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Elon Musk: Tons of C++/C engineers needed
- the_hoser 7y agoI don't care to have a job where my mistakes could possibly end up killing people months/years from now, but I wouldn't mind seeing what he means by "hardcore coding test".
- cableshaft 7y agoYeah. That alone would keep me from applying.
- adossi 7y agoYou could always just blame QA
- majidazimi 7y agoThen the shittier devs will inevitability be hired to work and the outcome is clear. The fact that genius people are working at Facebook to help us press like button on Kardashians' ass image at scale and dummies are working for Boeing already has shown its consequences.
- kick 7y ago"Genius people" staying far away from military contracting (like Boeing!) seems to be working out really well, and they should continue to have mundane and well-compensated jobs offered to them.
- majidazimi 7y agoI meant Boeing as commercial aircraft producer. And I don't blame anyone regarding this. It's their life/career.
- attilakun 7y agoI don't think it's fair to say that dummies are working at Boeing. Their recent scandals seem to at least partly stem from organisational/political problems. And FB "genius"'s mistakes are still far less visible than Boeing engineers'.
- ZitchDog 7y agoAn admirable goal, I suppose. With all the mental health issues stemming from software addiction and negative externalities due to ad revenue, these jobs will be harder and harder to find.
- hedora 7y agoAlmost any software bug can end up killing someone once it’s deployed to a billion people. It’s just less likely you’ll hear about it if it doesn’t involve a spectacular plane/car crash, missile launch, radiation release, etc. Ad targeting comes to mind (e.g., accidentally pushing opioids and worse at mentally unstable people because the computer inferred they are likely to buy).
- misiti3780 7y agoopioids ads most likely killed 10Ks of people.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoAccidentally... or purposefully, as a recent HN thread shown. In deaths because of ad targeting, I doubt most were caused by bugs.
- SQueeeeeL 7y agoI like how you assume that was an "accident", especially after it came out that Purdue and Allscripts teamed up to push pills through their software. The system is working as expected, it just would horrifying it's original creators
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ipnon 7y agoThe converse is that you are saving lives by developing a system that is already safer in terms of fatalities per mile than human drivers in some conditions.
- bdcravens 7y agoCan’t they just build it all in React? /s
- Someone1234 7y agoI could see working for for Tesla, I couldn't work on Tesla's AutoPilot though. I have deep reservations about using members of the public (and others on the road) as guinea pigs. Before the Walter Huang fatality, maybe, but after that and how Tesla acted about what was clearly a software bug in software that wasn't fit to be on public roads ("beta" label or otherwise), I could never justify working for such a company. Imagine being a software engineer on AutoPilot at the time, and then having the company you work for excuse your bugs by blaming the victim for not circumventing AutoPilot controlled steering into a wall. Software development ethics don't come up a lot. But I feel like AutoPilot is up there with medical software, aviation, and military, in that mistakes can easily cost lives. I want to be able to sleep at night. It is a cool problem-space, but only academically.
- alexpetralia 7y agoBy this logic, wouldn't you want an opportunity to help direct this space more positively, rather than being completely hands off?
- michaelt 7y agoTo me it seems unlikely a newly hired C developer could overrule Elon Musk on things like releasing the product to customers or having LIDAR.
- raxxorrax 7y agoThe way he demonstrated to treat his engineers would make me more suspicious. I have experience in c/c++ and especially imaging, but no way in hell would I want to work there. Maybe the guys he publicly fired were idiots, but even then you can manage that differently. It was a to a time when he got a lot of crap from media, but that is not a good excuse. Seriously lost faith in the company for that.
- rurban 7y agoI've worked im automotive in similar fields, even more advanced, and Tesla is not an outlier, probably even better than the rest. Tesla has a huge advantage in its flat modern management structure. They are at least 10x faster and cheaper than the rest. The results are visible to everyone. Bad midmgmt apples are everywhere, esp. in those kind of industries.
- vsskanth 7y agonaive question, but shouldn't AV command and control algorithms be built on some kind of formally verified system/language, considering lives are at play here ? I am aware of MISRA C for automotive but is something like that sufficient to guarantee against unintended behavior ? If not, can someone comment on why this isn't the case today ?
- pjc50 7y agoThere's a huge amount of money riding on the assumption that with enough training the neural net solutions will have an error rate low enough that the "Explain why the crash is the other person's fault" PR division can cover for it.
