9 ms·
Andrew here. Connor, thanks for releasing this on the orange site. This story is also more fun from my position. I've been applying to internships and intervie
by blastwind 4y ago
Andrew here. Connor, thanks for releasing this on the orange site.
This story is also more fun from my position. I've been applying to internships and interviewing every week. They're mostly rejections. They're the same questions over and over with minor variation (sorry to top comment for "impersonating" your comment style). My days are deteriorating from a colorful sphere down to two points. In fact, down to two pointers, left and right, iterating over a list of heights to find how much rain water it can trap.
I'm about to repeat the experience for the 10th time and I'm 100% on autopilot. But suddenly, a man reaches out to me on email and offers me up to $80/hr to be his senior engineer. This feels sketchy, my girlfriend tells me, "you're good but let's be honest here...". Anyways, I proceed, it might just be the start of a beautiful thing. I'm asked to interview as one of our developers because English is not their best language. I'm a little bothered, but I was fine with it. But then I see the developer name: Connor Tumbleson. My laughter bursts and so does my suspicion: With a name like that, no way the guy doesn't speak good English. I look up Connor Tumbleson on linkedin, and my suspicions were proved correct. I detail everything to Connor, and now this is on the top of HN. I lost a opprotunity but gained a story of the lifetime.
- dmoy 4y ago> In fact, down to two pointers, left and right, iterating over a list of heights to find how much rain water it can trap. Ah haha I hate that question It should be banned everywhere, oh well. I once saw a physicist (not even a coder) give a really cool answer to it though, I wish I could remember it.
- bqe 4y agoI remember being asked this during my interview at Google. It was the first time I heard it and I gave an answer that iterated over the list twice. The interviewer said that it wasn't good enough and I am only allowed to iterate over it once. He didn't let me write my O(2n) solution down so he returned a strong no as feedback.
- lupire 4y agoHe probably got chastised for poor interviewing in Feedback on Feedback.
- google234123 4y agoThat almost never happens.
- spennant 4y agoIt happens… I’ve chastised an interviewer before. Their job was to identify: 1) Can the candidate do the job? 2) Will the candidate do the job? 3) Will the candidate work well the team? Their job was not to emulate FAANG, intimidate the candidate, or see if the candidate studied Leetcode.
- heleninboodler 4y agoThis type of interviewing style is bullshit. It means the interviewer knows a better solution that is "clever" and expects you to either have the same cleverness epiphany on the spot or to have studied this question. Neither is actually very useful as a hiring criterion. Guy Steele gave an incredibly interesting guest talk[1] at google about four different ways to solve this exact problem, and the fact that it's an interesting enough topic for an hour long google talk should probably be a clue that you shouldn't be expected to invent the best solution on the whiteboard in 40 minutes. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftcIcn8AmSY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftcIcn8AmSY
- google234123 4y agothis could be a good question. There’s nothing wrong with a candidate giving some less effluent answer and then progressing up to a better solution with some small hints or discussions
- heleninboodler 4y ago
- boomskats 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- comboy 4y agoThis comment thread feels like a game of Mafia[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Naracion 4y agoRecount _this_ story during the social / break between interviews if you ever get an onsite. :D
- tomrod 4y agoAndrew, mad respect on your integrity and navigating an ethics situation one would expect to read about in a college study.
- kodah 4y agoShout out to you for wading through the literal torrent of bullshit without the foresight of a blog post to expose context and with little professional experience to help inform you. You'll be a great asset to the industry but it can take a minute to find your footing. Be persistent and definitely keep this story around for beer Friday.
- bmsleight_ 4y agoAndrew - you the sort of person I would love to have on my team. Alas I more hardware engineering than software. I hope the community here can give you some good leads and tips. Karma should be that ethics works.
- atmosx 4y agoShoutout to you sir for being honest and reaching out your fellow peer!!! I am sure you will have a great career and now you have an epic story to tell over beers with friends!
- pjbeam 4y agoEmail me at my HN username at protonmail dot com for a referral to Dropbox's internship. Love the integrity and drive to get to the bottom of a strange situation.
- mechanical_bear 4y agoThere ya go, looks like a gained opportunity there!
- AussieWog93 4y agoNot just for Andrew, but the identity thieves too! If anyone needs a Westerner to interview as "Andrew", hit me up. I've got a hot lead on an internship at Dropbox!
- pjbeam 4y agoMy plan is to verify it is the same email at least through OP, although your point is valid.
- jxi 4y agowhy protonmail instead of gmail or dropbox mail?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fortran77 4y agoI wonder how many people in your position smell something rotten, but instead of trying to contact the "real Connor" just delete/ignore all the messages because they don't want to be part of even a bigger scam. (What if everyone is in on it, and they're trying to scam you somehow?).
- robswc 4y agoI know it probably feels a bit hopeless now but trust me. If you learn to build things, provide value, you will have 100s of recruiters reaching out to you and you will mostly be rejecting offers for a change :) I have no doubt reading about you and seeing this comment in a few years you will be more than set!
