7 ms·

This. If you are not willing to learn the basic BST to prep for an interview, what's to say about you on your new job?

by dilly_li 5y ago

sidlls 5y ago
There’s no real correlation here.
- pc86 5y ago
  The BST doesn't correlate to doing well at the job. Being willing to teach yourself the BST because you want the job does correlate to doing well at it.
  - sidlls 5y ago
    No, not really.
darig 5y ago
That you don't focus on things unrelated to the job at hand?
weird-eye-issue 5y ago
That you don't want to learn worthless stuff that is solely for interview theatre?
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  If you can't handle the level of theater that is reviewing basic CS concepts that we all could afford to be more aware of even if we don't need to remember them day to day, you're really not going to survive the level of theater that dealing with a large organization requires.
  - pantulis 5y ago
    So this would be the equivalent to the "how many pianists tuners live in New York?"
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    Absolute load of shit. What does memorizing data structure algorithms you'll never practically use have to do with navigating company politics?
    - blacktriangle 5y ago
      It signals your willingness to jump through arbitrary hoops.
  - dmingod666 5y ago
    When Google had gone down a while back, someone had commented: "Have they tried try to invert a binary tree and see if it solves the problem?"
  - alexc05 5y ago
    There is a better way. We're (mostly) hackers for bleep's sake. You don't think that this is something that we can disrupt? The only reason we accept it as the status quo is that people accept it and say "this is the way it is" If you look at Goldman Sachs or Microsoft, BOTH are investing heavily in tuning their recruitment process to identify and hire neuro-atypical people. It is a business strategy that is paying off. Who's to day the kinder & gentler process they design couldn't be just as easily be applied to hiring in neuro-typicals. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversity/inside-microsoft/cross-disability/hiring.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversity/inside-microsoft/c... https://fortune.com/2019/12/07/autism-aspergers-adhd-dyslexia-neurodiversity-hiring-jobs-work/ https://fortune.com/2019/12/07/autism-aspergers-adhd-dyslexi... It doesn't change because it hasn't changed. Not because it can't.
    - ThrowawayR2 5y ago
      > "We're (mostly) hackers for bleep's sake." Ironically, the old-school hackers who made the word "hacker" famous, like the ones who built the UNIX ecosystem before Linux was even a thing, knew their CS fundamentals like the back of their hand. They'd have zero trouble with the coding aspect of these interviews. Very few people on HN are hackers. > "If you look at Goldman Sachs or Microsoft, BOTH are investing heavily in tuning their recruitment process to identify and hire neuro-atypical people" That's just a publicity stunt. I'd bet money that few of the neuro-atypical they hire last long in those places.
bmitc 5y ago
There should be a reason for it. I learn things because I need them for my job or I find them interesting, hopefully with some overlap. There's a lot of things to learn in life, and it's rather pointless to learn things for an interview process if it doesn't reflect upon the actual job requirements. Also, it's not like people know nothing. A good interview process learns both what the candidate does and does not know, how what they know could be useful, and how capable the candidate is in filling a knowledge gap if there actually is one between what they know and what is actually needed for the job. That is of course in addition to learning whether they're nice to be around or not.
- sanderjd 5y ago
  It's like learning a gate code; you don't need it once you're in the house, it's pointless to learn it, except that you have to in order to get through the gate.
  - keb_ 5y ago
    I just keep it on a flashcard in my glove compartment, and look it up when I need to.
    - sanderjd 5y ago
      Ok it's like a verbal code where the guard won't let you in if you don't do it from memory. It's an analogy damnit! :)
      - keb_ 5y ago
        Haha fair enough. :)
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Agreed, lapdogs should do as they are told and not question the leadership, for their ways are mysterious and wisdom divine
acheron 5y ago
The Stockholm syndrome among the leetcode crowd is astonishing.
thomascgalvin 5y ago
It says that I spend my time learning things that are actually useful, rather than trivia. The best screening I ever went through was for a job where I'd be working on a Spring Boot app with a React frontend. For that screening, I was asked to add a simple feature to an example app. It was clearly toy code, so I knew they weren't trying to get free work out of me. It was also representative of the kinds of tasks I would be doing, which let me know that I would enjoy the job, and let them know I would be good at it. I was hired on the spot. I've written algorithms to reverse b-trees, and I could figure it out again if I had to. But I don't have to, because the standard library is a thing, and that task tells a potential employer nothing about my skill set.