- 0xffff2 7y agoIs there any production software in the world that is written and maintained in a formally verified language? I have only ever seen toy problems and simplified subsystems of real projects verified. I work on space craft flight software and exactly none of it is formally verified. As far as I know, it's not practical to do so. If we could do it (without ballooning cost and schedule 10x), we would.
- arianvanp 7y agoAmazon S3 and DynamoDB come to mind are good examples. They are model-checked in TLA+ though the applications themselves are not written in TLA+. A large portion of Microsoft's in house developed device drivers for windows are formally verified. Boeing together with DARPA built an autonomous helicopter on top of the formally verified Sel4 microkernel https://ts.data61.csiro.au/projects/TS/SMACCM/ https://ts.data61.csiro.au/projects/TS/SMACCM/ Another one: Wireguard uses formally verified implementations of ed25519 https://github.com/project-everest/hacl-star https://github.com/project-everest/hacl-star
- 0xffff2 7y ago>Amazon S3 and DynamoDB come to mind are good examples. They are model-checked in TLA+ though the applications themselves are not written in TLA+. Honest question (I obviously don't have a ton of experience in this area), what does "model-checked in TLA+ though the applications themselves are not written in TLA+" mean (in terms of the guarantees you're getting)? If you're not verifying the actual code, then how do you prevent bugs creeping during whatever happens between verification and actually writing the application code? The HACL* project looks interesting. I would definitely accept that as an affirmative answer to my original question.
- hedora 7y agoIf this is their actual hiring strategy (armies of junior whiteboard coders with no preference for engineering experience or education), then the quality of their product will tank rapidly. It’s not that junior engineers are bad hires, it’s that it takes years of hard fought engineering experience to get an idea of what designs will work, what won’t; when to pay down tech debt, etc. Edit: There are lots of junior-sounding devs on this thread. Don’t let me discourage you. Just be sure you’re joining a team with strong engineering leads that will be good mentors.
- tga 7y agoWhat gives you the idea that Tesla is hiring junior whiteboard coders for these roles? They wouldn't know anything about optimizing C++/C/raw metal driver code for speed and wouldn't pass a real hardcore coding test.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- g82918 7y agoPassing a "hardcore" coding test is something you can train for, and tends to not correlate well with actual software architecting and optimization knowledge.
- pooya13 7y agoAlso optimized code is not necessary well designed.
- animalhot 7y agoVery true. Especially in embedded programming where custom code can yield massive perf gains.
- nickik 7y agoYou don't even know what 'hardcore' means in this context. Your literally judging their process essentially nothing and you have strong opinion on it. That said more about your prior then anything else .
- noncoml 7y agoC++ != C
- mottosso 7y agoFlamebait :)
- noncoml 7y agoHow so? They are different languages and different skill sets. Recruiters shouldn’t group the together. I have yet to meet a C programmer who can actually write C++ code. They just use the C++ compiler to write C compatible code.
- shkkmo 7y agoI'm pretty sure that that would evaluate to false in C++
- hadiz 7y agoI miss C++ a lot. The modern standard library is a thing of beauty IMO. Such a shame that I could not find a good gig when I was looking few months ago, at least not where I am. Looks like Tesla though are doing C with C++ features rather than C++. I'd also be interested in knowing what their "hardcore" questions are like...I heard that they ask a lot from your past experience.
- misiti3780 7y agoI know Elon is sometimes not popular around here, but how many CEOs at that level would know that level of details abouts the NNs. (he is totally in the weeds, but that is very cool IMO) I'd love to work there, but I know I would not put in the effort to pass the coding tests.
- new_realist 7y agoWorking for a manager who thinks they know the details, but are sophomorically off in the weeds, seems the worst of all possible worlds.
- bb88 7y agoWell, you mean besides any other CEO where software is a core part of their core business?
- Cshelton 7y agoYou'd be shocked. I had a meeting with a CTO of a F100 company, can't say who, but when talking about what encryption methods we use he was completely lost and asked to gear the conversation to be less technical. ...This meeting was scheduled as the "technical" meeting mind you. Most executives at that level in F500 companies are so far out of the "weeds".
- ackbar03 7y agoI've pretty much accepted as a rule of thumb the higher up you are in management the less you actually know about what your business actually does
- jacobsenscott 7y agoThe further down in the trenches you are the less you know about what those higher up in management are doing. The higher up in management you are the less you know about what the people down in the trenches are doing. That's fine because except for a few outliers both groups of people are doing the work that they need to do to make the company work.
- wolfgke 7y ago> "but all must pass hardcore coding test." The time necessary for this means a huge opportunity cost for every applicant.
