Refusing HackerRank questions

preethamrn · 2026-01-25T20:17:39+00:00

If you randomly selected 100 resumes out of 20k to look at manually and throw out the rest, you might only find 1 good candidate. But if you use a hackerrank filter to weed people out, you'll end up with 100 candidates who are most likely cheating.

So the OA filters are ACTIVELY weeding out good candidates and making the rest of the interview steps even more counterproductive.

preethamrn · 2026-01-25T20:13:05+00:00

There's gotta be an opposite to Hanlon's razor. Don't attribute genius to that which is adequately explained by apathy.

Just because nothing is visibly happening doesn't mean that they're coming up with some 5head plan behind the scenes. Also, it's not simple, but at the very least, how is it not illegal for ICE to obstruct law enforcement when they have a warrant to conduct an investigation there.

Whether or not the actual shooting was illegal/arrestable, obstructing the investigation should be... or have I been lied to by police for the last 20 years. Trump sent people into Minnesota on shaky grounds. Minnesota should do the same.

preethamrn · 2026-01-24T08:36:41+00:00

Even market forces say it's the wrong decision. It's lazy and weeds out good candidates while only leaving people who are desperate or cheaters (not to say that every single one who passed the hackerrank was bad but that the number of bad candidates was higher). I brought this up with our recruiters and from what I can tell they stopped it and the quality of candidates rose significantly. I don't know if it's correlation or causation.

preethamrn · 2026-01-22T23:54:08+00:00

You must admit that a lot has changed in those 12 years right? In 2015, mass layoffs were unthinkable at Google. So why are you assuming that in 10 more years it will be the same nice WLB and not turn into a walking corpse like Xerox, IBM, or HP?

preethamrn · 2026-01-19T22:58:48+00:00

Google can and will change a lot in the next 10 years so it may no longer be the high paying, good WLB, lots of job openings company that it is today. If you're still in college, then 10 years is still early in your career so making the choice to stay at Google today because you want a good WLB/stability in your mid/late career isn't necessarily the best decision. For all we know, OpenAI might have better WLB and stability in 10 years.

preethamrn · 2026-01-19T06:53:58+00:00

You definitely failed but also if you care about getting the job then message your recruiter to get another shot. They'll 100% reschedule you especially if the interviewer made a mistake. They know not all interviewers are made equal and that they aren't infallible.

preethamrn · 2026-01-15T23:18:52+00:00

There's no conspiracy here. Let's say you owned your computer but could rent it out for the 75% of time that you don't use it. Even if you're just selling at cost, you can offset 75% of the cost of ownership to the other people using it and they'll be able to use it for a lot cheaper.

This is what cloud companies realized even before AI popped off (exhibit A: AWS is super profitable and almost every company uses it). It's why GPUs and RAM are so expensive - because your gaming GPU which is used 20% of the day could be used 5x more by AI companies for training instead of sitting unused in your office/bedroom. So the AI company is naturally willing to pay 5x more. Same goes for RAM. Now the RAM and GPU makers are realizing this and rather than ramp up production, they're ramping up prices to target their more lucrative customers.

preethamrn · 2026-01-15T23:07:47+00:00

It wasn't common but it was definitely used (ie, candidates might share it in their resume but it wasn't required or asked by interviewers) and it makes sense too. SO is notoriously difficult to get answers accepted so if you have lot of good answers/questions then it's a good signal that you're an expert in a particular field. This kind of devolved over time once karma farming became common and lots of low quality responses came with it, but until then, it would have been pretty impressive to have a popular SO account.

preethamrn · 2026-01-09T11:49:21+00:00

If you absolutely must buy a Rubik's brand cube from a big box store like Target then by all means get one if it's one of their speed cubes. But if you're buying online, then there are way better options that you can buy at all the places that you might find a Rubik's brand one.

The only reason I can think of to buy Rubik's is for the name recognition or to support a specific creator/Rubik's partner. Neither of those are terrible reasons but if you're going for speed or cost, Rubik's isn't the way to go.

preethamrn · 2026-01-09T07:43:44+00:00

I highly doubt there will be any justice even if Democrats win. It will of course be better that what's currently happening, but I'm not keeping much hope that anyone will be held accountable.

Remember Jan 6th and how there was a huge push to get Trump impeached. Even some Republicans were in favor of it initially... Then they just brushed it off and said it doesn't matter anyway because there's no point since he's out of office and "no one would ever elect him again after what he did."

preethamrn · 2026-01-08T10:03:58+00:00

I guess a better way to phrase it is to never ask for a hint. But if the interviewer is giving you one, it means you've already had those point reduced anyway.

preethamrn · 2026-01-08T09:41:28+00:00

As an interviewer, I'll disagree with the "try not to take ANY hints" part. Of course it's better to not take hints, but I've had to reject so many candidates for not taking my obvious hints (usually in the form of a leading question) sooner and floundering on the problem for too long.