- sanderjd 5y ago
  For what it's worth, I don't like the CS-y interview process, but I also struggle with that very technology specific process. I don't want a job that hired me just to be a Spring Boot + React monkey. I want a job that hired me because they think I'm smart and adaptable and can tackle any problem with any technology.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  Here's the thing I think you're missing when it comes to the employer's POV during these types of interviews: they don't care so much about your skillset. At the point where you're doing an in-person interview and being asked these pointless puzzle questions, they are reasonably sure you have the required skillset to do the job. What they're actually testing for during the in-person interview is your ability to be a good worker bee. They're filtering out people like you who would question the point of doing task X. They want people who will do task X without question. They don't want workers who will ask "Why are we doing task X? Shouldn't we do task Y instead?" For most positions at these large companies, the person who questions the efficacy of task X is a different role -- the role that is instructing you to do task X. With these trivia questions, they are in fact telling you as a prospective employee the kinds of tasks you will be doing. They are letting you know that you will be doing a lot of pointless work, you won't have any say in the work you will be doing, the work you will be doing will seem trivial to you, and you have to be okay with that. If you're not okay with that, it's not the job for you.
alexc05 5y ago
I don't mean to sound rude, but I feel like your response seriously lacks empathy. I am a father to a 2 year old, I have a mortgage and an existing full time job. The time investment required to go through a bunch of algorithms that are almost exclusively used in passing coding interviews does not offer the same ROI as, for example, streamlining a process that you are currently facing on a day to day basis. On top of that, something that I've learned recently about myself is that I have a tremendous fear of failing coding interviews. You see there is an emotional component to the effort you put in to doing one of those things. You go through the work to get accepted into the interview process then you find yourself face to face with "one shot" to impress. Maybe they've even flown you out to their location so you can go through this whole experience on site. At that point the optimistic among us might start thinking about things like what our lives would look like if we worked at "technological mecca" doing really cool shit for silicon valley dollars. So you start allowing yourself to think about watching the ocean on a sunny day eating avacado toast while you watch your now bleach blonde son playing in the surf. Your wife is happy too. You have this beautiful life that you're providing for those that you love. (in your fantasies you don't worry about the cascadia fault-line, the dystopian nature of US healthcare, or the fact that california seems to catch fire for a month every year nowadays) ANYWAYS, you go in, you give it your all. Maybe you think you nailed it, or maybe you can clearly come up with 20 better solutions in the 20 seconds after you leave. Maybe you studied 50 concepts intensely, but missed the one they picked to ask you about. You didn't get the questions in advance or anything. It doesn't matter though, you missed a semicolon on the whiteboard and your code doesn't compile when they type it in. You get a terse reply from your original recruiter "not a good fit at this time" ... there's no insight into what you did wrong or where you could get better. That opens the company up to legal liability. Anything more than "thanks" risks exposure. So you're left with days and weeks of effort for nothing. On top of that you have a real long flight home where you get to grieve the loss of that beautiful life you imagined. Do you work in a place where you can tell your colleagues at work that you were interviewing? If not, you can't even talk to the people in your life who are most likely to understand the pain you're going through. So you get to suffer alone. So. What does it say about someone? Absolutely nothing.
- sanderjd 5y ago
noarchy 5y ago
I have never prepped for an interview in my life. If they're asking me questions or to solve problems related to my field, I don't really need to study. If they ask me things that are irrelevant, then that's another thing entirely. In short, I am a specialist, and am hired accordingly.

