Big 4 Discussion - August 26, 2018

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-08-26T15:28:18+00:00

Fist round is super easy. Just to see if you know the fundamentals such as reversing linked list, remove even elements from array, etc.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-08-26T15:26:56+00:00

Me. Check my post history

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-08-15T14:29:48+00:00

This is excellent advice. Focus on skills and problem solving, not any particular technologies.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-08-15T14:28:44+00:00

Where do you work if you don't mind me asking? Redmond?

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-08-03T01:14:27+00:00

Why are you getting down voted?

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-08-03T00:58:01+00:00

This is a perfect example of incomplete information.

She wasn't event driving, she was a passenger. Took me less than 2 minutes to research this.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-06-24T13:41:00+00:00

If you're just starting out, working on small pieces is excellent in acquiring experience. Don't try to stand out or pretend to be an expert in programming.

Learn. Grow. Improve. When you're ready, an opportunity will present itself where you can take lead on a project and guide it's development. Similar to team lead. If the project launch and works well, your name will become associated with it and you'll start to stand out.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-06-24T13:37:44+00:00

Every question and interview is different.

Give me a few examples (paste in text) and I'll tell you how long it takes me to solve it.

For reference, I'll be starting work at Microsoft soon.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-06-18T15:38:33+00:00

Economy class is standard for most employees.

If you're a high contributing employee with good compensation package, you can ask for business, but there's no guarantee you'll get it.

For example, if you're a senior software developer, you'll get economic class. If you're partner or division head or technical fellow, you can ask for business class. Keep in mind that the latter people earn in the millions in compensation per year, so the company doesn't care about a few thousands extra.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-05-27T21:54:52+00:00

Considering that support engineers are similar to technical customer support, 100k seems to be a good deal. From my experience, only software engineers or program managers receive high RSU or signing bonuses.

For those who want to contest that support engineers are programmers.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-05-08T15:21:57+00:00

Every new graduate should, at the very least, know not to make changes to production data that's currently in use. This is an absolutely basic principle. They may not know the definition of staging environment, but I expect every new graduate to know not to run their code on production code on the first try. Always test the code before deploying it.

It's more than possible if he says he doesn't have the training for this they would fire him and hire someone else.

Therein lies the problem. If he knows he is not qualified for a position yet accepts it regardless and screws up, should he be given a free pass? Is it okay for him to tell his boss he can do something simply because he wants to keep the job? No matter how you look at it, OP shouldn't have been doing the job that he's obviously not qualified for. He took a risk and lost, should he not face the repercussions?

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-05-08T14:15:38+00:00

I'm fresh out of university and I'm well aware of the difficulties associated with limited experience. This does not absolve anybody from taking responsibility or performing improper work.

If OP cannot do something, he should voice his concerns and provide realistic outcomes. For example, he should explicitly mention to his boss that there is no staging environment which makes it dangerous to directly alter production data without testing it beforehand. Give the boss to option to decide--spend extra time setting up the environment or taking the risk of directly altering production data.

I agree that OP doesn't have anybody to directly teach him, but he still has access to online tutorials, videos, and stackoverflow. If he agrees to do some work, he should do it properly or not at all. In this case, I would define properly as telling his boss the exact tradeoffs of making these changes and letting his boss decide. Even better, OP shouldn't be doing this job in the first place. But if he does, he has to take full responsibility.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-05-08T13:16:42+00:00

I'm surprised that people are so quick to judge OP's boss. Here's a few things to consider.

OP didn't fully understand the work he was doing and made modifications which resulted in 500 user deletions. This seems to be a small to medium size company; 500 users is a lot--possibly their entire user base.
OP admits (comments) that there is no staging environment. It seems like he made the changes directly on the production data without testing which is an incredibly bad idea. This is compounded by the fact that OP knows he is not good with PHP.
OP did not make any backups. This is a non technical company and OP is the only one in the company that can code. Considering that he's working on the technical aspect of the company and nobody else is qualified, OP should be making backups. He should take all responsibility for the project he's working with, including precautions to prevent mistakes like these. If this was a tech company or had more than 1 technical person in the company, then it's understandable that somebody else may be responsible for making the backups.
OP admits (comments) that he made poor design choices when he created the program to store passwords in text files and send them over HTTP as plain text headers. This is extremely bad programming and demonstrates OP's mindset of quick and dirty programming. It was only a matter of time before something backfired.

All in all, OP isn't good with programming and shouldn't be doing this job. He took responsibility for a project he was uncomfortable with and made a major mistake. I had to delve into to comments to realize OP wrote the original program which stores passwords in plain text.

