7 ms·

I went to MIT and knew a good number of people who were confident in technical interviews. The problems in interviews were much easier than what I got in class,

by rcheu 9y ago

I went to MIT and knew a good number of people who were confident in technical interviews. The problems in interviews were much easier than what I got in class, or even CTY CS classes in middle school. While there's definitely good people at non-elite universities, selection bias is at play here too. For example, in the senior year case, you're just looking at people who were concerned enough about interviews to go to interviewing.io during their senior year. Most people I knew at MIT had a full time offer they were happy with from their Junior year internship by their senior year. You can actually see the impact of this in your graphs too, notice that the % of people with a 1 or a 2 in elite schools increases for senior year vs junior year. People who have been doing well in technical interviews and have good return offers won't spend as much time preparing.

akhilcacharya 9y ago
>CTY CS classes in middle school. The hell? What sort of problems are you getting? Were you doing edit distance and word break and shortest palindrome in middle school?
- rcheu 9y ago
  Was a long time ago so I don't remember them all, but some examples I do remember: * Print pascal's triangle up to the n-th level, with proper spacing (so that it looks like a triangle). * Make the game Go for 2 players. I got a sub problem of this during my Google interview (determine whether a piece is captured).
  - wiz21c 9y ago
    When interviewing in tech jobs I had : - build an asynchronous communication queue from scratch (which implies building semaphores) - optimize the drawing of a sphere on a screen the rest was more regular (I didn't apply to super elite jobs, and both the companies with these two hard tests failed, so it's no indication neither about them, neither about me)
    - mrastro 9y ago
      > - build an asynchronous communication queue from scratch (which implies building semaphores) How long were these interviews? Seems like something I could do in a few days not a 2-hour interview!
      - wiz21c 9y ago
        It lasted two hours. Now the way it worked was that I was doing on my own but I had to constantly explain to a "peer" my line of reasoning. So I was not alone in front of a white paper :-) This was an extremely interesting wy to interview. I felt I had the opportunity to demonstrate my skills on a difficult problem (which I didn't solve). I didn't remember the details of Dijkstra's algorithm but I had the opportunity to show that I can approach a complex problem in a logical and efficient way (well, that day, that kind of problem; don't ask me to work on helicoidal tomography :-))
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

by rcheu 9y ago

akhilcacharya 9y ago

>CTY CS classes in middle school. The hell? What sort of problems are you getting? Were you doing edit distance and word break and shortest palindrome in middle school?

rcheu 9y ago
Was a long time ago so I don't remember them all, but some examples I do remember: * Print pascal's triangle up to the n-th level, with proper spacing (so that it looks like a triangle). * Make the game Go for 2 players. I got a sub problem of this during my Google interview (determine whether a piece is captured).
- wiz21c 9y ago
  When interviewing in tech jobs I had : - build an asynchronous communication queue from scratch (which implies building semaphores) - optimize the drawing of a sphere on a screen the rest was more regular (I didn't apply to super elite jobs, and both the companies with these two hard tests failed, so it's no indication neither about them, neither about me)
  - mrastro 9y ago
    > - build an asynchronous communication queue from scratch (which implies building semaphores) How long were these interviews? Seems like something I could do in a few days not a 2-hour interview!
    - wiz21c 9y ago
      It lasted two hours. Now the way it worked was that I was doing on my own but I had to constantly explain to a "peer" my line of reasoning. So I was not alone in front of a white paper :-) This was an extremely interesting wy to interview. I felt I had the opportunity to demonstrate my skills on a difficult problem (which I didn't solve). I didn't remember the details of Dijkstra's algorithm but I had the opportunity to show that I can approach a complex problem in a logical and efficient way (well, that day, that kind of problem; don't ask me to work on helicoidal tomography :-))
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]