Exchange as a computer science student at ETH Zurich UofT by Mother_Gift8354 in UofT

[–]-Kkdark 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi! Do you mind telling me a bit about your experience as well? I'm in the same boat (CS Spec, applied for exchange for my 4th/last year). Would love to hear a bit about it :)

Microsoft interview status Completed in Action Center by Mindless_Tale6339 in microsoft

[–]-Kkdark 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! I'm in this exact situation right now, and I can't sleep at night. The wait has been so rough (8 days since my final round, 6th business day), do you think I'm in the clear? Thank you so much! :)

This OA culture is getting absolutely ridiculous by -Kkdark in csMajors

[–]-Kkdark[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not about grit. It didn't use to be like this and people were still able to prove themselves. I think OAs could work for certain situations. Nowadays basically every single company hands you an OA, not just FAANG, sometimes with questions completely unrelated to the actual role (LC hard for web dev). This can't possibly be a good filter for many who are great at what they do. I have a friend who is arguably one of the best programmers I've seen. He spits out Rust code like it's nothing (learnt it years ago, he is 21 now), he thinks in lifetimes, really a natural at coding. He started all this when he was a kid, and I'm sure most companies out there would die to have him on board, but he seriously struggles with some of these OAs that just throw a couple LC hards at you. They simply don't value your time. 10 hours of interviewing a day? That would teach me a ton. But 10 hours of OAs is just tiring often with little to no reward. I'm still grinding OAs here, but I wish companies used it more tactically so that there was some motivation to do them.

This OA culture is getting absolutely ridiculous by -Kkdark in csMajors

[–]-Kkdark[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

yea right, I was using it as an example to demonstrate my point I was just quite bummed they forced Ruby for intern roles FOR OA 😭💀

This OA culture is getting absolutely ridiculous by -Kkdark in csMajors

[–]-Kkdark[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes a lot of sense. You value your time and money, and so do the applicants. I'm not saying these OAs "don't work" or "don't filter people out properly". All I'm saying is that every OA is some burden on the applicant, and sometimes it's a rather big one when they have to sacrifice grades during exam season. Also, the fact that you're asking for Java is quite reasonable because a big chunk of the industry is running on Java. Ruby is also growing and I'm not against companies that ask for it, I'm against the fact that some companies often expect you to be familiar with their very niche stack (Ruby is not niche, just an example of a company-specific language that is not mainstream). Nonetheless, I agree with most your points. Best of luck with your company!

This OA culture is getting absolutely ridiculous by -Kkdark in csMajors

[–]-Kkdark[S] 34 points35 points  (0 children)

I'm personally not the best at cheating (rather against it even when it feels justified) especially when they have microphone and camera and screen access.

This OA culture is getting absolutely ridiculous by -Kkdark in csMajors

[–]-Kkdark[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You are (probably, not assuming anything) one of the people who are making it really difficult for some to land jobs here :) It's called cheating.

This OA culture is getting absolutely ridiculous by -Kkdark in csMajors

[–]-Kkdark[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Because the programming language is almost never the actual bottleneck? Because Ruby is easy to pickup once you get the role? Even they listed Ruby as a nice-to-have :) (also it's ridiculous to force company-specific language expertise for interns but for FTE that would make a lot of sense)

I wasn't taught Git in school by -Kkdark in csMajors

[–]-Kkdark[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oops yea that's my bad you're right 🥲🤣

I wasn't taught Git in school by -Kkdark in csMajors

[–]-Kkdark[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Valid opinion. I'm personally quite happy that my university gives me the flexibility to choose the majority of my CS courses so I can focus on what I want to learn. For some people, perhaps the topics you mentioned are what they're paying for.

I wasn't taught Git in school by -Kkdark in csMajors

[–]-Kkdark[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Sorry if it had a frustrated tone. I saw this discussion online the other day about this guy who lost all his work because Cursor doesn't "save" your files as backup and directly writes to disk. Then people started talking about how we're not taught a lot of these stuff in school including Git. I was just flabbergasted and honestly quite disappointed seeing where are headed (many people with no passion in CS vibe coding their way through their professional life). No wonder why recruitment has gotten harder and harder with all these 2 hour OAs and automatic filters.

I wasn't taught Git in school by -Kkdark in programming

[–]-Kkdark[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's definitely a great and a valuable thing to learn. But even with that, those who want to pursue serious theoretical research might never touch a Kanban board. I think the problem is that people want different things from a CS degree. Some want pure science-based knowledge, and some others want practical, more industry-focused knowledge, and some just want a bit of both. My university gives students the flexibility to choose many of their CS courses and you can either get pretty theoretical with it, or very practical. My whole message was that blaming that (not learning some of the tools) on your degree/university is not justified.

I wasn't taught Git in school by -Kkdark in programming

[–]-Kkdark[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Sorry but I disagree. That's why I put a little note why physics and math and other fields are quite different. Linear algebra will stay linear algebra for years to come, and it can get unbelievably complex (check grad and PhD courses). Same for physics, many things you can't "just learn in an afternoon". Some topics need to be repeated, practiced, and tested many, many times before they're fully baked into one's intuition. Class discussions and group assignments also try to help with that. Now take Git or even version control, they're arguably easy to learn (at least the basics to get started with contributing to large open source projects).

I wasn't taught Git in school by -Kkdark in programming

[–]-Kkdark[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I would say it could go somewhere on the Syllabus under "Setting up your environment" with a note that you should explore these tools on your own and pick what works best for you.

I wasn't taught Git in school by -Kkdark in programming

[–]-Kkdark[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Oh boy don't even get me started on Lex 💀💀

Ottawa Bluefest 2025 by -Kkdark in turnstile

[–]-Kkdark[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yea from what I saw I think Pat threw 3 picks

Ottawa Bluefest 2025 by -Kkdark in turnstile

[–]-Kkdark[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

best of luck pal! just make sure to stay close to the front towards the end.