- jaffee 4y agoAndrew, see if anything here catches your eye... we've got a few openings. You can email me at my username at featurebase.com. https://www.featurebase.com/careers https://www.featurebase.com/careers
- tomcam 4y agoDamnit with all these job offers dropping into Andrew's inbox I definitely need someone to clone me so I can be all ethical and shit * Kidding I'm retired. Mad props, Andrew!
- tomcam 4y ago> my girlfriend tells me, "you're good but let's be honest here..." My favorite part of this whole thing. Hang onto her.
- blastwind 4y agoHaha yes. She's honest and the best.
- blastwind 4y agoI'm grateful for all of the opportunities! Thank you everyone.
- imron 4y agoI suspect you’re about to get a ton of legitimate interviews and will be able to pick from the best of them. Strong ethics, and this lesson on their importance, will serve you well your entire career.
- dj_mc_merlin 4y agoBTW, why are you applying just for internships? I checked out your (non-forked) github repos and you're definitely better than I was as an intern. It's not senior engineer level, but you could definitely go for at least a junior eng position for sure. God knows we hire much worse junior FE engineers than that. Or are you interviewing for FAANG(-like) positions only? edit: small tip though, I would rename the App2.js etc. files to something else, having multiple files named the same but with a number difference says a lot about experience level. also: do not use regex for parsing XML (https://github.com/BlastWind/xml-leaf-highlighter/blob/main/xml_leaf_highlighter/main.py https://github.com/BlastWind/xml-leaf-highlighter/blob/main/...). That is also a common newbie mistake I hope this doesn't come across as patronizing, I didn't mean it so.
- gumby 4y agoMy kid chose this approach. He had a mix of startup and bigger (not mega-) company experience and chose FAANG internship because they have the infrastructure to make an internship productive. This was from some advice he received. By "infrastructure" it's not just code (CI, tools, etc) but personnel, how they come up with projects, etc. New grads or still-undergrads may have a lot of programming experience but none on working as part of a team.
- dj_mc_merlin 4y ago> By "infrastructure" it's not just code (CI, tools, etc) but personnel, how they come up with projects, etc. New grads or still-undergrads may have a lot of programming experience but none on working as part of a team. Fully agreed, the code part of the job is really only 20%. The rest is learning to do so in a team and business environment, which is actually much harder than programming. I learned this in a startup however and would definitely recommend it to others. You learn less "the correct approach", but more or less get shoved into doing bigger things earlier since all the big guns are focused on some ungodly hard problem. So all the medium-hard problems get shoved to the juniors and interns. It's not the healthiest environment sure (I was doing 40hr/wks as part-time frequently), but if you can survive in it for a while you gain tenacity and a lot of skills that are hard to normally deepen until later.
- wanderingmind 4y ago<sarcasm> Plot twist. The same organization is pretending to be Andrew to get some work opportunities </sarcasm>. But seriously, its a breath of fresh air to see someone displaying strong ethics in the face of adversity (losing a job albeit a fake one pays real $$). Trending on HN first page will open a world of new opportunities. Good luck.
- primitivesuave 4y agoHey Andrew, I am sure your integrity in this situation will be rightfully rewarded. You come across as a great hire not just in the matter of integrity, but also in the humble/honest description of your skill level and experience. I can see you finding that internship entirely on your own, by simply walking into the next interview confident of how valuable someone like you would be to any organization.
- intelVISA 4y agoThe biggest red flag is a senior engineer role paying $80hr!
- moralestapia 4y agoToo low? Too high?
- cpfohl 4y agoLow. Much too low. Going rate starts in the low 100s and has no super hard cap. 80/hr overseas, or in less urban parts of the US is pretty standard. I’d question the reason for staying, though, since finding higher paying remote work is pretty easy these days…
- viridian 4y ago$80 an hour is a salary of $166,400
- lazide 4y agoYup. Typical FAANG base salary for entry level junior is about that, not counting stock.
- moralestapia 4y ago
- blastwind 4y agoMessages are only editable within 2 hrs so I write another message expressing my additional thoughts and thanks: As important as having integrity is a community that prioritizes and fosters integrity. The HN community skipped the fostering part and went straight to giving me referrals and interviews. I'm grateful, and I'll carry on the spirit when I'm in the position to do so. The opportunities I've derived are nothing but amazing, but the most important thing I've learned is to internalize integrity as one of my greatest strengths: In the face of adversity and unfairness, I'll stand up for myself and others. Also, thanks for those telling me internship finding is going to get better. I am not pessimistic about it at all, but I was trying to be funny by "impersonating" the previous top comment, it fits the theme. I find myself maniacally focused when practice algorithms, and I enjoy focusing. This whole time of writing this I have that one scene from Scent of A Woman repeating in my head: "And I have seen boys like these, younger than these, their arms torn out, their legs ripped off. But there isn't nothin' like the sight of an amputated spirit; there is no prosthetic for that."
- breck 4y agodrop me an email if you are still looking for an internship breck@pldb.com. we usually use the rainwater question for our interviews but will have to try something else since you already had it
- Gordonjcp 4y ago"So, Andrew, how did you decide to go into infosec?"
- yodsanklai 4y ago> They're mostly rejections. They're the same questions over and over with minor variation You should be able to solve them if they're the same questions!