4 ms·

The questions are very academic-like. I can answer the questions, but I learned the answers in university, not on-the-job. If I'd not done a CS degree, I would

The questions are very academic-like. I can answer the questions, but I learned the answers in university, not on-the-job. If I'd not done a CS degree, I would not be able to answer those questions.

Stormbringer 16y ago
I think that on the one hand, this is because Facebook wants to put on the big-boy pants like the other grown-up companies. Gogle does this, so Facebook must. And Google does it because Microsoft does it. And Microsoft does it because Billy G is a freak of (un)nature. At least they're not asking why man hole covers are round, or if you had a bathtub the size of New York how many Grand Pianos would fit in it (correct answer: "I'm not aware that the Grand Piano is an internationally recognised standard unit of measure") On the other hand, interviewing is not a solved problem in IT. It can't be, otherwise half (or more) of the people would never have gotten in, and productivity would soar. On the gripping hand, for all that I want to denigrate Facebook, these questions do actually make sense - do you want people on your server writing an O(n) algorithm when an O(log n) one will do? When N is ridiculously large, like 500 million or something like that? And if the only place to learn these things is in an academic environment, then so be it. I admire the generic self-taught programmer as much as anybody else, but if they really love what they do, it would behoove them to borrow someone's old computer science textbooks and skim through them.
- gawker 16y ago
  These questions definitely do make sense. If you look at Google's white papers and research, you'll see that their creative implementations allow them to use commodity hardware to build a huge server farm. This allows them to scale quickly and cheaply. Any microsecond of downtime for Google/Facebook would be catastrophic yet it is unwise to dump all the cash buying expensive servers.

The questions are very academic-like. I can answer the questions, but I learned the answers in university, not on-the-job. If I'd not done a CS degree, I would not be able to answer those questions.

Stormbringer 16y ago

I think that on the one hand, this is because Facebook wants to put on the big-boy pants like the other grown-up companies. Gogle does this, so Facebook must. And Google does it because Microsoft does it. And Microsoft does it because Billy G is a freak of (un)nature. At least they're not asking why man hole covers are round, or if you had a bathtub the size of New York how many Grand Pianos would fit in it (correct answer: "I'm not aware that the Grand Piano is an internationally recognised standard unit of measure") On the other hand, interviewing is not a solved problem in IT. It can't be, otherwise half (or more) of the people would never have gotten in, and productivity would soar. On the gripping hand, for all that I want to denigrate Facebook, these questions do actually make sense - do you want people on your server writing an O(n) algorithm when an O(log n) one will do? When N is ridiculously large, like 500 million or something like that? And if the only place to learn these things is in an academic environment, then so be it. I admire the generic self-taught programmer as much as anybody else, but if they really love what they do, it would behoove them to borrow someone's old computer science textbooks and skim through them.

gawker 16y ago
These questions definitely do make sense. If you look at Google's white papers and research, you'll see that their creative implementations allow them to use commodity hardware to build a huge server farm. This allows them to scale quickly and cheaply. Any microsecond of downtime for Google/Facebook would be catastrophic yet it is unwise to dump all the cash buying expensive servers.