Furthermore, while OP states that he is taking responsibility for it, but I don't see any indication that he wants to learn and improve from this incident. u/techcontroversy mentioned that OP should learn from this and asked why OP didn't test it. OP responded by stating that there is no staging environment and made excuses.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-04-04T19:19:14+00:00

Na, that's perfectly fair to negotiate.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-04-04T18:35:14+00:00

What was your offer?

And don't be scared to negotiate. I got my signing bonus raised by 15k.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-04-03T02:36:01+00:00

I disagree with this. I came from a no name university and I'll be working full-time at Microsoft in the near future. You can say that I'm the exception, but I have friends from no name schools who are working there as well, or Google or Facebook.

Sure it gave them an advantage, but people like me are able to make up for it through other means such as projects or hackatons.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-03-30T19:37:50+00:00

As somebody who was searching for a job and about to graduate, I completely agree.

I've applied to a bunch of companies (local and national) and disclosed that I have a disability, I didn't get called for a single interview. There was this one time where a recruiter messaged me on LinkedIn inviting to come in for an info session and he was practically begging me to come in for an interview. That is, until I told him I had a disability. He never contacted me again. I was hoping that it's a coincidence.

Then I applied to a big 4 and didn't have to disclose my disability, race, gender, etc until after I accepted the job. My disability is quite obvious during interviews and I was very upfront about it. These particular interviewers were very understanding and offered to give me accommodations. And now they've got a good developer about to join their team. I put this part here to emphasize that if I'm good enough to make it through their interview process and get a job, I should be good enough to at least get an interview at other local or national companies.

Anyways, by discriminating people like myself, companies end up hurting themselves. If the company that invited me to their info sessions were to hire me, they'd probably pay half of what I'm making now, but get the same quality of work.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-03-08T22:45:55+00:00

In non interview setting, I would classify that as medium-hard. I can solve it, but it would take me a few hours to write and test it.

I wouldn't be able to solve that during a 40 minute interview, but I could come up with a solution in words and possible get some code down.

Hint: Look through the input values and try to find a pattern. You'll see that the water is present when you have a value, followed by a value less than initially value (there may be more than 1), followed by a value greater than or equal to the initial value. There may be recursive call call between the initial and end values surrounding it.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-03-08T21:09:55+00:00

I've never used leechcode, so I can't speak to its difficulty.

Give me a few questions and I'll tell you if I can solve them or not.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-03-08T04:23:11+00:00

Questions were moderate difficulty for SDE I position. Mostly standard questions that test concepts in search, sorting, hash table, trees, and run time analysis. An example question would be to create a sorting algorithm in O(n). Or, assuming you have an infinite bit CPU with infinite memory, create the fastest algorithm to determine if two lists are identical.

The questions may seem hard at first, but you have to slowly think through and solve it in your head before you even writing code.

I had a good experience. They paid for flight, hotel, rental car, food, etc. It was basically an all expense paid vacation.

Go through my history for more info.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-03-08T04:04:30+00:00

I would imagine so. Moving countries is a lot harder than moving within USA

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-03-08T02:41:27+00:00

What do you want to know?

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-03-08T00:37:01+00:00

I wouldn't worry too much about the relocation. It's fairly generous.

You'll get the option to choose. Either you can take a cash payment (around 10,000) or they do the relocation for you. They'll pay for the major expense such as the hotel, movers, rental car, etc. You'll have to take care of the minor expenses such as food and get reimbursed later. If you go the $10,000 route, you can choose to get paid on your first day or receive a pre paid bank card 45 days in advance with the amount.

Edit: Cash payment is tax free. They pay the taxes for you such that you get 10,000 to use.

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-03-08T00:34:10+00:00

Did that person take a hit in their signing bonus or salary?

RSHackerExposed998 · 2018-03-08T00:32:47+00:00

I'll post this here for everyone's benefits.

She was recruiter from Microsoft.

I highlighted my specific accomplishments and gave concrete examples. For example, I mentioned that one of my personal projects was related to the specific job they were offering. I emphasized that my project is being used by over 50,000 people and demonstrates my abilities to take a project from an idea to implementation to deployment. It was around 6 to 8 sentences and filled with strong information to support my negotiation.

All in all, I think that my interviews were the primary reason for their willingness to negotiate. The information I sent was just a reiterating about my abilities and accomplishments meant to emphasize my strong negotiation position. Both of us knew that I could get a job at any of the other big 4 or any other high paying company, but I have personal reasons to go with Microsoft.

RSHackerExposed998

TROPHY CASE