4 ms·

Most interviews unfortunately have little to do with the actual work and require significant practice to do well. > One question I was asked was "How do you ma

by rtlfe 6y ago

Most interviews unfortunately have little to do with the actual work and require significant practice to do well. > One question I was asked was "How do you make sure that a celebrity's tweet reaches all of her followers in less than 3 seconds?". I had no idea, I have never handled that kinda scale. If you're technically competent overall, you should be able to learn enough to make your way through this from a few hours of reading and watching youtube videos. That's what I did when I was in the same situation, and I passed the architecture interviews at multiple FANGs. Same for the coding questions. You need to spend time reading interview books and doing leetcode.

sage76 6y ago
> If you're technically competent overall, you should be able to learn enough to make your way through this from a few hours of reading and watching youtube videos. I actually did read up a bit on it later. This may not be what twitter is doing right now, but in the videos i saw, this 3 second thing is not possible. You can batch process the tweets and use websockets or whatever to send them, or just let users get them when they log in to their accounts. That's what i read anyway. I don't care to look much deeper unless I'm actually working at Twitter, and it seems that's my problem.
- rtlfe 6y ago
  > I don't care to look much deeper unless I'm actually working at Twitter, and it seems that's my problem. If you want to get a job, you probably just need to suck it up and spend some time doing things you don't want to do.
  - sage76 6y ago
    Spoken like someone sitting in the ivory tower of a FAANG. > some time Perhaps it was my fault in not explaining the amount of effort I did put in, but if the implication is i need to learn the intricacies of the architectures of every platform out there, then truly this is not the industry for me.
    - timtimtim123 6y ago
      Awesome. Less competition out there :)
    - sethammons 6y ago
      This comment comes across as emotionally charged. I recommend taking a step back, decompressing, and re-approaching the problem. You should absolutely _not_ learn the intricacies of the the architectures of every platform out there. You should, however, think through some of the base architecture building blocks and what it looks like when they work together. You should be familiar with queues, databases, caching, basic tcp/network, observability (logging, metrics, tracing), and also basic application design (separation of concerns, testability, etc). Eventually, you will become familiar with different solutions for each of these components. Sprinkle in some reading about other companies architectures and you can start to see why they might have chosen what they did. Eventually, you can start talking about trade offs between different solutions. The biggest growth opportunities here would be discussions with folks who are more senior to you about these things and why they think they way they do about them. As a former math teacher, it sounds like you are complaining about not knowing every problem's solution instead of learning the building blocks on how to solve the problem. As a silly example, some algebra students can only solve "3a + 2 = 11" because they have seen "number next to variable plus number equals a number, so I have to subtract the number without a variable from both sides, ...." and when they see "11 = 3a + 2", then they say they've never seen "a number equaling a number next to a variable plus another number, how are they supposed to memorize all these problems?!" Heck, some students only solve that problem by guessing different values of 'a' until they get the right answer. Other will start tossing operations at the wall until something sticks (this feels like most modern development honesty). However, students eventually "get it" and realize that they can solve "3(11 + 3a) - 3 + 66a = 16.6 + 113a/245" even though they've never seen that problem before.
mesaframe 6y ago
The biggest hurdle for me to get the resume selected. How do people do that!?
- worker767424 6y ago
  It's easiest when the recruiter contacts you. So Linkedin profile, email on Github, etc. Starting out is hard, the first job really is the hardest, and I doubt recruiters are looking that hard. Once you have several recognizable, well-regarded companies on your resume (or Linkedin profile), even sending in your resume through an online submission will normally get you a callback. That, and you'll meet at these places, so the next time you're looking for a job, you check with friends to see if they're happy where they're at and if they'll refer you.
  - mesaframe 6y ago
    I'm starting out. How can I make recruiter contact me?

by rtlfe 6y ago

sage76 6y ago

> If you're technically competent overall, you should be able to learn enough to make your way through this from a few hours of reading and watching youtube videos. I actually did read up a bit on it later. This may not be what twitter is doing right now, but in the videos i saw, this 3 second thing is not possible. You can batch process the tweets and use websockets or whatever to send them, or just let users get them when they log in to their accounts. That's what i read anyway. I don't care to look much deeper unless I'm actually working at Twitter, and it seems that's my problem.

rtlfe 6y ago
> I don't care to look much deeper unless I'm actually working at Twitter, and it seems that's my problem. If you want to get a job, you probably just need to suck it up and spend some time doing things you don't want to do.
- sage76 6y ago
  Spoken like someone sitting in the ivory tower of a FAANG. > some time Perhaps it was my fault in not explaining the amount of effort I did put in, but if the implication is i need to learn the intricacies of the architectures of every platform out there, then truly this is not the industry for me.
  - timtimtim123 6y ago
    Awesome. Less competition out there :)
  - sethammons 6y ago
    This comment comes across as emotionally charged. I recommend taking a step back, decompressing, and re-approaching the problem. You should absolutely _not_ learn the intricacies of the the architectures of every platform out there. You should, however, think through some of the base architecture building blocks and what it looks like when they work together. You should be familiar with queues, databases, caching, basic tcp/network, observability (logging, metrics, tracing), and also basic application design (separation of concerns, testability, etc). Eventually, you will become familiar with different solutions for each of these components. Sprinkle in some reading about other companies architectures and you can start to see why they might have chosen what they did. Eventually, you can start talking about trade offs between different solutions. The biggest growth opportunities here would be discussions with folks who are more senior to you about these things and why they think they way they do about them. As a former math teacher, it sounds like you are complaining about not knowing every problem's solution instead of learning the building blocks on how to solve the problem. As a silly example, some algebra students can only solve "3a + 2 = 11" because they have seen "number next to variable plus number equals a number, so I have to subtract the number without a variable from both sides, ...." and when they see "11 = 3a + 2", then they say they've never seen "a number equaling a number next to a variable plus another number, how are they supposed to memorize all these problems?!" Heck, some students only solve that problem by guessing different values of 'a' until they get the right answer. Other will start tossing operations at the wall until something sticks (this feels like most modern development honesty). However, students eventually "get it" and realize that they can solve "3(11 + 3a) - 3 + 66a = 16.6 + 113a/245" even though they've never seen that problem before.

mesaframe 6y ago

The biggest hurdle for me to get the resume selected. How do people do that!?

worker767424 6y ago
It's easiest when the recruiter contacts you. So Linkedin profile, email on Github, etc. Starting out is hard, the first job really is the hardest, and I doubt recruiters are looking that hard. Once you have several recognizable, well-regarded companies on your resume (or Linkedin profile), even sending in your resume through an online submission will normally get you a callback. That, and you'll meet at these places, so the next time you're looking for a job, you check with friends to see if they're happy where they're at and if they'll refer you.
- mesaframe 6y ago
  I'm starting out. How can I make recruiter contact me?