6 ms·

As someone who didn't go to school, I struggle with doing algorithms and implementing data structures in front of someone. Outside of timeboxed interviews I neg

by kodah 5y ago

As someone who didn't go to school, I struggle with doing algorithms and implementing data structures in front of someone. Outside of timeboxed interviews I negotiate them fairly well, but I'm almost always seeing something for the first time. Then again, for as long as I've been in software it's always been tailored for academics. This seems to be just fine and even championed as a good thing. My reaction is to plan my exit from the industry whenever this job comes to an end. I'll end up going back to school in my thirties, despite being qualified, because of self-imposed constraints by this industry that have little if anything to do with the tasks I'll be given or planning day to day.

irq 5y ago
Or you can ignore employers who interview like that and keep searching until you find one that doesn’t. A lot of people do this for the same reason you outlined.
- annoyingnoob 5y ago
  I gave up on software interviews. Everyone wants to follow what FB and Google do to 'find the best people'. In my experience, 'keep searching until you find one' is bad advice. Can't tell you how many companies I interviewed with that simply take their entire process from others. We interview like X, we group teams/squads like Y, we do our agile process like Z. I don't want to work for your wannabe something else organization, get a clue.
  - irq 5y ago
    > In my experience, 'keep searching until you find one' is bad advice. This advice worked for me and several of my long term colleagues across decades of career experience. We’re all introverts so this is a big deal for us. I suspect you are giving up too easily.
    - annoyingnoob 5y ago
      > across decades of career experience Modern whiteboard interviews are not decades old. I never had any issue until the last 5 years or so. Tech interviews are testing for presentation skills and brainstorming skills, and placing a lot of weight on those alone. If that is what the job is like then I don't want it. If your idea of best practices is copying (as best you can) someone else then I'm not a good fit for your company. In my view, its your loss and not mine - you missed an opportunity because you are not creative enough to see any other workable process. I passed the last crap whiteboard interview I went to, even the question that no one else had gotten right previously (so they say). Didn't get the job, over-qualified - they wanted someone cheaper really. It is not about giving up too soon, its about doing something I dislike, and that has nothing to do with the day-to-day work, over-and-over.
politician 5y ago
That's a shame. Most software development jobs don't actually require a degree and getting a degree is no guarantee that you'll be able to solve the whiteboard questions.
gameswithgo 5y ago
I think this can’t really be the reason for your going back to school. A few weeks of drilling of common data structures and algorithms would put you at parity with college grads. Could it be you just don’t like the industry and project that onto some kind of academic bias or something? Nothing wrong with not liking software development it is often awful.
- kodah 5y ago
  It is, I plan on going back to school to be an EE when that times comes. > A few weeks of drilling of common data structures and algorithms would put you at parity with college grads. I don't know where one gets this kind of idea. I also stated fairly clearly that I have no trouble negotiating algorithms and data structures, the problem is when they're timeboxed and involve an interviewers participation. I think my main objection is to even doing these kinds of interviews. When, in the world, would one need to write out binary search and would have only 30 minutes to do so? Knowing the properties of different algorithms and data structures is important, imo, but implementing them in a timeboxed manner with abstract problems seems like an odd activity to demonstrate qualification. > Could it be you just don’t like the industry and project that onto some kind of academic bias or something? Academic Bias may play less of a role than my perception makes it out to be, but I'd at least say it's significant in this industry. The way I think it gets in is subtle, catering questions and problems that one might find in an academic setting is one. My company also heavily hires interns, which again facilitates an academic bias in hiring, but there is no program for people who don't come from a prestigious university. The lingo used usually points to an academic background as well; I've learned "top talent" usually refers to prestigious companies (that primarily hire from academia) or prestigious universities.
  - bb88 5y ago
    So maybe you'll read this and appreciate it I hope. I started getting back into electronics in the last 5 years, and have been really enjoying it. I think EE is maybe one of the hardest engineering fields, but can also be the most rewarding I think when you do something cool. It's also wide ranging from RF to Electrical Grid to VLSI. So good luck. I wish you well.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nickff 5y ago
There are many employers (such as mine,) which do not use these theoretical questions, and instead focus questions on prior project work. That said, many of the high-prestige employers (and their former employees) do use the tests you're talking about, largely because they see themselves as exclusive. If you're aiming for one of those prestige employers, you should be aware that they're also exclusive about which schools they recruit from.
jonfw 5y ago
A degree to learn data structures and algorithms would be a massive waste. I think I had 2 classes that focused on them
- oriolid 5y ago
  I think the idea of the algorithm interview is to see if you were awake in class while getting the degree and whether you can think on your feet. For other classes it's more difficult to come up with questions that aim for the same.
  - jolux 5y ago
    What algorithms courses are we even talking about? I dropped out after sophomore year but I still took data structures and algorithms, and a lot of the stuff I see people mention getting quizzed on at Google (I saw convex hulls in another thread on here) is 400-level, elective courses in these topics. The last object we studied in DS&A was graphs and graph algorithms, which I can handle just fine.
    - oriolid 5y ago
      The ones you take before dropping out and starting a job, obviously.
      - jolux 5y ago
        Can’t tell if you’re being facetious or not but my point was that not even every CS major would have taken this course (and learned about these structures) by the time they had finished, so it doesn’t quite seem reasonable to expect it as core knowledge for CS graduates, unless you want to select for graduating from a particular school.
- raydev 5y ago
  But didn't you have classes where some subset popped up again and again? That's why I still encourage people to pursue a Bachelors degree over bootcamp if they have minimal programming experience prior to going to school. If I'd taken only the "intro to ds" and only "intro to algos" courses to get my degree I would've been poorly equipped to start my first job, since that was the first time I'd seen those concepts.
lifeplusplus 5y ago
My enter CS degree had one course on data structures and it didn't make me expert at white boarding ... Doing 40 mock interviews helped me
vincentmarle 5y ago
As a fellow college dropout who had the same insecurities and actually went back to college in his thirties (part-time) to study exactly this... all that knowledge still doesn't prepare you for time-boxed stressful leet code interviews. The people you are competing with study leet code for 3 months and get really good at solving coding puzzles within 45 minutes. Study the basic data structures (nothing fancy needed beyond binary trees) and solve leet code an hour a day for 3 months. That's all you need to do.
- unanswered 5y ago
  > The people you are competing with study leet code for 3 months You can keep competing with the B and C players if you want but don't give that advice to others.
  - vincentmarle 5y ago
    What would you recommend A players should do?
    - unanswered 5y ago
      A players have a deep understanding of the topics so that very little or no memorization of solutions and techniques is necessary. (Practice, in this case, is a form of memorization.)
lunch 5y ago
Art school graduate here, and my only advice is to broaden your sights and keep trying (if you want to). I've interviewed with FAANG too many times to count and every time it's crashed and burned on the comp-sci quizzes. Fuck em, keep looking. You'll eventually find a team that doesn't demand solving riddles that aren't applicable to your day-to-day CRUD. Take these jobs and you'll quite possibly learn the skillsets, or meet enough people, to get into the Big Co's without the riddles. It worked for me. I feel like I have PTSD from Google and Amazon interviews early in my career.