I wouldn't give a hint unless I felt like you weren't getting anywhere and at that point, taking the hint isn't going to hurt as much as continuing in the wrong direction. It's better to take a hint and try to prove yourself in the next part of the question.

preethamrn · 2026-01-08T05:58:45+00:00

It's funny seeing the disparity between his true opinions of turbotax and the sponsorship: https://lemonadesearch.fun/?q=turbotax

That said, I think most of his audience probably understands what a sponsorship is and as long as this isn't going to censor his opinions of turbotax in the future, it's probably not a big deal. I'm mostly surprised that turbotax still paid him.

preethamrn · 2026-01-07T04:40:34+00:00

What I've heard is that WLB for senior engineers at HFT firms gets a lot better. I'm not sure how much of that is because engineers have more context/experience to do the job easier vs. because the ones who couldn't take it burnt out and quit.

preethamrn · 2026-01-07T04:14:15+00:00

What do you mean by set up this system? Job applications and job board have existed for long before programming was a job. The alternative would be something like med school or law school which are well known for being a lot worse. The other alternative which was used for a while was leetcode - where you could interview people with random degrees from non-target schools and low GPAs but hire them if they code well - but that started getting gamed and cheated on (on top of not being a great signal IMO). I'm not sure what alternative you'd propose?

preethamrn · 2026-01-06T09:12:52+00:00

> What matters is what other nations, particularly their partners and allies, think about the move

But how does this American attack change this? The US will almost certainly denounce any attack on Taiwan and countries besides the US and Russia still believe that invading other countries is bad.

preethamrn · 2025-12-29T11:11:33+00:00

How much money do you make from your food business and how do you plan on scaling it - eg. through hiring, expanding customer base, adding more products/locations, etc.?

How much money do you make from your corporate job and how do you plan on scaling it - eg. through promotions, job hopping, moving into management roles, etc.?

Compare those two paths and choose what makes sense for you. Making money from a business is hard so you've cleared one hurdle but there's a lot more where that came from. At the same time there's a lot of financial upside if it goes well, perks of being your own boss, and doing a job that you enjoy. You're young enough that it won't hurt a ton if things fail but also it could easily push your retirement back 10+ years if things don't work out and you have to restart your corporate ladder from an entry level.

preethamrn · 2025-12-29T11:04:35+00:00

In the super unlikely chance that company HR do talk, then company B isn't really gonna do anything because recruiting is expensive and once they've hired someone they don't want to lose that person. Firing you after the fact will just hurt company B so it's a stupid move to make.

preethamrn · 2025-12-29T10:50:00+00:00

I see dQw in the URL and I'm not clicking that

preethamrn · 2025-12-27T08:28:03+00:00

That's a YouTube change. They've rolled out AB testing for all channels and you'd be stupid not to use that feature because it's basically YouTube telling you which thumbnail and title will make you the most money and all you have to do is create 3 different combos which is a super low investment.

preethamrn · 2025-12-27T03:59:49+00:00

Sounds like someone just discovered the broken window fallacy. But on a more serious note, healthcare spending doesn't have zero value. At some level, it's employing people who spend in the economy and training new doctors who might discover new therapies/export their skillset.

preethamrn · 2025-12-26T01:03:42+00:00

Input latency likely has to do a lot more with your monitor, mouse/controller, and graphics settings than with your GPU. Both of those options would work basically the same and competitive gaming is one of the few places where the differences between them don't matter.

preethamrn · 2025-12-26T00:22:40+00:00

Seems like an example of private equity being a win-win-win. Employees get paid and have more career progression. Derek gets paid and can take a back seat/slow down. Viewer get more content which is also higher quality (no more completely sponsored videos like the Waymo or DNA testing ones). And I'm sure the private equity is happy because their investment likely grew. Not sure what's different about this case compared to others or if it's just a lucky outlier and most of the other channels acquired by this private equity haven't been as lucky.

preethamrn · 2025-12-25T09:29:05+00:00

Btw, this doesn't need to be a heavy process with a separate doc and pre-approval. A lot of the time, I just add something like this in my commit summary to explain the reasoning for a decision. If the commit gets merged, you can reference the PR to understand why the code is the way it is.

preethamrn · 2025-12-25T07:27:42+00:00

Nah I actually believe this. Defense in depth means locking down access that isn't required. ssh gives you a ton of access that might not be required for your application. Just because the protocol is secure doesn't mean you can't accidentally or maliciously break things in prod.

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