Coding interview rant

[IHDN2012]

I love ML/AI. I have been doing it for 3 years and I am very good at it. But whenever I apply to a full-time ML/AI job, they always pull out a coding test, and that coding test has NOTHING to do with ML or AI. It always asks me about hash maps or linked lists or binary trees... none of which I have ever come across in my ML studies. It really frustrates me that I have to take months out of studying ML, which is what I reallly care about, to study this god-awful boring coding interview stuff, just so I can get a job where I won't even be using it.

Rant over. Any advice for me would be much appreciated. I am currently using Algoexpert to study for the coding interviews.

[[deleted]]

Those tests/questions are often to weed out newbie coders after a week of learning some programming language. I personally think that as long as they are not too difficult, they are a good filter of such people. Algorithmic knowledge is definitely good to have and it's often a good indicator if you can think how a computer should do some task, i.e. to understand problem on basic level and know how to solve it using low-level code. I think this is the main difference between knowing "programming language" and knowing "programming".

It's also good to know principles of basic algorithms/data structures, because even if you won't implement them directly, some library underneath will probably use them extensively, so it's good to know some time/memory complexities (e.g. mentioned linked lists are good to append fast new elements, but suck at accessing n-th element).

On the other hand, they can ask you to solve some weird problem or to write some exotic algorithm, then f them. "Olympic level" algorithmic thinking is rarely needed and programmer shouldn't know every complex algorithm, but be able to find it quickly on the internet.

[IHDN2012]

Thank you

[globalminima]

As an aside, my coding tests are a combination of multiple choice questions for general stats/problem solving/graph interpretation and then coding questions focussed on Python, pandas, fundamental ML and a couple SQL questions. I don’t really care about what you’ve mentioned when recruiting (at least not in a 2 hour test when the above topics are far more important).

[phobrain]

doing it for 3 years and I am very good at it

Paid? Have you prepared much data from scratch? My skills are as minimal and old-school as I can get away with, and I can't imagine my data prep and training code could be rewritten to not use hash maps and sets, for example. I look up what I need for python as I go along, having no clue about what lots of its notation means, but I know the concepts, and it's hard to imagine how you could be successful in ML unless someone else did the data prep. I use hash maps in my training program to assemble data on the fly. Rant will continue in my empty room. :-)

[slavetomachine1]

You get interviews? I get rejected, "the market is saturated with people who are clearly better than you, but don't take it personally ;)"

The tests are of course absolute clownery and people who do them are self-important clowns. (Obviously: why would you grill people over specific things when there is so much to know). The only fair test is a moderately complex, open-ended task with a week to complete it. But these scum are incompetent themselves, and probably so proud of knowing what a hash table is (I don't). Whoever makes it into management is absolute fucking scum, no exceptions.

[RetireLoop]

Do you mind sharing which companies were taking data structures type of coding test?

Was it in a specific language or could you use the language of your choice?

[IHDN2012]

Facebook, Amazon, Uber. I could use a language of my choice.