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As it should have been. The fact that you have a PhD means nothing to Google, Facebook, and the like (except possibly a slightly higher base salary than a new g
by toephu2 9y ago
As it should have been. The fact that you have a PhD means nothing to Google, Facebook, and the like (except possibly a slightly higher base salary than a new grad w/ only a BS)
The question is, can you whiteboard? They will be testing that. If you can, then all is golden and you probably didn't need to waste those 4-6 years getting that PhD because what you will be working on will have nothing to do with your topic of research (unless it was AI/ML).
- ex_amazon_sde 9y agoMe and my colleagues never asked this trivial question when interviewing for Amazon, just like you don't ask a driver what a brake is.
- toephu2 9y agoI assumed OP was referring to white board coding questions when he said "trivial programming task", which Amazon indeed does ask you to do throughout the interview process.
- Retra 9y agoI didn't have to answer any hackneyed technical questions or take any tests to get a job. The most technical thing I did was explain how a data structure I wrote works, which came up naturally in a conversation about what kind of programming I have done. If you can demonstrate that you understand programming concepts and can learn, then it's not much more to assume you can write code. If you need someone who can hit the ground running with some specific technology, then you might need to go deep into it, but not to find out if someone can program.
- toephu2 9y agoGoogle does not hire people by simply assuming the candidate can code. You do not get the benefit of the doubt, and in fact, you must prove otherwise. They want to see you write code on the whiteboard and solve the technical challenge given.
- Retra 9y agoAnd as we all plainly know: what Google does is what we all should do. That's probably the one company that's never done something unnecessary or wasteful.