IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

Noodleface

Noodleface

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Had my phone interview, it was really weird. I didn't know it was an actual part of an interview, I thought the guy just wanted to talk to me - mistake 1.

I made sure I understood a bunch of key concepts related to my work, he focused on my projects back in school - mistake 2.

Flubbed a question at the end - mistake 3. Although I couldn't tell if the question was an informal one or not.

He still wants me to come in but I'm a bit leery. It seems I would be the only person working on this stuff right out of the gate across all their products - which is a nice challenge, but I only have afew years experience in this stuff. I have a legitimate concern that it is over my head.
 
Noodleface

Noodleface

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Yeah I'm going to at least follow through and go from there. Just his demeanor and voice started to throw me some doubts. Also the company was founded within MIT and has strong ties there, so I'd be lying if I said I wasn't intimidated a bit about that.
 
moontayle

moontayle

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You know your work and as long as you feel you can do it, you'll be good.

Speaking for myself, I actually got asked if I would be able to dive into the code and understand it. A reasonable question since I only had school experience at the time. I told them yes, of course, but added that in the event I didn't understand it, I was capable of either figuring it out or finding information to help me figure it out. Having been here a while now, I think this answer helped my case. Everyone is super busy all the time, and even though I got shoved into a role I wasn't prepared for (lead on the product), it's been implied several times that they like that I'm self-sufficient.
 
Noodleface

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moontayle_sl said:
You know your work and as long as you feel you can do it, you'll be good.

Speaking for myself, I actually got asked if I would be able to dive into the code and understand it. A reasonable question since I only had school experience at the time. I told them yes, of course, but added that in the event I didn't understand it, I was capable of either figuring it out or finding information to help me figure it out. Having been here a while now, I think this answer helped my case. Everyone is super busy all the time, and even though I got shoved into a role I wasn't prepared for (lead on the product), it's been implied several times that they like that I'm self-sufficient.
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Actually that's something my boss has always praised me on. I think I've said before our code is massive (22000 files). Coming straight out of school, I rarely ask for help on anything related to the code - occasionally I'll ask for a feature to be explained, or why we do certain things, but in general I just put my head down and work (and post on rerolled). The new guy (old guy) that joined us is the complete opposite, I have to tip toe around his cube or else he asks you to explain something.
 
Noodleface

Noodleface

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True, I've heard that they like to talk about their schooling as well haha.

At first he thought I had a 3.2/5.0 as well, I'm stupid but not that stupid.
 
Lendarios

Lendarios

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Noodlemod_sl said:
Yeah I'm going to at least follow through and go from there. Just his demeanor and voice started to throw me some doubts. Also the company was founded within MIT and has strong ties there, so I'd be lying if I said I wasn't intimidated a bit about that.
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But can they program a BIOS that boots up the first time? Can they??

Probably they can, but that is not the point!!
 
Kovaks

Kovaks

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Almost went to vm word this year but it didn't work out. Forum bros should post what conferences they are going to so that if anyone else is going we can grab beers.
 
Vinen

Vinen

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Noodlemod_sl said:
We aren't important enough to go to EMC World, only the cool cats working converged infrastructure can
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Very few VMware people get sent to VMworld anymore. We had to share badges up to and including Senior Directors. It's a marketing conference
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I just had customers to meet... fuck'in a being a customer facing Engineer.

//Next year is Vegas.
///Would rather is be in San Francisco then Vegas
////Guess I get to play in Poker Tournaments again.
 
Noodleface

Noodleface

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I thought the phone interview was a bit rough, felt like he wanted someone more well-rounded and more experienced. Got an email from the hiring manager today to get me in for a round of interviews, with her saying that the phone interview went really well according to the guy.

Gonna have to study this weekend on everything I forgot and never use since I read their typical interviews ask for that sort of stuff.
 
T

Tenks

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After watching something on the DV-R the show "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?" was on. I struck me that a ton of programming interviews are like this show. Trivial shit you learned in school but never use in day-to-day so you just forget it then arrogant interviewers proclaiming you are dumber than a 5th grader.
 
Cad

Cad

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Smart interviewers don't ask you shit you could look up on google. They give you problems and see how you solve them, to see how you think. If their interview process consists of factoids that if you could use your phone you'd score 100% on, just think of the mongoloids they've probably hired before you and ask yourself if you want to work there.
 
Noodleface

Noodleface

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It's stuff like the big O efficiency of certain algorithms, BSTs, algorithms, etc.

Stuff that in my field is never used, at least not by us. We are way too close to the silicon to be doing fancy wonky crazy things

That said, their glassdoor interviews don't have BIOS engineering interviews. In fact, pretty sure the guy said they don't even have any BIOS engineers except for one hardware guy that's been doing it. It might be just new territory for them - which is a bit frightening for me.
 
Vinen

Vinen

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Cad_sl said:
Smart interviewers don't ask you shit you could look up on google. They give you problems and see how you solve them, to see how you think. If their interview process consists of factoids that if you could use your phone you'd score 100% on, just think of the mongoloids they've probably hired before you and ask yourself if you want to work there.
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I'm so glad I don't do technical interviews. I fucking loathe choosing a question for a person to answer technically. I just focus on team fit and whether or not I feel the person has a personality I could work with.
 
wormie

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Technical interviews are just going to get worse imo. With the influx of bootcamp grads (about whom a growing number of hiring managers are complaining about) interviewers will be attempting to weed people out even harder.
 
T

Tenks

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I'd argue overly technical questions during an interview actually favor the boot campers. I have to assume the boot campers get taught the wikipedia answer to many of these interview questions. Sort of like teaching to the test in primary school. Like Vinen said the only things I care about during an interview is personality meshing and if the person demonstrates the capacity for learning. With how quickly the field moves I don't really care what you know now unless we need to onboard someone and contribute immediately. I care about what you potentially could know.

Case in point we just hired a really, really smart guy. He's a published author of technical books and had rave reviews from everyone who has worked with him in the past. We needed someone who knew Solr. He knew nothing about Solr or even the basics of searching. We hired him anyways. And in a few weeks he has a prototype sharded Solr instance running on our Hadoop cluster. If we would have been obsessed with pre-existing Solr knowledge his resume would have been filtered out from the get-go.
 
wormie

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Tenks_sl said:
I'd argue overly technical questions during an interview actually favor the boot campers. I have to assume the boot campers get taught the wikipedia answer to many of these interview questions. Sort of like teaching to the test in primary school. Like Vinen said the only things I care about during an interview is personality meshing and if the person demonstrates the capacity for learning. With how quickly the field moves I don't really care what you know now unless we need to onboard someone and contribute immediately. I care about what you potentially could know.

Case in point we just hired a really, really smart guy. He's a published author of technical books and had rave reviews from everyone who has worked with him in the past. We needed someone who knew Solr. He knew nothing about Solr or even the basics of searching. We hired him anyways. And in a few weeks he has a prototype sharded Solr instance running on our Hadoop cluster. If we would have been obsessed with pre-existing Solr knowledge his resume would have been filtered out from the get-go.
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Being able to memorize an answer does not show ones ability to solve problem. The point of the questions is to see problem solving skills, not to see if the interviewee can reach the correct answer. Bootcamps do not teach the algorithmic skills that allow one to make a good effort at reaching the solution. On top of that, there are more and more bootcamps popping up every day and each one is more "scammy" and shittier than the next.

But you are correct that bootcamps are trying to teach people to memorize common questions. This is why I am assuming that the interview questions will be evolving to avoid the people that just memorizing the solutions.
 
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