5 ms·

I've flunked almost every interview where I've been asked to solve a fiddly math problem with an algorithm. I've always sucked at these types of questions. I en

I've flunked almost every interview where I've been asked to solve a fiddly math problem with an algorithm. I've always sucked at these types of questions. I ended up buying Gayle McDowell's book 'Cracking the Coding Interview' to get me through my next career move, but since then, I've taken a job that didn't involve getting through a coding exam. It's these types of questions that would stop me even applying for a job at Amazon or Google. I know they'd come up and I know I'd flunk them, so I don't bother. Funny thing is, nobody has regretted hiring me.

fweespeech 11y ago
Yeah, the worst part is companies like Amazon will expect you to eat multiple days of PTO to go through their screening process. Hell, I feel this way even tho they have recruiters trying to fill quotas that contact me about jobs at Amazon :| Why would I bother? It is like they only want to hire unemployed programmers with plenty of time on their hands to prep.
- a3n 11y ago
  I've noticed a trend over the decades (yep, decades) where people and corporations are moving away from subjective evaluations to safe, who-could-argue-with-that objective evaluations. If someone doesn't know how to evaluate a candidate, or doesn't feel safe or comfortable, well ... nobody gets fired for asking about algorithms.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  Amazon and Google's hiring processes appear designed to bring in large numbers of very clever undergraduates finishing their bachelor's degree and looking for a first job -- and little else. (For the record, I've gotten an offer from Amazon before, but never from Google, and Google seems to make their interview process noticeably harder in terms of how much of your undergrad algorithms and data-structures curricula you have to remember to do the interview. Strangely, my lack of obsession with these subjects hasn't ever stopped me getting anything done in real life.) Alternative hypothesis: these companies believe that the ability to answer undergrad exam questions about general algoriths-and-data-structures can act as a kind of intelligence quotient for programmers, giving a strong measure of general intelligence with low false-signal rates, and they are hiring for (what they believe to be) raw cleverness because they simply don't believe domain expertise or specialization to be real, exploitable phenomena. This alternative has the advantage of neatly explaining their allocation processes, too. But on the other hand, believing these to be disjoint hypotheses requires me to assume that undergraduates have never actually specialized by the end of their degree.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    > Amazon and Google's hiring processes appear designed to bring in large numbers of very clever undergraduates finishing their bachelor's degree and looking for a first job -- and little else. Yeah, that makes sense and its a perfectly valid explanation. I don't get why they'd have recruiters who contact people that don't fit their mold on a regular basis if that was the case. It seems like a complete waste of resources. That is why I think they have some other objective. > these companies believe that the ability to answer undergrad exam questions about general algoriths-and-data-structures can act as a kind of intelligence quotient for programmers, I'm pretty sure that is what they think they are doing. I just don't see it as successful because while its easy to remember the names/purposes of algorithms it is difficult to remember all of them at an implementation level because I implement them once and rarely every again. So I'd need to go look something up that I last implemented 5 years ago or Google it. However, I'm not going to waste my time to "prep" to waste my PTO for maybe getting a job. Its a completely unproductive activity when 90% of other interviews don't involve me expending more than a day of PTO.
pyre 11y ago
> It's these types of questions that would stop me even applying for a job at Amazon or Google. I know they'd come up and I know I'd flunk them, so I don't bother. I've known some decent programmers to come out of Amazon, but I've also seen some atrocious programmers that had previously worked at Amazon. I can't say it breeds confidence that their interview techniques work well.
- hackerboos 11y ago
  Don't Amazon hire a lot of contractors though? Maybe they circumvent the tedious recruitment process?

fweespeech 11y ago

Yeah, the worst part is companies like Amazon will expect you to eat multiple days of PTO to go through their screening process. Hell, I feel this way even tho they have recruiters trying to fill quotas that contact me about jobs at Amazon :| Why would I bother? It is like they only want to hire unemployed programmers with plenty of time on their hands to prep.

a3n 11y ago
I've noticed a trend over the decades (yep, decades) where people and corporations are moving away from subjective evaluations to safe, who-could-argue-with-that objective evaluations. If someone doesn't know how to evaluate a candidate, or doesn't feel safe or comfortable, well ... nobody gets fired for asking about algorithms.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
Amazon and Google's hiring processes appear designed to bring in large numbers of very clever undergraduates finishing their bachelor's degree and looking for a first job -- and little else. (For the record, I've gotten an offer from Amazon before, but never from Google, and Google seems to make their interview process noticeably harder in terms of how much of your undergrad algorithms and data-structures curricula you have to remember to do the interview. Strangely, my lack of obsession with these subjects hasn't ever stopped me getting anything done in real life.) Alternative hypothesis: these companies believe that the ability to answer undergrad exam questions about general algoriths-and-data-structures can act as a kind of intelligence quotient for programmers, giving a strong measure of general intelligence with low false-signal rates, and they are hiring for (what they believe to be) raw cleverness because they simply don't believe domain expertise or specialization to be real, exploitable phenomena. This alternative has the advantage of neatly explaining their allocation processes, too. But on the other hand, believing these to be disjoint hypotheses requires me to assume that undergraduates have never actually specialized by the end of their degree.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  > Amazon and Google's hiring processes appear designed to bring in large numbers of very clever undergraduates finishing their bachelor's degree and looking for a first job -- and little else. Yeah, that makes sense and its a perfectly valid explanation. I don't get why they'd have recruiters who contact people that don't fit their mold on a regular basis if that was the case. It seems like a complete waste of resources. That is why I think they have some other objective. > these companies believe that the ability to answer undergrad exam questions about general algoriths-and-data-structures can act as a kind of intelligence quotient for programmers, I'm pretty sure that is what they think they are doing. I just don't see it as successful because while its easy to remember the names/purposes of algorithms it is difficult to remember all of them at an implementation level because I implement them once and rarely every again. So I'd need to go look something up that I last implemented 5 years ago or Google it. However, I'm not going to waste my time to "prep" to waste my PTO for maybe getting a job. Its a completely unproductive activity when 90% of other interviews don't involve me expending more than a day of PTO.

pyre 11y ago

> It's these types of questions that would stop me even applying for a job at Amazon or Google. I know they'd come up and I know I'd flunk them, so I don't bother. I've known some decent programmers to come out of Amazon, but I've also seen some atrocious programmers that had previously worked at Amazon. I can't say it breeds confidence that their interview techniques work well.

hackerboos 11y ago
Don't Amazon hire a lot of contractors though? Maybe they circumvent the tedious recruitment process?