This. If you are not willing to learn the basic BST to prep for an interview, what's to say about you on your new job?

sidlls 5y ago

There’s no real correlation here.

pc86 5y ago
The BST doesn't correlate to doing well at the job. Being willing to teach yourself the BST because you want the job does correlate to doing well at it.
- sidlls 5y ago
  No, not really.

darig 5y ago

That you don't focus on things unrelated to the job at hand?

weird-eye-issue 5y ago

That you don't want to learn worthless stuff that is solely for interview theatre?

blacktriangle 5y ago
If you can't handle the level of theater that is reviewing basic CS concepts that we all could afford to be more aware of even if we don't need to remember them day to day, you're really not going to survive the level of theater that dealing with a large organization requires.
- pantulis 5y ago
  So this would be the equivalent to the "how many pianists tuners live in New York?"
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  Absolute load of shit. What does memorizing data structure algorithms you'll never practically use have to do with navigating company politics?
  - blacktriangle 5y ago
    It signals your willingness to jump through arbitrary hoops.
- dmingod666 5y ago
  When Google had gone down a while back, someone had commented: "Have they tried try to invert a binary tree and see if it solves the problem?"
- alexc05 5y ago
  There is a better way. We're (mostly) hackers for bleep's sake. You don't think that this is something that we can disrupt? The only reason we accept it as the status quo is that people accept it and say "this is the way it is" If you look at Goldman Sachs or Microsoft, BOTH are investing heavily in tuning their recruitment process to identify and hire neuro-atypical people. It is a business strategy that is paying off. Who's to day the kinder & gentler process they design couldn't be just as easily be applied to hiring in neuro-typicals. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversity/inside-microsoft/cross-disability/hiring.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversity/inside-microsoft/c... https://fortune.com/2019/12/07/autism-aspergers-adhd-dyslexia-neurodiversity-hiring-jobs-work/ https://fortune.com/2019/12/07/autism-aspergers-adhd-dyslexi... It doesn't change because it hasn't changed. Not because it can't.
  - ThrowawayR2 5y ago
    > "We're (mostly) hackers for bleep's sake." Ironically, the old-school hackers who made the word "hacker" famous, like the ones who built the UNIX ecosystem before Linux was even a thing, knew their CS fundamentals like the back of their hand. They'd have zero trouble with the coding aspect of these interviews. Very few people on HN are hackers. > "If you look at Goldman Sachs or Microsoft, BOTH are investing heavily in tuning their recruitment process to identify and hire neuro-atypical people" That's just a publicity stunt. I'd bet money that few of the neuro-atypical they hire last long in those places.

bmitc 5y ago

There should be a reason for it. I learn things because I need them for my job or I find them interesting, hopefully with some overlap. There's a lot of things to learn in life, and it's rather pointless to learn things for an interview process if it doesn't reflect upon the actual job requirements. Also, it's not like people know nothing. A good interview process learns both what the candidate does and does not know, how what they know could be useful, and how capable the candidate is in filling a knowledge gap if there actually is one between what they know and what is actually needed for the job. That is of course in addition to learning whether they're nice to be around or not.

sanderjd 5y ago
It's like learning a gate code; you don't need it once you're in the house, it's pointless to learn it, except that you have to in order to get through the gate.
- keb_ 5y ago
  I just keep it on a flashcard in my glove compartment, and look it up when I need to.
  - sanderjd 5y ago
    Ok it's like a verbal code where the guard won't let you in if you don't do it from memory. It's an analogy damnit! :)
    - keb_ 5y ago
      Haha fair enough. :)

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

Agreed, lapdogs should do as they are told and not question the leadership, for their ways are mysterious and wisdom divine

acheron 5y ago

The Stockholm syndrome among the leetcode crowd is astonishing.

