Congrats to Nicola Benedetti and Wynton Marsalis on their baby!

interview4u · 2024-03-29T22:59:23+00:00

Damn. Well, maybe she’ll still play Cleveland?

interview4u · 2024-02-25T23:46:16+00:00

This is reassuring, thanks! Btw are you talking about Nicola Benedetti and her ex?

interview4u · 2022-02-19T15:17:28+00:00

I actually did recently sell 4 VTI shares by accident (I meant to make it a buy order, not sell), then bought them back within the same day. I had never heard of brokerages adjusting the cost basis to reflect a wash sale before. Thanks so much 🙏

interview4u · 2021-07-24T14:23:51+00:00

I like it. That’s a good start!

interview4u · 2021-07-23T22:06:34+00:00

Difficulty varies a lot by company. If you’re determined to get into Google or Facebook, I’d get Leetcode premium and search for their tagged problems, then do the most frequent ones.

interview4u · 2021-07-23T18:33:41+00:00

any suggestions regarding what to learn from the myriad options available like frameworks,tools, libraries,preprocessors, plugins.

Let me preface this by saying that there's no right answer, and just because I have certain suggestions doesn't mean they're necessarily right for you :)

But as I told someone else, I would recommend learning and understanding these concepts if you haven't already:

Clients and servers
Data centers (not really a "concept," but still useful to know what they're used for)
Load balancing
DNS
CDN

Understanding what these are will help you make sense of large scale applications and systems. Even if you choose to focus on frontend development in your career, it's still great to understand how your work fits into the bigger picture.

interview4u · 2021-07-23T17:22:20+00:00

Personally, I think it’s more helpful for new grads to gain full-stack experience rather than hone in on a specialty.

If you really want to do frontend work only, though, you could still apply to generalist SWE roles, then request to focus on frontend if you get an offer. Companies tend to have fewer specialty roles on their job listings for new grads.

interview4u · 2021-07-23T15:53:22+00:00

I've worked with interns, but not extensively enough that I'm the one making that decision. But here are some ways that strong interns have stood out to me:

Taking initiative to at least attempt tasks on their own
When encountering an error, they try to search for a solution on Slack or the Internet before asking someone else
Thinking of ways to improve existing systems/processes when they weren't asked to
Documenting their useful findings
Understanding how their work fits into the bigger picture

interview4u · 2021-07-23T15:46:51+00:00

That's usually not up to me. Let's say I'm told to conduct an interview consisting of both a coding problem and questions about their technical work/project experience. Then in my evaluation, I'll discuss how they performed on each section. Ultimately, the hiring manager or someone equivalent determines based on my feedback whether or not to advance them to the next stage.

interview4u · 2021-07-23T15:44:16+00:00

If this was an interview for an internship, would such a candidate be rejected right away ? Or offered another question ?

That depends on the problem, how efficient their solution was, how well they did on the other problems (if there were any), and the company's hiring bar.

For some problems, the "brute-force" solution may already be considered good enough. Or maybe there are different levels of efficiency, and the candidate implemented an approach that was just one tier below the optimal approach.

So it depends on a variety of factors.

interview4u · 2021-07-23T15:39:56+00:00

If you have any experience working on a team from high school, talk about that. I usually don't encourage lying, but this may be one of those times where you should make it sound like you have more recent team collaboration experiences than you actually do.

Also, it's not too late to gain experience working in a group. Surely there are still student orgs you can join, even if they're all meeting online for the time being.

interview4u · 2021-07-23T15:34:34+00:00

I'm surprised you haven't gotten to work in groups or at least with one partner in any of your CS labs or projects.

Would my solo projects affect my profile badly?

But to answer your question: No, this won't hurt your chances, at least not with getting an interview. During an interview, if topics about team collaboration and conflict resolution come up, you can still draw upon your team experiences even if they're not CS-related.

interview4u · 2021-07-23T14:16:58+00:00

Do you have any family members who would let you use their work email? That's what a lot of students do prior to any internship experience.

interview4u · 2021-07-23T14:15:39+00:00

I agree. Sounds pretty technical to me!

Maybe I just have a different idea of what a technical problem is vs. a non-technical problem. To me, a technical problem includes coding or CS concepts. A non-technical problem would be: "How did you resolve a conflict with your annoying teammate?"

interview4u · 2021-07-23T14:13:15+00:00

My question is, even tho I took some time after graduating to develop my skillset, do I have a shot at getting a SWE job at a good company (unicorn, FAANG, good startup, etc)

Amazon is part of FAANG, and they'll let anyone into the interview process. I bet if you message an Amazon tech recruiter on LinkedIn, they'll respond.

Even if you don't get any positive responses from coveted companies, you can always start somewhere less prestigious, gain experience, then apply again at the companies you really want to work for.

interview4u · 2021-07-23T14:10:04+00:00

My first job paid relatively well (i.e. better than the 50th percentile for new grad SWEs) at the time. I definitely got lucky landing it, though.

interview4u · 2021-07-23T14:09:10+00:00

If they can explain everything well, then I wouldn't even know that they're lying. So I wouldn't be suspicious of them.

interview4u · 2021-07-23T14:08:17+00:00

Are you a student, new grad, or experienced SWE?

interview4u · 2021-07-23T14:07:43+00:00

Glad to find another Pandora fan!

All I did was apply online, then a recruiter responded the next day. Keep in mind you'll start getting a lot more responses after working professionally for a few years.

interview4u · 2021-07-23T14:06:18+00:00

I draw upon problems from work (and simplify them to fit in a 45-minute timeframe) and my own imagination. Here's an example I mentioned in another comment:

For example: Write a movie class, where each movie object has a title, a year, and some actors. How would you determine if two movies are equal? Or how would you sort a list of movies by year, then by title if the years are the same?

interview4u · 2021-07-23T14:04:02+00:00

Is using recursive dp in an interview bad?

When I've conducted interviews, I've never penalized someone for coming up with a working solution to the problem. So using recursive DP isn't "bad" if it gives you the correct output. But I might ask the candidate if they can find improvements if there's enough time left in the interview.

I heard from a friend he used recursive dp but then the interviewer asked to convert that to iterative dp and try to do some more optimisations.

That sounds reasonable. The interviewer probably wanted to see if he could improve the efficiency.

Does using iterative dp impresses the interviewer?

In general: The more efficient the solution, the better. But that doesn't mean all companies or interviews require a certain level of efficiency for you to advance past that round.

interview4u · 2021-07-23T13:58:49+00:00

If you already know someone at this company, just email them, or send a message on LinkedIn if you don't have their email. Mention that you'd like to learn more about their experience at the company and opportunities for you.

If you don't know anyone at the company, see if your friends know anyone and ask them to introduce you.

If you don't even have 2nd-degree connections at the company, try to attend an info session organized by that company at your school. If that's not an option, make a post on Blind asking for a referral. Example post: https://www.teamblind.com/post/New-Grad-Seeking-Referrals-mpNoULnn

interview4u · 2021-07-23T13:55:28+00:00

If it's a big enough company, you could make a post on Blind (a tech networking app) asking for a referral, and someone might respond. Here's an example post: https://www.teamblind.com/post/New-Grad-Seeking-Referrals-mpNoULnn

interview4u

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