6 ms·
This was a hiring puzzle from the Instagram team in 2012, from back before Facebook acquired them: https://instagram-engineering.com/instagram-engineering-chall
by sgk284 5y ago
This was a hiring puzzle from the Instagram team in 2012, from back before Facebook acquired them: https://instagram-engineering.com/instagram-engineering-challenge-the-unshredder-7ef3f7323ab1 https://instagram-engineering.com/instagram-engineering-chal...
I remember having a lot of fun solving it, in Coffeescript (which was all the rage at the time), also with TSP but using the Pearson correlation coefficient as the similarity metric: https://gist.github.com/stevekrenzel/1505619 https://gist.github.com/stevekrenzel/1505619
Here's a little demo of it in action: http://krenzel.org/files/insta/ http://krenzel.org/files/insta/
- speedgoose 5y agoI like how unicorns can do such hiring challenges while normal companies are desperate for people to apply. I think my current company would hire anyone who can breath and write 3 lines of code per month, but no one fitting these criteria applies.
- onion2k 5y agoI can write 4 lines of code per month, so I guess I'm overqualified.
- speedgoose 5y agoDo they work ?
- reificator 5y agoOh, now we're moving the goalposts eh?
- malux85 5y agoOn my machine, yes
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoThey've got +3 on StackOverflow so fully peer reviewed.
- gccs 5y agoThere is a shortage of engineers because companies don't want to pay them what their worth.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoThis gets spouted all the time on HN, and I find it rarely to be true, or at least a gross oversimplification. In my experience what usually happens is a programmer's "worth" is hugely dependent on the scale of the organization, moreso than nearly every other individual contributor-level role, which means that smaller orgs have an extremely difficult time competing with larger orgs. For example, suppose at some company there is a business process that generates $1 billion in annual revenue, and a programmer has implemented something that can increase that by, say, .2%. So the programmer's "worth" in that situation is 2 million dollars. A much smaller company only does $10 million in annual revenue, so the commensurate .2% improvement is only worth 20k. This is a gross oversimplification, of course, but it really gets to the heart of way the FAANGS can pay such huge salaries and suck up a lot of the best talent. It's not that all the other companies are being stingy, it's just that in many cases they can't pay a programmer anywhere near what a FAANG can because that programmer just can't generate that much business value at a smaller company.
- lostcolony 5y agoIt kinda goes the other way too though, no? A business generating $1 billion in revenue might have 10k employees. A smaller company doing $10 million in revenue might have 100. The commensurate value of a given employee is not that different. And the number of employees also affects the types of efficiencies you can introduce; the likelihood of finding something that will increase revenue at a higher percentage for a large company is drastically lower than the likelihood of finding something that will increase revenue at a higher percentage for a small company. And that's if it's percentage based in the first place, rather than fixed savings. Anyway, relatedly, it has more to do with the fact that a lot of the leading tech companies have a high amount of revenue -per employee-. That is, revenue/employee = big number. There's a few different reasons for that, but that's the main thing. Per the example above, it's really more like a company doing $1 billion in revenue has 10k employees, and another doing $100 million has 5k employees. Obviously the former has more to spend on employees, as they're generating more with fewer.
- michaelcampbell 5y agoWhat's the work, and the pay? Those 2 things will play big roles more than a dearth of candidates. Told my son for years if you want to make more money, find something to do that no else wants to. Turns out the same is on the hiring side.
- speedgoose 5y agoVery average IT work in healt-care. Glorified CRUD plus some. Pay is average too.
- infinite8s 5y agoWhat does average mean in this case?
- bombcar 5y agoLow.
- speedgoose 5y agoAverage, according to the data collected by the government and the unions.
- eps 5y ago"You get what you pay for" as they say. Your company needs to revise what they mean by "average."
- smabie 5y agoThen pay more?
- speedgoose 5y agoI wish yes.
- airhead969 5y agoSchlepping.. embrace the suck for $$. Really nasty, lots of headaches, complexity, risks, and/or people think it's magic.
- porphyra 5y agoI think public hiring challenges like this are less of a barrier that filters out candidates, and more of an attractor that increases the number of applicants by "nerd sniping" people.
- speedgoose 5y agoYou need a strong brand and good marketing to attract people with a challenge. A normal company has difficulties to reach people.
- satya71 5y agoAre you hiring on-site or remote? Which country?
- harry8 5y agoTells us their price point is below market for competent let alone good.
- deviledeggs 5y agoI can get 250k a year from a unicorn. Why would I apply anywhere else?
- ezekg 5y agoReminds me how much I loved CoffeeScript. The code really is beautiful.
- cozos 5y agoDid you get the job?
- sydthrowaway 5y agoYou applied tsp.. in an interview?!
- dkarras 5y agoon a napkin with crayons too.