thomascgalvin 5y ago

It says that I spend my time learning things that are actually useful, rather than trivia. The best screening I ever went through was for a job where I'd be working on a Spring Boot app with a React frontend. For that screening, I was asked to add a simple feature to an example app. It was clearly toy code, so I knew they weren't trying to get free work out of me. It was also representative of the kinds of tasks I would be doing, which let me know that I would enjoy the job, and let them know I would be good at it. I was hired on the spot. I've written algorithms to reverse b-trees, and I could figure it out again if I had to. But I don't have to, because the standard library is a thing, and that task tells a potential employer nothing about my skill set.

sanderjd 5y ago
For what it's worth, I don't like the CS-y interview process, but I also struggle with that very technology specific process. I don't want a job that hired me just to be a Spring Boot + React monkey. I want a job that hired me because they think I'm smart and adaptable and can tackle any problem with any technology.
ModernMech 5y ago
Here's the thing I think you're missing when it comes to the employer's POV during these types of interviews: they don't care so much about your skillset. At the point where you're doing an in-person interview and being asked these pointless puzzle questions, they are reasonably sure you have the required skillset to do the job. What they're actually testing for during the in-person interview is your ability to be a good worker bee. They're filtering out people like you who would question the point of doing task X. They want people who will do task X without question. They don't want workers who will ask "Why are we doing task X? Shouldn't we do task Y instead?" For most positions at these large companies, the person who questions the efficacy of task X is a different role -- the role that is instructing you to do task X. With these trivia questions, they are in fact telling you as a prospective employee the kinds of tasks you will be doing. They are letting you know that you will be doing a lot of pointless work, you won't have any say in the work you will be doing, the work you will be doing will seem trivial to you, and you have to be okay with that. If you're not okay with that, it's not the job for you.

alexc05 5y ago

I don't mean to sound rude, but I feel like your response seriously lacks empathy. I am a father to a 2 year old, I have a mortgage and an existing full time job. The time investment required to go through a bunch of algorithms that are almost exclusively used in passing coding interviews does not offer the same ROI as, for example, streamlining a process that you are currently facing on a day to day basis. On top of that, something that I've learned recently about myself is that I have a tremendous fear of failing coding interviews. You see there is an emotional component to the effort you put in to doing one of those things. You go through the work to get accepted into the interview process then you find yourself face to face with "one shot" to impress. Maybe they've even flown you out to their location so you can go through this whole experience on site. At that point the optimistic among us might start thinking about things like what our lives would look like if we worked at "technological mecca" doing really cool shit for silicon valley dollars. So you start allowing yourself to think about watching the ocean on a sunny day eating avacado toast while you watch your now bleach blonde son playing in the surf. Your wife is happy too. You have this beautiful life that you're providing for those that you love. (in your fantasies you don't worry about the cascadia fault-line, the dystopian nature of US healthcare, or the fact that california seems to catch fire for a month every year nowadays) ANYWAYS, you go in, you give it your all. Maybe you think you nailed it, or maybe you can clearly come up with 20 better solutions in the 20 seconds after you leave. Maybe you studied 50 concepts intensely, but missed the one they picked to ask you about. You didn't get the questions in advance or anything. It doesn't matter though, you missed a semicolon on the whiteboard and your code doesn't compile when they type it in. You get a terse reply from your original recruiter "not a good fit at this time" ... there's no insight into what you did wrong or where you could get better. That opens the company up to legal liability. Anything more than "thanks" risks exposure. So you're left with days and weeks of effort for nothing. On top of that you have a real long flight home where you get to grieve the loss of that beautiful life you imagined. Do you work in a place where you can tell your colleagues at work that you were interviewing? If not, you can't even talk to the people in your life who are most likely to understand the pain you're going through. So you get to suffer alone. So. What does it say about someone? Absolutely nothing.

sanderjd 5y ago

noarchy 5y ago

I have never prepped for an interview in my life. If they're asking me questions or to solve problems related to my field, I don't really need to study. If they ask me things that are irrelevant, then that's another thing entirely. In short, I am a specialist, and am hired accordingly.