by kodah 5y ago

irq 5y ago

Or you can ignore employers who interview like that and keep searching until you find one that doesn’t. A lot of people do this for the same reason you outlined.

annoyingnoob 5y ago
I gave up on software interviews. Everyone wants to follow what FB and Google do to 'find the best people'. In my experience, 'keep searching until you find one' is bad advice. Can't tell you how many companies I interviewed with that simply take their entire process from others. We interview like X, we group teams/squads like Y, we do our agile process like Z. I don't want to work for your wannabe something else organization, get a clue.
- irq 5y ago
  > In my experience, 'keep searching until you find one' is bad advice. This advice worked for me and several of my long term colleagues across decades of career experience. We’re all introverts so this is a big deal for us. I suspect you are giving up too easily.
  - annoyingnoob 5y ago
    > across decades of career experience Modern whiteboard interviews are not decades old. I never had any issue until the last 5 years or so. Tech interviews are testing for presentation skills and brainstorming skills, and placing a lot of weight on those alone. If that is what the job is like then I don't want it. If your idea of best practices is copying (as best you can) someone else then I'm not a good fit for your company. In my view, its your loss and not mine - you missed an opportunity because you are not creative enough to see any other workable process. I passed the last crap whiteboard interview I went to, even the question that no one else had gotten right previously (so they say). Didn't get the job, over-qualified - they wanted someone cheaper really. It is not about giving up too soon, its about doing something I dislike, and that has nothing to do with the day-to-day work, over-and-over.

politician 5y ago

That's a shame. Most software development jobs don't actually require a degree and getting a degree is no guarantee that you'll be able to solve the whiteboard questions.

gameswithgo 5y ago

I think this can’t really be the reason for your going back to school. A few weeks of drilling of common data structures and algorithms would put you at parity with college grads. Could it be you just don’t like the industry and project that onto some kind of academic bias or something? Nothing wrong with not liking software development it is often awful.