- techntoke 7y agoThe people people in that thread are funny. They're like.. what is C/C++? Going to learn it on Code Academy. 6 hours later: Okay now I'm an expert for you Elon, when do I start.
- new_realist 7y agoTesla doesn’t pay well enough to attract good software engineering talent.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y agoIt does compare badly versus employers in the oil & gas, defense, tobacco and casino industry. A shame.
- aey 7y agoWhy not rust?
- stuff4ben 7y agoOr Java? /s
- danbrooks 7y agoKarpathy is building the NN backend in PyTorch, for which C++ is the most popular deployment language.
- zozbot234 7y agoBecause then all the biased reviewers and short sellers would spread wild rumors about how your Tesla car has this rust in it, and you need to get it coated with POR-15. It's a huge deal breaker for them.
- BubRoss 7y agoRust's ecosystem is genuinely nowhere near the maturity of C++.
- DoofusOfDeath 7y agoCan you elaborate on this, or point to a good source of more info on the topic? As a longtime C++ programmer starting to look at Rust, I'm quite interested.
- oceanghost 7y agoAh, Elon needs more sweatshop programmers?
- JakeStone 7y agoA few years ago, I contacted a buddy of mine at Tesla to see if they were hiring. That led to a call from their HR/recruiter and a nice chat. I remember being interested enough to continue the process until we reached the end. It sounded pretty straightforward. Coding test, talk to a bunch of people onsite, etc. Each of the people would write up a report and it would work its way up to Elon Musk and he would make the final decision as to whether or not to hire me. In a small company of up to ~200 people, sure. A department that's maybe a layer or two beneath him, ok, maybe? I don't remember where this was exactly, but it was something involving web services or similar in C#, and I don't even think it was front-facing, but for internal use, so probably somewhere in the IT department. For my personal tastes, when the CEO is making hiring decisions on every position, that's an element of micromanaging that I'm not comfortable with, so Tesla is pretty much off my list.
- omarhaneef 7y agoWilson Williams responds: “ If you ever need a solid ideas man with no coding knowledge whatsoever, hit me up.” To which Scott Lawson responds: “ Ideas are cheap, execution is gold.” Finally Wilson again: “ Anyone can learn to code, you can't learn how to have good ideas.” I assume Wilson (I’m using their names as presented) is kidding, in which case it’s very funny.
- exhilaration 7y agoI don't think he's kidding. Most people think that being a "good ideas guy" is how you succeed without understanding that everyone has those ideas, but few can execute them. I'm sure many of us in tech were approached by friends and family with amazing app ideas after iPhones became popular without understanding that ideas are cheap and getting a product launched is the hard part.
- gamechangr 7y agoHe’s not kidding for sure
- blackrock 7y ago> Educational background is irrelevant, but all must pass hardcore coding test. This sounds like another example where his hard core coding tests filters for code-grifters. You know the type: People who game the system by studying L33T coding challenges, and can hack out some nonsense from copy/pasting stackoverflow. They get ‘something’ working, and ship it, and declare that it is done. But when you really investigate it, you find that it is a disaster waiting to happen. And in general, they cannot engineer a formally-verified, fault-tolerant system to control complex systems, complex heavy machinery, and intricate business logic. But, these are the engineers that will pass his hard core coding challenge. Welcome to the so-called world of Software “Engineering”.
- wallacoloo 7y ago> And in general, they cannot engineer a formally-verified, fault-tolerant system Do any automobile manufacturers actually use formal verification? How do you even apply such techniques to things that leverage ML like Tesla’s autonomous driver?
- blackrock 7y agoML for automotive sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. It seems like ML is statistically safe for everyone else, until that moment when you become the “statistic”.
- penagwin 7y agoI always struggled with this. Give me a list of things to memorize and a rigid test - and I'll struggle. Put me in a real environment with access to documentation, actual team members, and time to learn and understand a system? That's where I actually shine. Something I kinda like the idea of for a "code interview" would be a "reverse interview". E.g. give them some sample code (likely from production) and ask them to critique it and review it. I'm no expert in SQL - but I can still spot an injection vector. If I need to use SQL regularly then I'll learn it as needed, etc.
- fortran77 7y ago> And in general, they cannot engineer a formally-verified, fault-tolerant system to control complex systems, complex heavy machinery, and intricate business logic. You wonder why they're not using D or even Rust or Ada to get systems that are more provably safe?
- imvetri 7y agoOk. Recently few layoff happened at Tesla. New hires are a replacement.
- sys_64738 7y agoI wouldn't work for a nutter like Musk. He's out of control.