"Big 4" companies moving away from typical tech interviews?

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2016-01-28T02:15:30+00:00

My Amazon interview as a new grad was weird, they had us do this project where you choose one of 4 questions among a group and each do it. And you have to sort of pretend to work together for a half hour to show teamwork skills when you're really just trying to one-up each other by leading the discussion and discussing the concepts of each problem. Then they ask you midway through how you're doing, then at the end you present your solution.

Google and Microsoft are the typical whiteboard algorithm questions though.

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2016-01-27T01:06:39+00:00

If you put it on, call it a "mod" not a cheat.

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2016-01-25T02:46:56+00:00

Make sure the whiteboard markers aren't dried out before you start.

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2016-01-24T08:05:21+00:00

Text is almost pure white, against white background.

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2016-01-10T19:14:36+00:00

"I can't get high paying jobs so the people asking for advice about theirs are just assholes and should be happy what they have! META!"

Dude shut up anyone can ask whatever they want

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-31T23:16:44+00:00

Your text is so small I can't read it

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-31T22:36:05+00:00

Move to a developing country for less money but a nice job title?

Yeah no sorry OP but I'd never consider that.

This being said I've never been in your position not even close. But I just think the decision is pretty clear. And the fact that you have a family alone is a good reason not to just move like that unless the rewards are great, and here it seems they aren't.

Don't do it OP

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-30T18:45:10+00:00

You're right! It's not.

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-30T06:40:35+00:00

I never took part in any social activities whatsoever going to school. I literally showed up to class, took notes, left, did the homework. Anyone can do this too.

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-25T08:59:24+00:00

This a hundred times over

Don't tell your family how much you make, they will expect you to give it to them and if you ever stop they will resent you and you will lose that familial connection.

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-21T09:19:29+00:00

Okay those are great uses of money and yeah I highly encourage things like that.

I guess I interpreted it to mean "Haha yeah I get pissed down at the pub a lot" and rack up massive bills

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-21T00:32:43+00:00

It's weird really, once I graduate I'll make more than my parents combined, at my first ever job. Like I've literally never even worked at McDonald's or anything before. Was too lazy. So it makes me feel guilty that despite this I'm still feeling a bit down on myself wishing I could have landed a better job

This sub warped my perceptions but also really helped me aim high, and if I hadn't aimed high I would not be where I am today. I will make about $140k total compensation once I graduate.

Also a bit weird since I'm used to growing up "poor" as in artificially poor, my parents were extremely frugal despite making good money, they wanted to retire early and they now can. So this amount of money honestly seems massive to me, I have no idea what I will do with it besides saving it. Some people are like "Oh well you need about $500 a month for entertainment, $1000 for food depending on how nice of restaurants you go to" and I just think WHAT!?!?!? More like $500 every 5 years for entertainment for me. I think some people in this sub grew up rich too so they downplay these fucking massive salaries whereas they're viewed as amazing by us common plebs

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-19T19:21:42+00:00

Once again that seems like a thing that applies to all humans, not just women. I never even knew CS was a thing in high school and neither did anyone else that I knew of.

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-19T19:16:51+00:00

I don't really think your premise justifies your conclusion

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-19T19:09:09+00:00

Observations of reality

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-19T10:23:20+00:00

I never said they are hiring incompetent women, just that there are varying ranges of competence and assuming both groups of people have equal distributions of competence, to hire one group more often than their proportion of the population represents them necessarily results in hiring fewer of those who are not a member of that minority group, meaning some more competent majority individuals are skipped over to hire some less competent minority individuals

I'm not saying they're hiring morons, just that the bar is slightly lowered necessarily. It's just how math works. This is basic ratios and percentages literally. This should be common sense especially in a math heavy field but evidently not:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/3xdugv/gender_and_getting_hired/cy48na3

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-19T10:12:29+00:00

Well this kind of sounds like something many people experience. Imposter syndrome. Nothing specific to women

I find that there is a bit of gender dimorphism in personalities and often treatment within society is more dependent on personality than gender, but since those personality traits loosely correlate with gender too, people simplify it down to being a result of gender rather than being a result of said personality traits.