kodah 5y ago
It is, I plan on going back to school to be an EE when that times comes. > A few weeks of drilling of common data structures and algorithms would put you at parity with college grads. I don't know where one gets this kind of idea. I also stated fairly clearly that I have no trouble negotiating algorithms and data structures, the problem is when they're timeboxed and involve an interviewers participation. I think my main objection is to even doing these kinds of interviews. When, in the world, would one need to write out binary search and would have only 30 minutes to do so? Knowing the properties of different algorithms and data structures is important, imo, but implementing them in a timeboxed manner with abstract problems seems like an odd activity to demonstrate qualification. > Could it be you just don’t like the industry and project that onto some kind of academic bias or something? Academic Bias may play less of a role than my perception makes it out to be, but I'd at least say it's significant in this industry. The way I think it gets in is subtle, catering questions and problems that one might find in an academic setting is one. My company also heavily hires interns, which again facilitates an academic bias in hiring, but there is no program for people who don't come from a prestigious university. The lingo used usually points to an academic background as well; I've learned "top talent" usually refers to prestigious companies (that primarily hire from academia) or prestigious universities.
- bb88 5y ago
  So maybe you'll read this and appreciate it I hope. I started getting back into electronics in the last 5 years, and have been really enjoying it. I think EE is maybe one of the hardest engineering fields, but can also be the most rewarding I think when you do something cool. It's also wide ranging from RF to Electrical Grid to VLSI. So good luck. I wish you well.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nickff 5y ago

There are many employers (such as mine,) which do not use these theoretical questions, and instead focus questions on prior project work. That said, many of the high-prestige employers (and their former employees) do use the tests you're talking about, largely because they see themselves as exclusive. If you're aiming for one of those prestige employers, you should be aware that they're also exclusive about which schools they recruit from.

jonfw 5y ago

A degree to learn data structures and algorithms would be a massive waste. I think I had 2 classes that focused on them

oriolid 5y ago
I think the idea of the algorithm interview is to see if you were awake in class while getting the degree and whether you can think on your feet. For other classes it's more difficult to come up with questions that aim for the same.
- jolux 5y ago
  What algorithms courses are we even talking about? I dropped out after sophomore year but I still took data structures and algorithms, and a lot of the stuff I see people mention getting quizzed on at Google (I saw convex hulls in another thread on here) is 400-level, elective courses in these topics. The last object we studied in DS&A was graphs and graph algorithms, which I can handle just fine.
  - oriolid 5y ago
    The ones you take before dropping out and starting a job, obviously.
    - jolux 5y ago
      Can’t tell if you’re being facetious or not but my point was that not even every CS major would have taken this course (and learned about these structures) by the time they had finished, so it doesn’t quite seem reasonable to expect it as core knowledge for CS graduates, unless you want to select for graduating from a particular school.
raydev 5y ago
But didn't you have classes where some subset popped up again and again? That's why I still encourage people to pursue a Bachelors degree over bootcamp if they have minimal programming experience prior to going to school. If I'd taken only the "intro to ds" and only "intro to algos" courses to get my degree I would've been poorly equipped to start my first job, since that was the first time I'd seen those concepts.

lifeplusplus 5y ago

My enter CS degree had one course on data structures and it didn't make me expert at white boarding ... Doing 40 mock interviews helped me

vincentmarle 5y ago

As a fellow college dropout who had the same insecurities and actually went back to college in his thirties (part-time) to study exactly this... all that knowledge still doesn't prepare you for time-boxed stressful leet code interviews. The people you are competing with study leet code for 3 months and get really good at solving coding puzzles within 45 minutes. Study the basic data structures (nothing fancy needed beyond binary trees) and solve leet code an hour a day for 3 months. That's all you need to do.

unanswered 5y ago
> The people you are competing with study leet code for 3 months You can keep competing with the B and C players if you want but don't give that advice to others.
- vincentmarle 5y ago
  What would you recommend A players should do?
  - unanswered 5y ago
    A players have a deep understanding of the topics so that very little or no memorization of solutions and techniques is necessary. (Practice, in this case, is a form of memorization.)

lunch 5y ago

Art school graduate here, and my only advice is to broaden your sights and keep trying (if you want to). I've interviewed with FAANG too many times to count and every time it's crashed and burned on the comp-sci quizzes. Fuck em, keep looking. You'll eventually find a team that doesn't demand solving riddles that aren't applicable to your day-to-day CRUD. Take these jobs and you'll quite possibly learn the skillsets, or meet enough people, to get into the Big Co's without the riddles. It worked for me. I feel like I have PTSD from Google and Amazon interviews early in my career.