their day to day? The answer is "no" almost without exception, even in serious research or hard core low level systems programming jobs.
- bearforcenine 9y ago
  It means that you have a friend or someone you pay solve the challenge and prep you very well on the solution. This isn't about creating the universe before you bake an apple pie, it's about preventing a mediocre software engineer who can understand a great solution, but has a hard time writing one from being assessed the same was as a great software engineer.
  - jasonlotito 9y ago
    Okay, allowing for that, nothing this class teaches does the job of allowing you to assess someone as a great software engineer either. In fact, if you want to hire a great software engineer, you can't do that reliably with any of these interview techniques. If your interview can be studied for, you aren't going to fight great software engineers. At best, you can find someone who will do the job. A mediocre software engineer.
- pedrosorio 9y ago
  "Are candidates expected to derive solutions to coding or engineering problems themselves from first principles as their day to day?" Does performance on these tasks correlate with performance on the job? Is it easy to measure this performance in interviews reliably? Then it's going to be used by companies.