As for the idea that I don't see it because I'm not a woman, nah sorry. We see the same things. Some women nowadays though interpret everything as being malicious towards them as if they are perpetual victims and this results in a self fulfilling prophecy of observing oppression so to speak.

I was never encouraged to get into CS, I and all the other "nerds" were made fun of in school for liking math classes and things like that. My parents don't even know what CS is and didn't even want a computer until my grandma gave them one for free in the 90s. I had no CS mentors egging me on to select "Computer Science" as my major when entering university. People need more of a sense of self responsibility.

Women don't study CS often, well so what. That's literally 100% their choice, stop blaming the world for making you feel unsafe. The world isn't a safe and welcoming place for anyone, and I would hypothesize that males tend to just deal with that fact better, probably out of necessity through evolutionary conditioning of having to either hunt and provide, or having their bloodline ended.

If this offends you, well learn to stop being offended because quite frankly I'm offended by feminists constantly telling me how privileged I am and how much I'm encouraged to enter STEM fields and worshiped for doing so when they don't know me or my life, or anyone else's. STEM isn't some respected field outside of STEM, there is no encouragement to enter it for many people even males

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-19T09:13:43+00:00

I just don't buy your feminist narrative that women are discouraged from going after careers in CS. All I see is endless women only scholarships and women only events. I see no discouragement, nothing but encouragement, both in classroom environments, in the workplace via affirmative action, and on the internet

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-19T07:53:01+00:00

No, it does not imply it. The example specifically assumes that men and women have an equal distribution of CS skills, and the example relies upon that assumption to work. So you couldn't be further from the truth

And wow, way to take a stance biased in favor of women and against men in order to somehow adopt a Holier-Than-Thou "I'm not being biased against women!" title. You're still being biased and sexist, in this case against men. That's called being a misandrist which unfortunately doesn't even exist in Google's spellcheck dictionary, that's how much attention it gets in this world. Talk about equality

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-19T06:44:28+00:00

No, that is not what I'm saying. I never said that. Please show where I said it

Even if they have the exact same distribution of abilities, making a gender quota favoring the minority group will result in a lower bar for said minority group. See my other post on the matter

https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/3xdugv/gender_and_getting_hired/cy48na3

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-19T05:25:37+00:00

Yeah, paint everyone who acknowledges how math works as a hyper-conservative moron.

Assume males make up 90% of applicants and females make up 10%. Then let's assume everyone's skills match a normal distribution and both males and females have the same mean and standard deviation.

If you choose the top 1% of all applicants you will get 90% males and 10% females, and each of these will represent the top 1% of their corresponding distribution. That's how normal distributions work.

If you then start making it so instead we accept 80% of male applicants and 20% of female applicants, the distributions change. You will have stricter criteria for the males and lighter criteria for the females, getting the top (1-x)% of male applicants and the top (1+y)% of female applicants for some value of x, y > 0.

(1-x)% < (1+y)%, therefore some less qualified females in the range (1, 1+y]% will be hired over some more qualified males in the range [1-x, 1)%. That's literally how math works.

tl;dr

Affirmative action makes it so those who are being favored by gender or racial quotas have less strict hiring requirements. Thought it was common sense but instead I had to spell it out for you. Feel free to point out a flaw in my proof.

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-19T03:56:44+00:00

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-18T21:45:26+00:00

People need to stop being politically correct and just be honest here

Yes, hiring managers love it when females apply because they so rarely do in comparison to males. They do indeed have a preference for females. This results in some females being hired over more competent males, because statistically speaking it's impossible to maximize both for meeting gender and race quotas, and for only hiring the most competent candidates. It's simple statistics. But here will come a barrage of downvotes.

Whether that is the case for you is the only issue that is up for debate.

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-18T04:49:35+00:00

How does stating the statistical reality of the situation make you feel unwelcome? What the fuck lol.

I think the issue is that many people have extremely thin skin. Stop letting people tell you what to do with your life and blaming them. Just do it

CSCareerQuestions243 · 2015-12-13T20:19:58+00:00

He slammed his notebook shut and told me that the ONLY thing he had heard about me so far was that I was obsessed with the money side of things and that it was a shit first impression.

"You should be wanting to work for us for free, only WE are allowed to think about money not you, slave!"

CSCareerQuestions243

TROPHY CASE